June 9, 2025 • 57 mins
Coco Hill Productions’ new podcast, Our Ancestors Were Messy, might be my favorite new pod of the year, perfect for avoiding the heavy news cycle!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is There Are No Girls.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
On the Internet.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, y'all, So I wanted to share a new podcast
with you all that I cannot get enough of, called
Our Ancestors Were Messy by Coco Hill Productions. All about
the messy, complicated, petty stories from historical figures that they
probably did not cover in school. It is something that
has been bringing me a ton of joy lately, so
I wanted to share it with you all too, So
check it out and don't forget to subscribe.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
The Secret Adventures of Black People presents Our Ancestors were Messy.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
On the Craig Well is poor, having only his wages
to depend on.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Oh my gosh, today, a forbidden romance threatens the future
of one of DC's most elite families.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
And Lulu was probably like, I don't care about this
side of the track. That side of the track, I'm
in love.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
And provides podder for two of DC's busiest gossip columnists.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Dear Louise, your letter to the household last week was
read with a great deal of interest.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
This episode stops Junkoline Hill, host of the podcast explain
it to me for Box Black Alive and your host
Nicole Hill, Oh diadd I think it's dad. This is
our Ancestors Were Messy, a podcast about our ancestors and
all their drama.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Mm hmm. Where did you grow up?
Speaker 4 (01:39):
So? I bounced around Kansas and Missouri for a good
chunk of my childhood. But I feel like when people
ask where you're from, they're asking where did you graduate
from high school? And the answer to that question is Albuquerque,
New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Albuquerque, New Mexico, which I mean, I love it there,
but wow.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Yeah, Like the number one thing people say is like,
oh they got black people there? In the answer snow
and that's why I am not there.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So where are you now? So I'm in DC now.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
I moved out here to go to Howard like most
Howard grads. That's probably the longest I've gone without saying
the words. I went to Howard and I just stayed
ever since.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
And what would you say, is your relationship to the city?
Oh my gosh, I really do feel like it raised me.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
I was talking with someone recently and I asked, how
long do you have to live in a place to
no longer be considered a transplant because I've lived in
DC for fifteen years now.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And my friend was like, you're good. Yeah, you're in.
I've been on and off in DC for twenty years.
I'm not there now, but I'm only ever away for
like a couple of years at a time. But I
count myself and I keep leaving. So you're in. You've
been there the whole time, steady, No.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I essentially bleed mambo sauce.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Now, as far as now, what kind of a black
are you?
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Ooh, Okay, I've been thinking about this.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And I feel like.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Original recipe, Like I am just a regular, a very
regular black person, like not a new black, just old
fashioned black lady. Well okay, I'm not an old fashioned
black lady. Let me not say that, but I mean,
I was like, what is that old fashioned?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
What's the original recipe? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
I don't have all the bells and whistles, like, I'm
not like, ooh, post racial society, even the conversations like
the diaspora wars. I think I'm a little original recipe
in that because I'm like, y'all, we.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Are all black. What are you and like people will
argue about the one drop rule and I'm like, mmm,
you're black.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
I also, I think I have a very good black
dar Like there are people who are black and I
clock it, and I have friends who are like, that's
a black person. I'm like, I I know when a
Negro is in my presence.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
I'm okay. So this might be this is awkward, this
is the third rail, but we're gonna this story is
about class. Yes, so on a scale of one to five,
one being trash and five being like free, clear, honest,
easy to do. Can you rate the quality of the
conversations about class that you've witnessed within the black community.
(04:19):
Oh it's hard to do.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
It's hard because sometimes it's good and then sometimes it's bad.
Like I said, I went to Howard and there's that
tweet where someone's like, I hate Howard.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Bitches.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
They're always in the bathroom arguing about slavery, and it's like,
I that's I am at the party. I am the
person in the bathroom arguing about slavery.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Mm hmmm hmmm.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Also, the thing is everyone tends to get blinded by
their own experience, and there's a defensiveness like an inherent defensiveness.
M I'm gonna give it a two. I'm gonna give
the conversations a two, especially if they're happening online.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Oh my gosh, don't even try. Oh my god, I know.
Then it's like zero, It's yeah, why do you think
that is? Why do you think class is such a
like it makes people defensive?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Okay, I think no matter who you are, class gets sticky.
It's that whole thing. It's like, don't talk about politics
and money and it's both those things together. But I
think for so long class and race has been married
in this country, and for good reason, like understandably so
there have been systemic things that, you know, uh, make
(05:28):
a lot of black people part of the same class
and make it very hard to have upward mobility. But
when that upward mobility does exist, it can get a
little sticky because it's this thing of well, you're still
experiencing racism, and it's like yeah, but also like there
are privileges that come with having money, and then there's
all this like class anxiety that's harder to move up
(05:51):
in the world, and then you feel defensive about it,
and it's just it gets sticky so quickly.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
How comfortable are you with discussing class. Oh, I'm pretty
comfortable with it.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
But again, I think that's because I've been arguing in
bathrooms about the bathroom for the past fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Okay. The story is about class and is actually in
DC ooh, back when it was really Chocolate City, back
when it was becoming Chocolate City. We are in the
Gilded Age aka the Victorian Era aka the eighteen eighties.
In Society News, President Grover Cleveland has become the first
(06:32):
and only president to get married in the White House.
Ye bride is twenty seven years his junior, and she
told their reverend, doctor Byron Sutherland, that they would be
changing her vows from honor love and obey to honor
love and keep a progressive lady, aggressive young lady. Reverend
(06:52):
doctor Sutherland is like, fine, we can do whatever you want,
because I've already been in so much trouble because he'd
married another DC recently, and in doing so, he'd ushered
in one of the biggest society scandals that the black
elite had ever seen. This is the story of a
battle between romance and class. This is the story of
the scandalous loves of Lulufrancis.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Oohoo, I love first of all, I love love, I
love scandals, I love drama.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
This is the story for you then, Okay, So slavery
ended twenty years ago. Black people are moving all around
the country now that they can, and they're trying to
decide where do we want to be? What city are
we about to turn chocolate? A lot of them decide
on Washington.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
D c.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Period. So there are a lot of really great black
schools there, obviously. Hu you know, there's a ton of
other black people around that's very attractive, the highest concentration
of black people in the nation at that time. And
in the city there's a class of black elites. They
(08:03):
are wealthy. They're from the DC Maryland Virginia area, which
obviously we call the DMV, and they're known as the
First Families. Oh so there's a couple different ways that
a person can become a member of the First Families,
the black elite. And I'm going to tell you how
one man did it. He is the father of the
(08:24):
star of today's episode, and his name is Richard Francis.
Richard was born enslaved in Virginia, a Southern gentleman never
mixed his own drinks, so they would have enslaved black
men do that for them. So this was one of
Richard's jobs. He did it really well. He didn't have
a choice. So when he was freed, eventually he went
(08:45):
to work at a white owned tavern up the street
from the White House. He rises from basically like a
bar back to the most popular bartender at this tavern,
it's called Hancock's Old Curiosity Shop.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Ooh, I'm drinking in old fashioned and I just imagine
the old fashions he would make me.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Oh, they would be so good. And you're black, so
he'd really hook him up. Well, you're a black woman
and it's the Victorian era, so maybe he wouldn't, so
he'd probably be like, why are you drinking, you hussy?
Go home. He is a really really good bartender, and
because of its location, it's really popular for politicians from
across the country to come in and they all fall
(09:23):
in love with his mint julips. This is his specialty.
One of his patrons is a senator and he tells
Richard that he wants to help him get a job
running the private restaurant in the US Senate, and Richard's like,
I would be very into that. So the Senator puts
in a good word and Richard gets the job. He's
not the first black man to hold that position, but
(09:43):
it's still like a really big deal. So once he's there,
he seems to be making good money. He takes his
earnings and invest them in DC real estate brilliant and
so then he makes more money and he can afford
to now be a member of the First Families. So
in order to be a member of the First Families,
you need to have a combination of the following. This
(10:03):
isn't an exhaustive list, but to start economic security, you
need enough money to not have to worry about money,
and you got to be real classy with it, meaning
you need to own a beautifully furnished home. You need
to dress well, you need to vacation in the right spots.
Harper's Ferry, West, Virginia actually is super popular. Oh with them.
Frederick Douglass and his family have a house out there.
(10:26):
Richard is financially set and I don't know how you
decorated his home or where he vacation, but he has money,
so check that's one thing. You have to have a
prestigious job running the private restaurant in the US Senate counts.
So check. You need to go to college. I don't
know Richard's educational background, but he's obviously very intelligent. But
he did not go to college, I'm assuming, so no
check for that. And you have to be from the DMV,
(10:47):
which he is from.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
So check.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Oh, they're strict.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
They are very serious about those rules of very serious.
I would not be grandfathered in my fifteen years. It'd
be like, girl, you are not from here.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
They would be like, Nope, you're out. Rich has made
the three out of four, so that means him, his wife,
their son, and two daughters are officially members of the
first family. And so that brings us to the star
of today's story. This is one of Richard's daughters, Miss
Louise Marla Francis, whom everybody calls Lulu. Lulu is likely
(11:20):
a fashionista, a little spunky and opinionated, likely educated. She
would have been doing things like attending organizing meetings for
women's suffrage at the city's first black Presbyterian church, the
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. She's a woman described by The
Washington Post at the time as the bell of Colored DC.
So basically, she is our ideal rom com heroine. I
(11:42):
wish I had a picture of her, but I do not.
But let's cast her in our mind. Who do you
think could play this person?
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Okay, it sounds like she's that girl and this person
is not an actress.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
But I'm just.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Imagining, like Gilded Age Lorie Harvey.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That's so funny. I was thinking Lori Harvey.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Yeah, like guilded age Lori Harvey. She's that girl, know
the girl, et cetera. Just remember that you're the prize, always, always.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Always, So once Lulu hits marrying age, inquiring minds would
want to know who is it going to be? Who's
she going to pick? Much like Lori Harvey at this time,
she could have ended up with a young w btw
boys they're in the same class, or maybe his mortal
enemy Booker T. Washington. Let's say, your Lulu, what would
(12:27):
your ideal husband at this time be? And for context,
let me just tell you that her sister married a
man with a good government job working at the pension office,
so that means they're economically secure, socially elite. Her brother
goes to Howard University and then the University of Michigan,
where he graduates magna cum Lottie, and then he comes
(12:47):
home to DC, marries an elite black woman at the
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, becomes a doctor. All right, so
you're Lulu, do I have to pick from the menu
you mentioned? Or can I make my ideal? Man up?
Make your eyes I deal eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Man up Ooh you know what, I'm gonna go with
a doctor. I'm gonna go with the doctor somebody that
like all the black people go to. They're like, oh,
he is that doctor. He is that guy, and I'll
be like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That's my man. Okay. So Lulu starts dating one of
her dad Richard's employees. Oh he's an aspiring young barber
named John F. Cragwell. Can I have you read how
the papers described mister Cragwell at that time. It's on
page one.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Oh my gosh, this is so rude. Craigwell is poor,
having only his wages to depend on.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Oh my gosh, that's your man. M hm.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
He's probably a nice guy. He might be rocking her
world in one of several ways. But also, like, what
else are we gonna I guess family money other than wages.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
I mean yeah, ideally family money or real estate investments. Ough.
