April 4, 2016 • 39 mins
Dr. Kali Nicole Gross joins Tracy to discuss a murder that took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1887. The details of the investigation and trial offer insight into the culture of the the post-Reconstruction era, particularly in regards to race.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:29):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we have an interview today.
One of the yeah, one of the really cool things
about doing a podcast like this is that after a
while you start getting on the mailing lists of publishers
and academic presses. You get to see what kinds of
history books are on the horizon. And I got a
catalog from Oxford University Press last fall and there was
(00:51):
a title that immediately caught my eye and made me say,
I've got to read this book. And it was called Hannah,
Mary Tabs and the Disembodied tor So, a Tale of Race, Sex,
and Violence in America by Dr Cally Nicole gross. So.
I asked for that book immediately, but then we put
off actually talking to Callie until after the book was
(01:11):
actually available. So that listeners, if you're understood, you can
get it and read it too. Callie is an associate
professor and the Associate Chair of African and African Diaspora
Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and this
is actually her second book. Her first was Colored Amazon's Crime,
Violence and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love
(01:33):
eighteen eighty to nineteen ten. So, as you can probably
glean from both of those titles, both of these books
deal a lot with criminal justice. Hannah Mary Tabs and
The Disembodied Torso tells the story of a crime that
was committed in Philadelphia in eight seven. The investigation started
after a torso, which was missing its head and limbs,
was found on the bank of a pond. Once this
(01:55):
torso was identified as belonging to a man named Silas Wakefield,
gains Ana, Marry Tabs, and George H. Wilson were eventually
arrested and brought to trial for the murder. And this
first part that we're going to start with uh is
Tracy talking to Callie and Callie giving an overview of
who Hannah Mary Tabs was. First off, thank you so
(02:21):
much for being on the show. I'm really excited to
talk to you about your book. And about this story
and about the the world that this story plays out in,
because I think there are a lot of things in
your book that are still really relevant today, and it's
a story that's not the sort of story that we
talked about a lot on the show for a lot
of reasons. So to start off, who was Hannah Mary Tabs? Okay, Well,
(02:47):
first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity.
I'm really looking forward to talking about this book. We've
you So, Hannah Mary Tabs was a black woman unlike
any other that I read about who lived in the
late nineteenth century. For what I could gather, she was
from Anna Arundel County, Maryland, who was born in the
eighteen fifties. Um Marilyn was this slave state. She came
(03:11):
into her womanhood during the Civil War, and in eighteen
eight seven in Philadelphia, she participated in the murder and
dismemberment of her parabore. A thing that you've alluded to
in other interviews is that when we tell the stories,
especially of black women in a historical context, a lot
(03:32):
of times the ones that we focus on are the
stories of women who were activists or women who had
a heroic story in some way, And this book is
a book about really she was basically an ordinary woman
who was who played a part in this crime. How
did you find her story in the first place. One
(03:52):
of those things that I do in my work is
I try to write against this idea of respectability. UM.
Respectability sort of an uffless strategy that black folks adopted
as a way to combat these negative stereotypes about black
people UM. And it's an important strategy and it has
its place in history, but it's also played out a
lot in history in historiography. What I mean is in
(04:15):
terms of the kinds of histories that historians right usually
focused on Black women who are really heroic. And one
of the things that I've learned is that that kind
of work is important, but it's not the only stories
to tell. And if we want to continue to make
black history relevant and to speak to ongoing issues, we
have to sort of expand our vision, and for me,
(04:38):
that meant looking at the experiences of black women in
the justice system. So I would doing research for my
first book, which looked at black women's experiences in the country,
sort of first penitentiaries which were founded in Philadelphia, first
of Walnut Street, jail and penitentiary house and at least
later Eastern State Penitentiary. In any way, the administrator that
(05:00):
Eastern Eastern maintained a scrapbook and they sort of took
out newspaper clippings with all the sort of quote unquote
famous sort of prisoners that they had. And it was
there that I first sort of stumbled across this Torso case.
They were just pages and pages about this bizarre sort
of case and these folks who were involved in it,
(05:22):
And once I picked it up, I really just couldn't
put it down. So the title of your book is
Hannah Mary Tabs and the Disembodied Torso, A Tale of race,
sex and violence in America. This torso that we're talking about,
when it was originally found at the crime scene, uh,
the investigators didn't know who it belonged to, and they
weren't sure of the victims race. How did that affect
(05:44):
how the investigation of this murder played out? So the
ambiguity around the torso's race really shaped the investigation in
a couple of significant ways. The first is that because
they fear it belows to a white man, it gets
a lot more sort of police activity and attention. Um,
they are really concerned about the loss of a white
(06:09):
man's life. They also, i think are driven in part
two to kind of resolve once and for all the
actual race of the victim. This is this period where
what it means to sort of be black and white
in some ways appeared to be shifting, and we had
this sort of influx of Eastern European immigrants and all
(06:30):
these other sort of others, and so there was speculation
about kind of who was in the social mantle of
whiteness who wasn't. So both of these factors, I think
really play into investigators kind of doubling down and really
wanting to solve this case. Um. But the ambiguity also
kind of stymies them because black and white folks lived
(06:53):
in very different worlds, and so not knowing the race
definitively kind of hampered them in terms that they didn't
know sort of which world to actually look into. Um.
Once they do figure out that is a man of color,
most likely a mulatto, then they sort of go hard
into the black community at that point, in part because
(07:14):
the case had attracted all this detention, had become already
sort of a media sensation. So I don't want to
ask you to basically tell us everything that happened, because
I've read the book and I know that you would
like readers to experience the discovery of all the elements
that played into this crime. Uh, and and not have
(07:35):
basically the ending spoiled for them before they even get started. Um.
But but the basics is that this torso discovered was discovered.
A woman named Hannah Mary Tabs was indicted for the crime,
and then she implicated another man in her testimony. So
this whole book going into the story and how it
(07:56):
all came to trial. Uh, it reads like an academic
true crime novel. How did you go about researching this
this thing that sort of blends these two worlds of
academic study and true crime. Yes, I'm so glad that
that's the way it reads. That's the goal. Um, an
(08:18):
academic true crime novel. That was the goal. Um. It
was it was complicated. On one hand, there was a
wealth of newspaper coverage because the case was still sensational.
Papers covered this thing from Philadelphia to Missouri to Ohio. Um.
(08:39):
There was even a German language newspaper published out of
Maryland that covered this case. Um. The Deutsch correspondence, believe
it or not. So I used the media coverage to
sort of serve as the spine of the book in
the narrative and also to guide my research. So from
(08:59):
that I could kind of piece together how this story
unfolded and evolved, and in along the way, I would
use the articles to kind of read against each other.
I read for inconsistencies, for names to address, for any
information that I could find about all of the folks involved,
from witnesses to the police, to the suspects, to the jurors,
(09:21):
to the judge. And then I followed it up with
other historical documents, so sences data, city directories, police UM
intake records, bills of indictment, you know, chunks of trial
transcript that had been reprinted. I found out that the
husband of you know Tabs basically was the Civil War veteran,
(09:44):
so I managed to track down some of his records
and UM pension files. So I used all of those
documents to kind of corroborate and verify the narrative as
best I could. But I ultimately I wanted the story
to unfold the way that I read it, because I
just could not believe it yeah, and that's that's really
what the book does, is it gradually reveals all these
(10:08):
little details that happened, and it's clear from the end.
