September 19, 2025 • 57 mins
Author interview with Elizabeth Gillespie McRae, author of 'Mothers of Massive Resistance,' a book examining how white women have systematically supported and engineered white supremacy. The discussion covers McRae's academic background, research insights, and specific women profiled in the book. It also touches on contemporary parallels, the importance of education in dismantling racial hierarchies, and how political discourses clouding political realities can sustain oppressive systems. The hosts emphasize the relevance of McRae's work in understanding current socio-political dynamics and the role of grassroots efforts in effecting change.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 3 (00:00):
Hi, this is Mandy Griffin.
(00:01):
And I'm Katie Swalwell, andwelcome to our Dirty Laundry,
stories of white ladies making amess of things and how we need
to clean up our act.
Katy (00:14):
Hello?
Hi.
How's going?
Hi, we.
It's good.
We've been talking, to a bunchof really fascinating people
lately, and one of them is theauthor of Mothers of Massive
Resistance.
I still can't believe that wegot to talk to her.
Mandy (00:30):
I know.
We say this all of the time, weare just people who decided to
start.
This podcast and we just do it,in our spare time.
All this is not professional,it's not produced nobody would
do it because we care so muchabout this and we are just
always so grateful and alsoamazed that these people will
(00:51):
extend their time so graciouslyand have such a passion to
discuss this.
And, Elizabeth Gopi Crave islike absolutely no different
about that, just so.
Great in the talk that we hadwith her so we were fangirling
so much.
Katy (01:07):
I, well, I think about all the authors that we've talked
to, like Stephanie Jones Rogers,or Jesse Daniels.
Like you read these books, theyblow your mind.
You all you wanna do is justtell the authors how grateful
you are and pick their brainabout something and you hope
that they.
Are as great as you've made themout to be in your head.
Mm-hmm.
And then every one of the casesthat we've been able to talk to
(01:28):
the author, it's like thegreatest pleasure.
And it's so much better than weever could have even expected.
They're just incredible peopledoing great work and important
scholarship and it's just I feelvery grateful that we have a
space to offer them to sharetheir work and hopefully reach
(01:49):
even more people.
Then they've already connectedwith, yeah, so we spoke with
Elizabeth Gillespie McGray.
For those who are not in theknow, she is the author of
Mothers of Massive Resistance,white Women and the Politics of
White Supremacy.
That book has won several words,including the Frederick Jackson
Turner Award, given by theorganization of American
(02:10):
Historians.
The Frank and Harriet OusleyAward given by the Southern
Historical Association and theSociety for Professors of
Education, outstanding bookAward.
She's a historian interested inrace, politics, and education
and postwar United States.
Her degrees are from Wake ForestUniversity.
That's her bachelor's.
Her master's degrees, plural arefrom Western Carolina University
(02:33):
and Marymount University inVirginia, and her PhD in history
is from the University ofGeorgia.
She's currently professor ofhistory at Western Carolina
University and is also theco-director of the Appalachian
Oral History Project, whichsounds like it's maybe taken a
little bit of a break sinceCOVID, but that.
Sounds like a fascinatingproject that maybe we could
(02:54):
follow up with her at somepoint.
I think oral histories are so,so important and just having
archives, like in Iowa rightnow, they're eliminating funding
for archives that have women'scollections, labor history
collections, queer historycollections, like there's who
benefits when we delete thosearchives or when we don't.
(03:17):
Document and preserve people'sstories, especially people from
the margins like the, there'sonly one group of people who
benefits from that, and that'sthe.
Bastards in power.
Yeah.
So we need to support all ofthose archives from the margins
that we can, in her currentproject, she examines the role
of school choice in Americanpublic education.
(03:38):
We got to talk to her a littlebit about that.
Mm-hmm.
Does anything stand out to youfrom the conversation that you
wanted, shout out before we letpeople in on what we talked
about?
Mandy (03:48):
I think just in general's, just so approachable
in the way that she, considersall of these ideas and how she
researched this book and the wayshe thinks about these women She
said that she wanted to make itvery clear that this was like
your next door neighbor.
Mm-hmm.
So that it would be something.
(04:11):
That we can recognize in ournext door neighbors, I think.
Yeah.
Um, and I think she did such agood job at that.
And that comes across in talkingto her too, that it's just a
very approachable presentation.
And she herself was the same.
And it was just really great.
Very lovely.
It was
Katy (04:29):
a wonderful conversation.
Yes.
I know.
Listeners will be as delightedas we were.
Yeah.
Uh, if you don't have the book,get it.
Mm-hmm.
Gift it.
Check it out.
And enjoy the conversation wehad with Elizabeth Gillespie
McGray.
Thanks.
Hello.
Mandy (04:47):
Hi.
We're very excited to be here.
Finally, we've talked about thison all of our episodes that we
today have.
Elizabeth Gillespie McCrae withus, and we get to ask her all
the questions that we have beenwanting to ask and just go over
how this work came together andtalk about how important it is
right now.
So we're very, very excited forthis.
(05:08):
But Katie, do you wanna givelike a little intro
Katy (05:11):
I do.
I know we have questions.
We've jotted some down and we'vehad questions in the margins
that we've been keeping track oftoo.
But I also think we just want totell her all the parts we left
so much and he
Elizabeth McCrae (05:22):
Great.
Katy (05:25):
oh, there's some like just little gems where we can see a
little bit of like, snark ismaybe not the right word, but
just your human frustration withsome of these people and every
time it comes through, we'rejust so delighted.
Anyway, we have just, so we'regoing to fan girl out here, but
I am delighted to welcomeElizabeth Glassby McRay, a
(05:47):
historian who is interested inrace, politics and education in
the post-war United States.
So what is there to really writeabout?
I don't know, that's just, I'm
Elizabeth McCrae (05:57):
Small topic.
Katy (05:58):
exactly, she is of course the author of Mothers of Massive
Resistance, white Women and thePolitics of White Supremacy that
we've been reading for the.
The past couple months here,Well, really just thinking about
the awards your book has won andthe people who have recommended
your book to us, who we reallyadmire and are inspired by that,
I, I think it's safe to say, Iwill say that I think, your
(06:21):
scholarship for me who works insocial studies education, it's
you, it's so important and it's,really just cutting edge
scholarship about the history ofwhite women.
I really appreciate it so much,and you do just such a brilliant
job of documenting not only howwhite women have supported white
(06:41):
supremacy, but how they'veengineered it, how they've been
the architects of it.
And I think like we at thispodcast want people to know
about all of that.
But I think sometimes it'sreally just opening up to say,
oh, women supported it too.
But gosh, this book just made meunderstand that it's more than
just supporting, it's way deeperthan that.
(07:03):
So we've got just a fewquestions that have popped up
for us throughout this book,just about you personally.
I hope it's okay to ask some ofthese questions, but, we're both
white women, we're both mothers.
I dunno how you identify, but I,I am wondering
Elizabeth McCrae (07:18):
mother.
Katy (07:19):
a white mother.
All right.
Elizabeth McCrae (07:21):
Other things.
Yeah.
Katy (07:22):
Of course, yes, we contain multitudes, but those are
significant identifiers.
So how, with that identity andbeing from the south yourself,
how did you come to be curiousabout this topic?
And even before being curious,how did you even become aware of
it?
How did it even occur to you toask about these histories and to
(07:45):
really take this seriously as asubject that is so important to
pay attention to?
Elizabeth McCrae (07:52):
I think like most things, it's both like
personal and kind of anintellectual journey.
Looking back, I would say I, wastelling Mandy after I finished
at Wake Forest, I moved to DC, Iended up teaching high school
and I taught in one of thewealthiest public school
districts in Virginia,
Katy (08:11):
hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (08:12):
In Northern Virginia as a teacher in
training.
And then I taught in one of the,poorest school districts, on the
edge of the coal fields inSouthwestern Virginia.
And I guess the the question ofsort of what is equal and
equitable because the fundingwas so different, right?
(08:34):
In the same state, the funding,the per pupil funding based on
property taxes seemed likeinsane.
And then that the students werecompeting, you know, to go to
college, right?
Without regard to that, one ofthem had received$1,500 from the
state and the other one hadreceived$3,400 for the state
(08:57):
you, or whatever those numberswere.
So I think like that experienceon the ground sort of teaching
school made me question the waywe talk about equality and
equity and the way that publicschools can be this very
liberatory institution, but alsoThey've been designed to uphold,
(09:21):
some pretty serious hierarchies,racist and class hierarchies in
American society.
So I think like that sort ofexperience, maybe put me on the
path of sort of equality and Ithink growing up in the mountain
south, and then going tograduate school and I was
enthralled by the Civil RightsMovement and the women that
(09:43):
worked in the Civil RightsMovement and the very first
paper I ever wrote I wasinterested in the Holland Folk
School, which was a labor andrace kind of progressive
institution in easternTennessee.
And I went over there to theirarchives, but I kept reading
about all these amazing peoplepushing for social justice.
And then I'm like, well, of thewhite women that are in this
(10:06):
cannon, which are not very many,right, but like of the ones that
are doing like Constance Curryand Anne Braden and all these
folks, I was like, I don't thinkI've ever come across anyone
like that, right?
Like, it's not been part of theconversations.
I don't think I grew up withanybody that seemed particularly
committed to like racialequality.
(10:29):
I mean, it just wasn't, not thatthey were against it, but it
just didn't seem part and parcelof sort of the white southern
world that I had grown up in.
Mandy (10:38):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (10:39):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (10:40):
And so I was like, are these women, they're
so fascinating, but are theyreally the ones, do they
represent what was reallyhappening on the ground?
And so then when I think I gotto working on my PhD, those
questions of sort of how did wecome to this place with
inequities and education andthen so much of the civil rights
(11:01):
movement, not all of it, but hadfocused on the schools, right?
And so, there's all these womenworking in the schools.
And it's not a very elegantanswer, but I think that that
both sort of thinking about,public school and equities and
then.
Reading about all these amazingblack and white women in the
civil rights movement, way moreblack women than white women, of
(11:24):
course, in the South, and thenthinking, wow, it's nice that
there were those white women,but is that really what all the
white women were doing?
And a sort of suspicion thatthat is not what was happening.
Mandy (11:38):
Uhhuh Uhhuh.
Yeah.
We talk a lot about, you know,there's always the excuse that
people give that individualswere a product of their time and
a product of their upbringingand their experiences, which of
course, but then also you seepeople who deviate from that.
And you wonder, what's thedifference between the people
(11:58):
who broke out of that mold andthe people that stayed in it.
And I think of a lot of thesewomen that you've written about
were the ones who stayed there.
And I think it's great that you,as an author like also came from
that community of the South.
