April 18, 2024 • 29 mins
Every photo tells a story. In this week’s episode, Katie and Yves take a look at specific instances when pictures were used for good…and for evil. Sometimes they expose the truth, but sometimes they obscure it.
Act I: The Most Photographed Man In America
How Frederick Douglass used his portraits to advance the abolitionist movement.
Act II: The Polaroid Protest
Two Polaroid employees discover that the company's technology was being used by the South African government to enforce apartheid. How they forced Polaroid into becoming the first major American company to withdraw from South Africa.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. I know you're ready to get
into this episode, but really quick. We have been loving
connecting with y'all over black storytelling, and if you've really
been loving the show, then we would really appreciate it
if you would leave us a rating and review, subscribe
to the show, and share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thanks y'all. Now time for the episode.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
On theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Friends Media.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Take my bit.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Okay, say cheese cheez. Let me see mm hm, I
like that. Try it again.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Okay, okay, how about this one. I don't think it's
really capturing me, but you're literally right there though.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Me as in my essence what I want to say
to the world through my likeness me.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Okay, So what do you want the picture to say?
Speaker 4 (01:13):
I wanted to say, there she go, and she begin
to it when she goes, you.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Know, black people be saying a whole lot and they'll
be saying nothing.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
But okay, I got it.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
So let's try this again. See that's perfect. I'm Katie
and I'm Eves.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
In today's episode, Pixel power.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Photos are always saying something A thousand somethings. As a
popular quote goes, and when photography and political movements mix,
maybe those pictures talk. So today on our show, we're
taking it back to the abolitionist movement and the anti
apartheid movement, looking through the viewfinder at specific ways photography
(02:02):
can be used for good and evil.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Act one, the most photographed man?
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Who do you think is the most photographed man today?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So the first person that comes to mind for me
is Barack Obama, even though he's not president anymore, So
I guess the current president, So Joe Biden.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
I guess you think photograph?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I don't because I feel like Obama had more photographs.
You know what I mean? Right?
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Who wants to look at him?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Nobody? But my thing is the White House.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
They have official photographers, So I say that the most
photograph because they're photographed on purpose. And obviously I'm thinking
an A and American centric way. So I'm thinking about
US federal government and I'm thinking about the office of
the president. So my first guess is Obama, and then
my second guess is just whoever the current president is,
(02:53):
which is now Biden? Wait, who do you think is
the most photographed person today?
Speaker 4 (02:59):
See, I would sink like maybe Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
But then I was like, because people are like always
taking pictures, it literally could be just like a random
kid in Ohio to get about the pictures of themselves,
they take a million pictures of themselves. Like most photographed
person in the world.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, I guess I also didn't include like self photography.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I wasn't include selfies.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
In my thinking on this.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Could literally be anybody.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
So we were really trying to find out who's the
most narcissistic person in the world.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
Well, you know, maybe most creative. Maybe they put no
shoots m h okay, that's a very diplomatic way to
put it. Yeah, with most folks carrying around a camera
at all times, it might be hard to know who
is the single most photographed person today, But that absolutely
was not the case in the eighteen hundreds. In the
nineteenth century, no American was photographed more than Frederick Douglas,
(03:50):
with more than one hundred and sixty known portraits. Douglas
had more pictures taken of him during his lifetime than
Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
And this was no accident.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Douglas, an escaped slave who became a renowned abolitionist, and
author understood the power of photography and saw the revolutionary
technology as an avenue to challenge racists, caricatures and stereotypes
about black people that were abundant in.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
American visual culture. Eves, can you describe this photo of Douglas.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
So it's a black and white photo, and Douglas is
kind of looking off into the side. He's dressed up
in nice clothes. He looks very stern, his lips are
kind of downturned. He's very seriously focused, and he looks like,
you know, he's about business, basically.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
About his beasis. Truly.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Yeah, And for anyone who has ever cracked open a
US history book, the image Eve's described is floating in
your head right now, partly because he took a lot
of his pictures like this. By posing for these portraits,
Douglas presented the world with an image of a dignified,
well dressed black man, a stark contrast to the degrading
to pictures that were common, and he carefully curated this
(05:01):
public image, ensuring he was always well groomed, always dressed formally,
and always projecting an air a sophistication.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
If you listen to our past episodes, Bona fide blackface
or we might regret this episode later. You'll recall that
American media often depicted black people as silly, simple folks,
just their fault white folk's amusement.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
But Douglas troubled that notion.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
He once said he never wanted to look like a happy, amiable,
fugitive slave.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
He a statement, why are he bagging?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Why is he bagging on slaves like that they can
be happy?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, I think.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
The thing is like, no one really looked like that. Yeah,
it was there putting out like nobody was looking like that. Yeah,
but he was like, let me make sure I don't
look like that. I ain't gonna smile. I'm not gonna
crack a one smile. And it's shit funny.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
It's just funny as an isolated sentiment to be like
taking it out of context like that.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Yeah, his photos, they were confrontational. The stirred eyes that
you mentioned, the unsmiling mouth, the playing background. A lot
of his pictures ain't no little Doiley's in the back.
He's like, keep your eyes on me, on my face,
and he described it as the face of the fugitive slave.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Douglas was well aware of the importance of controlling his
image and as a famous writer and orator. He used
his photographs to gain subscribers for his abolitionist newspaper, The
North Star, and he would also hand out pictures of
himself along with his letters, speeches and essays.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
He saw photography as quote the most democratic of the arts.
In a lecture he delivered in Boston in eighteen sixty one,
he said, what.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Was once the exclusive luxury of the rich and great
is now within reach of all the humblest servant. Girl
whose income is but a few shillings per week may
now possess a more perfect likeness of herself the noble
ladies and even royalty with all its precious treasures, could
purchase fifty years ago.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
Yeah, so basically just saying how photography really kind of
even the playing field in his eyes is interesting to me.
