On this episode of Our American Stories, Kevin Samy shares his family's remarkable American dream story. Kathryn Minshew, the founder of career platform The Muse tells us about an early ethical dilemma she faced while building her business. Rick Bowers tells us an undercover agent infiltrated the KKK, and with the help of Superman exposed them to the world.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - "In My Father's Village, Nobody Could Read...He Moved to America and Became an Engineer"
12:30 - A Client Was Disrespecting My Employees, So I Fired Them
25:00 - Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love to hear your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. Up next to story from
Kevin Sammy, the son of Indian American immigrants, who appeared
in Forbes thirty under thirty for Law and Policy in
(00:32):
twenty sixteen. Today, Kevin shares with us the story of
his family's love for the sport he played football and
why they valued his education so much. Take it away, Kevin.
You know, I grew up in Canton, Ohio. I am
first generation Indian American, so my mom and dad, they
(00:52):
emigrated from rural South India. My dad came to the
United States to do his doctorate. He ended up moving
to Ohio to work at company as an engineer, and
that's where I was born. And I had what I
believe is a pretty archetypal Midwest upbringing in a lot
of ways. I played football in high school and ended
up playing in college too. I don't think I would
(01:14):
have if not for the fact that I grew up
so close to the Hall of Fame and the culture
there was so deeply steeped in football. I didn't know
I would be as good as I was playing. College
is difficult to do. And I say that to give
credit to everyone who makes it to Division one ball.
You know, my parents, they really wanted to learn the
game after I became interested in after I started to
(01:34):
do well and I got looks from colleges. I was
you know, all state for two years in the state
of Ohio, which is a you know, known for good football.
It went from me trying my hand in it too.
There would be Indian families that would come from a
bit of parts of the state and around the region
who would come watch my high school games just as
a function of being now interested in this game. They
didn't have any other reason to be. Let's say before
(01:56):
during the Thanksgiving the Turkey Bowl, the Thanksgiving game that
NFL plays every year, all of the Indian families would
come to my house because my dad would teach them rules,
teach them about the game worked. There are fewer things
I feel more strongly about in terms of what have
shaped me in the game of football. I very much
(02:18):
grew up in the way that I think we all
hope America to be one that is not always but
predominantly accepting of difference, where this is sort of multicultural
experiment is more or less working. I mean, a Google
co founder, it was a refugee, but an enormous amount
of American winners of Nobel Prizes are immigrants. It's an
(02:41):
amazing place where that type of reality exists. I should
say segue into my parents. I mean, part of the
reason I got involved in politics latched onto Barack Obama's
candacy is he talked about in his famous DNC speech,
and that really launched him into the public. Ether talked
about his father's family farming goats in Kenya. My dad's
family go to India. India's a fascinating place, largest democracy
(03:02):
on the planet. The cast system in India was a
vestige of British rule and it doesn't officially exist, but
the cast system is still a kind of unfortunate vestige
of the past that has some kind of relevance in
modern Indian society. And so my family is from a
relatively lower cast. We're not We're not from the higher cast,
if you will. The reason I say that is, you know,
(03:25):
I am from a lineage of meat eating, farmer South
Indian people, uneducated, my mom and dad were the first
in their families to really go to school. My father
was the first to go to go to any school,
let alone higher education. You know, he grew up in
(03:47):
a village with no running water, no electricity, nobody could read.
It was an illiterate community. There was a neighboring village
where there was one guy that used to call him
in you know, my parents mother tongue Thummel Tamil. They
used to call him the reading uncle because he was
the one guy within you know, however many mile radius
that could kind of read. So people would bring him
letters or the very small amount of things that needed
(04:10):
to be ready. They'd bring him that collateral, that content
to translator to read for them. There's a moment in
my dad's childhood where they're a handful of little kids,
one of which was him, and some of the parents
thought themselves, look like, let's pay this guy a few
rupees a month right to teach our kids. Soasic basic
thumbel basic literacy. They kind of hollowed out a little
(04:32):
clay less than five m square foot space that was
a temple with some old idols and things in there
that God knows how long they've been there, took some
things out, and they'd bring sand from the river bed
to coat the floor so it was fresh and soft
and malleable. And they would use their fingers to write
into sand as a chalkboard and to do letters and numbers.
(04:54):
And when the sand was coarse, when it was a
hotter day, or it wasn't soft anymore, or their fingers
would bleed. And so it's kind of an indigenous vegetable
in an area that they would crack open and they
would put on their fingers like thimbles and to protect
them after they started to bleed, to keep continuing their lessons.
That's how my dad learned how to read. He ended
(05:16):
up going to a nearby government school that was thirteen
kilometers away. His father, my grandfather, saved money for a
year to buy a bike so he could bike there.
One thing led to the next to the next, and
education was really a way out of that type of poverty.
I'll just say, you know very much so the American dream.
(05:36):
I mean, he came to the United States to give
his family a better shot, to sort of raise the
quality of life by an order of magnitude. I think
my appreciation for being American is so rooted in that,
And how is it you know, I don't I don't
blame people for not knowing. I wish, I wish I
(05:57):
could show them. But how is it that you can't
appreciate the value of a place like the United States
when you can see how far you can go? It
is that possibility that is what makes his place special.
And yeah, you know, I spoke a little bit about football,
but the game meant so much to me, It really
(06:18):
built me. And a special thanks to Faith Buchanan and
Monty Montgomery for the editing and post production of this story,
and his special thanks also to Kevin Sammy for sharing
in the end his father's and mother's story and the
American dream story that so many immigrants come here to pursue.
And today Kevin works at our zero, a company moving
(06:41):
the ball forward on biosafety. To find out more about
what he's up to at that company, go to R
zero dot com. That's rzero dot com. How can you
not appreciate or value this country when you see how
far you can come? That Kevin about America? His father
well running water in his community, the first in his
(07:02):
family to even have the ability to read comes to America,
becomes an engineer, and that next generation. Oh my goodness,
you know the rest of the story you just heard.
