March 23, 2021 • 20 mins
Paula Johnson, whom listeners heard in the podcast, is a professor at the Syracuse University College of Law, and co-director of the Cold Case Justice Initiative (CCJI). Her team at CCJI could soon begin investigating Jim Duncan's death from a legal perspective. In this extended interview, Johnson talks about how her team of student-volunteers approaches Civil Rights-era investigations, what could come next in Jim's case, and that elusive concept of closure.
To continue supporting work like this, visit heraldonline.com/podcasts and consider a digital subscription.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back to Long Shot, a production of McClatchy Studios
and I Heart Radio. I'm executive producer Davin Coburn. This
is a bonus feature for a return man, taking you
behind the scenes of a reporting process that lasted more
than three years. Having listened to the show, audiences will
know that we have far more context now for the
events of October two. It involves rates the mental state
(00:26):
of the person and a town that was scared to
death to say anything, but it's not clear we have
actual answers yet about what happened in the Lancaster police station.
They say he committed suicia, but basically as you heard
in Part eight, Paula Johnson and her team at Syracuse
University's Cold Case Justice Initiative could soon work to change that,
(00:47):
bringing legal expertise to the case. Brett McCormick and our
production team investigated as reporters. Sometimes our training may lead
us to find that something raises an issue for us
that journalists may not pick up on. At the time
of Jim Duncan's death, no outside organizations investigated the shooting,
(01:07):
and we initially reached out to Johnson to see if
her team at C c J I might have done
so more recently, Johnson told us they hadn't and we
did not collaborate with her team on this project. But
after reading the few publicly available stories about Duncan's death,
Johnson told us she too had many questions and that
her team might now begin looking into it. I had
(01:28):
the chance to speak with Johnson at length about how
her team of student volunteers approaches these investigations, what could
come next in Duncan's case, and that elusive concept of closure.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. My
name is Policy Johnson. I am Professor of Law at
(01:50):
Syracuse University College of Law. I am also the director
of the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Sarcus University College
of Law. Our work is to assist families and speaking
information and justice and accountability for racially motivated killings of
(02:11):
their loved ones that have not been solved and no
one has been held to answer for those crimes. When
Jim Duncan died, there were a few stories written in
national publications like Jet Magazine in the New York Times,
but that was about it. What was your reaction to
reading some of those stories? It clearly seems like they
raised some questions for you the way they did for us. Yes,
(02:33):
I mean I having read the Jet magazine piece, having
looked at the New York Times piece, you know, and
just having a sense of, um, the kinds of suspensions
that are raised by this pace. You know, there are
more areas that we would want to look into, you know,
what his experiences were, what his demeanor was, at least
(02:56):
relevant times. It was very interesting to see the different
accounts about what was going on, you know, for Mr
Duncan with respect to drugs, and that needn't be you know,
really here or there as opposed to the most pivotal
part of this, and that is when he goes into
(03:18):
the police station. I mean, he's really curious to me,
for instance, that he walked in there and didn't say
anything to anyone. It just doesn't quite made sense to me. Now,
I've got the impression from what I've read that you know,
there were some real issues, racial issues in terms of
the police department and the rest of the community, and
(03:40):
so whatever has been documented, or even those things that
have not been documented but that people would be willing
to discuss. I think those things are really critical with
respect to the black community and would appear to be
a pretty all white or largely white police force in
that community. I mean, I could go on and on
about the kinds of things we want to know, but
(04:00):
that's the sort of thing that we want to be
able to learn more about. At times in the past,
C c J I has collaborated with reporters. How do
you think journalists and lawyers approach these sorts of investigations differently. Yeah.
One of the things that you know, we would do
as an initial matter is to read everything that we
(04:22):
can get our hands on that's available in the public sphere.
That includes any reportage that has taken place, you know, print, broadcast,
you name it, and we would begin to identify a
list of people that may have some knowledge or may
have some impressions. We'd want to talk to those people.