It's not like you came down assomebody from the quote unquote
north to hunt out these womenand call them out on anything.
(12:20):
Like seeing it from, from theperspective as someone who is
also then just raised in theproduct of that and, and coming
to all these conclusions andfinding them.
I think it just made the book somuch more alive and well-rounded
from that perspective.
I appreciated that a lot.
Elizabeth McCrae (12:38):
Yeah.
Well, probably it allowed me toget some stories I wouldn't have
gotten if I was someone else.
Mandy (12:44):
For sure.
Katy (12:45):
It's so true.
I live where Mandy and I met andmoved back to where I grew up in
Iowa and I feel like a realdeep, almost compulsion to do
work here and to try to improvesocial studies education,
especially as it connects tolocal history because I feel
(13:07):
it's my family's history.
It's my parents, mygrandparents, my
great-grandparents.
I feel like I have a obligation,I have an intellectual
curiosity, a professionalcuriosity, but when I'm here, it
has a whole different meaning tome to do that work.
And I wonder if you experiencedany of that when you were either
(13:28):
doing your archival research orwhen you were writing the fact
that this is your home, to someextent whether it's regional or
maybe even more local than that.
Elizabeth McCrae (13:37):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (13:38):
Did you feel any sort of connection obligation, you know?
Elizabeth McCrae (13:42):
Where I grew up is pretty different than
where I did a lot of theresearch.
Katy (13:46):
Hmm,
Elizabeth McCrae (13:47):
mean, maybe chapter one is about Lexington
and Rockbridge County is not sofar, but I'm in even like a sub
region.
Right.
The sort of mountain south.
But, I think what I did feel is,oftentimes doing this research
when I was in the communitieswhere I was talking to people
(14:07):
and staying and go into thearchives, outside of the sort of
academic world, people madeassumptions.
By the way I talked and the wayI looked, and I was pregnant
twice during this research.
So Right, okay.
Here's this little lady
Mandy (14:23):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (14:24):
work, right?
But not really having to betaken super seriously in some
ways.
Right.
But I think people pointed me indirections that they wouldn't
have pointed everybody in thosedirections.
I interviewed one of thecharacters in the book, Florence
Stillers Ogden.
(14:44):
I went to, speak to her nephew
Mandy (14:48):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (14:48):
his wife.
And, one of the stories theysaid is, oh, you've read all her
newspaper articles?
And I was like, yes.
And they were like, we'd like topublish'em, but you know, we
probably couldn't live here ifwe published them.
We'd have to edit out some ofthe racial parts of them.
And I was like, well, they're onmicrofilm everywhere.
Right?
Like,
Katy (15:08):
Also, I'm thinking what would be left, honestly,
Elizabeth McCrae (15:10):
Right.
Right, right.
But, but I was like, oh my gosh.
You know?
But I think that acknowledgementof what it meant to live in a
place where she had done thatwork Right.
In the delta of Mississippi
Katy (15:23):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (15:23):
might have been a story that I didn't get
if I was a woman of color.
Right.
Um, or if I didn't have asstrong of an accent as I have.
Right.
Mandy (15:33):
Yeah.
we were wondering that, I thinkthat's one of a couple of
questions there.
Like one, how did theseparticular women emerge from the
research that you did, and thenhow do you treat writing about
individuals who still have likeliving relatives?
And have you been contacted bysome of them?
(15:54):
Has anything come up with that?
Katy (15:56):
Okay.
Mandy's asking this question fora super specific reason, so I'm
gonna out her right now.
Her nickname is The PettyDetective because we'll be
reading an article or a book andshe always, figures out like,
oh, who's this bastard?
And goes even deeper to try tolearn more about their
backstory.
We've concluded everyone needstherapy and history would be so
different, but there's a woman,and now I can't remember her
(16:19):
last name.
Her first name is Mary, but as ateenager, she wrote this essay,
Mary Heal.
And of course Mandy's, like Igot on her Facebook page, she's
still alive and saw her post andI looked at it too.
And you can see her grandkidsand her kids and so that was one
of the questions we asked, like,whoa, this, it's not even
relatives, it's this person.
(16:40):
And what would it be like to beher granddaughter in college
reading this in a class Andsuddenly you turn the page and
kabam, there's memaw and you're,like, what is going on?
So the question of why thesefour women, how these four
women, but also there any likeethical quandaries or how do you
navigate when people are eitherstill living themselves and have
(17:01):
thoughts about how they wanna beportrayed or they're precious
about their relatives and theway that people write about
them.
Elizabeth McCrae (17:08):
That's the one moment in the book that sort of
gave me, I think pause onlyafter it was in print, right?
Like oh wow, it's finally outand here is this person, her
face and the essay.
And I didn't talk to her.
I mean, it's in the archive,right?
I didn't talk to her.
I've thought about that since,if I should have said, Hey,
(17:29):
what's up?
But also for the readers, Idon't presume to think how she
would read this, but for thereaders, I think the point was
that so much of the society thatshe was in was normalizing that.
And so when you're 17 or 16, whywouldn't you write that essay?
(17:50):
Um, why wouldn't you?
When you're ministers andpoliticians and maybe your
parents and your school isadvertising this and what's the
equivalent of whatever patrioticAmerican youth is saying, oh,
write this essay and you can get$500 and that's a lot of money,
then, um.
Mandy (18:10):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (18:12):
Like, I think it would take, have to be a
pretty, sophisticated16-year-old white 16-year-old in
Mississippi in that time periodto ignore all the reinforcements
that this position is alegitimate position.
And I think that's maybe what Ihope that readers would see is
(18:32):
that it's not that she wasreally unique or some early
version of Marjorie TaylorGreen, right?
But that, that's what lots ofmessages in her society
reinforced.
And then as a parent, I'm like,if you get asked to write an
essay contest, you better findout what that is.
Right,
Mandy (18:53):
Well, I don't know if you had heard any of that part where
we talked about it.
As I was reading this, Iremembered that I, myself one a
daughters of the AmericanRevolution essay contest in the
eighties.
I do not remember what the topicwas.
I can't, like my, I asked my momto look around and see if she
could find stuff.
I have the bond still from whenI won the contest and I was
(19:16):
like, I can't imagine.
'cause I grew up in a veryliberal family.
I can't imagine it was anythingovert like that my mom would've
been okay with me writing about,but I would love.
To have seen what it was to see.
'cause you know, it's stillembedded in it, even if it's not
right out at the forefront.
And so as we were readingthrough this and the DAR kept
(19:37):
coming up and up, I was justlike, oh my gosh.
The embarrassment.
Elizabeth McCrae (19:41):
I mean, I think, you know, that's, uh,
yes.
I think we've all done, I, Ithink I got a research, small
research grant from the ColonialDames and Grace Hale had gotten
it before who had come throughthe same program or the same
master's program, and she hadsaid, I'm not sending my
picture.
Right.
Like, the picture wasn'trequired.
(20:02):
And so they had changed theapplication process, but she's
like, why would you need apicture?
Right.
Um, but the same thing, I waslike, it's$500.
I need$500.
Right.
And it didn't seem overt In away that now I might think even
harder about that.
Mandy (20:19):
Yeah.
Katy (20:20):
You know, the, it's one of the reasons I love, love, love
this book is you're paintingsuch vivid portraits of these
women, but you are also weavingtogether and the way their
contexts are different, linkedbut different, unique.
But you are also linkingtogether the generational work
and the overlapping generationsand the systems and the
(20:42):
structures and theorganizational webs that are
being built.
It's really hard to refute andjust how you've even positioned
this woman now, who, by the way,her Facebook, I don't think
she's moved that far off these,like just for, to make you feel
better.
Like, I don't know.
But I, I do think there's thatyour answer like, oh, she is the
(21:02):
symptom.
This is like the manifestationis, of course there would be
teenagers that would write thisessay and publicly declare these
things.
That's the systemic result ofall of this work.
And I think that's what makes ithard.
I'm sure people can try, butit's not like you are picking
any one of these women.
(21:24):
And saying here's why they'reatrocious.
Mandy and I will comment aswe're reading things like she is
heinous, we get so frustrated,but you really are trying to lay
out like this web and thissystem.
Just as an aside at Iowa StateUniversity where I was a
professor for many years,there's, Carrie Chapman Kat was
one of the graduates and it's,this long standing controversy
(21:45):
over whether a building shouldbe still named in her honor
because of her use of whitesupremacist arguments, which
she's not the only one and it,but very prominent suffragists
who did leverage thesearguments.
And her great grand nephewfloats around and shows up
whenever there's a publiccritique of Ka to defend her or,
you know, she, she had a blackfriend.
(22:05):
You know, like all the kind ofarguments that you make for
like, why, and I always thinkthat it's the encounters I've
had with him even, it's just,it's missing the point.
It's not.
It's not even about what oneperson either believed in their
heart of hearts, or they saidthis on Tuesday, but they said
that on Friday.
Or, it's about trying tounderstand how systems get built
(22:27):
and sustained, and thoseindividual actions obviously are
a part of those things, but it'sabout trying to establish what
the norm is even, and thenholding that ground as hard as
you can and doing all of thesethings and why people would do
that, and why they're investedin it, how they're doing it.
I appreciate that a lot, eventhough you can't read this and
(22:50):
come away, like, the only thingthat we maybe took away from
these women, they're very smartand they're very tactical, you
know,
Elizabeth McCrae (23:00):
they read a lot.
Katy (23:01):
And we laughed so hard about like how.
They the time.
Like what?
Just the sheer commitment thatthey had.
And the one letter, the ladywho's said, I'm just eating
potato chips and I'm neverhaving sex.
We're like, okay, the judgedoesn't need that information.
But, we, I think that we'rereally, curious about how you've
(23:23):
seen people react to the book.
What have been the responsesfrom different, not just maybe
the descendants of people, butjust what has been the response?
What surprised
Elizabeth McCrae (23:33):
I mean, uh, the question on descendants
right, is.
Two of the women didn't havechildren, so, right.
Yeah.
Um, so I'm safe on those twofamilies.
Katy (23:46):
Unless there's a great grand nephew floating around.
'cause he has a lot of time onhis hands.
I'm telling you right now.
Yeah.
Elizabeth McCrae (23:51):
Yeah.
But I think there are, I mean,your point, there are producers
of this and the four women thatare, and there's more than four,
but those four that are the sortof narrative threads, they knew
what they were doing.
And they were actively doing it,and they wanted to produce a
white supremacist society.
They wanted to make sure thehierarchies worked in ways that
(24:14):
benefited some and didn'tothers.
I think the pervasiveness oftheir message means that a lot
of people consume that,
Katy (24:22):
Hmm,
Elizabeth McCrae (24:22):
and also perpetuate it, but not with the
same intent that they did.
and so.