It a terrific story about the American dream, about poverty,
about immigration, and about the ability of America to absorb
different people from different places. Kevin Sammy's story here on
(07:25):
Our American Story Leabibi here the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
(07:48):
to our American Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American
Stories dot com and give And we continue with our
(08:10):
American Stories. And now it's time for our Do the
Right Thing series about ethical dilemmas, and it's sponsored by
our friends at the Daniels Fund. And today we bring
you a young voice out of New York City. So
my name is Katherine Minshew. I felt really frustrated by
(08:31):
the tools that were available to help me navigate my career,
and so I started thinking, well, you know, what if
you could go online and get career advice, peek inside
companies and a sense for different career paths and different
roles and jobs and opportunities all in one place. And
eventually I stopped thinking about it, and I dove in
and I started a business. I was about twenty five
(08:56):
when I started the news. You know, at that point
in time, I was probably working you know, north of eighty,
maybe even ninety hours a week. I pitched one hundred
and forty eight investors before I was able to close
our seed round of capital, and I also had to
build and grow the business. So there were times when
(09:19):
I was getting you know, nose from investors all day,
and then I would go home, you know, let's call
it nine thirty ten pm, and I'd do another couple
hours of answering email, all the work that I couldn't
get to during the day that I was going to
bed at two am, you know, between one to three
(09:40):
am nearly every night, sometimes later. But I would try
quote unquote and be asleep by two and you know,
it was it was hectic, it was insane. But at
the same time, I had never loved anything more than
I loved building that business, and it also felt like
such a gift to be working on something that was
(10:02):
so meaningful. You know, jobs and careers like people drive
an intense amount of meaning from where they work. Even
though you know, there were days I just I wasn't
sure we were going to make it through. So early
in the company's history, we were scrambling hard for every
(10:26):
customer and every client, and it often felt like each
deal we signed was going to be the difference between
success or failure, you know, between the business surviving to
live another day and going out of business, and so
every deal was really hard fought, and I remember probably,
you know, I want to say it was probably about
(10:48):
a year and a half in I heard through someone
on my team that they were having a lot of
issues with a client that we recently signed. And you know,
we're asking, well, what sort of a because issues is
a really broad word. It can read a lot of
different things. But as I dug in, it became clear
that the client was not treating our people in a
(11:11):
way that aligned with our values. It was, you know,
I just think they were being incredibly rude and disrespectful.
I initially got involved in the relationship and told the
senior most contact that we had at the client that
I had some concerns about how their team was treating
(11:33):
my staff and that it was important that they not
do that, you know, and they seemed to take it
very seriously, they were very kind. But when I went
to check back in later, gosh, a week or two
or three later, with my team, it seemed pretty clear
that the behavior hadn't changed. And I remember thinking about
(11:56):
the situation for a while and trying to think about
what was the best thing to do. The individuals at
this client were being very kind to me, but they
were just just truly being absolutely terrible to members of
my team, And you know, it felt like in some
ways it made it worse that they were treating the
(12:19):
less experienced members of the team so much worse, as
if they felt like they could do that because they
could just get away with it. And so, I mean,
I remember talking about it with my co founder Alex
and ultimately we came to the fact that given that
we had tried warning them, we had tried asking them nicely,
(12:39):
and they hadn't changed their behavior. This just wasn't a
company that we were willing to do business with. It
that we were interested in doing business with, and so
I ended up getting on the phone with them and
saying that we'd be canceling their contract and refunding their money,
and that was part It was a bit scary. We again,
we just didn't have a lot of money to spare,
and so it was painful to give it back. But
(13:01):
I also felt like it was really important that I
set standards for how people treat my team. When I
told my team that I was going to fire this client,
I don't think they initially believed me. I think they
appreciated that I was standing up for them, but imagined
(13:22):
that I would emerge from the second phone call with
I don't know, some some result that wasn't the client
being fired, And there was a there was a real
relief and there was a real appreciation when when I
said that wasn't what had happened and that we wouldn't
be working with this company anymore. And I think it's
set a really powerful example for, you know, my willingness
(13:48):
to forego revenue to the business in order to do
the right thing by our people, and in particular because
the mission of the news is about helping people navigate
their careers and find that best fit job, company, and career.
It was also a way of saying that, you know,
we just didn't believe that a company that was going
to be behaving in that way had a place on
(14:09):
our platform. You know, you you only really know what
your values are until you're willing to defend them. It
can be very easy to say that you believe in X, Y,
and Z, but it's when push hits shove, it's when
(14:32):
you have to make a hard call that it really
becomes clear, you know, if you're if you're willing to
put your money where your mouth is and and look,
one of the hardest things about being a leader is
making the calls. And a lot of calls are not
black and white. There are other clients that have been,
(14:55):
you know, a little prickly or a little bit difficult.
And you know, don't think that you need to go
around firing clients left and right if they, you know,
step an inch outside of your prescribed ideal communication method.
And at the same time, sometimes people just cross a
line in a way that is deeply egregious. And I
(15:17):
think that I certainly took a lot of knocks as
I was building the views and I'm sure my team
dealt with a lot of crazy situations and a lot
of difficult people, but I remember this one. Just felt
it felt too far. And I think that it's such
a powerful statement for a team when you draw the
(15:39):
line around what you won't accept. It's, frankly, it's really
powerful for an individual. It's it's sort of the concept
of boundaries written large. And again, I, you know, I
believe in giving people second chances. I believe in being gracious.
I also believe that, you know, a lot of humans
are going through a lot of stuff, and so when
someone shows up to a conversation or an email exchange
(16:02):
or a meeting with aggression or with rudeness, or you know,
with different behaviors, I try and remember that I don't
know what they're dealing with. And at the same time,
you know, there's just certain patterns of repeated behavior that
I think you've got to remove from your life. And so,
you know, just because I personally wasn't having to deal
(16:25):
with this client in my role as a CEO, once
it became clear to me how they were behaving and
the impact I was having on my team, I felt,
you know, I felt like it was the right thing
to do and didn't regret it for an instant. And
I think even if the news had failed, I am
(16:46):
so I don't think I would have regretted kind of
going out on the field and giving it my all.