I'm going to encourage readers who find this, our listeners,
who who think this story sounds interesting, to to find
a copy of the book and read it. You make
it very clear in the end what you think happened,
which which I think is good because a lot of
writers don't do that for whatever reason and sort of
leave it up in the air, like it's clear in
(10:28):
the end that that that you have thoughts on on
what happened. You know, I struggled with that decision because
for me, there's so much about the case that's still
sort of a mystery. That point I sort of debated
back and forth over one what I thought actually did happen,
and into whether I should sort of included in a
(10:50):
book or not. In the end, it just seemed wrong
not to sort of put out there what what I
thought happened, but trying to sort of frame it too.
Isn't it This is where I being happened. But that's
pretty much the extent of it, which I could never
really quantity, you know, quantifiably say who actually kills this fan. Okay,
(11:14):
we've spent the first piece of this interview talking about
Hannah Mary Tabs and the crime she committed and how
Callie researched that crime. Next, we are going to talk
about some historical and social context of in the world
where all of this played out. But first we're going
to pause for a record from a father. Next up,
(11:39):
Tracy and Kelly are going to talk about what racial
attitudes were like in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which had been a
free state before the Civil War when this crime took place.
So one of the reasons that I really wanted to
talk to you about your book and about the events
that your book is about is the a lot of
(12:02):
things that existed in the world when this happened are
really still relevant today. So one of the things that
we have talked about a lot on our podcast lately
is the misperception that that racism is a Southern problem
and that after the Civil War, racial violence and discrimination
were only really problems in the states that had been
(12:23):
allowing slavery when the Civil War started, And of course
neither of those things is true. And this book in
particular is documenting things that happened in Philadelphia after the
Civil War, and Pennsylvania, of course was a free state
when the Civil War started. So what were racial attitudes
like in Philadelphia at this point in history. You're right
(12:45):
on both fronts. The racial attitudes in Philadelphia were not
terribly different from those held in the South for all
intended purposes, partly because Philadelphia, before could becoming a actually
was a colony that had slavery, like most of the
other colonies in the north to New York, New Jersey, Connecticut,
(13:08):
all of these places had slavery prior to independence um
and for short time thereafter. So it's they had freedom longer.
But they also have a legacy of inflavement um, as
you point out, And so in Philadelphia, even though enslavement
is gradually abolished in seventeen eighty, these sort of black
(13:32):
folks are not citizens yet either until the passage of
the fourteenth Amendment. Basically, so you have a population of
free blacks who had in some respects established certain things
in their own community, but also faced heavy, heavy discrimination.
They also were kind of fighting against jobs, sort of
(13:56):
competition where a newer industries were emerging in Philadelphia, particularly
in the late nineteenth century, Black people found themselves largely
shut out. They were mostly confined to domestic service, and
they were profoundly disappointed by that. Um. They also faced
daily kind of street harassment. Black women in particular was
(14:17):
very vulnerable kind of walking to and from work, traveling
on street cars. It was a very difficult time, and
they were removed from justice in the sense that police
were incredibly biased. Right, you have racial profiling going on
in Philadelphia. Violence was considered a part of policing, and
(14:38):
black people were especially vulnerable. Police manuals instructed officers to
stop anyone who looked poor and like they didn't belong
in the state. And this is a moment where you
have many newly freed black migrating in Philadelphia, in part
because it had been a free state longer and it
had been a robust abolitionist movement, so they thought this
(14:59):
was going to be like the Land of Milk and
Honey in terms of civil rights. It was a profound disappointment,
in shocks to find the same kind of racism UM operating,
not just in in terms of you know, employment, but
in housing as well as an in justice system. They
also don't have a lot of protection from police that's
(15:20):
the other thing that the case really highlights that Tabs
is a woman who has no criminal record in Philadelphia.
The once this investigation gets underweight's clear that she had
been committing all kinds of crimes in her community against
black people that they're so removed from justice that they're
basically kind of trapped. One of the things in the
(15:42):
book is a picture of the caption is Chief Kelly
and his private office from the Philadelphia Police and it's
a picture of this police officer and he's standing or
he's sitting in front of what it looks like a
wall of weapons and struments of harm. Basically, I was
(16:02):
I was astonished to see that, And was this sort
of a show of threat or was or were these
things that were all actually being used in policing. I
actually think that those were these sort of confiscated Keith stakes.
A lot of them are various sort the skeleton keys,
um and tools I think that folks are using in
(16:25):
the commission of crime. So in part, some of that
stuff that kept me are things that they had taken
off of you know, the the quote unquote professional crime
class that seems to be emerging in Philadelphia at this time, um,
it's also a weird kind of testimony to the ionies
(16:46):
of the city being called, you know, one of brotherly love.
I had not thought of that at all. So today,
when we talk about things like incarceration rates and disparities
and sentencing, a lot of the foe fists in the
media right now is on black men. And one of
the things that you've pointed out is that, um, like,
(17:07):
while there's definitely a wealth of evidence that that black
men are disproportionately represented in the justice system and they
tend to be given longer sentences than white men for
the same crimes. Uh In in the nineteenth century, so
when this this one this is happening, black women were
actually much more disproportionately imprisoned than black men. What were
(17:27):
the reasons for that? So the reason to a black
women were more disproportionately represented in prisoned in black men
in the nineteenth century, actually in the early twentieth century
as well, in part related to domestic service, right, is
this sort of I call it the domestic service to
prison pipeline because at n black women working in Philadelphia
(17:49):
work and domestic service there's the only job that they
could obtain. They worked for job mostly in white households.
So when when any sort of fact occurred a real
or imagine and white employers kind of called the police
and brought these black services before white justices injuries, they
(18:10):
got convicted at a higher rate, more than anyone else
in the city. So in the early part, for example,
of the early part nineteen century, black women were convicted,
sent Black women who went before Philadelphia criminal courts were convicted,
and so those dynamics kind of coalesced to produce this
disproportionate representation of them in the prison system. So it
(18:33):
was really like the middle of the twentieth century when
the when it shifted so that men were that black
men were more disproportionately represented in the prison system. What
led to that shift? So I'll tell you, ironically, it's
not really clear that that shift occurred in the mid
twentieth century. When I visited the prison in n I
(18:55):
was astonished to find that black women were still more
disproportionately represented in black in prison and black men, at
least in Pennsylvania. Now, what's different, or what has remained consistent,
is that the numbers of men are greater than that
of women in prison. So there are more black men
in prison than there are black women, but in terms
(19:17):
of their disproportionality black women, um that disproportionality has remained
fairly consistent. It's only been in the last few years
that the rate of inconceeration for black women have dropped,
and that's to part due to the changes in the
drug laws and their enforcements. So to kind of tie
this to how the how this is relevant to the
(19:38):
world that we're in today, Uh, why do you think
so much of the focus is on black men when
it's still such a disproportionate issue among black women. Also,
I think there are a couple of reasons why the
emphasis is still on black men, partly because their numbers
are so much greater, but also I think it was
about a kind of patriarchy that still sort of operates
(20:01):
in society. It is certainly in the black community that
a lot of times we are accustomed to sort of
rallying around injustices that impact black men, particularly when it's
from the state state violence. Right, you have black women
who have also you know, been this, you know, died,
who are unarmed in in incidence with police, but they
(20:24):
don't seem to garner the same kind of attention or
response when the victims are black males. I mean, it's
something that folks are working to change, but at the
end of the day, I think it speaks to a
kind of enduring sort of patriarchy. After another brief word
(20:45):
from a sponsor, we're going to get back to talking
about the parties involved in this crime, and we're going
to talk about the early life of George H. Wilson,
who Hannah Mary Tabs implicated in her testimony about this crime.