You talking about, like who youthink you wanna talk to and try
to change the needle?
The producers aren't the onesthat I didn't, right.
I'm like, they're not gonnachange.
Mandy (24:38):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (24:39):
But would the people that understood that
they're receiving these messagesand that it's this like really
constructed multi-level workThat, that they've just been
absorbing without thinking aboutit.
Those are the people that I hopethat they're equivalent in the
current climate we could change.
Mandy (24:59):
just kind of those light bulb moments where they might
read this and like, oh, I didn'trealize that this was connected
to this.
That was then back to that.
I think.
Yeah.
do you get feedback that therehave been people who have had
those awakenings, have you.
Katy (25:15):
Hmm.
I think some people in someaudiences, right, will be like,
oh my gosh, is this why I gotsent to a academy?
Instead of a public school?
Or is this why?
It happened to them, but theydidn't understand the context,
Like, oh, you're changingschools those have been light
(25:36):
bulb moments for them.
Like, oh, this is why my family,pulled me out of public school
and sent me to a segregationistacademy.
Or this is why in the north wemoved to a different
neighborhood in Boston thatwasn't being actively
integrated.
And so I think that has beenlight bulb moments for some
people.
(25:56):
There's also a lot of questionsabout from southern white women
that grew up in households withblack domestic workers, And
they'd heard these stories abouthow they're part of the family,
but then this clearly thatthey're not and so I think
that's been moments.
This may be too reductionist,but I was at a talk in Minnesota
(26:19):
and it's probably the whitestaudience that to, right?
But they were like, oh my gosh,what kind of reaction do you get
when you talk about this book inthe South?
And I was like they're used tolike talking about race, right?
And the sort of ways that theyresisted the civil race
(26:42):
movement.
And I think interestingly in thesouthern audiences have been, I
don't know if more receptive,but it's not like I'm the first
person that's challenged,
Mandy (26:51):
mm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (26:52):
how Jim Crow worked.
I think the problem and this istotally anecdotal.
I think more people have hadtrouble seeing the Boston women
as segregationist
Katy (27:03):
I was just gonna say, I think, you know, you're talking
to two Midwesterners here andthe folks in Minnesota, I feel
like they didn't read the wholebook because that, to me, the
most chilling part is thechapter that ends.
I think it's maybe Francis Dennaturally one of the women just
saying, kind of chuckling toherself, like, just wait till it
comes to the north and then,then, we'll see.
(27:23):
Just knowing how deep it goes.
Like they, they were, maybe wecan call them cynical in that
way, but I think they wereabsolutely accurate in their
assessment of how superficialand thin.
And, not interested really incivil rights movement.
Most white people in the northwere, I think it, it was
(27:45):
chilling, and then you read thechapter about Boston and Detroit
and, these other cities.
And being from the Midwestourselves, I think that that is
one of the myths that getsperpetuated about US history
writ large, but specifically theCivil War era, or civil rights
movement era.
That it's somehow North is thegood guy, south is the bad guy.
And just how that myth props upso much.
(28:11):
It makes it so hard to see theways that white women in the
North are being really awful andnot helpful at all, you know?
Elizabeth McCrae (28:19):
When I think it tends to create a single Jim
Crow regime rather than multipleones in multiple places.
That racial segregation andwhite supremacist politics
doesn't have to work the sameway.
Every place.
And I think it, I didn't makethat point as forcefully as I
think I've thought about itlater, but There's different
(28:42):
ways that that works.
And the anti busing was a momentthat sort of blew up some of
those ways.
That you could see into the deepinvestment that had manifest
itself differently.
Katy (28:55):
For what it's worth, I think you make that point pretty
clearly.
I mean, I thi, I mean, I,because I think you also make
the point that if victory forthem meant maintaining deur
segregation, then they wouldn'thave been so effective, but
because they were able to be somutable and portable that that's
(29:18):
what has.
Helped things
Mandy (29:20):
There were victories everywhere.
Elizabeth McCrae (29:22):
Right, right, right, right.
Right.
Mandy (29:25):
Yeah.
That's one of the otherquestions we had is has it
surprised you?
'cause this came out in 2018,right?
And we're now, seven years outfrom that, and I feel like this
past seven years has just beenan incredible resurgence of a
lot of the same tactics thatthese women used at that point
in time.
Did that surprise you?
(29:45):
Did you see.
Did it stand out more to you ordid it not surprise you where
you were like, of course, thisis like our MO.
Elizabeth McCrae (29:52):
I think it, unlike Katie, it took me a long,
like this, my book, I have itwritten another book, and I
spent a long time on it and I,and I wrote a lot of it during
the Obama presidency, right?
Where a lot of the conversationwas about a post-racial society
(30:12):
when I was like,
Katy (30:13):
hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (30:13):
Oh my gosh, no one's gonna believe this.
Like, we're moving on no one'sgonna, and so then it comes out
goes to press in late 2016 orwhatever comes out in 2018.
And I think the world's adifferent place.
And I probably was more attuned.
I mean, we had, a series ofelections, even at the state
(30:35):
level and the headlines keptsaying 82% of white women voted
for, voted didn't vote forStacey Abrams, and X percent
voted for Roy Moore and.
And there's this notion ofsurprise, and I'm like, we have
to stop being surprised, right?
There's overwhelming evidence.
(30:56):
I could still be doing research.
I mean, I think I love doingarchival research and every
place I went, I found anequivalent of Florence Schillers
Ogden, or Nell Battle Lewis, orCornelia.
I kept finding these people andat some point, how many of them
do I have to find right beforeI, like, I'd still be in the
(31:17):
archives,?
And my dean's like, uh, writethe book.
Stop doing this.
So I think, for me, probablydoing that work, I'm like, how
can we still be surprised?
How can we still be surprisedthey've been doing this work?
They've not been shy about itsince the 19th century.
Mandy (31:36):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (31:37):
Well, and if we look at Stephanie Jones
Rogers, even before that, right?
Right.
Mandy (31:41):
right.
Yep.
Katy (31:42):
think it is like a great ma, like a great, in a creepy
sense magic act because, whenyou look back intentionally to
look at it, it's so obvious anddense and thick, but it's like
this thicket of weeds that it,unless you know to look for it,
they're able to hide in plainsight and I leverage the sexism
(32:03):
against them or whatever it is,that they're able to make it
seem like there's nothing to seehere, and yet it's like they're
the dust that we think must meanthere's nothing there is
actually just being kicked up byall their energy and it's
actually
Elizabeth McCrae (32:18):
That's a really good metaphor.
Katy (32:20):
Ugh.
I, these women.
I think about it a lot.
Elizabeth McCrae (32:23):
Well, I think it's also who we imagine white
supremacists actors to be.
Katy (32:29):
yeah.
Elizabeth McCrae (32:30):
And we imagine them as these sort of loud male
public figures.
The sort of George Wallace writlarge or Bull Connor and
Birmingham, and they've taken upso much space and not that they
shouldn't, they're worth talkingabout, but I think they've
clouded, all the work being doneon the ground.
(32:52):
And you, I mean, I don't know ifyou grew up in a, like I always
tell my students, if you wantsomething done at a church, do
you go to the minister or do yougo to the church secretary who's
likely a woman
Mandy (33:03):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (33:04):
in the Protestant south?
And um, and
Katy (33:08):
Oh, it's so different in the Catholic North.
Let me tell.
Yeah.
Elizabeth McCrae (33:11):
They're like, you go, you go to the church
ladies.
I said, politics works that way,right?
They're talking, but thesepeople are doing such.
Critical work for segregationand white supremacy on the
ground.
Mandy (33:25):
Yeah.
It even to the point where itseemed like they were frustrated
with their male counterparts fornot moving it along enough.
They're like, okay, you guys areworthless.
Let's
Elizabeth McCrae (33:35):
Yeah.
Mandy (33:36):
move out of the way.
Elizabeth McCrae (33:38):
you're so less principled white supremacists,
like, we're the real ones, we'recommitted and we don't get
political perks for ourprincipled stance
Mandy (33:48):
thought that was a really
Elizabeth McCrae (33:50):
I was really surprised by that, you know?
Katy (33:53):
But I coming from a socialized education background.
I think that's one of theconsequences of the dominant
narrative and the way it getstaught in schools is, again, it
provides cover for these womenbecause we're never talking
about that.
That's just not.
They're not even characters inat all.
And the way that, let's take ushistory is typically taught is
(34:15):
by eras that are usually linkedto wars or presidential
administrations.
And that if you're taking thatlens too, it's almost impossible
to see these stories emergebecause they were intentionally
not connected to politicalparties.
That was fascinating to me how,they were so committed to the
ideology.
Right?
And you know, we keeprecommending this book to people
(34:37):
over and over, like, if you wantto understand this current
moment, this is essentialreading.
Because one of the big takeawaysfor me wasn't that white women
are shitty'cause that's whatwe're here for.
And we understand like that partof it didn't surprise us.
But what has confounded merecently is why this set of
issues, like why is MAGA soagainst the UN and why are
(35:01):
people really mad about fluoridein the water and what, I could
not believe the bundle of issuesthat has confused me as to why
is that the bundle?
And of course the answer iswhite sre.
You know, at the end of the dayshouldn't be surprised that
that's somewhere in there.
But that was so illuminating to,to piece together this current
(35:21):
political moment of, we don'ttrust the mainstream media where
white Christian nationalists, wehate unicef, we hate the un, we
like we all these things thatseem disconnected or even like
incongruent.
But when you twist it to look atit through the stories of these
women, it's like b ba, b ba pop.
It just all lines up and itmakes so much sense.
(35:42):
It's,
Elizabeth McCrae (35:43):
Yeah.
And I didn't imagine that the UNwould show up when I first
started, right?
Like I wanted to know.
Why is it with all these amazingpeople working for a more
equitable world, and racial andsocial justice, why is it we
can't move?
And my answer became white womenon the ground.
I mean, it's not the wholeanswer, but that was my answer,
(36:05):
so I was surprised when the UNcame up
Katy (36:08):
hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (36:09):
and then I was really surprised when the
fluoride came back around waslike, that seemed even a little
fringe in the early sixties, andnow I'm like, oh my gosh,
really?
That was unexpected for
Mandy (36:25):
Yeah, there are questions.
Katie and I sat in high schoolhistory classes right next to
each other for our whole highschool career.
And
Katy (36:33):
I wish we had the notes we passed back and forth.
Still.
Maybe you have
Mandy (36:36):
great
Elizabeth McCrae (36:37):
Oh, that would be awesome.
Mandy (36:38):
It would be so great.