And the fact that you know, we were ultimately, after
years of struggle, we were ultimately able to build a
really you know, kind of successful business that now has
a brand in the space. And yet you know, I'm
sure that the majority of Americans are probably not familiar
(17:09):
with the Muse. Yet we're kind of a joke that
we're like in the tweener stage where we're much bigger
than the startup that we used to be, and we
have you know, I think something like seventy five million
people worldwide a year who come to the Muse in
some form or other, But we're so much smaller than
the big players. And you know, and now we just
got to work on coming forum and you've been listening
(17:38):
to Katherine Minshew tell her story. Are Do the Right
Thing series again, brought to us by the folks at
the Daniels Fund. Here on our American Story. This is
(18:08):
our American Stories, and up next our own Joey Cortez
brings you a story about a fictional character we all
know and love, Superman and how he would team up
with the real life undercover agent to take down a
truly vicious villain. Over the years, Superman has fought many villains,
(18:30):
including the kkk Rick Bowers brings us the story of
how the hero not only fought this villain in the
fictional series, but also in real life. Here's Rick with
the backstory. The actual Superman character was created by two
Jewish kids in Cleveland in the nineteen thirties. And these
(18:53):
two kids were high school students and they loved science fiction.
They would hole up in their addict studio reading science
fiction magazines, books, they would go to the movies. You know,
Cape tros like Zoro were doing great things on the
big screen, and they were taking all of that in
(19:16):
and they started to create their own characters. And they
created a character and a story called the Reign of Superman.
But in that first iteration, Superman was bad. He was
an evil scientist doing horrid experiments on homeless men during
(19:37):
the depression, and he had no real superpowers. He were
just super evil. So they were creating some interesting characters,
but there was always something about that character that a
regional superman that not quite right. So they put that
on a shelf and let it incubate, and as Superman Lord.
(20:01):
One night, Jerry Siegel, one of these two young men
who were struggling to get through the depression, find work
and make it in the field of comic art, had
an epiphany, we have it backwards. What the world really
needs is a good Superman. And that epiphany and the
(20:24):
character that evolved from it came just as publishers in
New York City were developing the first comic books. And
the first comic books were actually compilations of newspaper strips
Little Orphan, any Popeye, and those newspaper strips would be
put in books and sold for a dime of peace.
(20:49):
But after the supply of newspaper strips had been exhausted,
these publishers needed original content, and one publisher recalled all
this set of drawings that these kids from Cleveland had
said with this character called Superman, and they were in
a pinch to launch a comic book called Action Comics,
(21:14):
so they hired Jerry Segal and Joe Schuster put together
thirteen pages of Superman stories for the original edition of
action comics, and before anyone really knew what happened, hundreds
of thousands of those comic books had been sold, and
(21:37):
the character that we all now know was Superman was born.
Boys and girls, your attention please, presenting a new exciting
radio program in the nineteen forties, The Adventures Superman on
the Air was created. Aster than an airplane, more powerful
(21:59):
than a locomotive, impervious of the sky. Look, it's a point.
That's Superman. And a creative writer and producer named Bob
Maxwell transform Superman into a radio show from the Mutual
(22:20):
Broadcasting System in New York, where actors, it sound effects
people would create a radio program three times a week
where Superman took on mad scientists and crime gangs and
evil spectral beings. And it became a hit. So Superman
(22:47):
was now in comic books, he was a strip in newspapers,
he was a serial in the movie theaters, and he
was reaching four million households three times a week through
the radio. As World War Two comes, the creators use
(23:10):
him more as a weapon against America's enemies. So he's
taking on Nazi spies, he's taking on German generals, and
in one case he actually took on Hitler and grabbed
him by the scruff and carried him off to an
(23:32):
international tribunal to be tried for war crimes. So Superman
has become a meaningful character in certain ways. And as
the war ended and as times changed, the creators of
(23:53):
the radio program asked a very perplexing question, what do
we do now? It seemed like the crime bosses and
the evil scientists had run their course. The war was over,
so Hitler was no longer a target, But there was
(24:14):
something happening here at home that got their attention. The
Ku Klux Klan was attempting a revival. Six million shoes
had just been killed in Nazi concentration camps. And here
we have people in our own backyard who are preaching
(24:36):
a similar philosophy and who believe that this post war
era can belong to them, That we can bring Americas
along to the Klan's philosophy, and we can create an
organization with millions of members. So these two forces are
(25:00):
very different. One is a fictional character on the radio
in comic books, and one is an actual real world
organization that is actually carrying out atrocious acts against its enemies.
(25:20):
Who would know that one day they would collide. While
all this was happening, a young man named Stetson Kennedy
was growing up in Jacksonville, Florida. Even at the age
of twelve, he was extremely uncomfortable with the perverse and
(25:45):
pervasive racism of the time. Through the streets of Jacksonville,
plans been marched, some on horseback to rest in ropes
and hoods, and at first he thought that this was
kind of a club for grown ups and they got
to dress up in costumes every day of the year
anytime they wanted, But he later learned that this was
(26:09):
actually a group that quote took care of people in
colored town, which means they imposed their will on black citizens.
And it was when the African American made in their
house was attacked by the clan for answering back a
(26:30):
streetcar operator who refused to give her the proper change.