And this is one of the things that came up
in the book that I immediately put on the list
to ask Callie directly about, because it's that's a little
up staying. Okay, So to wrap up this really fantastic
(21:17):
interview that Tracy did, uh, they're gonna talk a little
bit about George H. Wilson's early life, and then it
will wrap up with some thoughts about why Callie believes
stories like Hannah's are important to tell. To move back
to the players in this particular crime, a man named
(21:37):
George Wilson was invited along with Hannah Mary Tabs for
this murder, and you write about how his having lived
in Philadelphia's House of Refuge for colored youth, and how
for some black families living at this time, which was
after the Civil War in Philadelphia, their only option to
to prevent starvation and homelessness and just being absolutely desertate
(22:01):
was basically to surrender their children to this house of
refuge under the grounds that they were encourageible. So when
I read this, it sounds like they were basically putting
a child into juvenile detention as an alternative to homelessness.
Is that is that really what this was like? That's
the impression that the records certainly give that many many
(22:24):
of the commitments were doing large part to families being
incredibly impoverished and just not having many alternatives. Wilson, for
all intention purposes, had been orphaned at that point. His
father wasn't in the picture, his mother had just died.
Her well were very very poor. Um, he had some
(22:44):
issues with the truancy in school, and so all face
taken together, they decided to commit him to the House
of Refuge. And his story was not unlike many many
black children who had been confined. There was breaking part
about that. Piece of the story for me too, was
(23:05):
the shock that his own mother had actually been incarcerated.
There as a young person herself. So it was for
me this very early kind of example of a cycle
of institutionalization. UM I found profoundly disturbing, and I still
sort of troubled by all of this historical legacies in
(23:26):
the study history, in part because I wanted to be
a beacon for where we are today and certainly some
sort of guiding light for going forward. But I was
pretty horrified by just how much these issues around race
and confinement and law enforcement resonated with issues that are
(23:50):
ongoing today, and did not expect them to be so
directly related to our current kind of crisis. Yeah, that's
that was definitely one of the reasons why I wanted
to to talk to you on the podcast, because so
many of the aspects of this case are things that
are are still existing today. I UM. I was sort
(24:11):
of filling Holly, my co host, in on uh what
this interview was going to be about, and I had
told her about UM George being our George Wilson being
committed to this house of refuge and how his mother
had been committed there also, and she said, what kind
of start is that for a child? And I said,
that's exactly exactly my feeling like that that this just
(24:34):
sort of speaks to social conditions that were tremendously disturbing
and continue to be tremendously disturbing. One one thing that
I wondered was did did white families who were destitute
at this point have options to surrender their children that
didn't involve basically putting them into a juvenile justice system. Right,
(24:58):
this is a great question. So there are alternatives. You
have other kinds of charities and houses for poor people
and poor families, and certainly destitute women and children. They
tended to be segregated, which is why so many of
the poor black children ended up in the House of
(25:18):
Refuge for colored youth. That said, there also is a
house of refuge for white youth, and so there were
white children who were there as well sothern them also
under this sort of you know, the heading of incorrigibility.
And I don't doubt that a number of those cases
may well have stemmed from destitute poverty. Also that they
(25:39):
certainly had more avenues for benevolence and charity than most
black families at that time. So one thing that was
really new to me as I was reading your book.
I think most people who listen to our show are
probably familiar with the idea of passing. There's someone who
who was a black person, who who was having a
white identity to try to move through white society, and
(26:03):
like the really real and serious risks that came along
with doing that. That you know, if someone was discovered
to be passing for white, they could be fired from
their jobs, they could be punished, they may even be killed.
It's just some things that were really horrifying. A piece
of this equation that never ever occurred to me until
I read your book was that there was also a
(26:25):
corresponding fear among the white community that there were black
people moving secretly among them. Can you talk about that
a little. Certainly, this fear about infiltration was was pretty
new to me. I mean, on one hand, I suspected
that was a big part of the concern um with
round miss Agnation Right's twofold. On one hand, miss Agnation
(26:48):
kind of challenged the supremacist idea that black and white
folks are basically sort of entirely distinct animals. If you
will write, the idea that they could breed successfully undermine
this notion of whiteness is separate and above so misgenation
has always been sort of looked down upon, but in
(27:09):
some respect there was less fear about kind of mulattos
or incredibly light skin makes people because most of them
have been regulated by the institution of slavery. They were
in the South, their a plantations, everyone sort of knew
who they were. There was sort of the risk of
infiltration in the way that it sort of existed after inflamement,
(27:32):
and kind of with the mobility and the anonymity, particularly
in these urban environments. Right, somebody who could pass the
white could presumably leave Virginia migrate to Philadelphia, and white
families would be none the wiser. Right, they could be
working next to one of these flops, they could intermarry,
and all the rest. So there was a tremendous sphere
(27:54):
that they would be able to pass and blend in
in ways that white people would never be able to discerned.
So I know that this this is a fear that
still exists today as related to the LGBT community, like
that there's a there's plenty of research about about the
fear that there are gay people or that there are
(28:16):
transgender people that and you don't know, do you think
it is still present today in regards to race. You know,
I haven't given that's the great question. I haven't given
it a tremendous amount of thought. I'm sure, given the
current climate of our country that they probably are pockets
of folks who are concerned that there may be black
(28:40):
people passing and infiltrating among them. But I don't think
it is the same as it was in the late
nineteenth century. No, Um, is there anything else that you
want to make sure our listeners know about this book
or about Hannah Mary Tabs or the world that she
was living in. I do actually thank you for this opportunity.
(29:00):
I think that Hannah Mary Tad is important for a
bunch of reasons. I mean, for me as a black woman.
As they said, it was the first time that I
ever encountered a black woman like her in history, right,
ordinary yet sort of infamous. But also in looking at
her history in the case, it opened up this whole
other window onto the complexities that of the social stresses
(29:24):
that impacted black families and black communities. Uh. It shed
a light on the history, the other longer history in
terms of bias, policing and criminal justice visus the waste
and discrimination. But for me, it's also important to look
at her because I think it's important for black women
to have the space to be flawed or fraud or
(29:48):
damaged in history. I don't want black women. I've said
it before, but I try to say that every chance
I get. I don't want black women to have to
be clean in order to Marrick Sky only attention or
to have their humanity respected. So these kinds of stories
for me are important because they are a different kind
(30:08):
of affirmation of black women's humanity, and I think one
that's important for us to take a look at and
to consider. So to close out our interview, UM, as
a historian, you have written a lot of op eds
about racism, and about criminal justice, and about a lot
of other social issues, and this has become my favorite
(30:30):
question to ask historians that I talked to. Can you
spend a few minutes talking about how historians can help
people understand and contextualize the world that we're actually living
in today? I think so. I mean that is for me,
the important part of history as a project is trying
(30:50):
to have it served as this beacon for the president
and ideally going forward, So framing out our history and
contextualizing these issues is my sort of aim is to
help kind of get us to a point where we
can speak intelligently on the issues that are plaguing us today.