And we had one history teacherthat, oh man, was he a trip?
We got in some arguments withhim.
But we look at each other whilewe're learning these histories
and we're like, we didn't getthis.
Like this was, this was nevertaught.
This was never part of it.
So when we started doing, Ican't remember which topic it
was we were talking about, butone of the things we were really
(36:58):
interested in is when did theallegiance to the Democratic
party of that time then switchto the Republican party?
And how did the Republican partyof today become today's
Republican party?
Where did all of that occur?
What were the cogs in themachine that turned that?
And when we read those chaptersin your book, we were just like.
(37:20):
The answer, here's the answer.
This like,
Katy (37:23):
Mm-hmm
Mandy (37:24):
is where things happened and it's was never taught in
mainstream education.
And that's why I think thatpiece and so many other pieces
that we're just like, thisreally should be required
reading.
Like we want everyone, you can'tgo any further in any sort of
politics, work, advocacy withoutunderstanding this history.
(37:44):
It's so important, I think.
Elizabeth McCrae (37:46):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (37:46):
not be surprised anymore, like you said, because that's
not useful.
That's a waste of our time to besurprised by this.
And then to also.
Understand and anticipate andthen learn how to disrupt the
efforts like the Moms forLiberty group.
That's basically just anotheriteration of these other ones.
Or, you know, sometimes wearen't opposed to the technique
(38:08):
they're using.
We just hate the ends to whichthey're using this technique.
But we actually think that,those of us who are committed to
racial justice and, a more justequitable loving, sustainable
world, like, okay, maybe we needus a contest, maybe we need,
newsletters and all thesethings.
And one of the things we keepsaying is just how there,
(38:30):
there's a certain built inadvantage.
To the work that these women aretrying to accomplish.
Because when you don't careabout humanity, you can move
faster.
And when you are trying toadvocate for exploiting people,
you can exploit people in orderto advocate that, and you don't
lose any sleep over it,?
So there are these shortcutsthat they can take, and I think
(38:51):
our systems are so entrenchedthat, it's hard to transform
them or it's hard to evenimagine what could look
different when this has been,how it's been for so long.
So I think there's some uphillbattle, but like, no question
which side of history, I want mygreat grandkids to open a book
and not see me in like this
Elizabeth McCrae (39:12):
Right, right,
Katy (39:12):
chapter 12 of the edition of this book.
Um.
Elizabeth McCrae (39:17):
Yeah.
Katy (39:17):
Do you ever find yourself, especially given the politics
that we're currently living inthinking about lessons you
learned or what you took awaypersonally, I like, I guess in
some way the question might beeven deeper.
Like, did this change youfundamentally to learn about
(39:37):
this history and to write aboutit?
Did it make you more cynical?
Did it make you more committed?
Did it make you motherdifferently?
Like just you were in the thickof it for so long and still are
Elizabeth McCrae (39:50):
I think, yeah, it changed me.
I mean, I think the wholeprocess of.
I love going to school, right?
And so I've just almost neverleft.
So I think the whole process oflearning for me and then
learning this made me think sohard about how I wanted to
support public education andwhat I wanted my children to,
(40:14):
what overt lessons had to betaught But in a larger, am I
cynical?
Well, probably, but, I try notto be.
Sometimes people say like, doyou have any hope when you
finish?
And I was like, it took a lot ofdamn work to do this.
they were working all the time.
And they were policing thestories people told and the
(40:34):
schools and local politics andthe garden club and like they
were at it.
So there's so many places, Ithink to intervene to disrupt
it.
And you don't have to have anational
Katy (40:50):
hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (40:50):
did it where they were and they made national
networks.
But are you using the tools ofthe oppressors?
if we do some of the thing, samethings they do, but disrupt it.
If it takes so much work tosustain it, how much work do you
actually have to do?
How many cuts do you have tomake before it falls apart?
Mandy (41:12):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (41:13):
Um, and that is probably rose colored
glasses,
Katy (41:16):
But it's worth trying.
You know, it, it's worth, it'sworth remembering that I think,
especially for white women, likeyou talk about being a white
woman who's pregnant.
I mean, that's like, oh, theparagon of virtue walking in
somewhere, and just the like,what, what power that has to
kind of incognito, enter spacesand fuck'em up.
(41:39):
Like what would it mean to showup?
Like I, I thought for a secondabout Mandy, maybe I'll remember
this part, where there werewomen who would like go
undercover to the progressivegroups and like write down
everybody's license plates.
And I was like, God, can Istomach sitting through a Mom's
for Liberty meme?
But I kind of wanna do it, Ithink really important to
remember that the lack ofresistance or people not calling
(42:04):
out like, you can't do thatanymore, clerk.
That's not your job.
You can't fill that form outthat way.
Or
Elizabeth McCrae (42:10):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (42:11):
All, those little moments of pushback are certainly not
going to help their project.
Maybe it won't derail itentirely, but if it's death by a
thousand cuts that that's howthey're having their success,
then that has to be
Elizabeth McCrae (42:24):
Right.
Katy (42:25):
what's on the resistant side.
Elizabeth McCrae (42:26):
Yeah.
I mean, I think the other thingsit's made me suspicious of any
organization that has likeconstitution in it, like the
women for Constitutionalgovernment monster.
I mean, I tell my students, I'mlike, when you see a title like
that, you have to start looking
Mandy (42:42):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (42:43):
because it doesn't necessarily mean what
you think it means.
And so I was wary of that.
And I'm also, I think, wary orconscious of when motherhood is
deployed in ways that seemmoral, but are really political.
Like how motherhood, being amom, performs a lot of political
(43:07):
work for certain groups, andthat the class dynamics and
racial dynamics that areembedded in that are oh, I'm a
mom.
I'm doing this for the good ofmy children.
Well, I think that's what bleedsinto the next project on School
Choice.
Like how the deployment ofcertain rights for certain
(43:28):
mothers or parents has overcomeand clouded that there's a whole
group who've been, are beingdenied those rights or multiple
groups that are being denied.
Certain parents' choices mattermore than other parent choices.
And that comes straight out ofthe Post Brown era?
I mean, straight out of how arewe gonna get around integrated
(43:50):
schools.
I'm not saying it's the samenow, but I think the roots of it
seem
Mandy (43:55):
for sure.
Like it's not
Katy (43:57):
don't know that.
Mandy (43:58):
It's really not.
So is that your next project.
Is it gonna be somethingsimilar?
Is it another book you'relooking at publishing?
Elizabeth McCrae (44:06):
I hope I live long enough.
But, um, I think, so I am reallyinterested in sort of how school
and parental choice has beenshaped and deployed.
I don't know exactly, I sort ofstarted at the end, so I don't
know what that will look like.
And I'm also just nowconsidering have I said this out
(44:30):
loud?
I don't think I've said this outloud.
Go into a couple things thissummer being a fan girl.
Kim Crenshaw in the AfricanAmerican Policy Forum, and
they've been talking a lotracial fascism and all the women
I wrote about were not fascists,but I think Mary Dawson Kane
Mandy (44:49):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (44:49):
was maybe, she comes the closest and when I was
writing the book I wanted thesort of everydayness, and this
is your neighbor doing this workto come through.
These aren't like multi-headedwhite supremacist hydras, that
you can pick out.
(45:10):
But some of this stuff that Kanedid was a lot further to the
right than.
Not necessarily her racial pal,but the world she lived in.
Where she was in that, she wasin a far right world then.
So I've thought about like, isnow the moment to think about
doing something with her, giventhe sort of questions that we
(45:35):
might ask about the politicallandscape today?
I don't know.
I don't know that I wanna spendthat much time with her, but I
That's just popped into my head,Over the past couple weeks
thinking about how and this isnot my idea.
This comes really from KimCrenshaw and Carol Anderson and.
(45:56):
Talking about racial fascism andhow it has manifested itself
historically in the UnitedStates.
And so I've been thinking aboutthat since July.
And she is a person that seemsto keep looping back too.
Katy (46:11):
We interviewed, Jesse Daniels, who is a sociologist
who writes about nice whiteladies, a really great book
also.
And she spent a lot of timeonline in far right, hate group
like the Klan, but for ladies,kind of groups.
And I remember us asking herlike, oh, do you just, come
home, take a shower, and justtry to get your heebie-jeebies
(46:33):
out.
Like how do you try not get tooclose in a way that you are able
to stay tethered and grounded,when you're reading through all
these, but maybe that's not eventhe right question to ask
because that is the malu thatpeople have to live in and can't
exit it ever.
So it's just part of being insolidarity and doing the work
(46:56):
that needs to be done.
I wish we had more scholarsdoing the work that you and a
handful of others are doing.
If you could like, assemble ateam or, or kind of direct
people, like here are a wholebunch of other.
(47:16):
Places that need excavating withthis particular lens.
What would you want to seepeople asking about studying in
terms of deepening ourunderstanding, our ability to
document and witness and callout the work that white women
have been doing for so long inthe United States.
Elizabeth McCrae (47:36):
I think there's certainly a lot of work
to be done post 19 74, 75.
And the landscape does change,pretty significantly with the
rise of the religious right.
As a political force.
And so I, I'd be curious howthat manifests itself.
I mean, I think we see like adeep dive into that,?
Among communities of sort ofwhite women, I think there's a
(47:59):
lot of local or geographicallylittle tighter studies that
could be done that paint is somebroad brushes, but show how it
works in places.
I mean, Pasadena kept coming upin LA right?
In this book, and MichelleNickerson has written about
this, some of those people inour earlier period, or right
(48:20):
around World War ii.
But I think.
It's helpful to think about howthose systems have been
maintained at a sort of morelocal level.
And how the resistance to thebrown decision manifests itself
in particular places.
Because I wonder if we wouldn'tfind a group of actors that has
then shifted the politics ofthat place in subsequent
(48:43):
generations.
If we could draw lines through,I'm not sure, but I think that's
worth doing too.
Mandy (48:51):
curious, kind of taking off from those lines, since you
are a professor and you areworking with students, college
age students, I'm alwayswondering.
What the youth of today arereally thinking and doing and do
we have like people coming upwho care about this as
passionately who want to getinto that kind of thing?
(49:12):
And especially being in thesouth,
Katy (49:14):
Hmm.
Mandy (49:14):
what, what do you see in your students?
Like, do you have hope?
Do you,
Elizabeth McCrae (49:18):
Yes, I do have hope
Mandy (49:20):
okay.
Elizabeth McCrae (49:21):
if their brains don't disintegrate on
TikTok.
I have hope.
I mean, again, I think there's,college age students doing
amazing, things.