She was brought home, bloodied and beaten that he realized
what the real clan was all about. And this young man,
obviously being out of step with much of the culture
of his time, decided at that point that his life
(26:55):
would be dedicated fighting this kind of hate. And we've
been listening to Rick Bowers and he's the author of
Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan, the true story of
how the iconic superhero battled the men of hate. When
(27:16):
we come back, more of this remarkable story on our
American story. And we're back with our American stories and
(27:39):
the story of Superman versus the k k k. As
this organization grew, there was one real life superhero looking
to stop them, Stetson Kennedy. Let's get back to Rick
Bowers with the rest of the story. In nineteen thirty seven,
(28:00):
that's in Kennedy became an interviewer with the Florida's Writers Project,
which was a new deal program for unemployed writers, editors, researchers, historians,
and they would travel to the state collecting life stories,
tall tales, folk songs, and fables from common people. But
(28:24):
he would record folk songs from blues singers. He would
record stories from field hands and sharecroppers. And he started
to understand that these stories, these songs, these rituals, these
kind of values were what held people together, It held
(28:48):
culture together. And so in his mind, this was a
great insight and he came to see that by having
this information himself, he could be a much better writer, communicator,
and he could tell the stories of the common people
and inform others of their plights. So for Steps and Kennedy,
(29:14):
it was the injustice that was being inflicted on these
poor people. It was the racism that was directed at
these African American field hands, sharecroppers, fishermen, and it just
(29:34):
hit him at such a level that he dedicated himself
to trying to fix it. And he was working at
the time for an organization called the Anti Defamation League,
and the AFT Defamation League is an organization that opposes
the prejudice against Jewish people and fights for the rights
(29:55):
of all people. And they hired him as an infiltrator
to get inside the clan. The dangers were very real.
Nineteen forty six, the clan is reviving in Atlanta, Georgia,
and Stetson, through his research, knows this. He knows that
(30:19):
this organization with a long history of violence, is trying
to make a comeback and it's all happening in what
they called the Imperial City of Atlanta, Georgia. So he
moved to Atlanta, Georgia with the express purpose of infiltrating
the clan. So Stetson, through the ADL takes on a
(30:44):
false persona. He takes on the persona of John Perkins,
a encyclopedia salesman and the publisher of a hate sheet.
He begins hanging around with clansmen, talking their language. He
(31:07):
begins attending their meetings, and everything he discovers is filed
back to the Anti Defamation League in the form of
a spy report. And he's reporting on some of the
atrocities at the time that are just so brutal that
you know they shake you to the core. Two black
(31:29):
couples driving down a road outside of the Atlanta in
that year nineteen forty six are dragged from their car,
taken to a river bag and shot dead. A black
taxi driver in Atlanta who was seen giving a ride
(31:51):
to a white woman is dragged from his car and killed.
Inside the Land Group, Stetson would write reports about their
plans to invade a government armory, seize weapons, and orchestrate
an all out attack on black communities. And Stetson is
(32:16):
in the middle of this the entire time. He was
walking this fine line where one wrong step probably meant death.
Stetson also risk writing columns under pseudonyms exposing the KKK's hierarchy, customs, traditions,
(32:38):
and most notably their brutality. Meanwhile, as we learned earlier,
the Superman radio show creator sought a new type of
villain based on real life people awakening their audience to
the evil in their own lives. Their villain would be
the KKK or in their sixteen part series known as
The Clan of the Fire Recross, they worked with the
(33:02):
ADL and used much as Stetson's findings, hoping to strip
the clan of their mystique and attraction by revealing what
they're actually like behind all the secrecy. So through sixteen
episodes there's arc takes place and people are kidnapped, people
are threatened. Clark, Kent, Lois Lane have to put out
(33:25):
a special edition of the Daily Planet to let the
public know that this clan group is wrecking people, and
of course Superman has to take flight and round up
these clansmen in Houlomouth to jail the stets and Kennedy
always said the wit to take down the clan is
by ridiculing them. That is, if you look closely at
(33:47):
their rituals, there's language that they use where everything starts
with K. So the big clan gathering is a clan vocation.
This kind of ridiculous language can be made fun of
these ridiculous outfits that these people wear. He long robes,
(34:08):
these hoods over their heads, these little slits for eye holes.
They look like clowns. They look like kids at Halloween
dressed up as ghosts. So he felt that that was
a great way to undercut the clan. Suddenly they come
into an opening, and as the car stops, Chuck gasps
(34:30):
at the strange scene before him. In a glade, casting
weird shadows over the nearby hills and lighting the sky above,
burns a huge wooden cross. Before it knew, half a
hundred men clothed in long robes, pointed hoods slid only
at the eyes, cover their heads and faces, and a
low guttural chant issues harshly from their hidden lips, sending
an uneasy chill through Chuck's blood. While the boy looks
(34:54):
about him at the fearsome sight, Matt riggs Don's a
robe and hood on which a pale blue scorpion is embroidered. Then,
followed by Chuckey approaches the kneeling hooded band, a strangely
barbaric company in the dancing light of the Flaming Cross. Gosh,
who are all these guys, Uncle Max? And why are
you wearing the sheets and hoods? Where the Clan of
(35:14):
the Fiery Cross chuck? Where a great secret society pledged
to purify America America for one Americans only one race,
one religion, one color. I don't get it. America's got
all kinds of religions in colors. When we get through,
there'll only be one, only one. But the constitution says
all Americans have the same rights and privilege institution. We'll
(35:38):
change that. I'll be quiet, Quine Doll, I call on you, possession, brother,
Oh tryan scorpion in the Clan of the Fiery Cross,
Supreme authority vested by me. It was a very different
kind of program for kids. It was very revolutionary for
(35:59):
its time. In the end, it was extremely successful. The
media praise that flowed in was extraordinary. Industry groups hailed
Superman as a hero for tolerance. Education groups said, now
we see that these characters can play a positive role.
(36:22):
Newspapers wrote laudatary articles, some of them saying that this
is great for kids, but maybe their parents should listen
to it as well. There are stories that come from
actual clansmen that tell the story of how their kids
would listen to that show and then act it out.
(36:45):
So one kid would put on a Superman outfit, the
other one would put a pillowcase over their head and
wrap a sheet around themselves, and then Superman would grab
the white sheeted kid took them off to jail. Now,
these are clansmen watching this, so they became very infuriated
(37:07):
with what this show was doing, and they felt that
they were the ridicule of the world, where millions of
people are listening to this and they think we're a
bunch of fools. The clan was humiliated. This villain's infamy
would soon fits allows. In the nineteen twenties, during the
(37:30):
clan's peak years, they had four million members nationwide. Today
they have only three thousand, thanks in part to the
Superman character created by two boys from Cleveland, Ohio and
a real life superhero with the courage to go undercoverment
and expose a villain in his own backyard. And great
(37:52):
work as always to Joey Cortez and a special thanks
to Rick Bowers for sharing the story. And well, there's
not much to add the story of Superman versus the KKK.