It's for me a paramount importance, and I think most
(31:14):
historians would agree that I don't think we've really stand
a chance in terms of combating these issues, particularly one
as so deeply entrenched and so charged as racism and
sexism and and issues around gender and sexuality in the
(31:34):
justice system and in our society without having a real
and complicated understanding of how these issues developed and took
roots historically. Thank you. That's one of the things that
I really really loved about your book was seeing the
deep roots that that are just documented right here that
(31:59):
parallel l a lot of the things that are in
the news day and are going on in the world today.
So thank you so much. Oh my goodness, no, thank you.
And you know, for me, the other piece of that
history is to move the conversation along right now. Whenever
these instances arrived, we get stuck in this issue of
debating whether or not it is racism, whether or not
(32:21):
racism is applying the justice system, And what I'm trying
to sort of demonstrate is it. We have a whole
history that shows that it is, so we don't need
to sort of waste time debating when these instances arise
whether or not it's it's relating to systemic justice system.
It categorically in. We need to stop moving that discussion
forward now that we know that, what are we gonna
(32:43):
do about it? I'm so glad that I got to
talk to Kelly nicoleger Is about this book. Like number one,
the book is fascinating. Number two, she had so many
awesome things to say about the book itself and the
crime that happened in the world that it happened in.
(33:04):
Thank you again for being on the show. I know
I said it before, I'll say it four or five
more times. Thank you, thank you, Thank you so much,
um Kellie for your time and for being on the show.
I will say thank you as well because she was amazing.
I so loved listening to that interview. While I was
listening to the raw audio of it, I literally was
I Am and Tracy like every three minutes, going, oh
(33:24):
my gosh, this is fantastic. Uh, we don't we don't
normally wind up listening to the raw audio of of
each other's interviews, but this was one where you were
so excited about it that you I don't think you
wanted to wait, and I still I don't want to wait.
I couldn't couldn't wait on that one. Uh. Do you
have some listener mail to close out this fabulous episode?
I do. This is from Gabrielle, and it's about our
(33:46):
recent podcast about the Women Air Force Service pilots. But
it's also about, uh, how the conversation we had at
the end of the second part about how we learned
about history, And so Gabrielle says, and need to start
out by thanking you for your podcast. Honestly, I'm not
sure how I could get through commutes or half marathon
training runs without you. The podcast keep my mind active
(34:08):
and stress free. Also happened to be a high school
history teacher, so hopefully my students won't miss some of
this stuff from history class. I just listened listened to
part one while driving in part two while running of
the WASP interview. Wow, as a lover of history, I
enjoyed so many details about a topic I was only
briefly informed about. This brings me to two points that
(34:28):
you made at the end of Part two about teaching
history in a date slash name and oversimplified manner. I
understand from an educator's perspective why it is easy to
fall into the style of presenting history. I primarily teach
world history and have experience at the middle and high
school levels. The state of New Jersey, for instance, expects
us to teach high schoolers the history of the world
from the Middle Ages to modern day in ten months.
(34:51):
Ten months. For this reason, we skip over ideas and
individuals that can be incredibly fascinating and oversimplify for the
sake of time. We can't help but to miss some stuff.
I just finished teaching World War One in five eighty
minute classes. Yet I was able to teach students about
the changes in war and technologies, Gallipoli campaign because of
your podcast, My students want to celebrate Anzac Day in April,
(35:13):
the Armenian genocide, Russian Revolution and more. It is my
goal to make history as relevant as possible, so I
constantly connect my topics to current events to explain why
the world is the way it is today. But I
have only one teacher. I hope others can have the
same perspective, so I appreciated your comments. I'm bringing historians
to speak or right to the public. Your podcast is
(35:33):
another example history can be taught in accessible and engaging
ways outside of class books and documentaries. So thank you again.
I constantly crave new knowledge and understanding of our world.
So I love spending my time with both of you.
Best wishes, Gabrielle. Thank you, Gabrielle. Uh, that was the
point that you and I have talked about. You didn't
(35:53):
really come up in that discussion that, like, we know
so many awesome history teachers who love what they do,
and they love their kids, and they love to teach,
but they're kind of confined to teaching expectations that are
set like not at their individual classroom level, at at
a state level, like at a curriculum level, and a
(36:14):
lot of times the curriculum's focus is sort of on, uh,
teaching patriotism sometimes. Yeah, Like that was definitely the case
when I was growing up. The focus of history classes
was a lot of times on how great the state
I was growing up in was and how great the
United States is as a nation. Uh, And to me,
(36:36):
that was an enormous shortcoming in my history education. Like
I didn't leave school with the history education that helps
me understand why the world is the way it is, um,
and instead helped me understand that the United States had
a big part in a bunch of big wars like
(36:57):
which you know was was not the faults my individual teachers.
That was really the curriculum they were expected to teach
was oriented it that way. So, UM, I definitely wanted
to talk about that because I we when we had
that discussion, we definitely weren't trying to disparage teachers at all.
We love them. We love all the awesome teachers who
(37:17):
write us and and talk to us about their kids
and what they're doing in their classrooms. Yeah. I mean,
I think in a case like this where she specifically
mentioned like how she tries to make these lessons relevant
and teach kids what's going on today as a result
of things that happened in the past, like that's exactly
how you get minds engaged and thinking about cause and
effect throughout history. And I definitely like you. I I
(37:40):
didn't think I liked history growing up because it was
a lot of like date name repetition and uh memorization.
But even then, I don't think those were necessarily bad teachers.
They were constrained by what they were, you know, required
to do and ridiculously short periods of time often so
absolutely no shade to any of the teachers of the world.
I know you guys are doing like incredible work and
(38:03):
a very hard job that I could never do and
so appreciate. So yeah, yeah, thank you. Awesome. Teachers are awesome.
I also wanted to quickly update about the loft Um,
the bill to reinstate their privileges at Arlington National Cemetery
un unanimously passed in the House. As of one we're
(38:24):
recording right now, it is still pending in the Senate.
Uh and that may change between when we recorded this
update and when this episode comes out, because there's a
lead time between when we do things. Um. But yeah,
that is underway. So you'd like to write to us
about this or any other podcast or a history podcast
at how Stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook at
facebook dot com slash miss in History and on Twitter
(38:46):
at miss and History. Our tumbler is miss in History
dot tumbler dot com. Our pinterest is also missed in History.
If you would like to learn more about what we
talked about today, you can do. Our parent company's website
and is how stuff works dot com. There is all
kinds of awesome information about anything you can think of.
You can also come to our website, which is missed
in History dot com. You'll find show notes for all
(39:08):
the episode Polly and I have ever done. We will
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in that you want to learn more about it. We
also have an archive of every episode we have ever
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that and a whole lot more at how stuff works
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(39:28):
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Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:29):
I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and we have an interview today.