And the reason why photography got really accessible during this
time is because the picture used to be printed on metal,
and it used it switched to being printed on paper,
and of course paper was like more abundant and easier
to print on. But I really thought it's interesting to
call it the most democratic of the arts, as someone
(07:15):
who used to be enslaved like slavery is like the
very antithesis of democracy, you know, and so him seeing
photography as like the antithesis in a way of slavery,
and like he's able to put his image out there
and really change people's minds based on his image, Like
he like looked so serious and so dignified. People were like,
(07:37):
he's lying. He wasn't even a slave before. People didn't
believe it because his image that he put out. He
had the newspaper and he was going around writing these speeches,
like giving these speeches. People were like, ain't no way
because of the images that we see, you know, like
the minstrel shows, like that's what a slave is.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
So I was like, he ate that. He really ate
that description. What did you think of it?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Well, I have a question for you, which is that
I'm curious about your take on who his intended audience
was for in his thinking around like presenting himself in
this way. Was it for other black people to be
like this is who you are, this is who you
really are and you can see yourself this way.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Or was it for non black people? I think it
was both.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
So, like in the quote where he's talking about like
the humble servant girl being able to see herself because
like you know how they say the camera don't lie
a little timpanals or something, but they gonna lie. It's
gonna show you what you like really look like. And
if you have people like always saying like you're subhuman,
like you're not as good as me, like you're you know,
an animal really, and then you look at this image
and you're like, wait a minute, I'm not who they
(08:40):
said I was. And they also can see this black
man who is very black, you know, like you know
sometimes people be back in the days for saying they black,
but they like, you know, one sixteenth black, but this
man black, Okay, like ain't no question. So like they
can see this black man and be like, oh, like
he has this picture, he's like dressing these nice clothes,
he's like giving all these lectures.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
So I definitely think it was for black people.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
But then also when people were wanting to know about
abolition and you know, what should we do as a country,
people were coming to him people, you know, as powerful
as a president of the United States, he was advising
Abraham Lincoln. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he
was like very well read, well written, well spoken, and
(09:24):
well photographed. He had the most photographs out, so I
think it was twofold. And so, like you said, he
had the North Star and that was a way to
get the message out, and he was printing his picture
in there every time, like hey, like this is an
abolitions newspaper. These are our thoughts about anti slavery. This
is what it would look like. This is what would
happened going forward, like really laying out the cause, like
(09:45):
the moral objections and just laying it out for people
to be able to read. And like you know, newspapers
they just popping back then he puts up a newspaper.
Now maybe people did even read it, but people's reading
those newspapers listening to his speeches. He was handing out
little cars of his picture like yeah. Henry Lewis Gates
called him like the social media influencer of his day,
and I was like, that's really true, because he was
(10:08):
using a relatively new technology to get his message out
and like spread you know, his own propaganda, which was
anti slavery.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
And he does look serious in the photo, but it
does also strike me as a very artistically composed photo
as well. This one that I'm looking at and described
earlier of him looking off into the side. There's just
something about it that seems pretty thoughtfully composed, and it
makes me think about our previous episode in which we
talked about James Vandersey and his death portraits and this
being kind of like something that preceded that, Like, this
(10:39):
is James Vandersey used his portraits to talk about death,
and this is about life. This is about what kind
of lives black people had in the truth and authenticity of.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
What black life looked like.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And Frederick Douglass showed that through his photos without having
to say it, because a statement of it being the
most democratic of the arts is very telling when and
there are so many other arts that Black people did
express themselves through, a really big one of them being writing,
and a lot of people didn't have access to that though,
(11:10):
so a lot of people weren't able to read or
weren't able to write back in that time.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Yeah, this photograph is like telling a story, even if
you're illiterate exactly. And going back to your question about
if he was targeting black people or white people, he
also was a big recruiter for the Union Army former
slaves or I think maybe even they were still slaves,
but yeah, to join the Union Army and fight the
Confederacy did the Civil War, and he was able to
(11:37):
use that like this for people who you know, might
not have access to the North Star but can see
his picture or like, oh, this man says we should
like join and fight, and like giving people the idea
the abolition is possible, you know. So he was really
like firing on all cylinders truly. But I think like
a lot of scholars call him like the father of
the Civil rights movement, and we see a lot of
(12:00):
his tactics and movements current movements now. Like when you
look back at the Civil Rights movement, a lot of
things you're looking at is pictures. Right, So on Bloody
Sunday when John Lewis crossed that Edmund Pettis Bridge, people
saw the images of the dogs getting sticked on people
and the water hoses knocking people down, and that's put
(12:21):
on TV and you know, you can write your letter
from the Birmingham jail and stuff like that, but those
images hit different. And I think Frederick Douglas was kind
of one of the maybe not first, but one of
the most prominent people to say, like the opress can
show these images and like change things. And you see
that in the civil rights movement, see in the Black
Lives Matter movement, And I think now even in like Palestine,
(12:44):
we're getting like terrible images coming from Palestine. And the
thing that's kind of different with Palestine is like you're
seeing these images and we're like what the fuck? And
then the powers at b are just like whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
You know, we're inundated with so many of them that
it's become easier to be desensitized.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
I don't think we're desensitized. I think the ruling class
just doesn't give a fuck about Palestinians, right, And so
it's like we're used to saying like, oh, we're seeing
these horrible images and they're telling the truth. So things
need to change because we've seen that going all the
way back from abolition, But now with Paleside is like
not happening.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
So when I say we, I don't mean necessarily me
and you and people who we know are pro Palestine.
But I do think there is a general public outside
of the ruling class that is in denial purposeful denial
as well, because just think about all the people I
mean holocaust deniers going to that, I mean everything, like
people who deny atrocities that happen in the world. People
turn a blind eye to it a lot of the
(13:40):
time and say, these things are happening, but are they
really happening, like people who're saying they were like actors
in Sandy Hook. You know, just whenever atrocities come up,
there are always regular people, including poor people, including people
who are not part of the ruling class, who are like,
you know, they see all of this in front of
their face and like there's they use some sort of
excuse to be like, yeah, it's not really happy happening.