So rude, so rude. She likes that boy, she likes
the okay, so okay, So this is the thing. Craigwell
is a barber or a tonsillary artist, which is what
they're called. At this time, black men were like finding
that they actually really enjoy the experience of like going
to a shop together, talking reckless, hanging out, also getting
(14:14):
their hair done. So men are like, oh, okay, you
guys like this. They start opening barbershops somewhat regularly. They
begin popping up all over black communities and people are
starting to be like, huh, this seems like it's a
community hub. This seems like a potentially lucrative business. So
being a black barber does have the potential to become
(14:34):
like an important role in the black community and a
profitable job. So Lulu's like maybe, She's like, you know,
there's potential here. Dad like just let them cook, Like
we don't know what he can do. So they keep
dating and they do fall in love.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So like, let's picture a romance montage. You're Lulu, You're
with your Craigwell. Can you just like describe the world
that you two would build together. What kind of dates
would you want to go on with him in the
eighteen eighties.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna tell you one thing. We
are getting ice cream. We are going to an ice
cream parlor.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
We are making eye contact at church and he is.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Walking me out while I fan myself. He's courting me.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
He's sitting in my mother's parlor and we are drinking
tea under the watchful eye of my father and siblings.
I don't know, like, is there a promenade that we
go to.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Is there? I don't know what things are open.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
There's probably no zoo yet, probably no museums, but like
whatever the version of that is, maybe he's outside my
window at night and throwing rocks and we're writing each
other letters. Maybe we even sneak a little kissy kiss
and no one sees it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Being fast. This cross class kind of upstairs downstairs romance
is not something that the first families would have been
cool with. They're very snobby. So, like, just to put
it in person effective, there's like two hundred and thirty
thousand people in DC at this time, seventy five thousand
(16:06):
or thirty two percent of them are black, and then
four hundred of the seventy five thousand are members of
the First Families. Okay, so it's giving literal talent. You
took the words out of my mouth. That's what we're
talking about here, is the talented Tent. So the town's
ad fifth really, so the First Families, they're exclusive. If
you're wealthy and black, but you're coming to DC from
(16:27):
like Philly or New York or Detroit, they call you
a foreigner or a stranger. And if you're poor or
uneducated and black, they don't call you anything at all
because they're living by this mandate of lift as we climb.
The saying is everywhere. It's a huge part of the
strategy that the race has come up with during a
time when they literally had to move in next door
(16:49):
to the people who used to enslave them. So it's
like not a good time. So they think like, Okay,
how are we going to change this? How are we
going to make things better for ourselves? And WBTA boys
and a lot of people come up with this idea
of the Talented Tent and they're like, all right, we
need y'all to go in there. Be as respectable and
as elegant and educated as possible to put these white
(17:10):
people at ease and show them that, like, see, I'm
a human just like you see my hands. You can't
really reason. You have to be like it's okay, it's okay,
or you have to just fight.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
But it gives something that I would have thought to
do when I was like in my twenties and felt
like I had something to prove.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And this is like they're the first generation of people.
A lot of them were slaves and now they're free.
White people are not okay with this. It's not like
everybody's like, oh, yeah, you earned it, good for you.
Like they're under duress at all times, so yes, you're
having to like overcompensate, overprove, overdo all these things. And
the idea is if we send y'all in there to
(17:49):
do that, then white people will be put at ease
and then go around to the back of the club,
open the door, and then you're gonna let all the
rest of us in. Here's what the strategy didn't for.
It's hard to be in something but not of it.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
What did Audrey Lord say, master's house, master's tools, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yes, So the talented tenth start to adopt the traditions
and the customs of the elites they're meant to be imitating.
And then they come back to the black community and
are these enforcers at the politics of respectability and brutal
critics of anybody that doesn't comply. Ooh, I wonder if
that had any long term consequences. You know what, I
keep thinking, I'm like, you create a strategy that'll really
(18:32):
work for you, but then, uh oh, we just kept
the same exact strategy for like hundreds of years. We
didn't update it, you know, as like modern people. I
think we're trying to update it now. But it's so
hard for me to judge them ever, because I'm like,
it did work. I am Hereah.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
It's also the thing of like, if you're barely one
generation out of being enslaved, you know, I'm gonna I'm
gonna have some empathy.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Back to Lulu. Lulu has a friend who she does
seem to turn to for advice. The papers don't name her,
but I'm imagining her to be like a level headed
best friend, archetype like Dion and clueless. So I just
want to call her Dion.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, every rom com needs a best friend. Every rom
com needs a best friend.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Of course. All right, so I'm imagining this next part,
but indulge me. Dion probably would have listened to Lulu
go on and on and on about her great love
and these walks along the promenade the ice cream, and
she's like, girl, come on, now, do you really think
that this is going to work out? He is a barber,
and he is broke and we are royalty, like, what
(19:47):
are you doing? And Lulu was probably like, Dean, I
don't care about that. I don't care about upstairs, downstairs,
this side of the track, that side of the track.
I'm in love. And not only does she and Craig
Well continue dating, they get engaged. Oooh, but someone finds
Craig Well and they have a conversation with him. We
(20:08):
don't know what they say, we don't know who it is.
All we know is that afterwards he goes to Lulu
and he says, I can't be with you anymore. Our
engagement is over. And then he moves to Pennsylvania. Oh
my gosh, she has to stab him. He broke her heart.
Lulu is so sad. I'm picturing her like running upstairs
and then flinging herself on the bed and crying and
crying and crying, and Dion's trying to console her, but
(20:32):
she's also maybe breathing a little sigh of relief along
with Richard, Lulu's dad, and the rest of the first families,
because Lulu was probably gonna end up like Lucinda Seton. Anyway,
allow me to tell you the cautionary tale of Lucinda Seton. Oh,
(20:53):
thirty years before Lulu's forbid love, the DMV had another
it girl and her name was Lucinda Seton. When a
famous German American painter came to d C looking to
paint the portrait of the quintessential African American lady to
be displayed across Europe. Do you know who he chose? Lucinda?
See not.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
He's going to paint her like one of his German girls.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So Lucinda's all this happening with her her like time
to shine. It's eighteen fifty, so the Civil War is
ten years off. Slavery is in full effect. It's the culture.
But also we have a community of free black people,
and that's what her family is. But that year, the
census was taken and for the first time it recognized
and counted as separate Africans and mixed race people, so
(21:41):
half white, half black. So it was reported that there
were a little over three million enslaved black people in
America at that time, and two hundred and fifty thousand
of them were mixed race. So these two hundred and
fifty thousand people, for the most part, they're not born
of you know, like loving concent sensual relationships. That's how
(22:01):
we're not at all here, you know what I mean.
So we're talking about horrible like mass rape from white
and slavers of black women, and then black women are
giving births these hundreds of thousands of people, and these
are just the people that they counted. So the white
men who fathered these children at that time, there was
like a culture among some of them of claiming these
children and either giving them better jobs on the plantation,
(22:24):
like in the house. We know what this does to
our community, But they're bringing their children inside all.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Right, time for colorism to start.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
But they're like, you know, you are my son, you
are my daughter. You work inside. It's disgusting and weird,
but this is what they're doing. Or they're freeing them
after a certain age, or sending them off to Europe
to be educated, or even sometimes leaving them inheritances. Some
of the elite families got their start this way, or
they claimed to have gotten their start this way because
(22:55):
it was seen as a respectable thing. It was like
you were special to your dad. Obviously, we know this
is how we came by being light skin, which is
among the most important qualities a member of the black
elite could ever possess. Horrible beginnings, what we did with
that trauma is multiply it. But this is how this
(23:16):
is part of their story too. So Lucinda Seton's family seemed,
from what I can surmise, to have partially gotten their
start this way. I mean they are very light. She's
like part Indian, part white, part black. Okay, he's a
red bone.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
As we say, she would be in the fenty three hundreds.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
She would be in the fenty three hundreds. Thank you
for translating that from mono audience. So you know they're
free through all this, you know, weirdness and grossness. But
they also somebody opened up a grocery store and it
would eventually become the largest grocery store chain in the DMV,
and so that's how they came by a bunch of money.
So Lucinda's doing great. She's living the dream until she
(23:56):
marries a blacksmith. Smith is doing okay for him, so
he's doing, you know, the best of it can. But
he's also middle class, so now she is too. She
clearly married for love because she has to move into
a middle class neighborhood and a quaint little home on
I Street in northwest d C. Which is like now, now,
(24:17):
it's like girl, that's money, Yes, exactly. So she moves
to I Street where the men go to work and
the women raise kids and nobody comes by to paint
their pictures. Oh no. Lucinda has six kids, five girls
and a boy named William, and she seems to have
been searching for a way to get back in to
(24:38):
the first families that get back into the life she'd
become accustomed. But they need to make some money. If
Lucinda setons six kids get educated, they can get good jobs,
make real money, and put their family back on the map.
So all the kids are sent to school. William goes
to the prestigious private elementary school in the basement the
(25:00):
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. So now all Lucinda has to
do is just wait. Unfortunately, in eighteen sixty three, tragedy strikes.
Her husband is murdered during a robbery. Oh no, So
now Lucinda is a widow with six kids to feed.
(25:23):
I don't know if her family helped her out a bit.
Maybe they did, but she does become a dressmaker, and
she starts an ice cream shop to make ends meet.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Oh my gosh, did Lulu go there with Craig.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Well, they are going to cross paths, we'll see. But
she has to pull her kids out of their schools
to help earn money for their survival. Some of the
members of the First Families probably still stop by her
little house on Ice Street and wish her well, but
it's clear to everyone that Lucinda is now even further
away from being one of them than she was before.
(25:56):
She'd married into a precarious financial situation, and now she
was a poor with no hope of ever advancing. So
now we're back. We're back with Lulu and Dion. In
the eighteen eighties, we left Lulu. She's crying in her bedroom,
(26:19):
probably making it up, but you know, she's sobbing. Dion
is there. She's rubbing her head. She's saying, don't worry
about Craigwell. All men are dogs. It's gonna be okay.
Then I picture Lulu's father, Richard, poking his head in
the room to check on his daughter Lulu. She doesn't
notice him because she's sobbing, but Dion looks up. The
two exchange of knowing Glands. What was that? Look? Cut
(26:41):
to Lucinda's house. Lucinda sne is still in DC, in
that little house on I Street, and she would have
likely been watching the Lulu Craigwell affair with a lot
of interest, maybe because the story mirrored her own, or
maybe because she had made it her and her six
kids business to know exactly actly what the First Families
were getting into and to tell everybody.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Oh, that is nasty, Lucinda, don't be nasty.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
They may have counted her out, but they shouldn't have,
because Lucinda has a son named William Chase, and he's
all grown up now and she's taught him everything she knows.
William and Lucinda are coming for the First Families, and sadly,
Lulu will find herself caught in the crossfire. Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
But you know what, I watch a lot of housewives,
so I do understand when you get iced out, Like
the alternative is like time to be a gossip monger
and start some mess coming up.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Lucinda starts a beehive and Lulu prepares to become a bride.
We now return to our ancestors were messy.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Back to Lulu. She's single now, but then she meets
a man. His name is mister Sneed. Mister who mister
snead s n e ed.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Okay, so she's back outside. She's back outside, all right,
she got her toes. She doesn't have her toes out.
It's the Gilded day.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
No, no, no, no, no, no whatever.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
That version is like, hey girl, we've got a new man.
Forget that old one. We're moving on.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Mister Sneed is a waiter at the Arlington Hotel, which
is one of America's most opulent hotels. And the first
families would have been like, this is a great look.