I keep coming back to thissummer in Nashville, the
Democracy defenders, but likeJustin Jones from Tennessee and
the sort of youth that he hasgathered, that are doing all
(49:45):
kinds of work all over theplace.
And I was, sounds like I'm namedropping, but I was talking to,
I had emailed Carol, I'm,
Mandy (49:54):
Yeah.
Elizabeth McCrae (49:55):
emailed, um, Carol Anderson the other day to
ask
Katy (50:00):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (50:00):
for some help.
Like, I'm working on this classon reconstruction and I was
like, can I come pick yourbrain?
And she's like, my students areon fire.
Right.
So I do think that, there's alot of hope and I think they're
rightly so.
They're pretty pissed that we'veleft them a world that.
Seems, really problematic.
(50:21):
So I think there is, and I findeven across the political
spectrum, I mean, not on the farends, but like caring about
things that our central to theirlives and what they believe in
that aren't really representedby the political discourse that
we have today.
(50:41):
So yeah.
I'm hopeful.
Katy (50:43):
I think there's something to be said too for when these
things are, like all the quietparts are said out loud kind of
moment.
That of course is painful andviolent and hurting people and
you know, that's needs to stop.
But there's, there is somethingabout that that actually can be
empowering too.
(51:04):
Like it's pretty obvious, therereally isn't any subtlety to any
of this right now.
And I, I wonder as things.
Escalate as those efforts, moveeven from far right into
authoritarianism or
Elizabeth McCrae (51:23):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Katy (51:25):
and the ways, like I'm thinking about, Mandy and I
talked about this a coupleepisodes ago, like the bargain
that some of these women made toshift to a more colorblind,
conversational approach
Elizabeth McCrae (51:38):
This is strategy?
I mean, a well articulatedstrategy.
Katy (51:42):
and maybe this is me being naively like I am the more
naively optimistic, one of thetwo of us and I have run since
we were 12.
But I, I do wonder if thatdecision bought them time, but
if there isn't something in thatdecision to go that way, that
also is exploitable because, atsome point people bought in.
(52:04):
Like I'm thinking people in myown family who.
Are appalled at what'shappening, but have voted
Republican their whole livesand, are like really disoriented
and kind of piecing thingstogether.
But they were lulled by thatcolorblind language and now
they're recognizing that that'swhat it was.
And they're, they are distancingthemselves from that community.
(52:25):
So I wonder as things get moreexplicit and get more on the
surface and this agenda that'sso extremist, although not the
exception in the United States,it's like always been there.
Um, again, maybe that's naivelyoptimistic of me, but there's
part of me that, hopes that likeas they kind of commented their.
Elizabeth McCrae (52:49):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (52:49):
Power that that's sort of their undoing because people are
like, no, not, not that, butmay.
Maybe again, maybe this is me,and she's chuckling from her
grave like, oh, you areunderestimating the white
supremacy.
That is
Elizabeth McCrae (53:02):
I think, you know, there are people that are
gonna work at it and are workingat it, but you know, there's
also, I don't know, I thinkabout students like they think
they should be safe when they goto school, wherever they are on
the political spectrum, most of'em don't think you should go to
jail for the possession ofmarijuana?
Mandy (53:21):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (53:22):
I think the racial politics are.
Are more fraught for sure.
Or the racist politics.
'cause I think there, there'sbeen so much work done to shape
those.
But, I don't wanna speak for, Idon't think most of our students
would say, oh, what really asegregated society is what we
should return to.
(53:42):
I mean, they could use someeducation, but couldn't we all I
think we're no different thanthat.
But
Mandy (53:48):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (53:48):
I think the color blindness the mask has
been pulled off of that, I thinkin this moment, I just can't
imagine that discourse works.
But I think we have to becareful of what discourse comes
next.
Katy (53:59):
Oh, you just gave me goosebumps and like,
Mandy (54:04):
Yeah.
Katy (54:04):
That was actually a question.
We were thinking of each chapteras like part one of the horror
movie, part two of the horrormovie, and, maybe now is the
grand final.
Like again, maybe it's not,maybe it doesn't have that sort
of buildup, but is there becauseyou do such a great job at
showing at how it doesn't evolveorganically, but these mutations
(54:27):
are being engineered to protectthese systems.
That's gonna keep, like peopleare gonna keep trying to mutate
it to engineer.
What would you have us watchingfor?
Or knowing these women well, andtheir, what their legacies are,
what would you be suspicious ofor watching for?
Elizabeth McCrae (54:45):
Well, you know, I like being a historian
'cause I don't have to.
Be knowledge, like super, youknow, it's different than being
a political s who's commentingon what's happening now.
But I do think we both shouldreform institutions and also
protect those that havedemocratic possibilities.
When an institution comes undersuch fire that we gotta think
(55:07):
about what's the story behindthat, right?
Do all institutions haveproblems for sure?
But which ones can be in pursuitof democracy and humanity and
equality and can be reformed.
And I think sometimes theattacks are the loudest on ones
that have that potential even ifit has not been met.
(55:28):
And then I think we have to lookfor political discourses that
cloud political realities Whichcolorblindness did family values
did.
Um, that seem to be politicallyneutral and are not politically
neutral.
Mandy (55:44):
Yep.
Great places to start.
There's so much underneath allof those.
Elizabeth McCrae (55:48):
Or we could retreat and binge watch, you
know, whatever, something tolike.
Mandy (55:54):
we're leaning into the both and that's what we talked
about earlier today, binge watchNetflix, go to your PTA
meetings.
You gotta, you gotta do both.
Well, we're so thankful that youwould spend time talking to us.
We always say, we don't know whypeople say yes to us.
We're so grateful that they do.
Elizabeth McCrae (56:11):
well, I'm so grateful to be asked.
Thank you so much.
Mandy (56:15):
Anyone who's been listening, who's been reading
along with us, if you weretrying to think of, the next
birthday present you get foryour friend or, holidays, just
push this book out to everyone,not even subtly.
Just demand that people lookinto this history and know more
about it.
Start your own book clubs.
I think it's really important.
(56:36):
To discuss these issues, notjust to read it and know it for
yourself.
Katie and I learned so much justtalking to each other from it
and, we love talking to all ofthe people that come on and it
helps
Elizabeth McCrae (56:47):
Well, thank you.
Yeah.
Mandy (56:48):
that.
Elizabeth McCrae (56:49):
Thank you so much.
Yes.
And if you ever have otherquestions, I'm happy to answer
emails from people, if you havequestions or,
Mandy (56:57):
Okay,
Elizabeth McCrae (56:58):
and I'm so glad to know about you now, so I
can put you on my podcast list.
Yeah,
Katy (57:04):
Well, we can't wait to read your next book or article
or whatever comes out.
I think school choice for me isdefinitely a place to fight and
to be super aware of.
That's one of those cloudinglanguage, like who's gonna be
anti it just sounds like, oh, ofcourse you want people to have
choice or parental rights orwhatever it is.
But just how, how that's usedinto what ends And, um, just
(57:28):
yeah.
Appreciate your work so much andwhat
Elizabeth McCrae (57:31):
you have ideas, either of you, please
send them my way.
Thank you so much.
Mandy (57:35):
Thank you.
Elizabeth McCrae (57:37):
you too.
Bye bye.
Hi, this is Mandy Griffin.
(00:01):
And I'm Katie Swalwell, andwelcome to our Dirty Laundry,
stories of white ladies making amess of things and how we need
to clean up our act.
Katy (00:14):
Hello?
Hi.
How's going?
Hi, we.
It's good.
We've been talking, to a bunchof really fascinating people
lately, and one of them is theauthor of Mothers of Massive
Resistance.
I still can't believe that wegot to talk to her.
Mandy (00:30):
I know.
We say this all of the time, weare just people who decided to
start.
This podcast and we just do it,in our spare time.
All this is not professional,it's not produced nobody would
do it because we care so muchabout this and we are just
always so grateful and alsoamazed that these people will
(00:51):
extend their time so graciouslyand have such a passion to
discuss this.
And, Elizabeth Gopi Crave islike absolutely no different
about that, just so.
Great in the talk that we hadwith her so we were fangirling
so much.
Katy (01:07):
I, well, I think about all the authors that we've talked
to, like Stephanie Jones Rogers,or Jesse Daniels.
Like you read these books, theyblow your mind.
You all you wanna do is justtell the authors how grateful
you are and pick their brainabout something and you hope
that they.
Are as great as you've made themout to be in your head.
Mm-hmm.
And then every one of the casesthat we've been able to talk to
(01:28):
the author, it's like thegreatest pleasure.
And it's so much better than weever could have even expected.
They're just incredible peopledoing great work and important
scholarship and it's just I feelvery grateful that we have a
space to offer them to sharetheir work and hopefully reach
(01:49):
even more people.
Then they've already connectedwith, yeah, so we spoke with
Elizabeth Gillespie McGray.
For those who are not in theknow, she is the author of
Mothers of Massive Resistance,white Women and the Politics of
White Supremacy.
That book has won several words,including the Frederick Jackson
Turner Award, given by theorganization of American
(02:10):
Historians.
The Frank and Harriet OusleyAward given by the Southern
Historical Association and theSociety for Professors of
Education, outstanding bookAward.
She's a historian interested inrace, politics, and education
and postwar United States.
Her degrees are from Wake ForestUniversity.
That's her bachelor's.
Her master's degrees, plural arefrom Western Carolina University
(02:33):
and Marymount University inVirginia, and her PhD in history
is from the University ofGeorgia.
She's currently professor ofhistory at Western Carolina
University and is also theco-director of the Appalachian
Oral History Project, whichsounds like it's maybe taken a
little bit of a break sinceCOVID, but that.
Sounds like a fascinatingproject that maybe we could
(02:54):
follow up with her at somepoint.
I think oral histories are so,so important and just having
archives, like in Iowa rightnow, they're eliminating funding
for archives that have women'scollections, labor history
collections, queer historycollections, like there's who
benefits when we delete thosearchives or when we don't.
(03:17):
Document and preserve people'sstories, especially people from
the margins like the, there'sonly one group of people who
benefits from that, and that'sthe.
Bastards in power.
Yeah.
So we need to support all ofthose archives from the margins
that we can, in her currentproject, she examines the role
of school choice in Americanpublic education.
(03:38):
We got to talk to her a littlebit about that.
Mm-hmm.
Does anything stand out to youfrom the conversation that you
wanted, shout out before we letpeople in on what we talked
about?
Mandy (03:48):
I think just in general's, just so approachable
in the way that she, considersall of these ideas and how she
researched this book and the wayshe thinks about these women She
said that she wanted to make itvery clear that this was like
your next door neighbor.
Mm-hmm.
So that it would be something.