(14:01):
In many ways, Douglas was ahead of his time in
recognizing the profound impact that photography could have on public
perception and national consciousness.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
His photos radiated dignity and authority, characteristics denied to those
who had been enslaved, and his extensive photographic archive is
a testament to the transformative power of the camera to humanize, educate,
and inspire.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Next, we're traveling between Massachusetts and South Africa to hear
about how two Polaroid employees contributed to the fall of apartheid.
That's after the Break Act two, the Polaroid protest.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
I wanted to include the Polaroid protest in this episode
because one unlike Frederick Douglas, I hadn't known about it
until recently. And that could just be a function of
our US focus educational system, but it also could be
because it gives a great blueprint for how we can
affect change today when it comes to corporations participating in oppression.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, it's a powerful story that really highlights the transformative
potential of worker led activism.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So let's get into it.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
In nineteen seventy two, African American Polaroid employees Caroline Hunter
and Ken Williams made a shocking discovery that Polaroid's products
were being used by the South African government to create
ID past books for black South Africans as part of
the oppressive apartheid system. Here's Caroline Hunter describing how she
and Ken Williams made that discovery.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It was really a fluke.
Speaker 6 (15:43):
Ken and I were going out to lunch and as
we passed through the workplace on our way out, we
saw an ID badge MAYFA, South Africa. We looked at
it and began to say to each other, we didn't
know Polaroid was in South Africa.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
In response to finding out that their employer's products were
being used to oppress black South Africans, Caroline and Ken
formed the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, or the PRWM, and
they issued three bold demands to Polaroid on October eighth,
nineteen seventy One, that Polaroid announced a policy of complete
(16:19):
disengagement from South Africa since all American companies doing business
in South Africa reinforced that racist system and its government.
Two that Polaroid have its management meet with the entire
company to discuss this policy and announce his position on
apartheid publicly in the USA and in South Africa simultaneously.
(16:41):
Three that if Polaroid company is sincereness opposition to apartheid,
we call upon it to contribute the profits earned.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
This was an unprecedented move At the time. It was
the norm for corporations to uphold racist regimes through their
products and for employees and customers to say nothing, but
not the PRWM. The PRWN organized a protest of about
two hundred people at polaroids headquarters at Cambridge, Massachusetts, bringing
their message directly to the company, and after a Polaroid
(17:11):
refused to meet with at PRWM. They called for a
worldwide boycott of Polaroid products by all Right On Thinking
People on October twenty seventh and a fly release by
the group. They explained their reasoning for the boycott.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Polaroid sells its ID two system to the South African
government to make the notorious pastbook pictures Polaroid imprisons black people.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
In just sixty seconds.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Here's Caroline Hunter again explaining that ethos behind their fight
for black South Africans.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
We really had some sense that no one's free unless
everybody's free, and that we had some relationship to black
people everywhere, and as workers, we had a right to
say what happened to our labor. So we started off
just asking the question, what is Polaroid doing in South Africa.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
In response to the prwm's question asking and demand making,
Polaroid sent a delegation to South Africa and announced the
Polaroid Experiment. In the experiment, Polaroid would ban sales to
the government, raised wages, and increased job training for black workers.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
But PRWM saw the Polaroid experiment for what it was,
a disingenuous attempt to continue profiting from apartheid. And quel
discent among workers. Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams also testified
before the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid advocating for
a boycott of Polaroid. This puts significant pressure on Polaroid
to respond to the worker's demands.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Caroline Hunter and Kim Williams were fired from Polaroid for
their activism, but.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
The PRWM continued and after seven years of protest, Polaroid
finally withdrew from South Africa in nineteen seventy seven, ending
its business ties with the apartheid regime. The Polaroid workers
activism is seen as pioneering in the corporate divestment movement
against apartheid After the break, how we can use the
Polaroid protests as a blueprint for movement work today?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
You mentioned earlier that you saw this protest as like
a blueprint for how we can affect change today.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
What exactly do you mean by that?
Speaker 5 (19:13):
I think in a capitalistic society, protests that come for
your oppressor's capital are more effective than the ones that
appeal to their morals because they simply don't have any
I found this leaflet that the African Research Group put
out about the Polaroid protests as they were going on
in the seventies, and I think they explained best. Arg
thinks that the brave action taken by these workers is
(19:35):
the most important movement now going on in the US
about South Africa. The workers are making demands that strike
at the economic roots of apartheid, rather than bemoaning the
inhuman conditions that the system inflicts. They are revolutionary black
workers struggling against imperialist oppression and winning their own liberation.
It goes on to say Polaroid is an ideal target.
(19:59):
It is a well known LIB company which disguises its
support for South Africa in pseudo humanistic rhetoric. It knows
that a victory against them will hurt not only them,
but other US and peeriless companies as well. Defeating Polaroid
provides an important starting point an example for similar struggles
against other companies. It undermines their mystifying ideology and strikes
(20:20):
a blow at their economic well being. Polaroid is only
the beginning, and I wanted to include this because storytelling
is kind of like a neutral tool. It could be
used for good, it could be used for evil. So
in the case of South Africa, Polaroid was using photography
for evil, like the story that they were telling about
black South Africans, or that they were a criminal, they
(20:41):
were second class citizens, if citizens at all, you know,
that they deserve to be monitored and like really restricting
their freedom of movement. And then the story that Caroline
and Ken got from that when they just happened to
see that picture, which I'm so glad they did imagine
if they are head were like turn and that the
other way, like this protest might not even happen or
(21:03):
might have happened years later, but they saw that and
like took that information that like Polaroid is like telling
the story about black people in South Africa that simply
isn't true.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
And we're going to stand up for.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Fellow black people around the world, whether we like know
them personally or not, whether we have familial ties to
them or not, because this story just isn't true and
it's such the antithesis of what Frederick Douglass was doing
with his picture. He was using it to say, like
this is who black people are, kind of like showing
our humanity in South Africa was doing the exact opposite,
like stripping black people's humanity away from them. With these
(21:37):
pastbook pictures.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And it's also telling that these pastbook photos were photos
taken in the midst of like direct action that was
happening or anything like that, and like movement in the streets.