The papers call him swell h A waiter's a great look. Yeah,
because it's had a really really really fancy hotel, okay,
and because at this time to put on a uniform
and work in a hotel like work for dignitaries and
(28:45):
all these things. This is really really important to them. Okay,
So Lulu and Sneed begin a courtship. Lulu and Sneed
get engaged. Lulu's dad, Richard, agrees to give them a
wedding present, which is a uh love that mm hmmm,
we love a house's gift. That's amazing. Lulu and her
(29:06):
parents and maybe mister Sneed draft an invite list, and
although I couldn't find it, I could guess who would
be on it. All the first families, the famed suffragette
Mary Church Terrell and the Terrells love Mary Church Terrell, Langston,
Hughes's great uncle John Mercer Langston and the Langstons would
of course be there. Obviously, they have to invite the
founder of the fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, John F. Cook,
(29:28):
and the Cooks, the McKinley's, the Cardozos, the grim Keys.
Everybody's gonna be there, as in Cardozo High School. Cardozo's right,
I know, it's wild. Wow. I was like, all these
last names come from this, what I know?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
I saw I heard a seat and I was like,
wait a minute, I know that street and the school.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
So then this question arises between the couple. I'm guessing
Lulu is the one that asked this question. She says,
mister Snead, should we invite mister Craigwell to our wedding?
Would you ever invite an ex to your wedding? Okay?
And this is gonna sound messy.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
If y'all are cool and your current partner does not
know the extent of your friendship with this person, yes,
but if it is well known, girl, he does not
need to be there. No, stop being messy.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Okay. Well, Lulu's parents send out the invitations and the
household prepares for a royal wedding two people who most
certainly would not have received an invite from the Francis
family and would have been in their feelings about it.
For Lucinda Seaton and her now grown son, William Chase. So,
(30:43):
if you'll recall, she'd had to pull him out of
school when he was nine to help support the family,
and he started selling newspapers and that's how you got
to know a lot of the editors and the newsrooms
and the reporters in Black DC. He grows up, he
goes to Howard Law school who passes the bar. He
becomes a lawyer, and he will continues reporting and working
in various newsrooms. And he lives at home on I
(31:04):
Street with his mom and his sisters. They're all very close.
William has got this flare for the dramatic. He has
dreams of becoming a renowned actor, and he actually ends
up falling in love with and marrying another actor, and
the two of them are in little plays together and stuff.
It's very cute. Mainly though, his time is spent lawyering, reporting,
(31:28):
and jockeying for political appointments. Because there's another way that
a person can become a member of the black elite,
and that is by doing the absolute most. If he
can become a combination lawyer, reporter, and politician, he will
be economically secure, have the most prestigious jobs anyone can have,
be lifting as he climbs in matters of law, news
(31:48):
and politics.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Okay, being a politician and a journalist at the same
time gives me pause, but I do respect the hustle.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
It's a wild combo, But like, how do you go
on both these things?
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Sir?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
But okay, totally fine, no questions. We're all on board.
No notes. But the problem was when it came to
the politics. He never seemed to get the political appointments
that he went after, and when he was rejected, he
did not take it and stride. He would go into
the office of whatever newspaper he was working for at
(32:20):
the time, he would sit down at his typewriter and
he would go absolutely insane on everyone he held responsible
for him not getting the jobs he thought he deserved.
So like one time, Frederick Douglass was like, I will
hook you up, and he said great or great great,
and then Frederick Douglas is like, no, no, I can't.
He publishes all this that I hate you. I hate
(32:42):
the way that you dress, I hate the way that
you I hate your hair, like just Patty.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Well, okay, but if you're going scorched or like that,
that's why you're not a politician, like a not insignificant
amount of having a career is being personal and getting
people to like you. And if you go scorched earth
when you get a no, you're gonna keep getting those right.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
But he doesn't care. People describe him as handsome, a climber,
and very very combative.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
Oh he was handsome. I see why he's like that.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Like, oh wait, that changes everything. Okay, got it clear,
That's why he's acts like that. So finally William does
secure one of the jobs he's been going after. He's
named the editor of The Washington b a brand new
weekly paper serving the black citizens of DC whose motto
was Stings for our enemies, honey for our friends. Oh
(33:36):
oh oh. It's estimated that at this time there are
like twelve thousand newspapers serving segregated black communities across America,
but when you get to a major city like DC,
there's usually a few, so the competition is really fierce
and you need to do something to stand out. So
William is like, what's up, sisters, what's up my wife?
(33:58):
You all are now going to be on stay at
the Washington B And he makes all of them like
reporters and cultural critics in addition to some outside people.
And then they set up offices at Lucinda's house on
I Street. There they turned the Bee into appointment reading.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
So was it like the shade Room? Essentially this was
their shade room.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Well, okay, so it was. They primarily cover news related
to the fight for civil rights and social justice. They're
like covering news that all the white papers are covering,
but without all the racism and with black people in it.
That's like the idea mm hmm. But they also make
sure from time to time to just let William get
behind his typewriter and do his thing. He'll be like,
(34:42):
what's up, White leaders? I am so sick and tired
of all the ways that you do not point black
people to position the power. You are so racist and
you're so hypocritical. And then he'll be like, what's up,
Black leaders? Nothing that you're doing is going to make
a difference in the black community because you are too
intellectual and you're too theoretical. And then this is his favorite,
(35:03):
He's like, what's up, first, families, you think you're so
much better than us, You think I don't know what's
going on behind closed doors. A lot of his readers,
who The Bee refers to as the household, that's what
they call black DC.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
He's like, okay, exactly, but it's giving the shape room exactly.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
It's good branding. It's good branding. You got a brand
your audience. The household feels looked down upon by the
black elites because they're working class or they're poor, or
their dark skin, or they couldn't go to college, and
so behind their back, the household calls the first families
the fust families, the what families fust f ust, which
(35:46):
is slang for musty.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Oh nothing, musty, jesus. Okay, I think being called musty
is the worst thing that can happen to you.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Do you know? I agree, because like musty isn't just stinky.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
Musty is like you're funky and you've been flunky for
a minute.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Can I have you read on page two what the
be said about them?
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yes, let me see who. They wouldn't be caught dead
with an ordinary Negro, and they foolishly expect to become
absorbed by the white race.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Ooh, drag them? No, okay, but here's the thing. You're Lulu,
so you're the fusty one. How would you feel reading this? Okay?
Speaker 4 (36:21):
And this is what? Okay, this makes me think. It's
that thing of hey, we're all black people, et cetera,
et cetera. But and I admit sometimes when I see
tweets about this where people complaining about quote unquote black
elite or like black college educated people, there's something in
you that inherently gets defensive, even though you'll have these
(36:44):
conversations about men, about white supremacy, and you say, hey,
you gotta take a hard look at XYZ. But when
the finger points to you, it admittedly does not feel good.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
And I do feel like people start bringing out their
like no, no, no, no, their cards where it's like, well,
my dad, my pay I'm first generation college graduate, Like
I don't. Don't put me with them, like my family
grew up with no money. You just want to start
you do these things.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
And it takes a lot of work to check that
and say, okay, only hit dogs holler if I'm hollering,
what am I doing? What's happening? And that takes a
lot of maturity and a lot of thought.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
So back to William. He is assaulted twice and sued
five times for libel over his articles. He's like, I
don't care. There's this section of the paper called the
Clara and Louise column. Every week the paper publishes a
letter from an anonymous Clara to an anonymous Luis or
vice versa. And in the letters, among other things, they
(37:42):
share the tor details about the ups and the downs
and the scandals of the first families, Okay, lady whistledown.
The lady whistled down to a t and the first
families hate this column. Their complaints about it reached such
a fever pitch that William, who is normally like don't care,
don't care, don't care, has to release a statement being like, sorry,
(38:03):
I don't know who Clara and Louise are. I understand
your pain. However, I am never going to stop. I'm
never going to back down. Every week, tune in because
I'm going to be publishing all of their insights into
your scandals and your hypocrisies. On November twenty seventh, eighteen
(38:27):
eighty six, just five days before Lulu and Sneed's wedding,
the Washington be publishes a bombshell in their weekly gossip column, which,
as you'll recall, is written in the form of letters
between an anonymous Clara and an anonymous Louise. I have
compiled a medley of the letters that Clara and Louise
wrote to each other over the next two weeks about
(38:47):
the scandal, which I would love for us to read
right now, if you would not mind. I think I'm
playing Louise, if you will play Clara dear Clara, I
hardly know how to begin or what relate first. But
the most sensational thing that has ever happened in our
society is the elopement of missus Lulu Francis girl. Not
(39:08):
you Elope, Cho.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Dear Louise, your letter to the household last week was
read with a great deal of interest. I never was
made more surprised in my life.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
It will be remembered that mister Craigwell had been going
with Miss Francis for a number of years, and it
was understood that the engagement between them had been canceled.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
Mister Craigwell was persuaded to break the engagement by a
lady connected with the Francis family.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Oh did I think nasty work? Nasty work.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Then Miss Francis went to Harrisburg on a visit, and
mister Craigwell did not greet her with any respect, nor
did he.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Write to her for over a year.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Still, she said that he was the only man she
ever loved, and if she married an it would be
for spite. The lady was told by a friend not
to marry for spite. Okay, Lulu, Lulu, while you let
why you let men play let's just continue because I
have I have a lot of thoughts. Let's continue.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Mister Snead expressed tender feelings for the lady. He gave
her his heart, and they were engaged, and he went
to the expense of making their wedding a brilliant affair.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
The lady asked her friend would be wise to give
mister Craigwell an invite to her marriage. She was told now,
Mister Craigwell, on the reception of an invitation from Miss
Francis and mister Sneed, announcing their marriage, immediately left Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
and came to d C. Once in the city, mister
Craigwell remarked to his friend that he would never leave
(40:46):
d C without Miss Lulufrancis, but, finding that he could
not persuade her parents to bless his reunion with Miss Francis,
he returned to Harrisburg. Mister Craigwell could not rest in Harrisburg,
so he returned again to d C and inaugurated another scheme.
This time, he solicited the services of the sister of
Miss Lulu. While out walking with mister Sneed, Miss Lulu
(41:09):
called at her sister's and told mister Sneed to wait
outside as she wanted to see her sister about address.
Mister Craigwell was there and he pleaded with her to
become his wife.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Mister Craigwell told Miss Francis that he always loved her
and that it was hard to see his first love
married to another man who would make her life miserable.
At this juncture, Miss Francis said, but my invitations are
out for my marriage to mister Sneed. Oh I could
fix that, said mister Craigwell. After deciding what steps were
(41:43):
best to pursue. It said that Miss Francis, mister Craigwell,
her sister, and her brother in law traveled to the
residence of Reverend Doctor Sunderland, who married President Grover Cleveland.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
In the afternoon of Wednesday, November second, The marriage license
was procured and they were married. Doctor Sunderland said that
he thought the affair a romance and that it did
not excite his suspicions. It was settled, and poor mister
Sneed was made a victim of despair.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
The household is started and society is up in arms
to think that Miss Francis would be guilty of such
an act.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Mister and Missus Francis are heartbroken to think that their
daughter would treat them so.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
She has been reared a lady and looked upon and
respected as such. Her parents consist of the best elements
of our society. This is Sneed's last song. Where has
my Lulugan? Is a song I shall sing.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
The chestnut bells are ringing, and the boys are singing. Sneed, Sneed, Sneed,
Oh Sneed, Where has thy Lulugan? I have been told
that mister Sneed has received a just retribution. It's said
that he had many sympathizing friends who regretted that he
was disappointed, and many young ladies who were pleased.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I saw mister Sneed at the fraternals last Wednesday evening,
and he approached Major Fleetwood and said, Major, I carried
you an invitation to my wedding, but I suppose that
you have heard that my intended has gone off with another.