Here on our American story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and we love to hear your story. Send them to
our American Stories dot com. Up next to story from
Kevin Sammy, the son of Indian American immigrants, who appeared
in Forbes thirty under thirty for Law and Policy in
(00:32):
twenty sixteen. Today, Kevin shares with us the story of
his family's love for the sport he played football and
why they valued his education so much. Take it away, Kevin.
You know, I grew up in Canton, Ohio. I am
first generation Indian American, so my mom and dad, they
(00:52):
emigrated from rural South India. My dad came to the
United States to do his doctorate. He ended up moving
to Ohio to work at company as an engineer, and
that's where I was born. And I had what I
believe is a pretty archetypal Midwest upbringing in a lot
of ways. I played football in high school and ended
up playing in college too. I don't think I would
(01:14):
have if not for the fact that I grew up
so close to the Hall of Fame and the culture
there was so deeply steeped in football. I didn't know
I would be as good as I was playing. College
is difficult to do. And I say that to give
credit to everyone who makes it to Division one ball.
You know, my parents, they really wanted to learn the
game after I became interested in after I started to
(01:34):
do well and I got looks from colleges. I was
you know, all state for two years in the state
of Ohio, which is a you know, known for good football.
It went from me trying my hand in it too.
There would be Indian families that would come from a
bit of parts of the state and around the region
who would come watch my high school games just as
a function of being now interested in this game. They
didn't have any other reason to be. Let's say before
(01:56):
during the Thanksgiving the Turkey Bowl, the Thanksgiving game that
NFL plays every year, all of the Indian families would
come to my house because my dad would teach them rules,
teach them about the game worked. There are fewer things
I feel more strongly about in terms of what have
shaped me in the game of football. I very much
(02:18):
grew up in the way that I think we all
hope America to be one that is not always but
predominantly accepting of difference, where this is sort of multicultural
experiment is more or less working. I mean, a Google
co founder, it was a refugee, but an enormous amount
of American winners of Nobel Prizes are immigrants. It's an
(02:41):
amazing place where that type of reality exists. I should
say segue into my parents. I mean, part of the
reason I got involved in politics latched onto Barack Obama's
candacy is he talked about in his famous DNC speech,
and that really launched him into the public. Ether talked
about his father's family farming goats in Kenya. My dad's
family go to India. India's a fascinating place, largest democracy
(03:02):
on the planet. The cast system in India was a
vestige of British rule and it doesn't officially exist, but
the cast system is still a kind of unfortunate vestige
of the past that has some kind of relevance in
modern Indian society. And so my family is from a
relatively lower cast. We're not We're not from the higher cast,
if you will. The reason I say that is, you know,
(03:25):
I am from a lineage of meat eating, farmer South
Indian people, uneducated, my mom and dad were the first
in their families to really go to school. My father
was the first to go to go to any school,
let alone higher education. You know, he grew up in
(03:47):
a village with no running water, no electricity, nobody could read.
It was an illiterate community. There was a neighboring village
where there was one guy that used to call him
in you know, my parents mother tongue Thummel Tamil. They
used to call him the reading uncle because he was
the one guy within you know, however many mile radius
that could kind of read. So people would bring him
letters or the very small amount of things that needed
(04:10):
to be ready. They'd bring him that collateral, that content
to translator to read for them. There's a moment in
my dad's childhood where they're a handful of little kids,
one of which was him, and some of the parents
thought themselves, look like, let's pay this guy a few
rupees a month right to teach our kids. Soasic basic
thumbel basic literacy. They kind of hollowed out a little
(04:32):
clay less than five m square foot space that was
a temple with some old idols and things in there
that God knows how long they've been there, took some
things out, and they'd bring sand from the river bed
to coat the floor so it was fresh and soft
and malleable. And they would use their fingers to write
into sand as a chalkboard and to do letters and numbers.
(04:54):
And when the sand was coarse, when it was a
hotter day, or it wasn't soft anymore, or their fingers
would bleed. And so it's kind of an indigenous vegetable
in an area that they would crack open and they
would put on their fingers like thimbles and to protect
them after they started to bleed, to keep continuing their lessons.
That's how my dad learned how to read. He ended
(05:16):
up going to a nearby government school that was thirteen
kilometers away. His father, my grandfather, saved money for a
year to buy a bike so he could bike there.
One thing led to the next to the next, and
education was really a way out of that type of poverty.
I'll just say, you know very much so the American dream.
(05:36):
I mean, he came to the United States to give
his family a better shot, to sort of raise the
quality of life by an order of magnitude. I think
my appreciation for being American is so rooted in that,
And how is it you know, I don't I don't
blame people for not knowing. I wish, I wish I
(05:57):
could show them. But how is it that you can't
appreciate the value of a place like the United States
when you can see how far you can go? It
is that possibility that is what makes his place special.
And yeah, you know, I spoke a little bit about football,
but the game meant so much to me, It really
(06:18):
built me. And a special thanks to Faith Buchanan and
Monty Montgomery for the editing and post production of this story,
and his special thanks also to Kevin Sammy for sharing
in the end his father's and mother's story and the
American dream story that so many immigrants come here to pursue.
And today Kevin works at our zero, a company moving
(06:41):
the ball forward on biosafety. To find out more about
what he's up to at that company, go to R
zero dot com. That's rzero dot com. How can you
not appreciate or value this country when you see how
far you can come? That Kevin about America? His father
well running water in his community, the first in his
(07:02):
family to even have the ability to read comes to America,
becomes an engineer, and that next generation. Oh my goodness,
you know the rest of the story you just heard.
It a terrific story about the American dream, about poverty,
about immigration, and about the ability of America to absorb
different people from different places. Kevin Sammy's story here on
(07:25):
Our American Story Leabibi here the host of our American Stories.
Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
(07:48):
to our American Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to our American
Stories dot com and give And we continue with our
(08:10):
American Stories. And now it's time for our Do the
Right Thing series about ethical dilemmas, and it's sponsored by
our friends at the Daniels Fund. And today we bring
you a young voice out of New York City. So
my name is Katherine Minshew. I felt really frustrated by
(08:31):
the tools that were available to help me navigate my career,
and so I started thinking, well, you know, what if
you could go online and get career advice, peek inside
companies and a sense for different career paths and different
roles and jobs and opportunities all in one place. And
eventually I stopped thinking about it, and I dove in
and I started a business. I was about twenty five
(08:56):
when I started the news. You know, at that point
in time, I was probably working you know, north of eighty,
maybe even ninety hours a week. I pitched one hundred
and forty eight investors before I was able to close
our seed round of capital, and I also had to
build and grow the business. So there were times when
(09:19):
I was getting you know, nose from investors all day,
and then I would go home, you know, let's call
it nine thirty ten pm, and I'd do another couple
hours of answering email, all the work that I couldn't
get to during the day that I was going to
bed at two am, you know, between one to three
(09:40):
am nearly every night, sometimes later. But I would try
quote unquote and be asleep by two and you know,
it was it was hectic, it was insane. But at
the same time, I had never loved anything more than
I loved building that business, and it also felt like
such a gift to be working on something that was
(10:02):
so meaningful. You know, jobs and careers like people drive
an intense amount of meaning from where they work. Even
though you know, there were days I just I wasn't
sure we were going to make it through. So early
in the company's history, we were scrambling hard for every
(10:26):
customer and every client, and it often felt like each
deal we signed was going to be the difference between
success or failure, you know, between the business surviving to
live another day and going out of business, and so
every deal was really hard fought, and I remember probably,
you know, I want to say it was probably about
(10:48):
a year and a half in I heard through someone
on my team that they were having a lot of
issues with a client that we recently signed. And you know,
we're asking, well, what sort of a because issues is
a really broad word. It can read a lot of
different things. But as I dug in, it became clear
that the client was not treating our people in a
(11:11):
way that aligned with our values. It was, you know,
I just think they were being incredibly rude and disrespectful.
I initially got involved in the relationship and told the
senior most contact that we had at the client that
I had some concerns about how their team was treating
(11:33):
my staff and that it was important that they not
do that, you know, and they seemed to take it
very seriously, they were very kind. But when I went
to check back in later, gosh, a week or two
or three later, with my team, it seemed pretty clear
that the behavior hadn't changed. And I remember thinking about
(11:56):
the situation for a while and trying to think about
what was the best thing to do. The individuals at
this client were being very kind to me, but they
were just just truly being absolutely terrible to members of
my team, And you know, it felt like in some
ways it made it worse that they were treating the
(12:19):
less experienced members of the team so much worse, as
if they felt like they could do that because they
could just get away with it. And so, I mean,
I remember talking about it with my co founder Alex
and ultimately we came to the fact that given that
we had tried warning them, we had tried asking them nicely,
(12:39):
and they hadn't changed their behavior. This just wasn't a
company that we were willing to do business with. It
that we were interested in doing business with, and so
I ended up getting on the phone with them and
saying that we'd be canceling their contract and refunding their money,
and that was part It was a bit scary. We again,
we just didn't have a lot of money to spare,
and so it was painful to give it back. But
(13:01):
I also felt like it was really important that I
set standards for how people treat my team. When I
told my team that I was going to fire this client,
I don't think they initially believed me. I think they
appreciated that I was standing up for them, but imagined
(13:22):
that I would emerge from the second phone call with
I don't know, some some result that wasn't the client
being fired, And there was a there was a real
relief and there was a real appreciation when when I
said that wasn't what had happened and that we wouldn't
be working with this company anymore. And I think it's
set a really powerful example for, you know, my willingness
(13:48):
to forego revenue to the business in order to do
the right thing by our people, and in particular because
the mission of the news is about helping people navigate
their careers and find that best fit job, company, and career.
It was also a way of saying that, you know,
we just didn't believe that a company that was going
to be behaving in that way had a place on
(14:09):
our platform. You know, you you only really know what
your values are until you're willing to defend them. It
can be very easy to say that you believe in X, Y,
and Z, but it's when push hits shove, it's when
(14:32):
you have to make a hard call that it really
becomes clear, you know, if you're if you're willing to
put your money where your mouth is and and look,
one of the hardest things about being a leader is
making the calls. And a lot of calls are not
black and white. There are other clients that have been,
(14:55):
you know, a little prickly or a little bit difficult.
And you know, don't think that you need to go
around firing clients left and right if they, you know,
step an inch outside of your prescribed ideal communication method.
And at the same time, sometimes people just cross a
line in a way that is deeply egregious. And I
(15:17):
think that I certainly took a lot of knocks as
I was building the views and I'm sure my team
dealt with a lot of crazy situations and a lot
of difficult people, but I remember this one. Just felt
it felt too far. And I think that it's such
a powerful statement for a team when you draw the
(15:39):
line around what you won't accept. It's, frankly, it's really
powerful for an individual. It's it's sort of the concept
of boundaries written large. And again, I, you know, I
believe in giving people second chances. I believe in being gracious.
I also believe that, you know, a lot of humans
are going through a lot of stuff, and so when
someone shows up to a conversation or an email exchange
(16:02):
or a meeting with aggression or with rudeness, or you know,
with different behaviors, I try and remember that I don't
know what they're dealing with. And at the same time,
you know, there's just certain patterns of repeated behavior that
I think you've got to remove from your life. And so,
you know, just because I personally wasn't having to deal
(16:25):
with this client in my role as a CEO, once
it became clear to me how they were behaving and
the impact I was having on my team, I felt,
you know, I felt like it was the right thing
to do and didn't regret it for an instant. And
I think even if the news had failed, I am
(16:46):
so I don't think I would have regretted kind of
going out on the field and giving it my all.