They were just photos of people. They were portraits, just
like the pictures of Frederick Douglass were. So thinking about
that neutrality, it's like you see a person in a photo,
but what's the context? What is it a part of
(21:59):
one thing? See the setting for Frederick Douglas's photos isn't
an anti slavery newspaper, and then this isn't a pastbook
that is used to directly harm South Africans, to directly
commit violence upon black people, and to restrict their movement,
to disenfranchise them, to do so many of these other
terrible things to black people on South Africans. So in
(22:22):
the quote that you just read where it was talking
about how Polaroid is an ideal target because it's a
liberal company, also hits really hard to thinking about that
in terms of this social media age where there are
so many corporations that have this hashtag to cling onto
that is like pro black or it's pro LGBTQ, or
(22:45):
it's body positive you know, there are so many things
that they can latch onto that look really good in
their commercials. They have really good marketing tactics about it,
and they cling on to those things and rightfully so.
And that quote you just read, they bring that up
and how they are a great target because of that,
because they profess to believe in certain things, they profess
to support certain things.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
But look at.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
This actual legwork that Caroline and Ken have done and
that people today in movements and protests are doing to
see what the numbers behind the pseudo actions are, like
tracing the lines from one thing to the next.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And yeah, it's also.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
Very perscian, Yeah, because I can imagine like Polaroid during
that time, it's like seems like very family friendly company,
like oh you get your pictures in sixty seconds, but
like their the paper and their archives heads like your
Polari imprisons black people in just sixty seconds. So, like
you said, it does depend on the context, but like
in this context, it really reminded me of was like
(23:47):
your booking picture or your mugshot.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
You know, look at this criminal.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
We have tabs on you, we have our eyes on you,
and like Polaroid being sell into that, and let's not
forget their polaroid experiment because companies will do that too.
The way they're talking about we're gonna raise wages for
the black workers in the United States.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
The Oki dog, the fucking Okay dog.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
And I'm glad they did for that because I feel
like niggas be falling for that, like oh word, we
get two weeks vacation. So yeah, like really being principled
and just standing up for black people across the diaspora.
And it's like talking about palisine, I get kind of frustrated,
like you know, it's like, definitely boycott these companies. But
(24:28):
then people are saying, like the people who work there
can't do anything about it, like they have to have
a job. I'm like, I truly do not believe that's true.
Like you can disrupt your company from the inside, and
like they might fire you like they did Caroline and Can.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
With the quickness, but they can't fire everybody.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
Ain't no company then, So I think there is stuff
that you can do in the inside and the outside.
So that's what I mean when I said the blueprint too,
like get on these companies' asses.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
So yes, let's talk about their appt use of that
slogan of the Polaroid in sixty seconds because so many
people would have been familiar with that slogan at the time,
and so it's something that people were hearing a lot
who were probably fans of Polaroid or just didn't know
anything about their political stances or who they were sending
money to. So for them to add the word in prisons,
(25:17):
I think it's a very effective way of them using
rhetoric to have like a really emotional response, because that's
what slogans do. They do something that becomes an earworm
for you, something that's going to stay stuck in your head,
and it's going to evoke an emotional response, so you
have some sort of weird connection to a corporation. So
(25:37):
for them to add the word in prisons I think
was a very effective way for them using Polaroid's own
terminology against them.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
Yeah, and another thing I found in the archive was
they were encouraging everybody to create leaflets pamphlets about what
was going on. It wasn't just like, oh, this is
our thing, y'all, don't say nothing. It was like, anybody
who knows anything about what Polaroids doing put this out there.
Spread it wide, and you know we talk often about
like just creating your own media. It's like they're not
(26:06):
gonna be talking about this on sixty minutes.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
They just not.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
They might later on once you start the grassroots, but
the information isn't going to come from the top down.
And so when you're like on the ground and just
putting out this information, everybody's like working together using their
slogans against them.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
It's really effective.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
And as we saw, you know, it took years, but
it did make a huge change. And that was like,
as the quote said, Polarid is just the beginning. Our
Polarid is only the beginning. Like they were coming for
other companies next too. So shout out to Caroline and
Ken and the whole group really, because you know, I
(26:45):
think we like to like shout out the leaders, but
it takes the whole Polaroid Revolutionary Workers movement to make
it happen. And now it is time for roll credits
the segment or we give credit to a person, place,
or thing that we've encountered during the week eves, Who
or what would you like to give credit to.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I would like to give credit to good hosts. I
really like hosting, but I also really like being a
guest as well, So it's nice when people are gracious
enough to like open up their home and have people
over and provide food and like set up activities for them.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
That's why I want to give credit to.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Today, Okay, good hosts.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
I would like to give credit to my guardian angels.
They had their hands on me, and sometimes you've be
thinking something happens and you're like, oh, that's just a coincidence,
but you're like, nah, they was looking out.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
So everyone, we have an announcement about our show.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Next week.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
We will be coming back with a brand new episode,
but we will be taking a short break throughout the
month of May, so you won't get any new episodes
until June sixth, But you can listen to all of
our previous episode. Any of them that you haven't heard,
you can listen to them. If there are any that
you want to listen to again, you can listen to them,
(28:06):
and you can keep up with us on social media
at on Theme Show. You can also go to our
website on Theme dot Show. But stay subscribed because we
have so many more cool episodes coming up when we
come back in June. And what are some of those
episodes going to be about Katie.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
You'll be hearing from arkivist talking about the hilarious stories
they found in the archive. We'll hear from a children's
lit expert about the lessons we pass on to our
kids through literature.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
You'll also get to learn a little bit about the
Black Muses who are part of visual arts history. And
you'll get an episode about Kronk Music and Snap Music.
So make sure you stay subscribed. See you next week.