One of the yeah, one of the really cool things
about doing a podcast like this is that after a
while you start getting on the mailing lists of publishers
and academic presses. You get to see what kinds of
history books are on the horizon. And I got a
catalog from Oxford University Press last fall and there was
(00:51):
a title that immediately caught my eye and made me say,
I've got to read this book. And it was called Hannah,
Mary Tabs and the Disembodied tor So, a Tale of Race, Sex,
and Violence in America by Dr Cally Nicole gross. So.
I asked for that book immediately, but then we put
off actually talking to Callie until after the book was
(01:11):
actually available. So that listeners, if you're understood, you can
get it and read it too. Callie is an associate
professor and the Associate Chair of African and African Diaspora
Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and this
is actually her second book. Her first was Colored Amazon's Crime,
Violence and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love
(01:33):
eighteen eighty to nineteen ten. So, as you can probably
glean from both of those titles, both of these books
deal a lot with criminal justice. Hannah Mary Tabs and
The Disembodied Torso tells the story of a crime that
was committed in Philadelphia in eight seven. The investigation started
after a torso, which was missing its head and limbs,
was found on the bank of a pond. Once this
(01:55):
torso was identified as belonging to a man named Silas Wakefield,
gains Ana, Marry Tabs, and George H. Wilson were eventually
arrested and brought to trial for the murder. And this
first part that we're going to start with uh is
Tracy talking to Callie and Callie giving an overview of
who Hannah Mary Tabs was. First off, thank you so
(02:21):
much for being on the show. I'm really excited to
talk to you about your book. And about this story
and about the the world that this story plays out in,
because I think there are a lot of things in
your book that are still really relevant today, and it's
a story that's not the sort of story that we
talked about a lot on the show for a lot
of reasons. So to start off, who was Hannah Mary Tabs? Okay, Well,
(02:47):
first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity.
I'm really looking forward to talking about this book. We've
you So, Hannah Mary Tabs was a black woman unlike
any other that I read about who lived in the
late nineteenth century. For what I could gather, she was
from Anna Arundel County, Maryland, who was born in the
eighteen fifties. Um Marilyn was this slave state. She came
(03:11):
into her womanhood during the Civil War, and in eighteen
eight seven in Philadelphia, she participated in the murder and
dismemberment of her parabore. A thing that you've alluded to
in other interviews is that when we tell the stories,
especially of black women in a historical context, a lot
(03:32):
of times the ones that we focus on are the
stories of women who were activists or women who had
a heroic story in some way, And this book is
a book about really she was basically an ordinary woman
who was who played a part in this crime. How
did you find her story in the first place. One
(03:52):
of those things that I do in my work is
I try to write against this idea of respectability. UM.
Respectability sort of an uffless strategy that black folks adopted
as a way to combat these negative stereotypes about black
people UM. And it's an important strategy and it has
its place in history, but it's also played out a
lot in history in historiography. What I mean is in
(04:15):
terms of the kinds of histories that historians right usually
focused on Black women who are really heroic. And one
of the things that I've learned is that that kind
of work is important, but it's not the only stories
to tell. And if we want to continue to make
black history relevant and to speak to ongoing issues, we
have to sort of expand our vision, and for me,
(04:38):
that meant looking at the experiences of black women in
the justice system. So I would doing research for my
first book, which looked at black women's experiences in the country,
sort of first penitentiaries which were founded in Philadelphia, first
of Walnut Street, jail and penitentiary house and at least
later Eastern State Penitentiary. In any way, the administrator that
(05:00):
Eastern Eastern maintained a scrapbook and they sort of took
out newspaper clippings with all the sort of quote unquote
famous sort of prisoners that they had. And it was
there that I first sort of stumbled across this Torso case.
They were just pages and pages about this bizarre sort
of case and these folks who were involved in it,
(05:22):
And once I picked it up, I really just couldn't
put it down. So the title of your book is
Hannah Mary Tabs and the Disembodied Torso, A Tale of race,
sex and violence in America. This torso that we're talking about,
when it was originally found at the crime scene, uh,
the investigators didn't know who it belonged to, and they
weren't sure of the victims race. How did that affect
(05:44):
how the investigation of this murder played out? So the
ambiguity around the torso's race really shaped the investigation in
a couple of significant ways. The first is that because
they fear it belows to a white man, it gets
a lot more sort of police activity and attention. Um,
they are really concerned about the loss of a white
(06:09):
man's life. They also, i think are driven in part
two to kind of resolve once and for all the
actual race of the victim. This is this period where
what it means to sort of be black and white
in some ways appeared to be shifting, and we had
this sort of influx of Eastern European immigrants and all
(06:30):
these other sort of others, and so there was speculation
about kind of who was in the social mantle of
whiteness who wasn't. So both of these factors, I think
really play into investigators kind of doubling down and really
wanting to solve this case. Um. But the ambiguity also
kind of stymies them because black and white folks lived
(06:53):
in very different worlds, and so not knowing the race
definitively kind of hampered them in terms that they didn't
know sort of which world to actually look into. Um.
Once they do figure out that is a man of color,
most likely a mulatto, then they sort of go hard
into the black community at that point, in part because
(07:14):
the case had attracted all this detention, had become already
sort of a media sensation. So I don't want to
ask you to basically tell us everything that happened, because
I've read the book and I know that you would
like readers to experience the discovery of all the elements
that played into this crime. Uh, and and not have
(07:35):
basically the ending spoiled for them before they even get started. Um.
But but the basics is that this torso discovered was discovered.
A woman named Hannah Mary Tabs was indicted for the crime,
and then she implicated another man in her testimony. So
this whole book going into the story and how it
(07:56):
all came to trial. Uh, it reads like an academic
true crime novel. How did you go about researching this
this thing that sort of blends these two worlds of
academic study and true crime. Yes, I'm so glad that
that's the way it reads. That's the goal. Um, an
(08:18):
academic true crime novel. That was the goal. Um. It
was it was complicated. On one hand, there was a
wealth of newspaper coverage because the case was still sensational.
Papers covered this thing from Philadelphia to Missouri to Ohio. Um.
(08:39):
There was even a German language newspaper published out of
Maryland that covered this case. Um. The Deutsch correspondence, believe
it or not. So I used the media coverage to
sort of serve as the spine of the book in
the narrative and also to guide my research. So from
(08:59):
that I could kind of piece together how this story
unfolded and evolved, and in along the way, I would
use the articles to kind of read against each other.
I read for inconsistencies, for names to address, for any
information that I could find about all of the folks involved,
from witnesses to the police, to the suspects, to the jurors,
(09:21):
to the judge. And then I followed it up with
other historical documents, so sences data, city directories, police UM
intake records, bills of indictment, you know, chunks of trial
transcript that had been reprinted. I found out that the
husband of you know Tabs basically was the Civil War veteran,
(09:44):
so I managed to track down some of his records
and UM pension files. So I used all of those
documents to kind of corroborate and verify the narrative as
best I could. But I ultimately I wanted the story
to unfold the way that I read it, because I
just could not believe it yeah, and that's that's really
what the book does, is it gradually reveals all these
(10:08):
little details that happened, and it's clear from the end.