Then Major laughed and said, yes, Snead, I don't know
whether to congratulate you or to extend my condolences. Mister Sneed,
in reply, said that he would like to have his
(43:22):
congratulations yours lovingly, yours truly Louise Clara. All right, girl,
go ahead, so much to say. I have so much
to say, and it really is giving. Lori Harvey, I'm
glad that's who we live with. I feel like mister
Sneed is Michael B.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Jordan, Oh, mister Sneed is, Oh, mister Steed is Michael B. Jordan,
which you know, Michael, call me. I'm around. I have
so many thoughts because, on one hand, it's better to
end a marriage before it's miserable. She clearly was not
into it. He was, although you know at the end
(44:02):
he's like it was. He feels very draky. It's very
like her loss. And I mean that derogatory that being said,
don't spend the block like no, if that man left once,
he'll leave again. And when he does it again, you're
gonna feel so stupid. I just like, oh, I'm gonna
(44:23):
get you back, baby, like I guess. But she let
that man spend the block and here we are, what
a scandal. I think it would have been better if
she had said, you know, I'm not feeling it, call
it off, maybe wait some time, lay low a little bit,
but to run off and get married. Also, her sister
was in Cahoots. We can't forget this. It's not all Lulu.
(44:46):
Her sister was in Cahut.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
So was it her mom who was all like, don't
marry that girl? No, they said it was a friend.
So that's why I feel like Diana. Okay, So this
is my conspiracy theory that I had cooked up in
my head based on no evidence. I feel like Richard,
Lulu's dad went to Dion, Lulu's best friend, and he
was like, Dion, my daughter cannot marry that broke barber.
(45:10):
I need you to go to him and tell him
that if he really cares for Lulu, the best thing
he can do for her is to leave her. And
so then Dion like went to him. She said that
Lulu is like, oh my god, he left me. I
want to be with him. And maybe Richard gave him
some money, because you know that's how rich people do it.
That is true. So then mister Craigwell leaves town. Lulu
is like, oh my god, like, I can't live without him.
(45:31):
Dion's like, you'll be fine. Lulu's like, should I invite
him to my wedding? Dion is like, girl, no, then
boom boom boom, He's back in her life. They're married.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
Also, it's this thing of and this is something my
mom always said, And of course there are exceptions to
this rule, but it's a thing of if your child
is dating someone you don't like, don't make a fuss
because that will only drive them into their arms.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Ooh yeah, and that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
You came for the mess Now stay for the rest
When our Ancestors were Messy continues, and now for the
thrilling conclusion of this week's installment of Our Ancestors were Messy.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
After the elopement, it's reported that Craigwell went to see
about making arrangements for him and Lulu to get to Pennsylvania,
and Lulu and her sister went home to face their parents. Allegedly,
mister Sneed is also there. Me, I would just fake
my own desk. Yeah, how would your parents react to
(46:40):
you showing up at the door being like okay, Mary, Okay.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
The thing is I'm an only child, So the amount
of conniption that would be.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Had, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you would never survive it. Unfortunately,
there's no record of what went down at the Francis
home during this meeting, but at the end, mister Sneaed
is sent away and that's the last we ever hear
of them. Now, Richard Francis Lulu's dad, and his wife,
Lula's mom. They are humiliated in front of all the
(47:11):
first families, the household, and potentially hundreds of thousands of
recorded black newspaper readers across the nation, because I found
articles about this elopement and papers in New York, in
Alabama and Missouri, and a lot of them were pulling
their reporting from the Beast, So this is bad. Also,
(47:32):
since Lulu was on the radar of the Washington Post,
White DC may have known about all of this too,
and so Richard may have had to deal with his
coworkers and clients whispering about this in the US Senate
as well as everywhere that he went in DC. Not
long after the scandal, in eighteen eighty eight, Richard passes
away suddenly, all his stress. His funerals held at the
(47:56):
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. Today, bartenders still remember and revere
Richard for his incredible mint Julips. When I was doing
the research for this episode, I kept getting linked to
all these magazines and all these articles about like famous
black bartenders and recipes, famous recipes created by black bartenders,
(48:17):
and there was Richards. It's the Dick Francis Special for
a mint Julip, and I will link the recipe in
the show notes. I never did find another article after
the scandal that mentioned Richard and Lulu together, so I
don't know what their father daughter relationship was after that
or at the time that he passed away. But in
(48:38):
the bios of his that I came across, and in
his obituary, he's listed as having left behind a wife
and one son, and that's it day, So both the
daughters got got maybe both the daughters. I don't know.
Dang dang heard Nanny strict. I know Washington Be continues
(49:01):
to grow in readership and prestige post elopement scandal, and
they gain a reputation across DC and in history as
a paper that fought fearlessly for civil rights and social justice,
in addition to the Clara Luis gospel column. But that's
less so in the history books. That's in the back.
And eighteen eighty three, Lucinda passes away with the Washington
(49:21):
Be still running from her home on Eye Street, which
she managed to hold on too, against all odds and
then pass on to her children. So shout out to Lucinda.
I know that's right. William keeps the paper going right
up until his death in nineteen twenty one, which made
it at that time one of the longest running black
newspapers in America. The DC First Family, you know, it's
(49:44):
hard to track down exactly what happened to them or
all their wealth. Obviously, DC people will recognize some of
the names seton McKinley, but unfortunately those places are named
after the enslavers that the First Family shared names with,
not the First Families themselves. Oh yeah, although I will
say Cardozo is named after Francis Cardozo, who was a
(50:04):
famous Black clergyman and politician. So we got that one.
But here's what we do know. Charles County in PG County, Maryland,
right outside of DC, are the richest majority black counties
in the nation, and they have been for a very
long time. And I don't know why these places in
Maryland became bastions of black wealth, but it does seem
like in some way the legacy of the First Families
(50:28):
in DC still lives on. But I wish someone would
look into this because I would love to know, like,
why do they congregate there?
Speaker 4 (50:34):
What is it about pretty Girl County that we can't
stay away from?
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Uh? Uh uh. As for our newlyweds, mister and missus Craigwell,
they spend a little bit of time out in Pennsylvania
and then right before the turn of the century they
moved to Seattle, Washington, and once they get there, they
make their way into black history. Now I can only
(51:00):
find a record of what mister Craigwell did because of
the times. But I know, I believe and feel that
I know that Lulu was there right beside him, holding
him down. Can I have you read the summary of
mister Creigwell's life, which was written up for his obituary
and published in Seattle's black newspaper, The Northwest Enterprise.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Okay, uh Northwest. Mister John Fields Craigwell, pioneer resident of
Seattle and veteran barber, died Monday morning from a heart ailment.
Mister Craigwell was born in Virginia in eighteen sixty two.
After graduation from high school, young Craigwell moved to Pennsylvania,
but later returned to Washington, where he engaged.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
In the barber business.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
In eighteen eighty five, mister Craigwell was married to Miss
Louise Francis, by the same minister that Mary Grover Cleveland.
They moved to Seattle in eighteen ninety, where the young
barber again started his business. His shop was a gathering
place for business leaders during and after the days of
the Alaska gold Rush. During his fifty six years as
a barber, he shaved many notables, including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt
(52:04):
and William McKinley, John jacobast Alexander Graham Bell, and many others.
Besides his business, mister Craigwell was interested in several civic affairs.
He used to take an active part in politics, and
at the time of his death he held one of
the highest offices in the Presbyterian Church.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Surviving are his widow.
Speaker 4 (52:21):
Missus Louise Craigwell, two daughters, three grandchildren, and one great grandchild.
On November twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five, mister and Missus
Craigwell celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, which hundreds of Seattle's
citizens attended.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Oh thank got a happy ending. Good for you girl.
Speaker 4 (52:39):
Okay, you could spend the block this one time, but
never do it again.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Craigwell passes away in nineteen thirty seven and Lulu passes
away in nineteen forty two. And as much as I
would love to tell you that's the end, I want
you to have this happy ending, there is one last part.
Oh no, oh, why are they like this? See, don't
spend the block. I told you, I told you, don't
do it. Do not text that man. Yes, Lulu and
(53:07):
Craigwell were among Seattle's earliest black citizens and members of
Seattle's black elite. And yeah, Craigwell does go on to
become a barber and the city's most successful black entrepreneur.
He has a staff of eleven toncilary artists in fashionable
downtown barber shops. But about those shops, So white people
(53:30):
really liked to be waited on by black people immediately
following the end of slavery, but they didn't want other
black people around also being served. So some barbers would
guarantee their all white clients, tell that the staff would
be all black, but that they wouldn't serve any black people.
And members of Seattle's black press accused Craigwell of this practice,
(53:52):
and they call him a segregationist barber. It's very hard
to be in it but not of it. Of course,
there's so much more that happened, but for now, that
is the story of the scandalous cross class romance of
Miss Lulu Francis.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
Wow, buh gilded age, Lori Harvey, you took me through
a lot, just.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Now a lot. Do you think it's possible to be
in it but not of it, to be operating in
these spaces of power but not adopting their practices and
(54:37):
their ways of thinking and treating people.
Speaker 4 (54:40):
Ooh, this is a question that I think about a lot,
just living my own life and living in DC. I
would like to think that you can be around and
not be dragged down by the grips and allure of power,
but I know that as humans we don't do that.
It's almost like the Ring and Lord of the Ring
is like you're around it and the pool becomes so
(55:02):
strong that you can't say no, and then like what
do you become?
Speaker 2 (55:06):
You know?
Speaker 4 (55:07):
I would like to think that someone is strong enough
to do it, but I don't know if that person exists.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Yeah, that's real. How are you feeling about the tactic
uplift as we climb as a strategy for eighteen eighty six,
what do we gain? What do we lose?
Speaker 4 (55:23):
Okay, huh, Honestly, there are things about There are things
about it that worked at the time, so I can't
begrudge them that. And I guess like the other option
would have led to even more death and destruction for
black people. So I get the route that they took,
(55:44):
and you know, talk about Monday morning quarterbacking. But you
know what if we say, Okay, we're just going to
do this for two years and then like we have
to be real people after this, you know, we can't
be doing this in twenty twenty four, Like they here's
a plan where this strategy is sunseted by twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (56:04):
What would what would you have us do?
Speaker 4 (56:07):
Probably disengage completely, just stop caring, like just being like
nothing is going to work. If people want to be racist,
they're just gonna do it, and they will find any
and every reason to do it. At this point, who
cares about the white gays? What are we up to?
Speaker 2 (56:20):
That is the strategy I we deploy. Now, what do
you think about looking at black history starting from the
messy beginnings? Because Craig Weell is like in Seattle, that
name is a big deal. He's like seen as a
big pioneer and as a person who's done this incredible thing.
And you start the story from the time that he
got to Seattle, and then you know, you kind of
talk about all the hard work he did, everything he overcame,
(56:43):
his incredible resilience in business acumen, and he's you know,
an amazing black capitalist. But we don't talk, you know
about the southern part. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (56:52):
I kind of like the mess because it's also a
reminder that something my mom would say to me over
and over again is there's nothing new on under the sun.
And I would think, mmm, I don't think that's true.
But this makes me realize, no, there really is nothing
new under the sun. And I think we would all
give ourselves a lot more grace if we looked at
our ancestors as people and knew that they could get
(57:15):
messy too, sometimes even messier.