See Ya on Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and
(28:54):
Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco
and Katie Mitchell, was edited and produced by Tari Harrison.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Follow us on.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Instagram at on themeshow. You can also send us an
email at helloat on Theme dot show. Head to on
Themet Show to check out the show notes for episodes.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. I know you're ready to get
into this episode, but really quick. We have been loving
connecting with y'all over black storytelling, and if you've really
been loving the show, then we would really appreciate it
if you would leave us a rating and review, subscribe
to the show, and share it with your friends.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Thanks y'all. Now time for the episode.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
On theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Friends Media.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Take my bit.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Okay, say cheese cheez. Let me see mm hm, I
like that. Try it again.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Okay, okay, how about this one. I don't think it's
really capturing me, but you're literally right there though.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Me as in my essence what I want to say
to the world through my likeness me.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Okay, So what do you want the picture to say?
Speaker 4 (01:13):
I wanted to say, there she go, and she begin
to it when she goes, you.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Know, black people be saying a whole lot and they'll
be saying nothing.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
But okay, I got it.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
So let's try this again. See that's perfect. I'm Katie
and I'm Eves.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
In today's episode, Pixel power.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
Photos are always saying something A thousand somethings. As a
popular quote goes, and when photography and political movements mix,
maybe those pictures talk. So today on our show, we're
taking it back to the abolitionist movement and the anti
apartheid movement, looking through the viewfinder at specific ways photography
(02:02):
can be used for good and evil.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Act one, the most photographed man?
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Who do you think is the most photographed man today?
Speaker 1 (02:14):
So the first person that comes to mind for me
is Barack Obama, even though he's not president anymore, So
I guess the current president, So Joe Biden.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
I guess you think photograph?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I don't because I feel like Obama had more photographs.
You know what I mean? Right?
Speaker 4 (02:27):
Who wants to look at him?
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Nobody? But my thing is the White House.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
They have official photographers, So I say that the most
photograph because they're photographed on purpose. And obviously I'm thinking
an A and American centric way. So I'm thinking about
US federal government and I'm thinking about the office of
the president. So my first guess is Obama, and then
my second guess is just whoever the current president is,
(02:53):
which is now Biden? Wait, who do you think is
the most photographed person today?
Speaker 4 (02:59):
See, I would sink like maybe Kim Kardashian.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
But then I was like, because people are like always
taking pictures, it literally could be just like a random
kid in Ohio to get about the pictures of themselves,
they take a million pictures of themselves. Like most photographed
person in the world.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, I guess I also didn't include like self photography.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I wasn't include selfies.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
In my thinking on this.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Could literally be anybody.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
So we were really trying to find out who's the
most narcissistic person in the world.
Speaker 5 (03:27):
Well, you know, maybe most creative. Maybe they put no
shoots m h okay, that's a very diplomatic way to
put it. Yeah, with most folks carrying around a camera
at all times, it might be hard to know who
is the single most photographed person today, But that absolutely
was not the case in the eighteen hundreds. In the
nineteenth century, no American was photographed more than Frederick Douglas,
(03:50):
with more than one hundred and sixty known portraits. Douglas
had more pictures taken of him during his lifetime than
Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
And this was no accident.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
Douglas, an escaped slave who became a renowned abolitionist, and
author understood the power of photography and saw the revolutionary
technology as an avenue to challenge racists, caricatures and stereotypes
about black people that were abundant in.
Speaker 4 (04:15):
American visual culture. Eves, can you describe this photo of Douglas.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
So it's a black and white photo, and Douglas is
kind of looking off into the side. He's dressed up
in nice clothes. He looks very stern, his lips are
kind of downturned. He's very seriously focused, and he looks like,
you know, he's about business, basically.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
About his beasis. Truly.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Yeah, And for anyone who has ever cracked open a
US history book, the image Eve's described is floating in
your head right now, partly because he took a lot
of his pictures like this. By posing for these portraits,
Douglas presented the world with an image of a dignified,
well dressed black man, a stark contrast to the degrading
to pictures that were common, and he carefully curated this
(05:01):
public image, ensuring he was always well groomed, always dressed formally,
and always projecting an air a sophistication.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
If you listen to our past episodes, Bona fide blackface
or we might regret this episode later. You'll recall that
American media often depicted black people as silly, simple folks,
just their fault white folk's amusement.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
But Douglas troubled that notion.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
He once said he never wanted to look like a happy, amiable,
fugitive slave.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
He a statement, why are he bagging?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Why is he bagging on slaves like that they can
be happy?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Well, I think.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
The thing is like, no one really looked like that. Yeah,
it was there putting out like nobody was looking like that. Yeah,
but he was like, let me make sure I don't
look like that. I ain't gonna smile. I'm not gonna
crack a one smile. And it's shit funny.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
It's just funny as an isolated sentiment to be like
taking it out of context like that.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
Yeah, his photos, they were confrontational. The stirred eyes that
you mentioned, the unsmiling mouth, the playing background. A lot
of his pictures ain't no little Doiley's in the back.
He's like, keep your eyes on me, on my face,
and he described it as the face of the fugitive slave.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Douglas was well aware of the importance of controlling his
image and as a famous writer and orator. He used
his photographs to gain subscribers for his abolitionist newspaper, The
North Star, and he would also hand out pictures of
himself along with his letters, speeches and essays.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
He saw photography as quote the most democratic of the arts.
In a lecture he delivered in Boston in eighteen sixty one,
he said, what.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Was once the exclusive luxury of the rich and great
is now within reach of all the humblest servant. Girl
whose income is but a few shillings per week may
now possess a more perfect likeness of herself the noble
ladies and even royalty with all its precious treasures, could
purchase fifty years ago.
Speaker 5 (06:53):
Yeah, so basically just saying how photography really kind of
even the playing field in his eyes is interesting to me.