I'm going to encourage readers who find this, our listeners,
who who think this story sounds interesting, to to find
a copy of the book and read it. You make
it very clear in the end what you think happened,
which which I think is good because a lot of
writers don't do that for whatever reason and sort of
leave it up in the air, like it's clear in
(10:28):
the end that that that you have thoughts on on
what happened. You know, I struggled with that decision because
for me, there's so much about the case that's still
sort of a mystery. That point I sort of debated
back and forth over one what I thought actually did happen,
and into whether I should sort of included in a
(10:50):
book or not. In the end, it just seemed wrong
not to sort of put out there what what I
thought happened, but trying to sort of frame it too.
Isn't it This is where I being happened. But that's
pretty much the extent of it, which I could never
really quantity, you know, quantifiably say who actually kills this fan. Okay,
(11:14):
we've spent the first piece of this interview talking about
Hannah Mary Tabs and the crime she committed and how
Callie researched that crime. Next, we are going to talk
about some historical and social context of in the world
where all of this played out. But first we're going
to pause for a record from a father. Next up,
(11:39):
Tracy and Kelly are going to talk about what racial
attitudes were like in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which had been a
free state before the Civil War when this crime took place.
So one of the reasons that I really wanted to
talk to you about your book and about the events
that your book is about is the a lot of
(12:02):
things that existed in the world when this happened are
really still relevant today. So one of the things that
we have talked about a lot on our podcast lately
is the misperception that that racism is a Southern problem
and that after the Civil War, racial violence and discrimination
were only really problems in the states that had been
(12:23):
allowing slavery when the Civil War started, And of course
neither of those things is true. And this book in
particular is documenting things that happened in Philadelphia after the
Civil War, and Pennsylvania, of course was a free state
when the Civil War started. So what were racial attitudes
like in Philadelphia at this point in history. You're right
(12:45):
on both fronts. The racial attitudes in Philadelphia were not
terribly different from those held in the South for all
intended purposes, partly because Philadelphia, before could becoming a actually
was a colony that had slavery, like most of the
other colonies in the north to New York, New Jersey, Connecticut,
(13:08):
all of these places had slavery prior to independence um
and for short time thereafter. So it's they had freedom longer.
But they also have a legacy of inflavement um, as
you point out, And so in Philadelphia, even though enslavement
is gradually abolished in seventeen eighty, these sort of black
(13:32):
folks are not citizens yet either until the passage of
the fourteenth Amendment. Basically, so you have a population of
free blacks who had in some respects established certain things
in their own community, but also faced heavy, heavy discrimination.
They also were kind of fighting against jobs, sort of
(13:56):
competition where a newer industries were emerging in Philadelphia, particularly
in the late nineteenth century, Black people found themselves largely
shut out. They were mostly confined to domestic service, and
they were profoundly disappointed by that. Um. They also faced
daily kind of street harassment. Black women in particular was
(14:17):
very vulnerable kind of walking to and from work, traveling
on street cars. It was a very difficult time, and
they were removed from justice in the sense that police
were incredibly biased. Right, you have racial profiling going on
in Philadelphia. Violence was considered a part of policing, and
(14:38):
black people were especially vulnerable. Police manuals instructed officers to
stop anyone who looked poor and like they didn't belong
in the state. And this is a moment where you
have many newly freed black migrating in Philadelphia, in part
because it had been a free state longer and it
had been a robust abolitionist movement, so they thought this
(14:59):
was going to be like the Land of Milk and
Honey in terms of civil rights. It was a profound disappointment,
in shocks to find the same kind of racism UM operating,
not just in in terms of you know, employment, but
in housing as well as an in justice system. They
also don't have a lot of protection from police that's
(15:20):
the other thing that the case really highlights that Tabs
is a woman who has no criminal record in Philadelphia.
The once this investigation gets underweight's clear that she had
been committing all kinds of crimes in her community against
black people that they're so removed from justice that they're
basically kind of trapped. One of the things in the
(15:42):
book is a picture of the caption is Chief Kelly
and his private office from the Philadelphia Police and it's
a picture of this police officer and he's standing or
he's sitting in front of what it looks like a
wall of weapons and struments of harm. Basically, I was
(16:02):
I was astonished to see that, And was this sort
of a show of threat or was or were these
things that were all actually being used in policing. I
actually think that those were these sort of confiscated Keith stakes.
A lot of them are various sort the skeleton keys,
um and tools I think that folks are using in
(16:25):
the commission of crime. So in part, some of that
stuff that kept me are things that they had taken
off of you know, the the quote unquote professional crime
class that seems to be emerging in Philadelphia at this time, um,
it's also a weird kind of testimony to the ionies
(16:46):
of the city being called, you know, one of brotherly love.
I had not thought of that at all. So today,
when we talk about things like incarceration rates and disparities
and sentencing, a lot of the foe fists in the
media right now is on black men. And one of
the things that you've pointed out is that, um, like,
(17:07):
while there's definitely a wealth of evidence that that black
men are disproportionately represented in the justice system and they
tend to be given longer sentences than white men for
the same crimes. Uh In in the nineteenth century, so
when this this one this is happening, black women were
actually much more disproportionately imprisoned than black men. What were
(17:27):
the reasons for that? So the reason to a black
women were more disproportionately represented in prisoned in black men
in the nineteenth century, actually in the early twentieth century
as well, in part related to domestic service, right, is
this sort of I call it the domestic service to
prison pipeline because at n black women working in Philadelphia
(17:49):
work and domestic service there's the only job that they
could obtain. They worked for job mostly in white households.
So when when any sort of fact occurred a real
or imagine and white employers kind of called the police
and brought these black services before white justices injuries, they
(18:10):
got convicted at a higher rate, more than anyone else
in the city. So in the early part, for example,
of the early part nineteen century, black women were convicted,
sent Black women who went before Philadelphia criminal courts were convicted,
and so those dynamics kind of coalesced to produce this
disproportionate representation of them in the prison system. So it
(18:33):
was really like the middle of the twentieth century when
the when it shifted so that men were that black
men were more disproportionately represented in the prison system. What
led to that shift? So I'll tell you, ironically, it's
not really clear that that shift occurred in the mid
twentieth century. When I visited the prison in n I
(18:55):
was astonished to find that black women were still more
disproportionately represented in black in prison and black men, at
least in Pennsylvania. Now, what's different, or what has remained consistent,
is that the numbers of men are greater than that
of women in prison. So there are more black men
in prison than there are black women, but in terms
(19:17):
of their disproportionality black women, um that disproportionality has remained
fairly consistent. It's only been in the last few years
that the rate of inconceeration for black women have dropped,
and that's to part due to the changes in the
drug laws and their enforcements. So to kind of tie
this to how the how this is relevant to the
(19:38):
world that we're in today, Uh, why do you think
so much of the focus is on black men when
it's still such a disproportionate issue among black women. Also,
I think there are a couple of reasons why the
emphasis is still on black men, partly because their numbers
are so much greater, but also I think it was
about a kind of patriarchy that still sort of operates
(20:01):
in society. It is certainly in the black community that
a lot of times we are accustomed to sort of
rallying around injustices that impact black men, particularly when it's
from the state state violence. Right, you have black women
who have also you know, been this, you know, died,
who are unarmed in in incidence with police, but they
(20:24):
don't seem to garner the same kind of attention or
response when the victims are black males. I mean, it's
something that folks are working to change, but at the
end of the day, I think it speaks to a
kind of enduring sort of patriarchy. After another brief word
(20:45):
from a sponsor, we're going to get back to talking
about the parties involved in this crime, and we're going
to talk about the early life of George H. Wilson,
who Hannah Mary Tabs implicated in her testimony about this crime.