(04:43):
But beyond that, we would um look into any kind
of documents that may be part of the legal investigation
aspect of this, and that sometimes we will require um
certainly fo your request. And you know that's something that
we would do. Now, you know, we ourselves are not prosecutors,
(05:04):
and so what we try to do is put that
information in some kind of report, and if it looks
as though there was something, you know, criminal involved, then
we present that to the relevant authorities. They may be
local prosecutors, they may be federal or state prosecutors, you know,
but as attorneys we kind of speak that language and
(05:26):
understand what kinds of things would be important for them
to take that and say maybe we'll convene a grand
jury or take this at that point. But it's all
about really the comprehensiveness and the thoroughness of following every lead,
and you know, and it's stuffing that I tell the
students all the time, and that is, don't draw conclusions
(05:48):
on things before we get as much information as we can,
because something may seem to be insignificant, but we can't
player that it's insignificance unless we have followed it, and
only then are we able to dismiss it as something
that really may have no bearing on the situation. So,
(06:11):
as lawyers, then your team would take on a family member,
in this case, a family member of Jim Duncan's as
a client. Is that right? Yeah? Generally speaking, very often
what happens is that a family member will contact us
or a community member will say it's been However, many
decades and law enforcement has said one thing, we've never
quite believed that or we think that there is more
(06:34):
to be discovered about this. Can you help us? And
so we yes, we take on you know, that matter,
and we are doing that on behalf of the families,
you know, to try to help a mass as much
information and create some sort of case, you know, profile
as to what we think has happened. And by definition,
(06:56):
your team is looking into cases that are decades old.
That means paperwork and other evidence could have been destroyed,
things simply get lost over time. How do you handle that?
How does your team make a case out of evidence
that may no longer exist. Well, I mean that's the
most difficult thing with cases that are defined as old cases.
(07:18):
When you're talking about something that's forty or more years old,
people have passed away, documents have been you know, lost
just in the process of moving. And so sometimes we
really are looking for a needle in a haystack. So
that becomes a very difficult task. It's very meticulous to
(07:39):
have to go through it. And again, as I say,
for our students, sometimes you don't even know what you're
looking for, right, you simply know that you're looking for
something that suggests that it is connected to the main inquiry,
and so that process can be quite difficult. And even
if there might not be a satisfying lead resolution to
(08:01):
one of your cases, is it fair to say that
family and friends just getting more clarity on what actually
happened begins to provide a little bit more closure. Yeah.
The word closure in these contexts I find to be
a very loaded term because in a number of instances,
people will ask us, why are you continuing to look
(08:23):
into these cases that are decades old? Right? Why don't you?
And by you, what is really mental is why don't
these families just move on? Right? It's been fifty years,
don't stay stuck in the past. And our response to
that is, to the extent that the families do not
(08:46):
have as much information as is possible to obtain about
what happened to their loved one, there is no moving
on right. There is is no closure because it remains
an open wool. Certainly, people go on with their lives,
(09:09):
but it does mean that there is something that has
not been determined and they want for there to be
something final about it, and that finality is a sense
of justice. If someone is responsible for taking someone else's
(09:30):
life or for propagating a story that is not accurate,
you know, if they are shielding other people who participated
and so are responsible. The families deserve to know that.
Whole communities deserve to know that. You know, those things
were done as messages to entire black community, and so
(09:52):
the closure, so to speak, goes beyond any particular family member,
any particular community. This is a demand for justice for
the entire American society. We'll be right back after the break.
(10:12):
When you take on a case, how long do these
investigations take? How much time are you and your students
going to be investing in it? Well, you know, the
time frames always differ with respect to the cases, and
we've been working with some for upwards of but you know,
a decade ourselves. I really should put it this way.
The information is there because there are people who are knowledgeable,
(10:36):
right and so if the people who are knowledgeable would
come forward, that would make our work exceedingly less difficult.
But to the extent that that is not availing, we
have to try to find it, you know, when we
have the wherewithal the means, the time. So much of
(10:57):
this really requires footwork. Just do it sitting at a
desk and getting to know people bry, developing a rapport
so that they will be willing to speak with you.
You know, you don't you simply don't just go to
folks and and really, you know, trying to ask them
about one of, if not the most harrowing experiences that
(11:18):
they have had in their own lives. I have to
spend time with people before they have a reason to
trust you. And that's simply the human dimension of it.
There has to be empathy and compassion even as you
are trying to gather information. So it's a constant process
of visiting and revisiting and going back over territory that
(11:42):
you may have covered before to see if it leads
you to something else, and when it does, to follow
those paths as well. C c j I has a
very specific commission, what was the genesis of this program
and why did you feel like these particular kinds of
cases were important to be focusing on. In the first
Emmett Till Act was passed in two thousand and seven,
(12:05):
really signed into law in two thousand eight. We began
to look into this and my co director Janice McDonald,
who was now an America professor at the College of Law,
was in Faraday, Louisiana, and she and a journalist, Stanley Nelson,
(12:25):
had struck up a conversation and he was looking into
the death of a man named Frank Morris. Mr Morris
had been killed in December of nineteen sixty four when
three white men had come to his shop instead of
a flame, and its believed that the people who set
(12:46):
his shoe shop of flame were members of the local
law enforcement and possibly planned members as well. So, as
you know, Professor McDonald and Stanley Morris were discussing this,
he mentioned that the family was really interested in getting
more information that he, as a journalist, didn't feel that
(13:08):
he might be able to provide for them, and would
we be willing to, you know, talk to the family
and see what we as lawyers might be able to do.