Speaker 2 (57:17):
Because this is wild. I'm like, five days before your wedding,
like that is wild. Like she loved that man down
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is There Are No Girls.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
On the Internet.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Hey, y'all, So I wanted to share a new podcast
with you all that I cannot get enough of, called
Our Ancestors Were Messy by Coco Hill Productions. All about
the messy, complicated, petty stories from historical figures that they
probably did not cover in school. It is something that
has been bringing me a ton of joy lately, so
I wanted to share it with you all too, So
check it out and don't forget to subscribe.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
The Secret Adventures of Black People presents Our Ancestors were Messy.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
On the Craig Well is poor, having only his wages
to depend on.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Oh my gosh, today, a forbidden romance threatens the future
of one of DC's most elite families.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
And Lulu was probably like, I don't care about this
side of the track. That side of the track, I'm
in love.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
And provides podder for two of DC's busiest gossip columnists.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Dear Louise, your letter to the household last week was
read with a great deal of interest.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
This episode stops Junkoline Hill, host of the podcast explain
it to me for Box Black Alive and your host
Nicole Hill, Oh diadd I think it's dad. This is
our Ancestors Were Messy, a podcast about our ancestors and
all their drama.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Mm hmm. Where did you grow up?
Speaker 4 (01:39):
So? I bounced around Kansas and Missouri for a good
chunk of my childhood. But I feel like when people
ask where you're from, they're asking where did you graduate
from high school? And the answer to that question is Albuquerque,
New Mexico.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Albuquerque, New Mexico, which I mean, I love it there,
but wow.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Yeah, Like the number one thing people say is like,
oh they got black people there? In the answer snow
and that's why I am not there.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
So where are you now? So I'm in DC now.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
I moved out here to go to Howard like most
Howard grads. That's probably the longest I've gone without saying
the words. I went to Howard and I just stayed
ever since.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
And what would you say, is your relationship to the city?
Oh my gosh, I really do feel like it raised me.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
I was talking with someone recently and I asked, how
long do you have to live in a place to
no longer be considered a transplant because I've lived in
DC for fifteen years now.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And my friend was like, you're good. Yeah, you're in.
I've been on and off in DC for twenty years.
I'm not there now, but I'm only ever away for
like a couple of years at a time. But I
count myself and I keep leaving. So you're in. You've
been there the whole time, steady, No.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I essentially bleed mambo sauce.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Now, as far as now, what kind of a black
are you?
Speaker 4 (03:00):
Ooh, Okay, I've been thinking about this.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
And I feel like.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Original recipe, Like I am just a regular, a very
regular black person, like not a new black, just old
fashioned black lady. Well okay, I'm not an old fashioned
black lady. Let me not say that, but I mean,
I was like, what is that old fashioned?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
What's the original recipe? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
I don't have all the bells and whistles, like, I'm
not like, ooh, post racial society, even the conversations like
the diaspora wars. I think I'm a little original recipe
in that because I'm like, y'all, we.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Are all black. What are you and like people will
argue about the one drop rule and I'm like, mmm,
you're black.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
I also, I think I have a very good black
dar Like there are people who are black and I
clock it, and I have friends who are like, that's
a black person. I'm like, I I know when a
Negro is in my presence.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
I'm okay. So this might be this is awkward, this
is the third rail, but we're gonna this story is
about class. Yes, so on a scale of one to five,
one being trash and five being like free, clear, honest,
easy to do. Can you rate the quality of the
conversations about class that you've witnessed within the black community.
(04:19):
Oh it's hard to do.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
It's hard because sometimes it's good and then sometimes it's bad.
Like I said, I went to Howard and there's that
tweet where someone's like, I hate Howard.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Bitches.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
They're always in the bathroom arguing about slavery, and it's like,
I that's I am at the party. I am the
person in the bathroom arguing about slavery.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Mm hmmm hmmm.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Also, the thing is everyone tends to get blinded by
their own experience, and there's a defensiveness like an inherent defensiveness.
M I'm gonna give it a two. I'm gonna give
the conversations a two, especially if they're happening online.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Oh my gosh, don't even try. Oh my god, I know.
Then it's like zero, It's yeah, why do you think
that is? Why do you think class is such a
like it makes people defensive?
Speaker 4 (05:06):
Okay, I think no matter who you are, class gets sticky.
It's that whole thing. It's like, don't talk about politics
and money and it's both those things together. But I
think for so long class and race has been married
in this country, and for good reason, like understandably so
there have been systemic things that, you know, uh, make
(05:28):
a lot of black people part of the same class
and make it very hard to have upward mobility. But
when that upward mobility does exist, it can get a
little sticky because it's this thing of well, you're still
experiencing racism, and it's like yeah, but also like there
are privileges that come with having money, and then there's
all this like class anxiety that's harder to move up
(05:51):
in the world, and then you feel defensive about it,
and it's just it gets sticky so quickly.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
How comfortable are you with discussing class. Oh, I'm pretty
comfortable with it.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
But again, I think that's because I've been arguing in
bathrooms about the bathroom for the past fifteen years.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Okay. The story is about class and is actually in
DC ooh, back when it was really Chocolate City, back
when it was becoming Chocolate City. We are in the
Gilded Age aka the Victorian Era aka the eighteen eighties.
In Society News, President Grover Cleveland has become the first
(06:32):
and only president to get married in the White House.
Ye bride is twenty seven years his junior, and she
told their reverend, doctor Byron Sutherland, that they would be
changing her vows from honor love and obey to honor
love and keep a progressive lady, aggressive young lady. Reverend
(06:52):
doctor Sutherland is like, fine, we can do whatever you want,
because I've already been in so much trouble because he'd
married another DC recently, and in doing so, he'd ushered
in one of the biggest society scandals that the black
elite had ever seen. This is the story of a
battle between romance and class. This is the story of
the scandalous loves of Lulufrancis.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
Oohoo, I love first of all, I love love, I
love scandals, I love drama.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
This is the story for you then, Okay, So slavery
ended twenty years ago. Black people are moving all around
the country now that they can, and they're trying to
decide where do we want to be? What city are
we about to turn chocolate? A lot of them decide
on Washington.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
D c.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Period. So there are a lot of really great black
schools there, obviously. Hu you know, there's a ton of
other black people around that's very attractive, the highest concentration
of black people in the nation at that time. And
in the city there's a class of black elites. They
(08:03):
are wealthy. They're from the DC Maryland Virginia area, which
obviously we call the DMV, and they're known as the
First Families. Oh so there's a couple different ways that
a person can become a member of the First Families,
the black elite. And I'm going to tell you how
one man did it. He is the father of the
(08:24):
star of today's episode, and his name is Richard Francis.
Richard was born enslaved in Virginia, a Southern gentleman never
mixed his own drinks, so they would have enslaved black
men do that for them. So this was one of
Richard's jobs. He did it really well. He didn't have
a choice. So when he was freed, eventually he went
(08:45):
to work at a white owned tavern up the street
from the White House. He rises from basically like a
bar back to the most popular bartender at this tavern,
it's called Hancock's Old Curiosity Shop.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Ooh, I'm drinking in old fashioned and I just imagine
the old fashions he would make me.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Oh, they would be so good. And you're black, so
he'd really hook him up. Well, you're a black woman
and it's the Victorian era, so maybe he wouldn't, so
he'd probably be like, why are you drinking, you hussy?
Go home. He is a really really good bartender, and
because of its location, it's really popular for politicians from
across the country to come in and they all fall
(09:23):
in love with his mint julips. This is his specialty.
One of his patrons is a senator and he tells
Richard that he wants to help him get a job
running the private restaurant in the US Senate, and Richard's like,
I would be very into that. So the Senator puts
in a good word and Richard gets the job. He's
not the first black man to hold that position, but
(09:43):
it's still like a really big deal. So once he's there,
he seems to be making good money. He takes his
earnings and invest them in DC real estate brilliant and
so then he makes more money and he can afford
to now be a member of the First Families. So
in order to be a member of the First Families,
you need to have a combination of the following. This
(10:03):
isn't an exhaustive list, but to start economic security, you
need enough money to not have to worry about money,
and you got to be real classy with it, meaning
you need to own a beautifully furnished home. You need
to dress well, you need to vacation in the right spots.
Harper's Ferry, West, Virginia actually is super popular. Oh with them.
Frederick Douglass and his family have a house out there.
(10:26):
Richard is financially set and I don't know how you
decorated his home or where he vacation, but he has money,
so check that's one thing. You have to have a
prestigious job running the private restaurant in the US Senate counts.
So check. You need to go to college. I don't
know Richard's educational background, but he's obviously very intelligent. But
he did not go to college, I'm assuming, so no
check for that. And you have to be from the DMV,
(10:47):
which he is from.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
So check.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Oh, they're strict.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
They are very serious about those rules of very serious.
I would not be grandfathered in my fifteen years. It'd
be like, girl, you are not from here.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
They would be like, Nope, you're out. Rich has made
the three out of four, so that means him, his wife,
their son, and two daughters are officially members of the
first family. And so that brings us to the star
of today's story. This is one of Richard's daughters, Miss
Louise Marla Francis, whom everybody calls Lulu. Lulu is likely
(11:20):
a fashionista, a little spunky and opinionated, likely educated. She
would have been doing things like attending organizing meetings for
women's suffrage at the city's first black Presbyterian church, the
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. She's a woman described by The
Washington Post at the time as the bell of Colored DC.
So basically, she is our ideal rom com heroine. I
(11:42):
wish I had a picture of her, but I do not.
But let's cast her in our mind. Who do you
think could play this person?
Speaker 4 (11:48):
Okay, it sounds like she's that girl and this person
is not an actress.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
But I'm just.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
Imagining, like Gilded Age Lorie Harvey.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That's so funny. I was thinking Lori Harvey.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Yeah, like guilded age Lori Harvey. She's that girl, know
the girl, et cetera. Just remember that you're the prize, always, always.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Always, So once Lulu hits marrying age, inquiring minds would
want to know who is it going to be? Who's
she going to pick? Much like Lori Harvey at this time,
she could have ended up with a young w btw
boys they're in the same class, or maybe his mortal
enemy Booker T. Washington. Let's say, your Lulu, what would
(12:27):
your ideal husband at this time be? And for context,
let me just tell you that her sister married a
man with a good government job working at the pension office,
so that means they're economically secure, socially elite. Her brother
goes to Howard University and then the University of Michigan,
where he graduates magna cum Lottie, and then he comes
(12:47):
home to DC, marries an elite black woman at the
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, becomes a doctor. All right, so
you're Lulu, do I have to pick from the menu
you mentioned? Or can I make my ideal? Man up?
Make your eyes I deal eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
Man up Ooh you know what, I'm gonna go with
a doctor. I'm gonna go with the doctor somebody that
like all the black people go to. They're like, oh,
he is that doctor. He is that guy, and I'll
be like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
That's my man. Okay. So Lulu starts dating one of
her dad Richard's employees. Oh he's an aspiring young barber
named John F. Cragwell. Can I have you read how
the papers described mister Cragwell at that time. It's on
page one.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Oh my gosh, this is so rude. Craigwell is poor,
having only his wages to depend on.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Oh my gosh, that's your man. M hm.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
He's probably a nice guy. He might be rocking her
world in one of several ways. But also, like, what
else are we gonna I guess family money other than wages.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
I mean yeah, ideally family money or real estate investments. Ough.