And the fact that you know, we were ultimately, after
years of struggle, we were ultimately able to build a
really you know, kind of successful business that now has
a brand in the space. And yet you know, I'm
sure that the majority of Americans are probably not familiar
(17:09):
with the Muse. Yet we're kind of a joke that
we're like in the tweener stage where we're much bigger
than the startup that we used to be, and we
have you know, I think something like seventy five million
people worldwide a year who come to the Muse in
some form or other, But we're so much smaller than
the big players. And you know, and now we just
got to work on coming forum and you've been listening
(17:38):
to Katherine Minshew tell her story. Are Do the Right
Thing series again, brought to us by the folks at
the Daniels Fund. Here on our American Story. This is
(18:08):
our American Stories, and up next our own Joey Cortez
brings you a story about a fictional character we all
know and love, Superman and how he would team up
with the real life undercover agent to take down a
truly vicious villain. Over the years, Superman has fought many villains,
(18:30):
including the kkk Rick Bowers brings us the story of
how the hero not only fought this villain in the
fictional series, but also in real life. Here's Rick with
the backstory. The actual Superman character was created by two
Jewish kids in Cleveland in the nineteen thirties. And these
(18:53):
two kids were high school students and they loved science fiction.
They would hole up in their addict studio reading science
fiction magazines, books, they would go to the movies. You know,
Cape tros like Zoro were doing great things on the
big screen, and they were taking all of that in
(19:16):
and they started to create their own characters. And they
created a character and a story called the Reign of Superman.
But in that first iteration, Superman was bad. He was
an evil scientist doing horrid experiments on homeless men during
(19:37):
the depression, and he had no real superpowers. He were
just super evil. So they were creating some interesting characters,
but there was always something about that character that a
regional superman that not quite right. So they put that
on a shelf and let it incubate, and as Superman Lord.
(20:01):
One night, Jerry Siegel, one of these two young men
who were struggling to get through the depression, find work
and make it in the field of comic art, had
an epiphany, we have it backwards. What the world really
needs is a good Superman. And that epiphany and the
(20:24):
character that evolved from it came just as publishers in
New York City were developing the first comic books. And
the first comic books were actually compilations of newspaper strips
Little Orphan, any Popeye, and those newspaper strips would be
put in books and sold for a dime of peace.
(20:49):
But after the supply of newspaper strips had been exhausted,
these publishers needed original content, and one publisher recalled all
this set of drawings that these kids from Cleveland had
said with this character called Superman, and they were in
a pinch to launch a comic book called Action Comics,
(21:14):
so they hired Jerry Segal and Joe Schuster put together
thirteen pages of Superman stories for the original edition of
action comics, and before anyone really knew what happened, hundreds
of thousands of those comic books had been sold, and
(21:37):
the character that we all now know was Superman was born.
Boys and girls, your attention please, presenting a new exciting
radio program in the nineteen forties, The Adventures Superman on
the Air was created. Aster than an airplane, more powerful
(21:59):
than a locomotive, impervious of the sky. Look, it's a point.
That's Superman. And a creative writer and producer named Bob
Maxwell transform Superman into a radio show from the Mutual
(22:20):
Broadcasting System in New York, where actors, it sound effects
people would create a radio program three times a week
where Superman took on mad scientists and crime gangs and
evil spectral beings. And it became a hit. So Superman
(22:47):
was now in comic books, he was a strip in newspapers,
he was a serial in the movie theaters, and he
was reaching four million households three times a week through
the radio. As World War Two comes, the creators use
(23:10):
him more as a weapon against America's enemies. So he's
taking on Nazi spies, he's taking on German generals, and
in one case he actually took on Hitler and grabbed
him by the scruff and carried him off to an
(23:32):
international tribunal to be tried for war crimes. So Superman
has become a meaningful character in certain ways. And as
the war ended and as times changed, the creators of
(23:53):
the radio program asked a very perplexing question, what do
we do now? It seemed like the crime bosses and
the evil scientists had run their course. The war was over,
so Hitler was no longer a target, But there was
(24:14):
something happening here at home that got their attention. The
Ku Klux Klan was attempting a revival. Six million shoes
had just been killed in Nazi concentration camps. And here
we have people in our own backyard who are preaching
(24:36):
a similar philosophy and who believe that this post war
era can belong to them, That we can bring Americas
along to the Klan's philosophy, and we can create an
organization with millions of members. So these two forces are
(25:00):
very different. One is a fictional character on the radio
in comic books, and one is an actual real world
organization that is actually carrying out atrocious acts against its enemies.
(25:20):
Who would know that one day they would collide. While
all this was happening, a young man named Stetson Kennedy
was growing up in Jacksonville, Florida. Even at the age
of twelve, he was extremely uncomfortable with the perverse and
(25:45):
pervasive racism of the time. Through the streets of Jacksonville,
plans been marched, some on horseback to rest in ropes
and hoods, and at first he thought that this was
kind of a club for grown ups and they got
to dress up in costumes every day of the year
anytime they wanted, But he later learned that this was
(26:09):
actually a group that quote took care of people in
colored town, which means they imposed their will on black citizens.
And it was when the African American made in their
house was attacked by the clan for answering back a
(26:30):
streetcar operator who refused to give her the proper change.
She was brought home, bloodied and beaten that he realized
what the real clan was all about. And this young man,
obviously being out of step with much of the culture
of his time, decided at that point that his life
(26:55):
would be dedicated fighting this kind of hate. And we've
been listening to Rick Bowers and he's the author of
Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan, the true story of
how the iconic superhero battled the men of hate. When
(27:16):
we come back, more of this remarkable story on our
American story. And we're back with our American stories and
(27:39):
the story of Superman versus the k k k. As
this organization grew, there was one real life superhero looking
to stop them, Stetson Kennedy. Let's get back to Rick
Bowers with the rest of the story. In nineteen thirty seven,
(28:00):
that's in Kennedy became an interviewer with the Florida's Writers Project,
which was a new deal program for unemployed writers, editors, researchers, historians,
and they would travel to the state collecting life stories,
tall tales, folk songs, and fables from common people. But
(28:24):
he would record folk songs from blues singers. He would
record stories from field hands and sharecroppers. And he started
to understand that these stories, these songs, these rituals, these
kind of values were what held people together, It held
(28:48):
culture together. And so in his mind, this was a
great insight and he came to see that by having
this information himself, he could be a much better writer, communicator,
and he could tell the stories of the common people
and inform others of their plights. So for Steps and Kennedy,
(29:14):
it was the injustice that was being inflicted on these
poor people. It was the racism that was directed at
these African American field hands, sharecroppers, fishermen, and it just
(29:34):
hit him at such a level that he dedicated himself
to trying to fix it. And he was working at
the time for an organization called the Anti Defamation League,
and the AFT Defamation League is an organization that opposes
the prejudice against Jewish people and fights for the rights
(29:55):
of all people. And they hired him as an infiltrator
to get inside the clan. The dangers were very real.