And from there we began to notice that there were
other cases that hadn't been solved. And as we began
(13:28):
to travel, people began to become aware of the work
we were doing. And whenever we would make these trips,
you know, invariably people would come to us and say,
you know, something suspicious happened about our family members death.
We never accepted what was told to us, you know,
the official story. Would you be able to help our
family as well? And so that is how it just grew.
(13:49):
I mean, it just grew. There just so many of
the instances and from there we actually, you know, we
created a course look at racial history legal analysis, you know,
around the work that we were doing, and so the
project itself blossomed from that. We'll be back after the break.
(14:17):
I've seen it in the past few years, you've taken
students to the King Center in Atlanta and other historic
locations in the civil rights movement. For your students today,
what's their understanding of events that happened fifty or sixty
years ago, Yes, we did. Part of the work with
the students is that the civil rights era, you know,
as we understand that from the say, you know, mid
(14:41):
to late nineties fifties to the mid seventies, with a
concentration in the nineteen sixties, is something that this younger
generation of students don't know as as a first hand
matter and have not generally been taught about it in
(15:03):
their secondary or even undergraduate educations. So so much of
what we have done in the course of working on
the cases has been also educating our students about this
era in American history. I mean, they certainly knew that
(15:25):
there's racial discrimination in the United States, but they didn't
have the kind of in depth awareness that this was
so endemic in American society and what that meant. Some
of you may be familiar with the Emmett Till case interview,
(15:47):
familiar with at least the name Emmett Till in Mississippi
in nine fourteen year old youth, young person who was
As they were reading through the accounts, sometimes the students
would come back to us and say they sometimes couldn't
tell whether they were reading something from the present or
(16:09):
something back in the nineties sixties, because the stories and
the accounts sounded so familiar to something that they heard
on the news just days before. It has always been
the families who have insisted that the world, that government officials,
that the entities, and the apparatus of society and law
(16:31):
enforcement take notice of these events, that the lives of
their loved ones, of their children matter, and that they
matter in the places where other people's lives matter. And so,
you know, this was part of the education for them
to understand that to some degree, there was an unbroken
(16:53):
chain in these racially motivated killings. So we took the
students to ad and we've taken them to Mississippi so
that they would get a first hand understanding of what
had happened in US history. Now. I think the Atlanta
trip that you're also referred to was one in which
c c j I and Syracuse University sponsored a retreat
(17:18):
or the family members of victims of racially motivated crime seats.
What you will hear this evening are from several family
members who will speak with you briefly about the experiences
that they've had in their families. And we had a
public forum at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and as you know,
that was Dr King's church. So there was a public
(17:41):
forum where we talked about the work. We talked about
the emotional and you know, psychological aspects of racial trauma.
We know that this isn't all about law. We know
that the family's needs go beyond simply making sure that
there is say a conviction, or there is even a
civil matter that happens in the legal system. We want
(18:04):
to recognize that before those needs are met, we can't
consider this work to be finished either. But then there
was a closed aspect of this that was just for
the families to meet and interact with each other. It
was emotional for all of us. I will never forget that.
As the family members went around and they kind of
(18:25):
talked about, you know, why they were there, what happened
in their own family, you know what they knew about it,
and all the questions that remained in the cases. One
man stood up and he said, I have always thought
that what our family experienced was one of the worst
(18:46):
things I had ever heard about, ever known about. And
then he said, until right until I heard from this
other family right because in a since they had all
been doing this in isolation, but now they were able
to connect with each other about something that no one
(19:12):
else could really understand, and it was just an incredibly powerful,
powerful moment. That retreat was something that really epitomized the
enormity of what has taken place in this society and
(19:33):
how much the families have had to hold throughout the
years of longing for justice for their family members. I'm
Davin Cober return Man is a production of The Herald
McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. Brett McCormick is the
(19:57):
lead reporter and the show is produced by Matt Walsh,
Karat Tabor Cotta Stevens, and Rachel Wise. I'm the executive
producer from McLatchy Studios. The executive producer for I Heart
Radio is Sean t Toone. For lots more on this story,
go to Harold online dot com Slash return Man. If
you have any additional information about Jim Duncan's life or death,
(20:18):
email us at return Man at Harold online dot com.