And this is one of the things that came up
in the book that I immediately put on the list
to ask Callie directly about, because it's that's a little
up staying. Okay, So to wrap up this really fantastic
(21:17):
interview that Tracy did, uh, they're gonna talk a little
bit about George H. Wilson's early life, and then it
will wrap up with some thoughts about why Callie believes
stories like Hannah's are important to tell. To move back
to the players in this particular crime, a man named
(21:37):
George Wilson was invited along with Hannah Mary Tabs for
this murder, and you write about how his having lived
in Philadelphia's House of Refuge for colored youth, and how
for some black families living at this time, which was
after the Civil War in Philadelphia, their only option to
to prevent starvation and homelessness and just being absolutely desertate
(22:01):
was basically to surrender their children to this house of
refuge under the grounds that they were encourageible. So when
I read this, it sounds like they were basically putting
a child into juvenile detention as an alternative to homelessness.
Is that is that really what this was like? That's
the impression that the records certainly give that many many
(22:24):
of the commitments were doing large part to families being
incredibly impoverished and just not having many alternatives. Wilson, for
all intention purposes, had been orphaned at that point. His
father wasn't in the picture, his mother had just died.
Her well were very very poor. Um, he had some
(22:44):
issues with the truancy in school, and so all face
taken together, they decided to commit him to the House
of Refuge. And his story was not unlike many many
black children who had been confined. There was breaking part
about that. Piece of the story for me too, was
(23:05):
the shock that his own mother had actually been incarcerated.
There as a young person herself. So it was for
me this very early kind of example of a cycle
of institutionalization. UM I found profoundly disturbing, and I still
sort of troubled by all of this historical legacies in
(23:26):
the study history, in part because I wanted to be
a beacon for where we are today and certainly some
sort of guiding light for going forward. But I was
pretty horrified by just how much these issues around race
and confinement and law enforcement resonated with issues that are
(23:50):
ongoing today, and did not expect them to be so
directly related to our current kind of crisis. Yeah, that's
that was definitely one of the reasons why I wanted
to to talk to you on the podcast, because so
many of the aspects of this case are things that
are are still existing today. I UM. I was sort
(24:11):
of filling Holly, my co host, in on uh what
this interview was going to be about, and I had
told her about UM George being our George Wilson being
committed to this house of refuge and how his mother
had been committed there also, and she said, what kind
of start is that for a child? And I said,
that's exactly exactly my feeling like that that this just
(24:34):
sort of speaks to social conditions that were tremendously disturbing
and continue to be tremendously disturbing. One one thing that
I wondered was did did white families who were destitute
at this point have options to surrender their children that
didn't involve basically putting them into a juvenile justice system. Right,
(24:58):
this is a great question. So there are alternatives. You
have other kinds of charities and houses for poor people
and poor families, and certainly destitute women and children. They
tended to be segregated, which is why so many of
the poor black children ended up in the House of
(25:18):
Refuge for colored youth. That said, there also is a
house of refuge for white youth, and so there were
white children who were there as well sothern them also
under this sort of you know, the heading of incorrigibility.
And I don't doubt that a number of those cases
may well have stemmed from destitute poverty. Also that they
(25:39):
certainly had more avenues for benevolence and charity than most
black families at that time. So one thing that was
really new to me as I was reading your book.
I think most people who listen to our show are
probably familiar with the idea of passing. There's someone who
who was a black person, who who was having a
white identity to try to move through white society, and
(26:03):
like the really real and serious risks that came along
with doing that. That you know, if someone was discovered
to be passing for white, they could be fired from
their jobs, they could be punished, they may even be killed.
It's just some things that were really horrifying. A piece
of this equation that never ever occurred to me until
I read your book was that there was also a
(26:25):
corresponding fear among the white community that there were black
people moving secretly among them. Can you talk about that
a little. Certainly, this fear about infiltration was was pretty
new to me. I mean, on one hand, I suspected
that was a big part of the concern um with
round miss Agnation Right's twofold. On one hand, miss Agnation
(26:48):
kind of challenged the supremacist idea that black and white
folks are basically sort of entirely distinct animals. If you
will write, the idea that they could breed successfully undermine
this notion of whiteness is separate and above so misgenation
has always been sort of looked down upon, but in
(27:09):
some respect there was less fear about kind of mulattos
or incredibly light skin makes people because most of them
have been regulated by the institution of slavery. They were
in the South, their a plantations, everyone sort of knew
who they were. There was sort of the risk of
infiltration in the way that it sort of existed after inflamement,
(27:32):
and kind of with the mobility and the anonymity, particularly
in these urban environments. Right, somebody who could pass the
white could presumably leave Virginia migrate to Philadelphia, and white
families would be none the wiser. Right, they could be
working next to one of these flops, they could intermarry,
and all the rest. So there was a tremendous sphere
(27:54):
that they would be able to pass and blend in
in ways that white people would never be able to discerned.
So I know that this this is a fear that
still exists today as related to the LGBT community, like
that there's a there's plenty of research about about the
fear that there are gay people or that there are
(28:16):
transgender people that and you don't know, do you think
it is still present today in regards to race. You know,
I haven't given that's the great question. I haven't given
it a tremendous amount of thought. I'm sure, given the
current climate of our country that they probably are pockets
of folks who are concerned that there may be black
(28:40):
people passing and infiltrating among them. But I don't think
it is the same as it was in the late
nineteenth century. No, Um, is there anything else that you
want to make sure our listeners know about this book
or about Hannah Mary Tabs or the world that she
was living in. I do actually thank you for this opportunity.
(29:00):
I think that Hannah Mary Tad is important for a
bunch of reasons. I mean, for me as a black woman.
As they said, it was the first time that I
ever encountered a black woman like her in history, right,
ordinary yet sort of infamous. But also in looking at
her history in the case, it opened up this whole
other window onto the complexities that of the social stresses
(29:24):
that impacted black families and black communities. Uh. It shed
a light on the history, the other longer history in
terms of bias, policing and criminal justice visus the waste
and discrimination. But for me, it's also important to look
at her because I think it's important for black women
to have the space to be flawed or fraud or
(29:48):
damaged in history. I don't want black women. I've said
it before, but I try to say that every chance
I get. I don't want black women to have to
be clean in order to Marrick Sky only attention or
to have their humanity respected. So these kinds of stories
for me are important because they are a different kind
(30:08):
of affirmation of black women's humanity, and I think one
that's important for us to take a look at and
to consider. So to close out our interview, UM, as
a historian, you have written a lot of op eds
about racism, and about criminal justice, and about a lot
of other social issues, and this has become my favorite
(30:30):
question to ask historians that I talked to. Can you
spend a few minutes talking about how historians can help
people understand and contextualize the world that we're actually living
in today? I think so. I mean that is for me,
the important part of history as a project is trying
(30:50):
to have it served as this beacon for the president
and ideally going forward, So framing out our history and
contextualizing these issues is my sort of aim is to
help kind of get us to a point where we
can speak intelligently on the issues that are plaguing us today.