And the reason why photography got really accessible during this
time is because the picture used to be printed on metal,
and it used it switched to being printed on paper,
and of course paper was like more abundant and easier
to print on. But I really thought it's interesting to
call it the most democratic of the arts, as someone
(07:15):
who used to be enslaved like slavery is like the
very antithesis of democracy, you know, and so him seeing
photography as like the antithesis in a way of slavery,
and like he's able to put his image out there
and really change people's minds based on his image, Like
he like looked so serious and so dignified. People were like,
(07:37):
he's lying. He wasn't even a slave before. People didn't
believe it because his image that he put out. He
had the newspaper and he was going around writing these speeches,
like giving these speeches. People were like, ain't no way
because of the images that we see, you know, like
the minstrel shows, like that's what a slave is.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
So I was like, he ate that. He really ate
that description. What did you think of it?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Well, I have a question for you, which is that
I'm curious about your take on who his intended audience
was for in his thinking around like presenting himself in
this way. Was it for other black people to be
like this is who you are, this is who you
really are and you can see yourself this way.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Or was it for non black people? I think it
was both.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
So, like in the quote where he's talking about like
the humble servant girl being able to see herself because
like you know how they say the camera don't lie
a little timpanals or something, but they gonna lie. It's
gonna show you what you like really look like. And
if you have people like always saying like you're subhuman,
like you're not as good as me, like you're you know,
an animal really, and then you look at this image
and you're like, wait a minute, I'm not who they
(08:40):
said I was. And they also can see this black
man who is very black, you know, like you know
sometimes people be back in the days for saying they black,
but they like, you know, one sixteenth black, but this
man black, Okay, like ain't no question. So like they
can see this black man and be like, oh, like
he has this picture, he's like dressing these nice clothes,
he's like giving all these lectures.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
So I definitely think it was for black people.
Speaker 5 (09:03):
But then also when people were wanting to know about
abolition and you know, what should we do as a country,
people were coming to him people, you know, as powerful
as a president of the United States, he was advising
Abraham Lincoln. When Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he
was like very well read, well written, well spoken, and
(09:24):
well photographed. He had the most photographs out, so I
think it was twofold. And so, like you said, he
had the North Star and that was a way to
get the message out, and he was printing his picture
in there every time, like hey, like this is an
abolitions newspaper. These are our thoughts about anti slavery. This
is what it would look like. This is what would
happened going forward, like really laying out the cause, like
(09:45):
the moral objections and just laying it out for people
to be able to read. And like you know, newspapers
they just popping back then he puts up a newspaper.
Now maybe people did even read it, but people's reading
those newspapers listening to his speeches. He was handing out
little cars of his picture like yeah. Henry Lewis Gates
called him like the social media influencer of his day,
and I was like, that's really true, because he was
(10:08):
using a relatively new technology to get his message out
and like spread you know, his own propaganda, which was
anti slavery.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
And he does look serious in the photo, but it
does also strike me as a very artistically composed photo
as well. This one that I'm looking at and described
earlier of him looking off into the side. There's just
something about it that seems pretty thoughtfully composed, and it
makes me think about our previous episode in which we
talked about James Vandersey and his death portraits and this
being kind of like something that preceded that, Like, this
(10:39):
is James Vandersey used his portraits to talk about death,
and this is about life. This is about what kind
of lives black people had in the truth and authenticity of.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
What black life looked like.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
And Frederick Douglass showed that through his photos without having
to say it, because a statement of it being the
most democratic of the arts is very telling when and
there are so many other arts that Black people did
express themselves through, a really big one of them being writing,
and a lot of people didn't have access to that though,
(11:10):
so a lot of people weren't able to read or
weren't able to write back in that time.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Yeah, this photograph is like telling a story, even if
you're illiterate exactly. And going back to your question about
if he was targeting black people or white people, he
also was a big recruiter for the Union Army former
slaves or I think maybe even they were still slaves,
but yeah, to join the Union Army and fight the
Confederacy did the Civil War, and he was able to
(11:37):
use that like this for people who you know, might
not have access to the North Star but can see
his picture or like, oh, this man says we should
like join and fight, and like giving people the idea
the abolition is possible, you know. So he was really
like firing on all cylinders truly. But I think like
a lot of scholars call him like the father of
the Civil rights movement, and we see a lot of
(12:00):
his tactics and movements current movements now. Like when you
look back at the Civil Rights movement, a lot of
things you're looking at is pictures. Right, So on Bloody
Sunday when John Lewis crossed that Edmund Pettis Bridge, people
saw the images of the dogs getting sticked on people
and the water hoses knocking people down, and that's put
(12:21):
on TV and you know, you can write your letter
from the Birmingham jail and stuff like that, but those
images hit different. And I think Frederick Douglas was kind
of one of the maybe not first, but one of
the most prominent people to say, like the opress can
show these images and like change things. And you see
that in the civil rights movement, see in the Black
Lives Matter movement, And I think now even in like Palestine,
(12:44):
we're getting like terrible images coming from Palestine. And the
thing that's kind of different with Palestine is like you're
seeing these images and we're like what the fuck? And
then the powers at b are just like whatever.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
You know, we're inundated with so many of them that
it's become easier to be desensitized.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
I don't think we're desensitized. I think the ruling class
just doesn't give a fuck about Palestinians, right, And so
it's like we're used to saying like, oh, we're seeing
these horrible images and they're telling the truth. So things
need to change because we've seen that going all the
way back from abolition, But now with Paleside is like
not happening.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
So when I say we, I don't mean necessarily me
and you and people who we know are pro Palestine.
But I do think there is a general public outside
of the ruling class that is in denial purposeful denial
as well, because just think about all the people I
mean holocaust deniers going to that, I mean everything, like
people who deny atrocities that happen in the world. People
turn a blind eye to it a lot of the
(13:40):
time and say, these things are happening, but are they
really happening, like people who're saying they were like actors
in Sandy Hook. You know, just whenever atrocities come up,
there are always regular people, including poor people, including people
who are not part of the ruling class, who are like,
you know, they see all of this in front of
their face and like there's they use some sort of
excuse to be like, yeah, it's not really happy happening.
(14:01):
In many ways, Douglas was ahead of his time in
recognizing the profound impact that photography could have on public
perception and national consciousness.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
His photos radiated dignity and authority, characteristics denied to those
who had been enslaved, and his extensive photographic archive is
a testament to the transformative power of the camera to humanize, educate,
and inspire.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Next, we're traveling between Massachusetts and South Africa to hear
about how two Polaroid employees contributed to the fall of apartheid.