To continue supporting this kind of work, visit Harold online
dot com slash Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And
for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,
Welcome back to Long Shot, a production of McClatchy Studios
and I Heart Radio. I'm executive producer Davin Coburn. This
is a bonus feature for a return man, taking you
behind the scenes of a reporting process that lasted more
than three years. Having listened to the show, audiences will
know that we have far more context now for the
events of October two. It involves rates the mental state
(00:26):
of the person and a town that was scared to
death to say anything, but it's not clear we have
actual answers yet about what happened in the Lancaster police station.
They say he committed suicia, but basically as you heard
in Part eight, Paula Johnson and her team at Syracuse
University's Cold Case Justice Initiative could soon work to change that,
(00:47):
bringing legal expertise to the case. Brett McCormick and our
production team investigated as reporters. Sometimes our training may lead
us to find that something raises an issue for us
that journalists may not pick up on. At the time
of Jim Duncan's death, no outside organizations investigated the shooting,
(01:07):
and we initially reached out to Johnson to see if
her team at C c J I might have done
so more recently, Johnson told us they hadn't and we
did not collaborate with her team on this project. But
after reading the few publicly available stories about Duncan's death,
Johnson told us she too had many questions and that
her team might now begin looking into it. I had
(01:28):
the chance to speak with Johnson at length about how
her team of student volunteers approaches these investigations, what could
come next in Duncan's case, and that elusive concept of closure.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. My
name is Policy Johnson. I am Professor of Law at
(01:50):
Syracuse University College of Law. I am also the director
of the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Sarcus University College
of Law. Our work is to assist families and speaking
information and justice and accountability for racially motivated killings of
(02:11):
their loved ones that have not been solved and no
one has been held to answer for those crimes. When
Jim Duncan died, there were a few stories written in
national publications like Jet Magazine in the New York Times,
but that was about it. What was your reaction to
reading some of those stories? It clearly seems like they
raised some questions for you the way they did for us. Yes,
(02:33):
I mean I having read the Jet magazine piece, having
looked at the New York Times piece, you know, and
just having a sense of, um, the kinds of suspensions
that are raised by this pace. You know, there are
more areas that we would want to look into, you know,
what his experiences were, what his demeanor was, at least
(02:56):
relevant times. It was very interesting to see the different
accounts about what was going on, you know, for Mr
Duncan with respect to drugs, and that needn't be you know,
really here or there as opposed to the most pivotal
part of this, and that is when he goes into
(03:18):
the police station. I mean, he's really curious to me,
for instance, that he walked in there and didn't say
anything to anyone. It just doesn't quite made sense to me. Now,
I've got the impression from what I've read that you know,
there were some real issues, racial issues in terms of
the police department and the rest of the community, and
(03:40):
so whatever has been documented, or even those things that
have not been documented but that people would be willing
to discuss. I think those things are really critical with
respect to the black community and would appear to be
a pretty all white or largely white police force in
that community. I mean, I could go on and on
about the kinds of things we want to know, but
(04:00):
that's the sort of thing that we want to be
able to learn more about. At times in the past,
C c J I has collaborated with reporters. How do
you think journalists and lawyers approach these sorts of investigations differently. Yeah.
One of the things that you know, we would do
as an initial matter is to read everything that we
(04:22):
can get our hands on that's available in the public sphere.
That includes any reportage that has taken place, you know, print, broadcast,
you name it, and we would begin to identify a
list of people that may have some knowledge or may
have some impressions. We'd want to talk to those people.
(04:43):
But beyond that, we would um look into any kind
of documents that may be part of the legal investigation
aspect of this, and that sometimes we will require um
certainly fo your request. And you know that's something that
we would do. Now, you know, we ourselves are not prosecutors,
(05:04):
and so what we try to do is put that
information in some kind of report, and if it looks
as though there was something, you know, criminal involved, then
we present that to the relevant authorities. They may be
local prosecutors, they may be federal or state prosecutors, you know,
but as attorneys we kind of speak that language and
(05:26):
understand what kinds of things would be important for them
to take that and say maybe we'll convene a grand
jury or take this at that point. But it's all
about really the comprehensiveness and the thoroughness of following every lead,
and you know, and it's stuffing that I tell the
students all the time, and that is, don't draw conclusions
(05:48):
on things before we get as much information as we can,
because something may seem to be insignificant, but we can't
player that it's insignificance unless we have followed it, and
only then are we able to dismiss it as something
that really may have no bearing on the situation. So,
(06:11):
as lawyers, then your team would take on a family member,
in this case, a family member of Jim Duncan's as
a client. Is that right? Yeah? Generally speaking, very often
what happens is that a family member will contact us
or a community member will say it's been However, many
decades and law enforcement has said one thing, we've never
quite believed that or we think that there is more
(06:34):
to be discovered about this. Can you help us? And
so we yes, we take on you know, that matter,
and we are doing that on behalf of the families,
you know, to try to help a mass as much
information and create some sort of case, you know, profile
as to what we think has happened. And by definition,
(06:56):
your team is looking into cases that are decades old.