(04:11):
That we can recognize in ournext door neighbors, I think.
Yeah.
Um, and I think she did such agood job at that.
And that comes across in talkingto her too, that it's just a
very approachable presentation.
And she herself was the same.
And it was just really great.
Very lovely.
It was
Katy (04:29):
a wonderful conversation.
Yes.
I know.
Listeners will be as delightedas we were.
Yeah.
Uh, if you don't have the book,get it.
Mm-hmm.
Gift it.
Check it out.
And enjoy the conversation wehad with Elizabeth Gillespie
McGray.
Thanks.
Hello.
Mandy (04:47):
Hi.
We're very excited to be here.
Finally, we've talked about thison all of our episodes that we
today have.
Elizabeth Gillespie McCrae withus, and we get to ask her all
the questions that we have beenwanting to ask and just go over
how this work came together andtalk about how important it is
right now.
So we're very, very excited forthis.
(05:08):
But Katie, do you wanna givelike a little intro
Katy (05:11):
I do.
I know we have questions.
We've jotted some down and we'vehad questions in the margins
that we've been keeping track oftoo.
But I also think we just want totell her all the parts we left
so much and he
Elizabeth McCrae (05:22):
Great.
Katy (05:25):
oh, there's some like just little gems where we can see a
little bit of like, snark ismaybe not the right word, but
just your human frustration withsome of these people and every
time it comes through, we'rejust so delighted.
Anyway, we have just, so we'regoing to fan girl out here, but
I am delighted to welcomeElizabeth Glassby McRay, a
(05:47):
historian who is interested inrace, politics and education in
the post-war United States.
So what is there to really writeabout?
I don't know, that's just, I'm
Elizabeth McCrae (05:57):
Small topic.
Katy (05:58):
exactly, she is of course the author of Mothers of Massive
Resistance, white Women and thePolitics of White Supremacy that
we've been reading for the.
The past couple months here,Well, really just thinking about
the awards your book has won andthe people who have recommended
your book to us, who we reallyadmire and are inspired by that,
I, I think it's safe to say, Iwill say that I think, your
(06:21):
scholarship for me who works insocial studies education, it's
you, it's so important and it's,really just cutting edge
scholarship about the history ofwhite women.
I really appreciate it so much,and you do just such a brilliant
job of documenting not only howwhite women have supported white
(06:41):
supremacy, but how they'veengineered it, how they've been
the architects of it.
And I think like we at thispodcast want people to know
about all of that.
But I think sometimes it'sreally just opening up to say,
oh, women supported it too.
But gosh, this book just made meunderstand that it's more than
just supporting, it's way deeperthan that.
(07:03):
So we've got just a fewquestions that have popped up
for us throughout this book,just about you personally.
I hope it's okay to ask some ofthese questions, but, we're both
white women, we're both mothers.
I dunno how you identify, but I,I am wondering
Elizabeth McCrae (07:18):
mother.
Katy (07:19):
a white mother.
All right.
Elizabeth McCrae (07:21):
Other things.
Yeah.
Katy (07:22):
Of course, yes, we contain multitudes, but those are
significant identifiers.
So how, with that identity andbeing from the south yourself,
how did you come to be curiousabout this topic?
And even before being curious,how did you even become aware of
it?
How did it even occur to you toask about these histories and to
(07:45):
really take this seriously as asubject that is so important to
pay attention to?
Elizabeth McCrae (07:52):
I think like most things, it's both like
personal and kind of anintellectual journey.
Looking back, I would say I, wastelling Mandy after I finished
at Wake Forest, I moved to DC, Iended up teaching high school
and I taught in one of thewealthiest public school
districts in Virginia,
Katy (08:11):
hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (08:12):
In Northern Virginia as a teacher in
training.
And then I taught in one of the,poorest school districts, on the
edge of the coal fields inSouthwestern Virginia.
And I guess the the question ofsort of what is equal and
equitable because the fundingwas so different, right?
(08:34):
In the same state, the funding,the per pupil funding based on
property taxes seemed likeinsane.
And then that the students werecompeting, you know, to go to
college, right?
Without regard to that, one ofthem had received$1,500 from the
state and the other one hadreceived$3,400 for the state
(08:57):
you, or whatever those numberswere.
So I think like that experienceon the ground sort of teaching
school made me question the waywe talk about equality and
equity and the way that publicschools can be this very
liberatory institution, but alsoThey've been designed to uphold,
(09:21):
some pretty serious hierarchies,racist and class hierarchies in
American society.
So I think like that sort ofexperience, maybe put me on the
path of sort of equality and Ithink growing up in the mountain
south, and then going tograduate school and I was
enthralled by the Civil RightsMovement and the women that
(09:43):
worked in the Civil RightsMovement and the very first
paper I ever wrote I wasinterested in the Holland Folk
School, which was a labor andrace kind of progressive
institution in easternTennessee.
And I went over there to theirarchives, but I kept reading
about all these amazing peoplepushing for social justice.
And then I'm like, well, of thewhite women that are in this
(10:06):
cannon, which are not very many,right, but like of the ones that
are doing like Constance Curryand Anne Braden and all these
folks, I was like, I don't thinkI've ever come across anyone
like that, right?
Like, it's not been part of theconversations.
I don't think I grew up withanybody that seemed particularly
committed to like racialequality.
(10:29):
I mean, it just wasn't, not thatthey were against it, but it
just didn't seem part and parcelof sort of the white southern
world that I had grown up in.
Mandy (10:38):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (10:39):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (10:40):
And so I was like, are these women, they're
so fascinating, but are theyreally the ones, do they
represent what was reallyhappening on the ground?
And so then when I think I gotto working on my PhD, those
questions of sort of how did wecome to this place with
inequities and education andthen so much of the civil rights
(11:01):
movement, not all of it, but hadfocused on the schools, right?
And so, there's all these womenworking in the schools.
And it's not a very elegantanswer, but I think that that
both sort of thinking about,public school and equities and
then.
Reading about all these amazingblack and white women in the
civil rights movement, way moreblack women than white women, of
(11:24):
course, in the South, and thenthinking, wow, it's nice that
there were those white women,but is that really what all the
white women were doing?
And a sort of suspicion thatthat is not what was happening.
Mandy (11:38):
Uhhuh Uhhuh.
Yeah.
We talk a lot about, you know,there's always the excuse that
people give that individualswere a product of their time and
a product of their upbringingand their experiences, which of
course, but then also you seepeople who deviate from that.
And you wonder, what's thedifference between the people
(11:58):
who broke out of that mold andthe people that stayed in it.
And I think of a lot of thesewomen that you've written about
were the ones who stayed there.
And I think it's great that you,as an author like also came from
that community of the South.
It's not like you came down assomebody from the quote unquote
north to hunt out these womenand call them out on anything.
(12:20):
Like seeing it from, from theperspective as someone who is
also then just raised in theproduct of that and, and coming
to all these conclusions andfinding them.
I think it just made the book somuch more alive and well-rounded
from that perspective.
I appreciated that a lot.
Elizabeth McCrae (12:38):
Yeah.
Well, probably it allowed me toget some stories I wouldn't have
gotten if I was someone else.
Mandy (12:44):
For sure.
Katy (12:45):
It's so true.
I live where Mandy and I met andmoved back to where I grew up in
Iowa and I feel like a realdeep, almost compulsion to do
work here and to try to improvesocial studies education,
especially as it connects tolocal history because I feel
(13:07):
it's my family's history.
It's my parents, mygrandparents, my
great-grandparents.
I feel like I have a obligation,I have an intellectual
curiosity, a professionalcuriosity, but when I'm here, it
has a whole different meaning tome to do that work.
And I wonder if you experiencedany of that when you were either
(13:28):
doing your archival research orwhen you were writing the fact
that this is your home, to someextent whether it's regional or
maybe even more local than that.
Elizabeth McCrae (13:37):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (13:38):
Did you feel any sort of connection obligation, you know?
Elizabeth McCrae (13:42):
Where I grew up is pretty different than
where I did a lot of theresearch.
Katy (13:46):
Hmm,
Elizabeth McCrae (13:47):
mean, maybe chapter one is about Lexington
and Rockbridge County is not sofar, but I'm in even like a sub
region.
Right.
The sort of mountain south.
But, I think what I did feel is,oftentimes doing this research
when I was in the communitieswhere I was talking to people
(14:07):
and staying and go into thearchives, outside of the sort of
academic world, people madeassumptions.
By the way I talked and the wayI looked, and I was pregnant
twice during this research.
So Right, okay.
Here's this little lady
Mandy (14:23):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (14:24):
work, right?
But not really having to betaken super seriously in some
ways.
Right.
But I think people pointed me indirections that they wouldn't
have pointed everybody in thosedirections.
I interviewed one of thecharacters in the book, Florence
Stillers Ogden.
(14:44):
I went to, speak to her nephew
Mandy (14:48):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (14:48):
his wife.
And, one of the stories theysaid is, oh, you've read all her
newspaper articles?
And I was like, yes.
And they were like, we'd like topublish'em, but you know, we
probably couldn't live here ifwe published them.
We'd have to edit out some ofthe racial parts of them.
And I was like, well, they're onmicrofilm everywhere.
Right?
Like,
Katy (15:08):
Also, I'm thinking what would be left, honestly,
Elizabeth McCrae (15:10):
Right.
Right, right.
But, but I was like, oh my gosh.
You know?
But I think that acknowledgementof what it meant to live in a
place where she had done thatwork Right.
In the delta of Mississippi
Katy (15:23):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (15:23):
might have been a story that I didn't get
if I was a woman of color.
Right.
Um, or if I didn't have asstrong of an accent as I have.
Right.
Mandy (15:33):
Yeah.
we were wondering that, I thinkthat's one of a couple of
questions there.
Like one, how did theseparticular women emerge from the
research that you did, and thenhow do you treat writing about
individuals who still have likeliving relatives?
And have you been contacted bysome of them?
(15:54):
Has anything come up with that?
Katy (15:56):
Okay.
Mandy's asking this question fora super specific reason, so I'm
gonna out her right now.
Her nickname is The PettyDetective because we'll be
reading an article or a book andshe always, figures out like,
oh, who's this bastard?
And goes even deeper to try tolearn more about their
backstory.
We've concluded everyone needstherapy and history would be so
different, but there's a woman,and now I can't remember her
(16:19):
last name.
Her first name is Mary, but as ateenager, she wrote this essay,
Mary Heal.
And of course Mandy's, like Igot on her Facebook page, she's
still alive and saw her post andI looked at it too.
And you can see her grandkidsand her kids and so that was one
of the questions we asked, like,whoa, this, it's not even
relatives, it's this person.