That's after the Break Act two, the Polaroid protest.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
I wanted to include the Polaroid protest in this episode
because one unlike Frederick Douglas, I hadn't known about it
until recently. And that could just be a function of
our US focus educational system, but it also could be
because it gives a great blueprint for how we can
affect change today when it comes to corporations participating in oppression.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Yeah, it's a powerful story that really highlights the transformative
potential of worker led activism.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So let's get into it.
Speaker 5 (15:20):
In nineteen seventy two, African American Polaroid employees Caroline Hunter
and Ken Williams made a shocking discovery that Polaroid's products
were being used by the South African government to create
ID past books for black South Africans as part of
the oppressive apartheid system. Here's Caroline Hunter describing how she
and Ken Williams made that discovery.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It was really a fluke.
Speaker 6 (15:43):
Ken and I were going out to lunch and as
we passed through the workplace on our way out, we
saw an ID badge MAYFA, South Africa. We looked at
it and began to say to each other, we didn't
know Polaroid was in South Africa.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
In response to finding out that their employer's products were
being used to oppress black South Africans, Caroline and Ken
formed the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, or the PRWM, and
they issued three bold demands to Polaroid on October eighth,
nineteen seventy One, that Polaroid announced a policy of complete
(16:19):
disengagement from South Africa since all American companies doing business
in South Africa reinforced that racist system and its government.
Two that Polaroid have its management meet with the entire
company to discuss this policy and announce his position on
apartheid publicly in the USA and in South Africa simultaneously.
(16:41):
Three that if Polaroid company is sincereness opposition to apartheid,
we call upon it to contribute the profits earned.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
This was an unprecedented move At the time. It was
the norm for corporations to uphold racist regimes through their
products and for employees and customers to say nothing, but
not the PRWM. The PRWN organized a protest of about
two hundred people at polaroids headquarters at Cambridge, Massachusetts, bringing
their message directly to the company, and after a Polaroid
(17:11):
refused to meet with at PRWM. They called for a
worldwide boycott of Polaroid products by all Right On Thinking
People on October twenty seventh and a fly release by
the group. They explained their reasoning for the boycott.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Polaroid sells its ID two system to the South African
government to make the notorious pastbook pictures Polaroid imprisons black people.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
In just sixty seconds.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
Here's Caroline Hunter again explaining that ethos behind their fight
for black South Africans.
Speaker 6 (17:39):
We really had some sense that no one's free unless
everybody's free, and that we had some relationship to black
people everywhere, and as workers, we had a right to
say what happened to our labor. So we started off
just asking the question, what is Polaroid doing in South Africa.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
In response to the prwm's question asking and demand making,
Polaroid sent a delegation to South Africa and announced the
Polaroid Experiment. In the experiment, Polaroid would ban sales to
the government, raised wages, and increased job training for black workers.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
But PRWM saw the Polaroid experiment for what it was,
a disingenuous attempt to continue profiting from apartheid. And quel
discent among workers. Caroline Hunter and Ken Williams also testified
before the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid advocating for
a boycott of Polaroid. This puts significant pressure on Polaroid
to respond to the worker's demands.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Caroline Hunter and Kim Williams were fired from Polaroid for
their activism, but.
Speaker 5 (18:36):
The PRWM continued and after seven years of protest, Polaroid
finally withdrew from South Africa in nineteen seventy seven, ending
its business ties with the apartheid regime. The Polaroid workers
activism is seen as pioneering in the corporate divestment movement
against apartheid After the break, how we can use the
Polaroid protests as a blueprint for movement work today?
Speaker 1 (19:06):
You mentioned earlier that you saw this protest as like
a blueprint for how we can affect change today.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
What exactly do you mean by that?
Speaker 5 (19:13):
I think in a capitalistic society, protests that come for
your oppressor's capital are more effective than the ones that
appeal to their morals because they simply don't have any
I found this leaflet that the African Research Group put
out about the Polaroid protests as they were going on
in the seventies, and I think they explained best. Arg
thinks that the brave action taken by these workers is
(19:35):
the most important movement now going on in the US
about South Africa. The workers are making demands that strike
at the economic roots of apartheid, rather than bemoaning the
inhuman conditions that the system inflicts. They are revolutionary black
workers struggling against imperialist oppression and winning their own liberation.
It goes on to say Polaroid is an ideal target.
(19:59):
It is a well known LIB company which disguises its
support for South Africa in pseudo humanistic rhetoric. It knows
that a victory against them will hurt not only them,
but other US and peeriless companies as well. Defeating Polaroid
provides an important starting point an example for similar struggles
against other companies. It undermines their mystifying ideology and strikes
(20:20):
a blow at their economic well being. Polaroid is only
the beginning, and I wanted to include this because storytelling
is kind of like a neutral tool. It could be
used for good, it could be used for evil. So
in the case of South Africa, Polaroid was using photography
for evil, like the story that they were telling about
black South Africans, or that they were a criminal, they
(20:41):
were second class citizens, if citizens at all, you know,
that they deserve to be monitored and like really restricting
their freedom of movement. And then the story that Caroline
and Ken got from that when they just happened to
see that picture, which I'm so glad they did imagine
if they are head were like turn and that the
other way, like this protest might not even happen or
(21:03):
might have happened years later, but they saw that and
like took that information that like Polaroid is like telling
the story about black people in South Africa that simply
isn't true.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
And we're going to stand up for.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Fellow black people around the world, whether we like know
them personally or not, whether we have familial ties to
them or not, because this story just isn't true and
it's such the antithesis of what Frederick Douglass was doing
with his picture. He was using it to say, like
this is who black people are, kind of like showing
our humanity in South Africa was doing the exact opposite,
like stripping black people's humanity away from them. With these
(21:37):
pastbook pictures.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
And it's also telling that these pastbook photos were photos
taken in the midst of like direct action that was
happening or anything like that, and like movement in the streets.