That means paperwork and other evidence could have been destroyed,
things simply get lost over time. How do you handle that?
How does your team make a case out of evidence
that may no longer exist. Well, I mean that's the
most difficult thing with cases that are defined as old cases.
(07:18):
When you're talking about something that's forty or more years old,
people have passed away, documents have been you know, lost
just in the process of moving. And so sometimes we
really are looking for a needle in a haystack. So
that becomes a very difficult task. It's very meticulous to
(07:39):
have to go through it. And again, as I say,
for our students, sometimes you don't even know what you're
looking for, right, you simply know that you're looking for
something that suggests that it is connected to the main inquiry,
and so that process can be quite difficult. And even
if there might not be a satisfying lead resolution to
(08:01):
one of your cases, is it fair to say that
family and friends just getting more clarity on what actually
happened begins to provide a little bit more closure. Yeah.
The word closure in these contexts I find to be
a very loaded term because in a number of instances,
people will ask us, why are you continuing to look
(08:23):
into these cases that are decades old? Right? Why don't you?
And by you, what is really mental is why don't
these families just move on? Right? It's been fifty years,
don't stay stuck in the past. And our response to
that is, to the extent that the families do not
(08:46):
have as much information as is possible to obtain about
what happened to their loved one, there is no moving
on right. There is is no closure because it remains
an open wool. Certainly, people go on with their lives,
(09:09):
but it does mean that there is something that has
not been determined and they want for there to be
something final about it, and that finality is a sense
of justice. If someone is responsible for taking someone else's
(09:30):
life or for propagating a story that is not accurate,
you know, if they are shielding other people who participated
and so are responsible. The families deserve to know that.
Whole communities deserve to know that. You know, those things
were done as messages to entire black community, and so
(09:52):
the closure, so to speak, goes beyond any particular family member,
any particular community. This is a demand for justice for
the entire American society. We'll be right back after the break.
(10:12):
When you take on a case, how long do these
investigations take? How much time are you and your students
going to be investing in it? Well, you know, the
time frames always differ with respect to the cases, and
we've been working with some for upwards of but you know,
a decade ourselves. I really should put it this way.
The information is there because there are people who are knowledgeable,
(10:36):
right and so if the people who are knowledgeable would
come forward, that would make our work exceedingly less difficult.
But to the extent that that is not availing, we
have to try to find it, you know, when we
have the wherewithal the means, the time. So much of
(10:57):
this really requires footwork. Just do it sitting at a
desk and getting to know people bry, developing a rapport
so that they will be willing to speak with you.
You know, you don't you simply don't just go to
folks and and really, you know, trying to ask them
about one of, if not the most harrowing experiences that
(11:18):
they have had in their own lives. I have to
spend time with people before they have a reason to
trust you. And that's simply the human dimension of it.
There has to be empathy and compassion even as you
are trying to gather information. So it's a constant process
of visiting and revisiting and going back over territory that
(11:42):
you may have covered before to see if it leads
you to something else, and when it does, to follow
those paths as well. C c j I has a
very specific commission, what was the genesis of this program
and why did you feel like these particular kinds of
cases were important to be focusing on. In the first
Emmett Till Act was passed in two thousand and seven,
(12:05):
really signed into law in two thousand eight. We began
to look into this and my co director Janice McDonald,
who was now an America professor at the College of Law,
was in Faraday, Louisiana, and she and a journalist, Stanley Nelson,
(12:25):
had struck up a conversation and he was looking into
the death of a man named Frank Morris. Mr Morris
had been killed in December of nineteen sixty four when
three white men had come to his shop instead of
a flame, and its believed that the people who set
(12:46):
his shoe shop of flame were members of the local
law enforcement and possibly planned members as well. So, as
you know, Professor McDonald and Stanley Morris were discussing this,
he mentioned that the family was really interested in getting
more information that he, as a journalist, didn't feel that
(13:08):
he might be able to provide for them, and would
we be willing to, you know, talk to the family
and see what we as lawyers might be able to do.