So rude, so rude. She likes that boy, she likes
the okay, so okay, So this is the thing. Craigwell
is a barber or a tonsillary artist, which is what
they're called. At this time, black men were like finding
that they actually really enjoy the experience of like going
to a shop together, talking reckless, hanging out, also getting
(14:14):
their hair done. So men are like, oh, okay, you
guys like this. They start opening barbershops somewhat regularly. They
begin popping up all over black communities and people are
starting to be like, huh, this seems like it's a
community hub. This seems like a potentially lucrative business. So
being a black barber does have the potential to become
(14:34):
like an important role in the black community and a
profitable job. So Lulu's like maybe, She's like, you know,
there's potential here. Dad like just let them cook, Like
we don't know what he can do. So they keep
dating and they do fall in love.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
So like, let's picture a romance montage. You're Lulu, You're
with your Craigwell. Can you just like describe the world
that you two would build together. What kind of dates
would you want to go on with him in the
eighteen eighties.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna tell you one thing. We
are getting ice cream. We are going to an ice
cream parlor.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
We are making eye contact at church and he is.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Walking me out while I fan myself. He's courting me.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
He's sitting in my mother's parlor and we are drinking
tea under the watchful eye of my father and siblings.
I don't know, like, is there a promenade that we
go to.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Is there? I don't know what things are open.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
There's probably no zoo yet, probably no museums, but like
whatever the version of that is, maybe he's outside my
window at night and throwing rocks and we're writing each
other letters. Maybe we even sneak a little kissy kiss
and no one sees it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Being fast. This cross class kind of upstairs downstairs romance
is not something that the first families would have been
cool with. They're very snobby. So, like, just to put
it in person effective, there's like two hundred and thirty
thousand people in DC at this time, seventy five thousand
(16:06):
or thirty two percent of them are black, and then
four hundred of the seventy five thousand are members of
the First Families. Okay, so it's giving literal talent. You
took the words out of my mouth. That's what we're
talking about here, is the talented Tent. So the town's
ad fifth really, so the First Families, they're exclusive. If
you're wealthy and black, but you're coming to DC from
(16:27):
like Philly or New York or Detroit, they call you
a foreigner or a stranger. And if you're poor or
uneducated and black, they don't call you anything at all
because they're living by this mandate of lift as we climb.
The saying is everywhere. It's a huge part of the
strategy that the race has come up with during a
time when they literally had to move in next door
(16:49):
to the people who used to enslave them. So it's
like not a good time. So they think like, Okay,
how are we going to change this? How are we
going to make things better for ourselves? And WBTA boys
and a lot of people come up with this idea
of the Talented Tent and they're like, all right, we
need y'all to go in there. Be as respectable and
as elegant and educated as possible to put these white
(17:10):
people at ease and show them that, like, see, I'm
a human just like you see my hands. You can't
really reason. You have to be like it's okay, it's okay,
or you have to just fight.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
But it gives something that I would have thought to
do when I was like in my twenties and felt
like I had something to prove.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
And this is like they're the first generation of people.
A lot of them were slaves and now they're free.
White people are not okay with this. It's not like
everybody's like, oh, yeah, you earned it, good for you.
Like they're under duress at all times, so yes, you're
having to like overcompensate, overprove, overdo all these things. And
the idea is if we send y'all in there to
(17:49):
do that, then white people will be put at ease
and then go around to the back of the club,
open the door, and then you're gonna let all the
rest of us in. Here's what the strategy didn't for.
It's hard to be in something but not of it.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
What did Audrey Lord say, master's house, master's tools, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yes, So the talented tenth start to adopt the traditions
and the customs of the elites they're meant to be imitating.
And then they come back to the black community and
are these enforcers at the politics of respectability and brutal
critics of anybody that doesn't comply. Ooh, I wonder if
that had any long term consequences. You know what, I
keep thinking, I'm like, you create a strategy that'll really
(18:32):
work for you, but then, uh oh, we just kept
the same exact strategy for like hundreds of years. We
didn't update it, you know, as like modern people. I
think we're trying to update it now. But it's so
hard for me to judge them ever, because I'm like,
it did work. I am Hereah.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
It's also the thing of like, if you're barely one
generation out of being enslaved, you know, I'm gonna I'm
gonna have some empathy.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Back to Lulu. Lulu has a friend who she does
seem to turn to for advice. The papers don't name her,
but I'm imagining her to be like a level headed
best friend, archetype like Dion and clueless. So I just
want to call her Dion.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, every rom com needs a best friend. Every rom
com needs a best friend.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Of course. All right, so I'm imagining this next part,
but indulge me. Dion probably would have listened to Lulu
go on and on and on about her great love
and these walks along the promenade the ice cream, and
she's like, girl, come on, now, do you really think
that this is going to work out? He is a barber,
and he is broke and we are royalty, like, what
(19:47):
are you doing? And Lulu was probably like, Dean, I
don't care about that. I don't care about upstairs, downstairs,
this side of the track, that side of the track.
I'm in love. And not only does she and Craig
Well continue dating, they get engaged. Oooh, but someone finds
Craig Well and they have a conversation with him. We
(20:08):
don't know what they say, we don't know who it is.
All we know is that afterwards he goes to Lulu
and he says, I can't be with you anymore. Our
engagement is over. And then he moves to Pennsylvania. Oh
my gosh, she has to stab him. He broke her heart.
Lulu is so sad. I'm picturing her like running upstairs
and then flinging herself on the bed and crying and
crying and crying, and Dion's trying to console her, but
(20:32):
she's also maybe breathing a little sigh of relief along
with Richard, Lulu's dad, and the rest of the first families,
because Lulu was probably gonna end up like Lucinda Seton. Anyway,
allow me to tell you the cautionary tale of Lucinda Seton. Oh,
(20:53):
thirty years before Lulu's forbid love, the DMV had another
it girl and her name was Lucinda Seton. When a
famous German American painter came to d C looking to
paint the portrait of the quintessential African American lady to
be displayed across Europe. Do you know who he chose? Lucinda?
See not.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
He's going to paint her like one of his German girls.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So Lucinda's all this happening with her her like time
to shine. It's eighteen fifty, so the Civil War is
ten years off. Slavery is in full effect. It's the culture.
But also we have a community of free black people,
and that's what her family is. But that year, the
census was taken and for the first time it recognized
and counted as separate Africans and mixed race people, so
(21:41):
half white, half black. So it was reported that there
were a little over three million enslaved black people in
America at that time, and two hundred and fifty thousand
of them were mixed race. So these two hundred and
fifty thousand people, for the most part, they're not born
of you know, like loving concent sensual relationships. That's how
(22:01):
we're not at all here, you know what I mean.
So we're talking about horrible like mass rape from white
and slavers of black women, and then black women are
giving births these hundreds of thousands of people, and these
are just the people that they counted. So the white
men who fathered these children at that time, there was
like a culture among some of them of claiming these
children and either giving them better jobs on the plantation,
(22:24):
like in the house. We know what this does to
our community, But they're bringing their children inside all.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
Right, time for colorism to start.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
But they're like, you know, you are my son, you
are my daughter. You work inside. It's disgusting and weird,
but this is what they're doing. Or they're freeing them
after a certain age, or sending them off to Europe
to be educated, or even sometimes leaving them inheritances. Some
of the elite families got their start this way, or
they claimed to have gotten their start this way because
(22:55):
it was seen as a respectable thing. It was like
you were special to your dad. Obviously, we know this
is how we came by being light skin, which is
among the most important qualities a member of the black
elite could ever possess. Horrible beginnings, what we did with
that trauma is multiply it. But this is how this
(23:16):
is part of their story too. So Lucinda Seton's family seemed,
from what I can surmise, to have partially gotten their
start this way. I mean they are very light. She's
like part Indian, part white, part black. Okay, he's a
red bone.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
As we say, she would be in the fenty three hundreds.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
She would be in the fenty three hundreds. Thank you
for translating that from mono audience. So you know they're
free through all this, you know, weirdness and grossness. But
they also somebody opened up a grocery store and it
would eventually become the largest grocery store chain in the DMV,
and so that's how they came by a bunch of money.
So Lucinda's doing great. She's living the dream until she
(23:56):
marries a blacksmith. Smith is doing okay for him, so
he's doing, you know, the best of it can. But
he's also middle class, so now she is too. She
clearly married for love because she has to move into
a middle class neighborhood and a quaint little home on
I Street in northwest d C. Which is like now, now,
(24:17):
it's like girl, that's money, Yes, exactly. So she moves
to I Street where the men go to work and
the women raise kids and nobody comes by to paint
their pictures. Oh no. Lucinda has six kids, five girls
and a boy named William, and she seems to have
been searching for a way to get back in to
(24:38):
the first families that get back into the life she'd
become accustomed. But they need to make some money. If
Lucinda setons six kids get educated, they can get good jobs,
make real money, and put their family back on the map.
So all the kids are sent to school. William goes
to the prestigious private elementary school in the basement the
(25:00):
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. So now all Lucinda has to
do is just wait. Unfortunately, in eighteen sixty three, tragedy strikes.
Her husband is murdered during a robbery. Oh no, So
now Lucinda is a widow with six kids to feed.
(25:23):
I don't know if her family helped her out a bit.
Maybe they did, but she does become a dressmaker, and
she starts an ice cream shop to make ends meet.
Speaker 4 (25:32):
Oh my gosh, did Lulu go there with Craig.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Well, they are going to cross paths, we'll see. But
she has to pull her kids out of their schools
to help earn money for their survival. Some of the
members of the First Families probably still stop by her
little house on Ice Street and wish her well, but
it's clear to everyone that Lucinda is now even further
away from being one of them than she was before.
(25:56):
She'd married into a precarious financial situation, and now she
was a poor with no hope of ever advancing. So
now we're back. We're back with Lulu and Dion. In
the eighteen eighties, we left Lulu. She's crying in her bedroom,
(26:19):
probably making it up, but you know, she's sobbing. Dion
is there. She's rubbing her head. She's saying, don't worry
about Craigwell. All men are dogs. It's gonna be okay.
Then I picture Lulu's father, Richard, poking his head in
the room to check on his daughter Lulu. She doesn't
notice him because she's sobbing, but Dion looks up. The
two exchange of knowing Glands. What was that? Look? Cut
(26:41):
to Lucinda's house. Lucinda sne is still in DC, in
that little house on I Street, and she would have
likely been watching the Lulu Craigwell affair with a lot
of interest, maybe because the story mirrored her own, or
maybe because she had made it her and her six
kids business to know exactly actly what the First Families
were getting into and to tell everybody.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Oh, that is nasty, Lucinda, don't be nasty.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
They may have counted her out, but they shouldn't have,
because Lucinda has a son named William Chase, and he's
all grown up now and she's taught him everything she knows.
William and Lucinda are coming for the First Families, and sadly,
Lulu will find herself caught in the crossfire. Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
But you know what, I watch a lot of housewives,
so I do understand when you get iced out, Like
the alternative is like time to be a gossip monger
and start some mess coming up.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Lucinda starts a beehive and Lulu prepares to become a bride.
We now return to our ancestors were messy.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Back to Lulu. She's single now, but then she meets
a man. His name is mister Sneed. Mister who mister
snead s n e ed.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Okay, so she's back outside. She's back outside, all right,
she got her toes. She doesn't have her toes out.
It's the Gilded day.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
No, no, no, no, no, no whatever.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
That version is like, hey girl, we've got a new man.
Forget that old one. We're moving on.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Mister Sneed is a waiter at the Arlington Hotel, which
is one of America's most opulent hotels. And the first
families would have been like, this is a great look.
The papers call him swell h A waiter's a great look. Yeah,
because it's had a really really really fancy hotel, okay,
and because at this time to put on a uniform
and work in a hotel like work for dignitaries and
(28:45):
all these things. This is really really important to them. Okay,
So Lulu and Sneed begin a courtship. Lulu and Sneed
get engaged. Lulu's dad, Richard, agrees to give them a
wedding present, which is a uh love that mm hmmm,
we love a house's gift. That's amazing. Lulu and her
(29:06):
parents and maybe mister Sneed draft an invite list, and
although I couldn't find it, I could guess who would
be on it. All the first families, the famed suffragette
Mary Church Terrell and the Terrells love Mary Church Terrell, Langston,
Hughes's great uncle John Mercer Langston and the Langstons would
of course be there. Obviously, they have to invite the
founder of the fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, John F. Cook,
(29:28):
and the Cooks, the McKinley's, the Cardozos, the grim Keys.