They were just photos of people. They were portraits, just
like the pictures of Frederick Douglass were. So thinking about
that neutrality, it's like you see a person in a photo,
but what's the context? What is it a part of
(21:59):
one thing? See the setting for Frederick Douglas's photos isn't
an anti slavery newspaper, and then this isn't a pastbook
that is used to directly harm South Africans, to directly
commit violence upon black people, and to restrict their movement,
to disenfranchise them, to do so many of these other
terrible things to black people on South Africans. So in
(22:22):
the quote that you just read where it was talking
about how Polaroid is an ideal target because it's a
liberal company, also hits really hard to thinking about that
in terms of this social media age where there are
so many corporations that have this hashtag to cling onto
that is like pro black or it's pro LGBTQ, or
(22:45):
it's body positive you know, there are so many things
that they can latch onto that look really good in
their commercials. They have really good marketing tactics about it,
and they cling on to those things and rightfully so.
And that quote you just read, they bring that up
and how they are a great target because of that,
because they profess to believe in certain things, they profess
to support certain things.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
But look at.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
This actual legwork that Caroline and Ken have done and
that people today in movements and protests are doing to
see what the numbers behind the pseudo actions are, like
tracing the lines from one thing to the next.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And yeah, it's also.
Speaker 5 (23:25):
Very perscian, Yeah, because I can imagine like Polaroid during
that time, it's like seems like very family friendly company,
like oh you get your pictures in sixty seconds, but
like their the paper and their archives heads like your
Polari imprisons black people in just sixty seconds. So, like
you said, it does depend on the context, but like
in this context, it really reminded me of was like
(23:47):
your booking picture or your mugshot.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
You know, look at this criminal.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
We have tabs on you, we have our eyes on you,
and like Polaroid being sell into that, and let's not
forget their polaroid experiment because companies will do that too.
The way they're talking about we're gonna raise wages for
the black workers in the United States.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
The Oki dog, the fucking Okay dog.
Speaker 5 (24:07):
And I'm glad they did for that because I feel
like niggas be falling for that, like oh word, we
get two weeks vacation. So yeah, like really being principled
and just standing up for black people across the diaspora.
And it's like talking about palisine, I get kind of frustrated,
like you know, it's like, definitely boycott these companies. But
(24:28):
then people are saying, like the people who work there
can't do anything about it, like they have to have
a job. I'm like, I truly do not believe that's true.
Like you can disrupt your company from the inside, and
like they might fire you like they did Caroline and Can.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
With the quickness, but they can't fire everybody.
Speaker 5 (24:45):
Ain't no company then, So I think there is stuff
that you can do in the inside and the outside.
So that's what I mean when I said the blueprint too,
like get on these companies' asses.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
So yes, let's talk about their appt use of that
slogan of the Polaroid in sixty seconds because so many
people would have been familiar with that slogan at the time,
and so it's something that people were hearing a lot
who were probably fans of Polaroid or just didn't know
anything about their political stances or who they were sending
money to. So for them to add the word in prisons,
(25:17):
I think it's a very effective way of them using
rhetoric to have like a really emotional response, because that's
what slogans do. They do something that becomes an earworm
for you, something that's going to stay stuck in your head,
and it's going to evoke an emotional response, so you
have some sort of weird connection to a corporation. So
(25:37):
for them to add the word in prisons I think
was a very effective way for them using Polaroid's own
terminology against them.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
Yeah, and another thing I found in the archive was
they were encouraging everybody to create leaflets pamphlets about what
was going on. It wasn't just like, oh, this is
our thing, y'all, don't say nothing. It was like, anybody
who knows anything about what Polaroids doing put this out there.
Spread it wide, and you know we talk often about
like just creating your own media. It's like they're not
(26:06):
gonna be talking about this on sixty minutes.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
They just not.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
They might later on once you start the grassroots, but
the information isn't going to come from the top down.
And so when you're like on the ground and just
putting out this information, everybody's like working together using their
slogans against them.
Speaker 4 (26:23):
It's really effective.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
And as we saw, you know, it took years, but
it did make a huge change. And that was like,
as the quote said, Polarid is just the beginning. Our
Polarid is only the beginning. Like they were coming for
other companies next too. So shout out to Caroline and
Ken and the whole group really, because you know, I
(26:45):
think we like to like shout out the leaders, but
it takes the whole Polaroid Revolutionary Workers movement to make
it happen. And now it is time for roll credits
the segment or we give credit to a person, place,
or thing that we've encountered during the week eves, Who
or what would you like to give credit to.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
I would like to give credit to good hosts. I
really like hosting, but I also really like being a
guest as well, So it's nice when people are gracious
enough to like open up their home and have people
over and provide food and like set up activities for them.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
That's why I want to give credit to.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Today, Okay, good hosts.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
I would like to give credit to my guardian angels.
They had their hands on me, and sometimes you've be
thinking something happens and you're like, oh, that's just a coincidence,
but you're like, nah, they was looking out.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
So thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
So everyone, we have an announcement about our show.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Next week.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
We will be coming back with a brand new episode,
but we will be taking a short break throughout the
month of May, so you won't get any new episodes
until June sixth, But you can listen to all of
our previous episode. Any of them that you haven't heard,
you can listen to them. If there are any that
you want to listen to again, you can listen to them,
(28:06):
and you can keep up with us on social media
at on Theme Show. You can also go to our
website on Theme dot Show. But stay subscribed because we
have so many more cool episodes coming up when we
come back in June. And what are some of those
episodes going to be about Katie.
Speaker 5 (28:22):
You'll be hearing from arkivist talking about the hilarious stories
they found in the archive. We'll hear from a children's
lit expert about the lessons we pass on to our
kids through literature.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
You'll also get to learn a little bit about the
Black Muses who are part of visual arts history. And
you'll get an episode about Kronk Music and Snap Music.
So make sure you stay subscribed. See you next week.
See Ya on Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and
(28:54):
Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves Jeffco
and Katie Mitchell, was edited and produced by Tari Harrison.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
Follow us on.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Instagram at on themeshow. You can also send us an
email at helloat on Theme dot show. Head to on
Themet Show to check out the show notes for episodes.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
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