It's for me a paramount importance, and I think most
(31:14):
historians would agree that I don't think we've really stand
a chance in terms of combating these issues, particularly one
as so deeply entrenched and so charged as racism and
sexism and and issues around gender and sexuality in the
(31:34):
justice system and in our society without having a real
and complicated understanding of how these issues developed and took
roots historically. Thank you. That's one of the things that
I really really loved about your book was seeing the
deep roots that that are just documented right here that
(31:59):
parallel l a lot of the things that are in
the news day and are going on in the world today.
So thank you so much. Oh my goodness, no, thank you.
And you know, for me, the other piece of that
history is to move the conversation along right now. Whenever
these instances arrived, we get stuck in this issue of
debating whether or not it is racism, whether or not
(32:21):
racism is applying the justice system, And what I'm trying
to sort of demonstrate is it. We have a whole
history that shows that it is, so we don't need
to sort of waste time debating when these instances arise
whether or not it's it's relating to systemic justice system.
It categorically in. We need to stop moving that discussion
forward now that we know that, what are we gonna
(32:43):
do about it? I'm so glad that I got to
talk to Kelly nicoleger Is about this book. Like number one,
the book is fascinating. Number two, she had so many
awesome things to say about the book itself and the
crime that happened in the world that it happened in.
(33:04):
Thank you again for being on the show. I know
I said it before, I'll say it four or five
more times. Thank you, thank you, Thank you so much,
um Kellie for your time and for being on the show.
I will say thank you as well because she was amazing.
I so loved listening to that interview. While I was
listening to the raw audio of it, I literally was
I Am and Tracy like every three minutes, going, oh
(33:24):
my gosh, this is fantastic. Uh, we don't we don't
normally wind up listening to the raw audio of of
each other's interviews, but this was one where you were
so excited about it that you I don't think you
wanted to wait, and I still I don't want to wait.
I couldn't couldn't wait on that one. Uh. Do you
have some listener mail to close out this fabulous episode?
I do. This is from Gabrielle, and it's about our
(33:46):
recent podcast about the Women Air Force Service pilots. But
it's also about, uh, how the conversation we had at
the end of the second part about how we learned
about history, And so Gabrielle says, and need to start
out by thanking you for your podcast. Honestly, I'm not
sure how I could get through commutes or half marathon
training runs without you. The podcast keep my mind active
(34:08):
and stress free. Also happened to be a high school
history teacher, so hopefully my students won't miss some of
this stuff from history class. I just listened listened to
part one while driving in part two while running of
the WASP interview. Wow, as a lover of history, I
enjoyed so many details about a topic I was only
briefly informed about. This brings me to two points that
(34:28):
you made at the end of Part two about teaching
history in a date slash name and oversimplified manner. I
understand from an educator's perspective why it is easy to
fall into the style of presenting history. I primarily teach
world history and have experience at the middle and high
school levels. The state of New Jersey, for instance, expects
us to teach high schoolers the history of the world
from the Middle Ages to modern day in ten months.
(34:51):
Ten months. For this reason, we skip over ideas and
individuals that can be incredibly fascinating and oversimplify for the
sake of time. We can't help but to miss some stuff.
I just finished teaching World War One in five eighty
minute classes. Yet I was able to teach students about
the changes in war and technologies, Gallipoli campaign because of
your podcast, My students want to celebrate Anzac Day in April,
(35:13):
the Armenian genocide, Russian Revolution and more. It is my
goal to make history as relevant as possible, so I
constantly connect my topics to current events to explain why
the world is the way it is today. But I
have only one teacher. I hope others can have the
same perspective, so I appreciated your comments. I'm bringing historians
to speak or right to the public. Your podcast is
(35:33):
another example history can be taught in accessible and engaging
ways outside of class books and documentaries. So thank you again.
I constantly crave new knowledge and understanding of our world.
So I love spending my time with both of you.
Best wishes, Gabrielle. Thank you, Gabrielle. Uh, that was the
point that you and I have talked about. You didn't
(35:53):
really come up in that discussion that, like, we know
so many awesome history teachers who love what they do,
and they love their kids, and they love to teach,
but they're kind of confined to teaching expectations that are
set like not at their individual classroom level, at at
a state level, like at a curriculum level, and a
(36:14):
lot of times the curriculum's focus is sort of on, uh,
teaching patriotism sometimes. Yeah, Like that was definitely the case
when I was growing up. The focus of history classes
was a lot of times on how great the state
I was growing up in was and how great the
United States is as a nation. Uh, And to me,
(36:36):
that was an enormous shortcoming in my history education. Like
I didn't leave school with the history education that helps
me understand why the world is the way it is, um,
and instead helped me understand that the United States had
a big part in a bunch of big wars like
(36:57):
which you know was was not the faults my individual teachers.
That was really the curriculum they were expected to teach
was oriented it that way. So, UM, I definitely wanted
to talk about that because I we when we had
that discussion, we definitely weren't trying to disparage teachers at all.
We love them. We love all the awesome teachers who
(37:17):
write us and and talk to us about their kids
and what they're doing in their classrooms. Yeah. I mean,
I think in a case like this where she specifically
mentioned like how she tries to make these lessons relevant
and teach kids what's going on today as a result
of things that happened in the past, like that's exactly
how you get minds engaged and thinking about cause and
effect throughout history. And I definitely like you. I I
(37:40):
didn't think I liked history growing up because it was
a lot of like date name repetition and uh memorization.
But even then, I don't think those were necessarily bad teachers.
They were constrained by what they were, you know, required
to do and ridiculously short periods of time often so
absolutely no shade to any of the teachers of the world.
I know you guys are doing like incredible work and
(38:03):
a very hard job that I could never do and
so appreciate. So yeah, yeah, thank you. Awesome. Teachers are awesome.
I also wanted to quickly update about the loft Um,
the bill to reinstate their privileges at Arlington National Cemetery
un unanimously passed in the House. As of one we're
(38:24):
recording right now, it is still pending in the Senate.
Uh and that may change between when we recorded this
update and when this episode comes out, because there's a
lead time between when we do things. Um. But yeah,
that is underway. So you'd like to write to us
about this or any other podcast or a history podcast
at how Stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook at
facebook dot com slash miss in History and on Twitter
(38:46):
at miss and History. Our tumbler is miss in History
dot tumbler dot com. Our pinterest is also missed in History.
If you would like to learn more about what we
talked about today, you can do. Our parent company's website
and is how stuff works dot com. There is all
kinds of awesome information about anything you can think of.
You can also come to our website, which is missed
in History dot com. You'll find show notes for all
(39:08):
the episode Polly and I have ever done. We will
have a link to Kelly's book if you are interested
in that you want to learn more about it. We
also have an archive of every episode we have ever
done on the entire podcast, so you can do all
that and a whole lot more at how stuff works
dot com or missed in History dot com for more
(39:28):
on this and thousands of other topics because it has
stuff works dot com
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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