Everybody's gonna be there, as in Cardozo High School. Cardozo's right,
I know, it's wild. Wow. I was like, all these
last names come from this, what I know?
Speaker 4 (29:41):
I saw I heard a seat and I was like,
wait a minute, I know that street and the school.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
So then this question arises between the couple. I'm guessing
Lulu is the one that asked this question. She says,
mister Snead, should we invite mister Craigwell to our wedding?
Would you ever invite an ex to your wedding? Okay?
And this is gonna sound messy.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
If y'all are cool and your current partner does not
know the extent of your friendship with this person, yes,
but if it is well known, girl, he does not
need to be there. No, stop being messy.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Okay. Well, Lulu's parents send out the invitations and the
household prepares for a royal wedding two people who most
certainly would not have received an invite from the Francis
family and would have been in their feelings about it.
For Lucinda Seaton and her now grown son, William Chase. So,
(30:43):
if you'll recall, she'd had to pull him out of
school when he was nine to help support the family,
and he started selling newspapers and that's how you got
to know a lot of the editors and the newsrooms
and the reporters in Black DC. He grows up, he
goes to Howard Law school who passes the bar. He
becomes a lawyer, and he will continues reporting and working
in various newsrooms. And he lives at home on I
(31:04):
Street with his mom and his sisters. They're all very close.
William has got this flare for the dramatic. He has
dreams of becoming a renowned actor, and he actually ends
up falling in love with and marrying another actor, and
the two of them are in little plays together and stuff.
It's very cute. Mainly though, his time is spent lawyering, reporting,
(31:28):
and jockeying for political appointments. Because there's another way that
a person can become a member of the black elite,
and that is by doing the absolute most. If he
can become a combination lawyer, reporter, and politician, he will
be economically secure, have the most prestigious jobs anyone can have,
be lifting as he climbs in matters of law, news
(31:48):
and politics.
Speaker 4 (31:50):
Okay, being a politician and a journalist at the same
time gives me pause, but I do respect the hustle.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
It's a wild combo, But like, how do you go
on both these things?
Speaker 4 (31:59):
Sir?
Speaker 2 (32:00):
But okay, totally fine, no questions. We're all on board.
No notes. But the problem was when it came to
the politics. He never seemed to get the political appointments
that he went after, and when he was rejected, he
did not take it and stride. He would go into
the office of whatever newspaper he was working for at
(32:20):
the time, he would sit down at his typewriter and
he would go absolutely insane on everyone he held responsible
for him not getting the jobs he thought he deserved.
So like one time, Frederick Douglass was like, I will
hook you up, and he said great or great great,
and then Frederick Douglas is like, no, no, I can't.
He publishes all this that I hate you. I hate
(32:42):
the way that you dress, I hate the way that
you I hate your hair, like just Patty.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Well, okay, but if you're going scorched or like that,
that's why you're not a politician, like a not insignificant
amount of having a career is being personal and getting
people to like you. And if you go scorched earth
when you get a no, you're gonna keep getting those right.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
But he doesn't care. People describe him as handsome, a climber,
and very very combative.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
Oh he was handsome. I see why he's like that.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Like, oh wait, that changes everything. Okay, got it clear,
That's why he's acts like that. So finally William does
secure one of the jobs he's been going after. He's
named the editor of The Washington b a brand new
weekly paper serving the black citizens of DC whose motto
was Stings for our enemies, honey for our friends. Oh
(33:36):
oh oh. It's estimated that at this time there are
like twelve thousand newspapers serving segregated black communities across America,
but when you get to a major city like DC,
there's usually a few, so the competition is really fierce
and you need to do something to stand out. So
William is like, what's up, sisters, what's up my wife?
(33:58):
You all are now going to be on stay at
the Washington B And he makes all of them like
reporters and cultural critics in addition to some outside people.
And then they set up offices at Lucinda's house on
I Street. There they turned the Bee into appointment reading.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
So was it like the shade Room? Essentially this was
their shade room.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Well, okay, so it was. They primarily cover news related
to the fight for civil rights and social justice. They're
like covering news that all the white papers are covering,
but without all the racism and with black people in it.
That's like the idea mm hmm. But they also make
sure from time to time to just let William get
behind his typewriter and do his thing. He'll be like,
(34:42):
what's up, White leaders? I am so sick and tired
of all the ways that you do not point black
people to position the power. You are so racist and
you're so hypocritical. And then he'll be like, what's up,
Black leaders? Nothing that you're doing is going to make
a difference in the black community because you are too
intellectual and you're too theoretical. And then this is his favorite,
(35:03):
He's like, what's up, first, families, you think you're so
much better than us, You think I don't know what's
going on behind closed doors. A lot of his readers,
who The Bee refers to as the household, that's what
they call black DC.
Speaker 4 (35:19):
He's like, okay, exactly, but it's giving the shape room exactly.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
It's good branding. It's good branding. You got a brand
your audience. The household feels looked down upon by the
black elites because they're working class or they're poor, or
their dark skin, or they couldn't go to college, and
so behind their back, the household calls the first families
the fust families, the what families fust f ust, which
(35:46):
is slang for musty.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
Oh nothing, musty, jesus. Okay, I think being called musty
is the worst thing that can happen to you.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Do you know? I agree, because like musty isn't just stinky.
Speaker 4 (35:56):
Musty is like you're funky and you've been flunky for
a minute.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Can I have you read on page two what the
be said about them?
Speaker 4 (36:04):
Yes, let me see who. They wouldn't be caught dead
with an ordinary Negro, and they foolishly expect to become
absorbed by the white race.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Ooh, drag them? No, okay, but here's the thing. You're Lulu,
so you're the fusty one. How would you feel reading this? Okay?
Speaker 4 (36:21):
And this is what? Okay, this makes me think. It's
that thing of hey, we're all black people, et cetera,
et cetera. But and I admit sometimes when I see
tweets about this where people complaining about quote unquote black
elite or like black college educated people, there's something in
you that inherently gets defensive, even though you'll have these
(36:44):
conversations about men, about white supremacy, and you say, hey,
you gotta take a hard look at XYZ. But when
the finger points to you, it admittedly does not feel good.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
And I do feel like people start bringing out their
like no, no, no, no, their cards where it's like, well,
my dad, my pay I'm first generation college graduate, Like
I don't. Don't put me with them, like my family
grew up with no money. You just want to start
you do these things.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
And it takes a lot of work to check that
and say, okay, only hit dogs holler if I'm hollering,
what am I doing? What's happening? And that takes a
lot of maturity and a lot of thought.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
So back to William. He is assaulted twice and sued
five times for libel over his articles. He's like, I
don't care. There's this section of the paper called the
Clara and Louise column. Every week the paper publishes a
letter from an anonymous Clara to an anonymous Luis or
vice versa. And in the letters, among other things, they
(37:42):
share the tor details about the ups and the downs
and the scandals of the first families, Okay, lady whistledown.
The lady whistled down to a t and the first
families hate this column. Their complaints about it reached such
a fever pitch that William, who is normally like don't care,
don't care, don't care, has to release a statement being like, sorry,
(38:03):
I don't know who Clara and Louise are. I understand
your pain. However, I am never going to stop. I'm
never going to back down. Every week, tune in because
I'm going to be publishing all of their insights into
your scandals and your hypocrisies. On November twenty seventh, eighteen
(38:27):
eighty six, just five days before Lulu and Sneed's wedding,
the Washington be publishes a bombshell in their weekly gossip column, which,
as you'll recall, is written in the form of letters
between an anonymous Clara and an anonymous Louise. I have
compiled a medley of the letters that Clara and Louise
wrote to each other over the next two weeks about
(38:47):
the scandal, which I would love for us to read
right now, if you would not mind. I think I'm
playing Louise, if you will play Clara dear Clara, I
hardly know how to begin or what relate first. But
the most sensational thing that has ever happened in our
society is the elopement of missus Lulu Francis girl. Not
(39:08):
you Elope, Cho.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
Dear Louise, your letter to the household last week was
read with a great deal of interest. I never was
made more surprised in my life.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
It will be remembered that mister Craigwell had been going
with Miss Francis for a number of years, and it
was understood that the engagement between them had been canceled.
Speaker 4 (39:33):
Mister Craigwell was persuaded to break the engagement by a
lady connected with the Francis family.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
Oh did I think nasty work? Nasty work.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Then Miss Francis went to Harrisburg on a visit, and
mister Craigwell did not greet her with any respect, nor
did he.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Write to her for over a year.
Speaker 4 (39:55):
Still, she said that he was the only man she
ever loved, and if she married an it would be
for spite. The lady was told by a friend not
to marry for spite. Okay, Lulu, Lulu, while you let
why you let men play let's just continue because I
have I have a lot of thoughts. Let's continue.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Mister Snead expressed tender feelings for the lady. He gave
her his heart, and they were engaged, and he went
to the expense of making their wedding a brilliant affair.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
The lady asked her friend would be wise to give
mister Craigwell an invite to her marriage. She was told now,
Mister Craigwell, on the reception of an invitation from Miss
Francis and mister Sneed, announcing their marriage, immediately left Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
and came to d C. Once in the city, mister
Craigwell remarked to his friend that he would never leave
(40:46):
d C without Miss Lulufrancis, but, finding that he could
not persuade her parents to bless his reunion with Miss Francis,
he returned to Harrisburg. Mister Craigwell could not rest in Harrisburg,
so he returned again to d C and inaugurated another scheme.
This time, he solicited the services of the sister of
Miss Lulu. While out walking with mister Sneed, Miss Lulu
(41:09):
called at her sister's and told mister Sneed to wait
outside as she wanted to see her sister about address.
Mister Craigwell was there and he pleaded with her to
become his wife.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Mister Craigwell told Miss Francis that he always loved her
and that it was hard to see his first love
married to another man who would make her life miserable.
At this juncture, Miss Francis said, but my invitations are
out for my marriage to mister Sneed. Oh I could
fix that, said mister Craigwell. After deciding what steps were
(41:43):
best to pursue. It said that Miss Francis, mister Craigwell,
her sister, and her brother in law traveled to the
residence of Reverend Doctor Sunderland, who married President Grover Cleveland.
Speaker 4 (41:55):
In the afternoon of Wednesday, November second, The marriage license
was procured and they were married. Doctor Sunderland said that
he thought the affair a romance and that it did
not excite his suspicions. It was settled, and poor mister
Sneed was made a victim of despair.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
The household is started and society is up in arms
to think that Miss Francis would be guilty of such
an act.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Mister and Missus Francis are heartbroken to think that their
daughter would treat them so.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
She has been reared a lady and looked upon and
respected as such. Her parents consist of the best elements
of our society. This is Sneed's last song. Where has
my Lulugan? Is a song I shall sing.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
The chestnut bells are ringing, and the boys are singing. Sneed, Sneed, Sneed,
Oh Sneed, Where has thy Lulugan? I have been told
that mister Sneed has received a just retribution. It's said
that he had many sympathizing friends who regretted that he
was disappointed, and many young ladies who were pleased.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I saw mister Sneed at the fraternals last Wednesday evening,
and he approached Major Fleetwood and said, Major, I carried
you an invitation to my wedding, but I suppose that
you have heard that my intended has gone off with another.