And from there we began to notice that there were
other cases that hadn't been solved. And as we began
(13:28):
to travel, people began to become aware of the work
we were doing. And whenever we would make these trips,
you know, invariably people would come to us and say,
you know, something suspicious happened about our family members death.
We never accepted what was told to us, you know,
the official story. Would you be able to help our
family as well? And so that is how it just grew.
(13:49):
I mean, it just grew. There just so many of
the instances and from there we actually, you know, we
created a course look at racial history legal analysis, you know,
around the work that we were doing, and so the
project itself blossomed from that. We'll be back after the break.
(14:17):
I've seen it in the past few years, you've taken
students to the King Center in Atlanta and other historic
locations in the civil rights movement. For your students today,
what's their understanding of events that happened fifty or sixty
years ago, Yes, we did. Part of the work with
the students is that the civil rights era, you know,
as we understand that from the say, you know, mid
(14:41):
to late nineties fifties to the mid seventies, with a
concentration in the nineteen sixties, is something that this younger
generation of students don't know as as a first hand
matter and have not generally been taught about it in
(15:03):
their secondary or even undergraduate educations. So so much of
what we have done in the course of working on
the cases has been also educating our students about this
era in American history. I mean, they certainly knew that
(15:25):
there's racial discrimination in the United States, but they didn't
have the kind of in depth awareness that this was
so endemic in American society and what that meant. Some
of you may be familiar with the Emmett Till case interview,
(15:47):
familiar with at least the name Emmett Till in Mississippi
in nine fourteen year old youth, young person who was
As they were reading through the accounts, sometimes the students
would come back to us and say they sometimes couldn't
tell whether they were reading something from the present or
(16:09):
something back in the nineties sixties, because the stories and
the accounts sounded so familiar to something that they heard
on the news just days before. It has always been
the families who have insisted that the world, that government officials,
that the entities, and the apparatus of society and law
(16:31):
enforcement take notice of these events, that the lives of
their loved ones, of their children matter, and that they
matter in the places where other people's lives matter. And so,
you know, this was part of the education for them
to understand that to some degree, there was an unbroken
(16:53):
chain in these racially motivated killings. So we took the
students to ad and we've taken them to Mississippi so
that they would get a first hand understanding of what
had happened in US history. Now. I think the Atlanta
trip that you're also referred to was one in which
c c j I and Syracuse University sponsored a retreat
(17:18):
or the family members of victims of racially motivated crime seats.
What you will hear this evening are from several family
members who will speak with you briefly about the experiences
that they've had in their families. And we had a
public forum at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and as you know,
that was Dr King's church. So there was a public
(17:41):
forum where we talked about the work. We talked about
the emotional and you know, psychological aspects of racial trauma.
We know that this isn't all about law. We know
that the family's needs go beyond simply making sure that
there is say a conviction, or there is even a
civil matter that happens in the legal system. We want
(18:04):
to recognize that before those needs are met, we can't
consider this work to be finished either. But then there
was a closed aspect of this that was just for
the families to meet and interact with each other. It
was emotional for all of us. I will never forget that.
As the family members went around and they kind of
(18:25):
talked about, you know, why they were there, what happened
in their own family, you know what they knew about it,
and all the questions that remained in the cases. One
man stood up and he said, I have always thought
that what our family experienced was one of the worst
(18:46):
things I had ever heard about, ever known about. And
then he said, until right until I heard from this
other family right because in a since they had all
been doing this in isolation, but now they were able
to connect with each other about something that no one
(19:12):
else could really understand, and it was just an incredibly powerful,
powerful moment. That retreat was something that really epitomized the
enormity of what has taken place in this society and
(19:33):
how much the families have had to hold throughout the
years of longing for justice for their family members. I'm
Davin Cober return Man is a production of The Herald
McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. Brett McCormick is the
(19:57):
lead reporter and the show is produced by Matt Walsh,
Karat Tabor Cotta Stevens, and Rachel Wise. I'm the executive
producer from McLatchy Studios. The executive producer for I Heart
Radio is Sean t Toone. For lots more on this story,
go to Harold online dot com Slash return Man. If
you have any additional information about Jim Duncan's life or death,
(20:18):
email us at return Man at Harold online dot com.
To continue supporting this kind of work, visit Harold online
dot com slash Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And
for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows,
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.