(16:40):
And what would it be like to beher granddaughter in college
reading this in a class Andsuddenly you turn the page and
kabam, there's memaw and you're,like, what is going on?
So the question of why thesefour women, how these four
women, but also there any likeethical quandaries or how do you
navigate when people are eitherstill living themselves and have
(17:01):
thoughts about how they wanna beportrayed or they're precious
about their relatives and theway that people write about
them.
Elizabeth McCrae (17:08):
That's the one moment in the book that sort of
gave me, I think pause onlyafter it was in print, right?
Like oh wow, it's finally outand here is this person, her
face and the essay.
And I didn't talk to her.
I mean, it's in the archive,right?
I didn't talk to her.
I've thought about that since,if I should have said, Hey,
(17:29):
what's up?
But also for the readers, Idon't presume to think how she
would read this, but for thereaders, I think the point was
that so much of the society thatshe was in was normalizing that.
And so when you're 17 or 16, whywouldn't you write that essay?
(17:50):
Um, why wouldn't you?
When you're ministers andpoliticians and maybe your
parents and your school isadvertising this and what's the
equivalent of whatever patrioticAmerican youth is saying, oh,
write this essay and you can get$500 and that's a lot of money,
then, um.
Mandy (18:10):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (18:12):
Like, I think it would take, have to be a
pretty, sophisticated16-year-old white 16-year-old in
Mississippi in that time periodto ignore all the reinforcements
that this position is alegitimate position.
And I think that's maybe what Ihope that readers would see is
(18:32):
that it's not that she wasreally unique or some early
version of Marjorie TaylorGreen, right?
But that, that's what lots ofmessages in her society
reinforced.
And then as a parent, I'm like,if you get asked to write an
essay contest, you better findout what that is.
Right,
Mandy (18:53):
Well, I don't know if you had heard any of that part where
we talked about it.
As I was reading this, Iremembered that I, myself one a
daughters of the AmericanRevolution essay contest in the
eighties.
I do not remember what the topicwas.
I can't, like my, I asked my momto look around and see if she
could find stuff.
I have the bond still from whenI won the contest and I was
(19:16):
like, I can't imagine.
'cause I grew up in a veryliberal family.
I can't imagine it was anythingovert like that my mom would've
been okay with me writing about,but I would love.
To have seen what it was to see.
'cause you know, it's stillembedded in it, even if it's not
right out at the forefront.
And so as we were readingthrough this and the DAR kept
(19:37):
coming up and up, I was justlike, oh my gosh.
The embarrassment.
Elizabeth McCrae (19:41):
I mean, I think, you know, that's, uh,
yes.
I think we've all done, I, Ithink I got a research, small
research grant from the ColonialDames and Grace Hale had gotten
it before who had come throughthe same program or the same
master's program, and she hadsaid, I'm not sending my
picture.
Right.
Like, the picture wasn'trequired.
(20:02):
And so they had changed theapplication process, but she's
like, why would you need apicture?
Right.
Um, but the same thing, I waslike, it's$500.
I need$500.
Right.
And it didn't seem overt In away that now I might think even
harder about that.
Mandy (20:19):
Yeah.
Katy (20:20):
You know, the, it's one of the reasons I love, love, love
this book is you're paintingsuch vivid portraits of these
women, but you are also weavingtogether and the way their
contexts are different, linkedbut different, unique.
But you are also linkingtogether the generational work
and the overlapping generationsand the systems and the
(20:42):
structures and theorganizational webs that are
being built.
It's really hard to refute andjust how you've even positioned
this woman now, who, by the way,her Facebook, I don't think
she's moved that far off these,like just for, to make you feel
better.
Like, I don't know.
But I, I do think there's thatyour answer like, oh, she is the
(21:02):
symptom.
This is like the manifestationis, of course there would be
teenagers that would write thisessay and publicly declare these
things.
That's the systemic result ofall of this work.
And I think that's what makes ithard.
I'm sure people can try, butit's not like you are picking
any one of these women.
(21:24):
And saying here's why they'reatrocious.
Mandy and I will comment aswe're reading things like she is
heinous, we get so frustrated,but you really are trying to lay
out like this web and thissystem.
Just as an aside at Iowa StateUniversity where I was a
professor for many years,there's, Carrie Chapman Kat was
one of the graduates and it's,this long standing controversy
(21:45):
over whether a building shouldbe still named in her honor
because of her use of whitesupremacist arguments, which
she's not the only one and it,but very prominent suffragists
who did leverage thesearguments.
And her great grand nephewfloats around and shows up
whenever there's a publiccritique of Ka to defend her or,
you know, she, she had a blackfriend.
(22:05):
You know, like all the kind ofarguments that you make for
like, why, and I always thinkthat it's the encounters I've
had with him even, it's just,it's missing the point.
It's not.
It's not even about what oneperson either believed in their
heart of hearts, or they saidthis on Tuesday, but they said
that on Friday.
Or, it's about trying tounderstand how systems get built
(22:27):
and sustained, and thoseindividual actions obviously are
a part of those things, but it'sabout trying to establish what
the norm is even, and thenholding that ground as hard as
you can and doing all of thesethings and why people would do
that, and why they're investedin it, how they're doing it.
I appreciate that a lot, eventhough you can't read this and
(22:50):
come away, like, the only thingthat we maybe took away from
these women, they're very smartand they're very tactical, you
know,
Elizabeth McCrae (23:00):
they read a lot.
Katy (23:01):
And we laughed so hard about like how.
They the time.
Like what?
Just the sheer commitment thatthey had.
And the one letter, the ladywho's said, I'm just eating
potato chips and I'm neverhaving sex.
We're like, okay, the judgedoesn't need that information.
But, we, I think that we'rereally, curious about how you've
(23:23):
seen people react to the book.
What have been the responsesfrom different, not just maybe
the descendants of people, butjust what has been the response?
What surprised
Elizabeth McCrae (23:33):
I mean, uh, the question on descendants
right, is.
Two of the women didn't havechildren, so, right.
Yeah.
Um, so I'm safe on those twofamilies.
Katy (23:46):
Unless there's a great grand nephew floating around.
'cause he has a lot of time onhis hands.
I'm telling you right now.
Yeah.
Elizabeth McCrae (23:51):
Yeah.
But I think there are, I mean,your point, there are producers
of this and the four women thatare, and there's more than four,
but those four that are the sortof narrative threads, they knew
what they were doing.
And they were actively doing it,and they wanted to produce a
white supremacist society.
They wanted to make sure thehierarchies worked in ways that
(24:14):
benefited some and didn'tothers.
I think the pervasiveness oftheir message means that a lot
of people consume that,
Katy (24:22):
Hmm,
Elizabeth McCrae (24:22):
and also perpetuate it, but not with the
same intent that they did.
and so.
You talking about, like who youthink you wanna talk to and try
to change the needle?
The producers aren't the onesthat I didn't, right.
I'm like, they're not gonnachange.
Mandy (24:38):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (24:39):
But would the people that understood that
they're receiving these messagesand that it's this like really
constructed multi-level workThat, that they've just been
absorbing without thinking aboutit.
Those are the people that I hopethat they're equivalent in the
current climate we could change.
Mandy (24:59):
just kind of those light bulb moments where they might
read this and like, oh, I didn'trealize that this was connected
to this.
That was then back to that.
I think.
Yeah.
do you get feedback that therehave been people who have had
those awakenings, have you.
Katy (25:15):
Hmm.
I think some people in someaudiences, right, will be like,
oh my gosh, is this why I gotsent to a academy?
Instead of a public school?
Or is this why?
It happened to them, but theydidn't understand the context,
Like, oh, you're changingschools those have been light
(25:36):
bulb moments for them.
Like, oh, this is why my family,pulled me out of public school
and sent me to a segregationistacademy.
Or this is why in the north wemoved to a different
neighborhood in Boston thatwasn't being actively
integrated.
And so I think that has beenlight bulb moments for some
people.
(25:56):
There's also a lot of questionsabout from southern white women
that grew up in households withblack domestic workers, And
they'd heard these stories abouthow they're part of the family,
but then this clearly thatthey're not and so I think
that's been moments.
This may be too reductionist,but I was at a talk in Minnesota
(26:19):
and it's probably the whitestaudience that to, right?
But they were like, oh my gosh,what kind of reaction do you get
when you talk about this book inthe South?
And I was like they're used tolike talking about race, right?
And the sort of ways that theyresisted the civil race
(26:42):
movement.
And I think interestingly in thesouthern audiences have been, I
don't know if more receptive,but it's not like I'm the first
person that's challenged,
Mandy (26:51):
mm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (26:52):
how Jim Crow worked.
I think the problem and this istotally anecdotal.
I think more people have hadtrouble seeing the Boston women
as segregationist
Katy (27:03):
I was just gonna say, I think, you know, you're talking
to two Midwesterners here andthe folks in Minnesota, I feel
like they didn't read the wholebook because that, to me, the
most chilling part is thechapter that ends.
I think it's maybe Francis Dennaturally one of the women just
saying, kind of chuckling toherself, like, just wait till it
comes to the north and then,then, we'll see.
(27:23):
Just knowing how deep it goes.
Like they, they were, maybe wecan call them cynical in that
way, but I think they wereabsolutely accurate in their
assessment of how superficialand thin.
And, not interested really incivil rights movement.
Most white people in the northwere, I think it, it was
(27:45):
chilling, and then you read thechapter about Boston and Detroit
and, these other cities.
And being from the Midwestourselves, I think that that is
one of the myths that getsperpetuated about US history
writ large, but specifically theCivil War era, or civil rights
movement era.
That it's somehow North is thegood guy, south is the bad guy.
And just how that myth props upso much.
(28:11):
It makes it so hard to see theways that white women in the
North are being really awful andnot helpful at all, you know?
Elizabeth McCrae (28:19):
When I think it tends to create a single Jim
Crow regime rather than multipleones in multiple places.
That racial segregation andwhite supremacist politics
doesn't have to work the sameway.
Every place.
And I think it, I didn't makethat point as forcefully as I
think I've thought about itlater, but There's different
(28:42):
ways that that works.
And the anti busing was a momentthat sort of blew up some of
those ways.
That you could see into the deepinvestment that had manifest
itself differently.
Katy (28:55):
For what it's worth, I think you make that point pretty
clearly.
I mean, I thi, I mean, I,because I think you also make
the point that if victory forthem meant maintaining deur
segregation, then they wouldn'thave been so effective, but
because they were able to be somutable and portable that that's
(29:18):
what has.
Helped things
Mandy (29:20):
There were victories everywhere.
Elizabeth McCrae (29:22):
Right, right, right, right.
Right.
Mandy (29:25):
Yeah.