Nineteen forty six, the clan is reviving in Atlanta, Georgia,
and Stetson, through his research, knows this. He knows that
(30:19):
this organization with a long history of violence, is trying
to make a comeback and it's all happening in what
they called the Imperial City of Atlanta, Georgia. So he
moved to Atlanta, Georgia with the express purpose of infiltrating
the clan. So Stetson, through the ADL takes on a
(30:44):
false persona. He takes on the persona of John Perkins,
a encyclopedia salesman and the publisher of a hate sheet.
He begins hanging around with clansmen, talking their language. He
(31:07):
begins attending their meetings, and everything he discovers is filed
back to the Anti Defamation League in the form of
a spy report. And he's reporting on some of the
atrocities at the time that are just so brutal that
you know they shake you to the core. Two black
(31:29):
couples driving down a road outside of the Atlanta in
that year nineteen forty six are dragged from their car,
taken to a river bag and shot dead. A black
taxi driver in Atlanta who was seen giving a ride
(31:51):
to a white woman is dragged from his car and killed.
Inside the Land Group, Stetson would write reports about their
plans to invade a government armory, seize weapons, and orchestrate
an all out attack on black communities. And Stetson is
(32:16):
in the middle of this the entire time. He was
walking this fine line where one wrong step probably meant death.
Stetson also risk writing columns under pseudonyms exposing the KKK's hierarchy, customs, traditions,
(32:38):
and most notably their brutality. Meanwhile, as we learned earlier,
the Superman radio show creator sought a new type of
villain based on real life people awakening their audience to
the evil in their own lives. Their villain would be
the KKK or in their sixteen part series known as
The Clan of the Fire Recross, they worked with the
(33:02):
ADL and used much as Stetson's findings, hoping to strip
the clan of their mystique and attraction by revealing what
they're actually like behind all the secrecy. So through sixteen
episodes there's arc takes place and people are kidnapped, people
are threatened. Clark, Kent, Lois Lane have to put out
(33:25):
a special edition of the Daily Planet to let the
public know that this clan group is wrecking people, and
of course Superman has to take flight and round up
these clansmen in Houlomouth to jail the stets and Kennedy
always said the wit to take down the clan is
by ridiculing them. That is, if you look closely at
(33:47):
their rituals, there's language that they use where everything starts
with K. So the big clan gathering is a clan vocation.
This kind of ridiculous language can be made fun of
these ridiculous outfits that these people wear. He long robes,
(34:08):
these hoods over their heads, these little slits for eye holes.
They look like clowns. They look like kids at Halloween
dressed up as ghosts. So he felt that that was
a great way to undercut the clan. Suddenly they come
into an opening, and as the car stops, Chuck gasps
(34:30):
at the strange scene before him. In a glade, casting
weird shadows over the nearby hills and lighting the sky above,
burns a huge wooden cross. Before it knew, half a
hundred men clothed in long robes, pointed hoods slid only
at the eyes, cover their heads and faces, and a
low guttural chant issues harshly from their hidden lips, sending
an uneasy chill through Chuck's blood. While the boy looks
(34:54):
about him at the fearsome sight, Matt riggs Don's a
robe and hood on which a pale blue scorpion is embroidered. Then,
followed by Chuckey approaches the kneeling hooded band, a strangely
barbaric company in the dancing light of the Flaming Cross. Gosh,
who are all these guys, Uncle Max? And why are
you wearing the sheets and hoods? Where the Clan of
(35:14):
the Fiery Cross chuck? Where a great secret society pledged
to purify America America for one Americans only one race,
one religion, one color. I don't get it. America's got
all kinds of religions in colors. When we get through,
there'll only be one, only one. But the constitution says
all Americans have the same rights and privilege institution. We'll
(35:38):
change that. I'll be quiet, Quine Doll, I call on you, possession, brother,
Oh tryan scorpion in the Clan of the Fiery Cross,
Supreme authority vested by me. It was a very different
kind of program for kids. It was very revolutionary for
(35:59):
its time. In the end, it was extremely successful. The
media praise that flowed in was extraordinary. Industry groups hailed
Superman as a hero for tolerance. Education groups said, now
we see that these characters can play a positive role.
(36:22):
Newspapers wrote laudatary articles, some of them saying that this
is great for kids, but maybe their parents should listen
to it as well. There are stories that come from
actual clansmen that tell the story of how their kids
would listen to that show and then act it out.
(36:45):
So one kid would put on a Superman outfit, the
other one would put a pillowcase over their head and
wrap a sheet around themselves, and then Superman would grab
the white sheeted kid took them off to jail. Now,
these are clansmen watching this, so they became very infuriated
(37:07):
with what this show was doing, and they felt that
they were the ridicule of the world, where millions of
people are listening to this and they think we're a
bunch of fools. The clan was humiliated. This villain's infamy
would soon fits allows. In the nineteen twenties, during the
(37:30):
clan's peak years, they had four million members nationwide. Today
they have only three thousand, thanks in part to the
Superman character created by two boys from Cleveland, Ohio and
a real life superhero with the courage to go undercoverment
and expose a villain in his own backyard. And great
(37:52):
work as always to Joey Cortez and a special thanks
to Rick Bowers for sharing the story. And well, there's
not much to add the story of Superman versus the KKK.
Here on our American story
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