Then Major laughed and said, yes, Snead, I don't know
whether to congratulate you or to extend my condolences. Mister Sneed,
in reply, said that he would like to have his
(43:22):
congratulations yours lovingly, yours truly Louise Clara. All right, girl,
go ahead, so much to say. I have so much
to say, and it really is giving. Lori Harvey, I'm
glad that's who we live with. I feel like mister
Sneed is Michael B.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
Jordan, Oh, mister Sneed is, Oh, mister Steed is Michael B. Jordan,
which you know, Michael, call me. I'm around. I have
so many thoughts because, on one hand, it's better to
end a marriage before it's miserable. She clearly was not
into it. He was, although you know at the end
(44:02):
he's like it was. He feels very draky. It's very
like her loss. And I mean that derogatory that being said,
don't spend the block like no, if that man left once,
he'll leave again. And when he does it again, you're
gonna feel so stupid. I just like, oh, I'm gonna
(44:23):
get you back, baby, like I guess. But she let
that man spend the block and here we are, what
a scandal. I think it would have been better if
she had said, you know, I'm not feeling it, call
it off, maybe wait some time, lay low a little bit,
but to run off and get married. Also, her sister
was in Cahoots. We can't forget this. It's not all Lulu.
(44:46):
Her sister was in Cahut.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
So was it her mom who was all like, don't
marry that girl? No, they said it was a friend.
So that's why I feel like Diana. Okay, So this
is my conspiracy theory that I had cooked up in
my head based on no evidence. I feel like Richard,
Lulu's dad went to Dion, Lulu's best friend, and he
was like, Dion, my daughter cannot marry that broke barber.
(45:10):
I need you to go to him and tell him
that if he really cares for Lulu, the best thing
he can do for her is to leave her. And
so then Dion like went to him. She said that
Lulu is like, oh my god, he left me. I
want to be with him. And maybe Richard gave him
some money, because you know that's how rich people do it.
That is true. So then mister Craigwell leaves town. Lulu
is like, oh my god, like, I can't live without him.
(45:31):
Dion's like, you'll be fine. Lulu's like, should I invite
him to my wedding? Dion is like, girl, no, then
boom boom boom, He's back in her life. They're married.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
Also, it's this thing of and this is something my
mom always said, And of course there are exceptions to
this rule, but it's a thing of if your child
is dating someone you don't like, don't make a fuss
because that will only drive them into their arms.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Ooh yeah, and that's exactly what they did.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
You came for the mess Now stay for the rest
When our Ancestors were Messy continues, and now for the
thrilling conclusion of this week's installment of Our Ancestors were Messy.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
After the elopement, it's reported that Craigwell went to see
about making arrangements for him and Lulu to get to Pennsylvania,
and Lulu and her sister went home to face their parents. Allegedly,
mister Sneed is also there. Me, I would just fake
my own desk. Yeah, how would your parents react to
(46:40):
you showing up at the door being like okay, Mary, Okay.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
The thing is I'm an only child, So the amount
of conniption that would be.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Had, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, you would never survive it. Unfortunately,
there's no record of what went down at the Francis
home during this meeting, but at the end, mister Sneaed
is sent away and that's the last we ever hear
of them. Now, Richard Francis Lulu's dad, and his wife,
Lula's mom. They are humiliated in front of all the
(47:11):
first families, the household, and potentially hundreds of thousands of
recorded black newspaper readers across the nation, because I found
articles about this elopement and papers in New York, in
Alabama and Missouri, and a lot of them were pulling
their reporting from the Beast, So this is bad. Also,
(47:32):
since Lulu was on the radar of the Washington Post,
White DC may have known about all of this too,
and so Richard may have had to deal with his
coworkers and clients whispering about this in the US Senate
as well as everywhere that he went in DC. Not
long after the scandal, in eighteen eighty eight, Richard passes
away suddenly, all his stress. His funerals held at the
(47:56):
fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church. Today, bartenders still remember and revere
Richard for his incredible mint Julips. When I was doing
the research for this episode, I kept getting linked to
all these magazines and all these articles about like famous
black bartenders and recipes, famous recipes created by black bartenders,
(48:17):
and there was Richards. It's the Dick Francis Special for
a mint Julip, and I will link the recipe in
the show notes. I never did find another article after
the scandal that mentioned Richard and Lulu together, so I
don't know what their father daughter relationship was after that
or at the time that he passed away. But in
(48:38):
the bios of his that I came across, and in
his obituary, he's listed as having left behind a wife
and one son, and that's it day, So both the
daughters got got maybe both the daughters. I don't know.
Dang dang heard Nanny strict. I know Washington Be continues
(49:01):
to grow in readership and prestige post elopement scandal, and
they gain a reputation across DC and in history as
a paper that fought fearlessly for civil rights and social justice,
in addition to the Clara Luis gospel column. But that's
less so in the history books. That's in the back.
And eighteen eighty three, Lucinda passes away with the Washington
(49:21):
Be still running from her home on Eye Street, which
she managed to hold on too, against all odds and
then pass on to her children. So shout out to Lucinda.
I know that's right. William keeps the paper going right
up until his death in nineteen twenty one, which made
it at that time one of the longest running black
newspapers in America. The DC First Family, you know, it's
(49:44):
hard to track down exactly what happened to them or
all their wealth. Obviously, DC people will recognize some of
the names seton McKinley, but unfortunately those places are named
after the enslavers that the First Family shared names with,
not the First Families themselves. Oh yeah, although I will
say Cardozo is named after Francis Cardozo, who was a
(50:04):
famous Black clergyman and politician. So we got that one.
But here's what we do know. Charles County in PG County, Maryland,
right outside of DC, are the richest majority black counties
in the nation, and they have been for a very
long time. And I don't know why these places in
Maryland became bastions of black wealth, but it does seem
like in some way the legacy of the First Families
(50:28):
in DC still lives on. But I wish someone would
look into this because I would love to know, like,
why do they congregate there?
Speaker 4 (50:34):
What is it about pretty Girl County that we can't
stay away from?
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Uh? Uh uh. As for our newlyweds, mister and missus Craigwell,
they spend a little bit of time out in Pennsylvania
and then right before the turn of the century they
moved to Seattle, Washington, and once they get there, they
make their way into black history. Now I can only
(51:00):
find a record of what mister Craigwell did because of
the times. But I know, I believe and feel that
I know that Lulu was there right beside him, holding
him down. Can I have you read the summary of
mister Creigwell's life, which was written up for his obituary
and published in Seattle's black newspaper, The Northwest Enterprise.
Speaker 4 (51:19):
Okay, uh Northwest. Mister John Fields Craigwell, pioneer resident of
Seattle and veteran barber, died Monday morning from a heart ailment.
Mister Craigwell was born in Virginia in eighteen sixty two.
After graduation from high school, young Craigwell moved to Pennsylvania,
but later returned to Washington, where he engaged.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
In the barber business.
Speaker 4 (51:42):
In eighteen eighty five, mister Craigwell was married to Miss
Louise Francis, by the same minister that Mary Grover Cleveland.
They moved to Seattle in eighteen ninety, where the young
barber again started his business. His shop was a gathering
place for business leaders during and after the days of
the Alaska gold Rush. During his fifty six years as
a barber, he shaved many notables, including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt
(52:04):
and William McKinley, John jacobast Alexander Graham Bell, and many others.
Besides his business, mister Craigwell was interested in several civic affairs.
He used to take an active part in politics, and
at the time of his death he held one of
the highest offices in the Presbyterian Church.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
Surviving are his widow.
Speaker 4 (52:21):
Missus Louise Craigwell, two daughters, three grandchildren, and one great grandchild.
On November twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five, mister and Missus
Craigwell celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, which hundreds of Seattle's
citizens attended.
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Oh thank got a happy ending. Good for you girl.
Speaker 4 (52:39):
Okay, you could spend the block this one time, but
never do it again.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Craigwell passes away in nineteen thirty seven and Lulu passes
away in nineteen forty two. And as much as I
would love to tell you that's the end, I want
you to have this happy ending, there is one last part.
Oh no, oh, why are they like this? See, don't
spend the block. I told you, I told you, don't
do it. Do not text that man. Yes, Lulu and
(53:07):
Craigwell were among Seattle's earliest black citizens and members of
Seattle's black elite. And yeah, Craigwell does go on to
become a barber and the city's most successful black entrepreneur.
He has a staff of eleven toncilary artists in fashionable
downtown barber shops. But about those shops, So white people
(53:30):
really liked to be waited on by black people immediately
following the end of slavery, but they didn't want other
black people around also being served. So some barbers would
guarantee their all white clients, tell that the staff would
be all black, but that they wouldn't serve any black people.
And members of Seattle's black press accused Craigwell of this practice,
(53:52):
and they call him a segregationist barber. It's very hard
to be in it but not of it. Of course,
there's so much more that happened, but for now, that
is the story of the scandalous cross class romance of
Miss Lulu Francis.
Speaker 4 (54:12):
Wow, buh gilded age, Lori Harvey, you took me through
a lot, just.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
Now a lot. Do you think it's possible to be
in it but not of it, to be operating in
these spaces of power but not adopting their practices and
(54:37):
their ways of thinking and treating people.
Speaker 4 (54:40):
Ooh, this is a question that I think about a lot,
just living my own life and living in DC. I
would like to think that you can be around and
not be dragged down by the grips and allure of power,
but I know that as humans we don't do that.
It's almost like the Ring and Lord of the Ring
is like you're around it and the pool becomes so
(55:02):
strong that you can't say no, and then like what
do you become?
Speaker 2 (55:06):
You know?
Speaker 4 (55:07):
I would like to think that someone is strong enough
to do it, but I don't know if that person exists.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Yeah, that's real. How are you feeling about the tactic
uplift as we climb as a strategy for eighteen eighty six,
what do we gain? What do we lose?
Speaker 4 (55:23):
Okay, huh, Honestly, there are things about There are things
about it that worked at the time, so I can't
begrudge them that. And I guess like the other option
would have led to even more death and destruction for
black people. So I get the route that they took,
(55:44):
and you know, talk about Monday morning quarterbacking. But you
know what if we say, Okay, we're just going to
do this for two years and then like we have
to be real people after this, you know, we can't
be doing this in twenty twenty four, Like they here's
a plan where this strategy is sunseted by twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (56:04):
What would what would you have us do?
Speaker 4 (56:07):
Probably disengage completely, just stop caring, like just being like
nothing is going to work. If people want to be racist,
they're just gonna do it, and they will find any
and every reason to do it. At this point, who
cares about the white gays? What are we up to?
Speaker 2 (56:20):
That is the strategy I we deploy. Now, what do
you think about looking at black history starting from the
messy beginnings? Because Craig Weell is like in Seattle, that
name is a big deal. He's like seen as a
big pioneer and as a person who's done this incredible thing.
And you start the story from the time that he
got to Seattle, and then you know, you kind of
talk about all the hard work he did, everything he overcame,
(56:43):
his incredible resilience in business acumen, and he's you know,
an amazing black capitalist. But we don't talk, you know
about the southern part. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (56:52):
I kind of like the mess because it's also a
reminder that something my mom would say to me over
and over again is there's nothing new on under the sun.
And I would think, mmm, I don't think that's true.
But this makes me realize, no, there really is nothing
new under the sun. And I think we would all
give ourselves a lot more grace if we looked at
our ancestors as people and knew that they could get
(57:15):
messy too, sometimes even messier.
Speaker 2 (57:17):
Because this is wild. I'm like, five days before your wedding,
like that is wild. Like she loved that man down
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