That's one of the otherquestions we had is has it
surprised you?
'cause this came out in 2018,right?
And we're now, seven years outfrom that, and I feel like this
past seven years has just beenan incredible resurgence of a
lot of the same tactics thatthese women used at that point
in time.
Did that surprise you?
(29:45):
Did you see.
Did it stand out more to you ordid it not surprise you where
you were like, of course, thisis like our MO.
Elizabeth McCrae (29:52):
I think it, unlike Katie, it took me a long,
like this, my book, I have itwritten another book, and I
spent a long time on it and I,and I wrote a lot of it during
the Obama presidency, right?
Where a lot of the conversationwas about a post-racial society
(30:12):
when I was like,
Katy (30:13):
hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (30:13):
Oh my gosh, no one's gonna believe this.
Like, we're moving on no one'sgonna, and so then it comes out
goes to press in late 2016 orwhatever comes out in 2018.
And I think the world's adifferent place.
And I probably was more attuned.
I mean, we had, a series ofelections, even at the state
(30:35):
level and the headlines keptsaying 82% of white women voted
for, voted didn't vote forStacey Abrams, and X percent
voted for Roy Moore and.
And there's this notion ofsurprise, and I'm like, we have
to stop being surprised, right?
There's overwhelming evidence.
(30:56):
I could still be doing research.
I mean, I think I love doingarchival research and every
place I went, I found anequivalent of Florence Schillers
Ogden, or Nell Battle Lewis, orCornelia.
I kept finding these people andat some point, how many of them
do I have to find right beforeI, like, I'd still be in the
(31:17):
archives,?
And my dean's like, uh, writethe book.
Stop doing this.
So I think, for me, probablydoing that work, I'm like, how
can we still be surprised?
How can we still be surprisedthey've been doing this work?
They've not been shy about itsince the 19th century.
Mandy (31:36):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (31:37):
Well, and if we look at Stephanie Jones
Rogers, even before that, right?
Right.
Mandy (31:41):
right.
Yep.
Katy (31:42):
think it is like a great ma, like a great, in a creepy
sense magic act because, whenyou look back intentionally to
look at it, it's so obvious anddense and thick, but it's like
this thicket of weeds that it,unless you know to look for it,
they're able to hide in plainsight and I leverage the sexism
(32:03):
against them or whatever it is,that they're able to make it
seem like there's nothing to seehere, and yet it's like they're
the dust that we think must meanthere's nothing there is
actually just being kicked up byall their energy and it's
actually
Elizabeth McCrae (32:18):
That's a really good metaphor.
Katy (32:20):
Ugh.
I, these women.
I think about it a lot.
Elizabeth McCrae (32:23):
Well, I think it's also who we imagine white
supremacists actors to be.
Katy (32:29):
yeah.
Elizabeth McCrae (32:30):
And we imagine them as these sort of loud male
public figures.
The sort of George Wallace writlarge or Bull Connor and
Birmingham, and they've taken upso much space and not that they
shouldn't, they're worth talkingabout, but I think they've
clouded, all the work being doneon the ground.
(32:52):
And you, I mean, I don't know ifyou grew up in a, like I always
tell my students, if you wantsomething done at a church, do
you go to the minister or do yougo to the church secretary who's
likely a woman
Mandy (33:03):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (33:04):
in the Protestant south?
And um, and
Katy (33:08):
Oh, it's so different in the Catholic North.
Let me tell.
Yeah.
Elizabeth McCrae (33:11):
They're like, you go, you go to the church
ladies.
I said, politics works that way,right?
They're talking, but thesepeople are doing such.
Critical work for segregationand white supremacy on the
ground.
Mandy (33:25):
Yeah.
It even to the point where itseemed like they were frustrated
with their male counterparts fornot moving it along enough.
They're like, okay, you guys areworthless.
Let's
Elizabeth McCrae (33:35):
Yeah.
Mandy (33:36):
move out of the way.
Elizabeth McCrae (33:38):
you're so less principled white supremacists,
like, we're the real ones, we'recommitted and we don't get
political perks for ourprincipled stance
Mandy (33:48):
thought that was a really
Elizabeth McCrae (33:50):
I was really surprised by that, you know?
Katy (33:53):
But I coming from a socialized education background.
I think that's one of theconsequences of the dominant
narrative and the way it getstaught in schools is, again, it
provides cover for these womenbecause we're never talking
about that.
That's just not.
They're not even characters inat all.
And the way that, let's take ushistory is typically taught is
(34:15):
by eras that are usually linkedto wars or presidential
administrations.
And that if you're taking thatlens too, it's almost impossible
to see these stories emergebecause they were intentionally
not connected to politicalparties.
That was fascinating to me how,they were so committed to the
ideology.
Right?
And you know, we keeprecommending this book to people
(34:37):
over and over, like, if you wantto understand this current
moment, this is essentialreading.
Because one of the big takeawaysfor me wasn't that white women
are shitty'cause that's whatwe're here for.
And we understand like that partof it didn't surprise us.
But what has confounded merecently is why this set of
issues, like why is MAGA soagainst the UN and why are
(35:01):
people really mad about fluoridein the water and what, I could
not believe the bundle of issuesthat has confused me as to why
is that the bundle?
And of course the answer iswhite sre.
You know, at the end of the dayshouldn't be surprised that
that's somewhere in there.
But that was so illuminating to,to piece together this current
(35:21):
political moment of, we don'ttrust the mainstream media where
white Christian nationalists, wehate unicef, we hate the un, we
like we all these things thatseem disconnected or even like
incongruent.
But when you twist it to look atit through the stories of these
women, it's like b ba, b ba pop.
It just all lines up and itmakes so much sense.
(35:42):
It's,
Elizabeth McCrae (35:43):
Yeah.
And I didn't imagine that the UNwould show up when I first
started, right?
Like I wanted to know.
Why is it with all these amazingpeople working for a more
equitable world, and racial andsocial justice, why is it we
can't move?
And my answer became white womenon the ground.
I mean, it's not the wholeanswer, but that was my answer,
(36:05):
so I was surprised when the UNcame up
Katy (36:08):
hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (36:09):
and then I was really surprised when the
fluoride came back around waslike, that seemed even a little
fringe in the early sixties, andnow I'm like, oh my gosh,
really?
That was unexpected for
Mandy (36:25):
Yeah, there are questions.
Katie and I sat in high schoolhistory classes right next to
each other for our whole highschool career.
And
Katy (36:33):
I wish we had the notes we passed back and forth.
Still.
Maybe you have
Mandy (36:36):
great
Elizabeth McCrae (36:37):
Oh, that would be awesome.
Mandy (36:38):
It would be so great.
And we had one history teacherthat, oh man, was he a trip?
We got in some arguments withhim.
But we look at each other whilewe're learning these histories
and we're like, we didn't getthis.
Like this was, this was nevertaught.
This was never part of it.
So when we started doing, Ican't remember which topic it
was we were talking about, butone of the things we were really
(36:58):
interested in is when did theallegiance to the Democratic
party of that time then switchto the Republican party?
And how did the Republican partyof today become today's
Republican party?
Where did all of that occur?
What were the cogs in themachine that turned that?
And when we read those chaptersin your book, we were just like.
(37:20):
The answer, here's the answer.
This like,
Katy (37:23):
Mm-hmm
Mandy (37:24):
is where things happened and it's was never taught in
mainstream education.
And that's why I think thatpiece and so many other pieces
that we're just like, thisreally should be required
reading.
Like we want everyone, you can'tgo any further in any sort of
politics, work, advocacy withoutunderstanding this history.
(37:44):
It's so important, I think.
Elizabeth McCrae (37:46):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (37:46):
not be surprised anymore, like you said, because that's
not useful.
That's a waste of our time to besurprised by this.
And then to also.
Understand and anticipate andthen learn how to disrupt the
efforts like the Moms forLiberty group.
That's basically just anotheriteration of these other ones.
Or, you know, sometimes wearen't opposed to the technique
(38:08):
they're using.
We just hate the ends to whichthey're using this technique.
But we actually think that,those of us who are committed to
racial justice and, a more justequitable loving, sustainable
world, like, okay, maybe we needus a contest, maybe we need,
newsletters and all thesethings.
And one of the things we keepsaying is just how there,
(38:30):
there's a certain built inadvantage.
To the work that these women aretrying to accomplish.
Because when you don't careabout humanity, you can move
faster.
And when you are trying toadvocate for exploiting people,
you can exploit people in orderto advocate that, and you don't
lose any sleep over it,?
So there are these shortcutsthat they can take, and I think
(38:51):
our systems are so entrenchedthat, it's hard to transform
them or it's hard to evenimagine what could look
different when this has been,how it's been for so long.
So I think there's some uphillbattle, but like, no question
which side of history, I want mygreat grandkids to open a book
and not see me in like this
Elizabeth McCrae (39:12):
Right, right,
Katy (39:12):
chapter 12 of the edition of this book.
Um.
Elizabeth McCrae (39:17):
Yeah.
Katy (39:17):
Do you ever find yourself, especially given the politics
that we're currently living inthinking about lessons you
learned or what you took awaypersonally, I like, I guess in
some way the question might beeven deeper.
Like, did this change youfundamentally to learn about
(39:37):
this history and to write aboutit?
Did it make you more cynical?
Did it make you more committed?
Did it make you motherdifferently?
Like just you were in the thickof it for so long and still are
Elizabeth McCrae (39:50):
I think, yeah, it changed me.
I mean, I think the wholeprocess of.
I love going to school, right?
And so I've just almost neverleft.
So I think the whole process oflearning for me and then
learning this made me think sohard about how I wanted to
support public education andwhat I wanted my children to,
(40:14):
what overt lessons had to betaught But in a larger, am I
cynical?
Well, probably, but, I try notto be.
Sometimes people say like, doyou have any hope when you
finish?
And I was like, it took a lot ofdamn work to do this.
they were working all the time.
And they were policing thestories people told and the
(40:34):
schools and local politics andthe garden club and like they
were at it.
So there's so many places, Ithink to intervene to disrupt
it.
And you don't have to have anational
Katy (40:50):
hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (40:50):
did it where they were and they made national
networks.
But are you using the tools ofthe oppressors?
if we do some of the thing, samethings they do, but disrupt it.
If it takes so much work tosustain it, how much work do you
actually have to do?
How many cuts do you have tomake before it falls apart?
Mandy (41:12):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (41:13):
Um, and that is probably rose colored
glasses,
Katy (41:16):
But it's worth trying.
You know, it, it's worth, it'sworth remembering that I think,
especially for white women, likeyou talk about being a white
woman who's pregnant.
I mean, that's like, oh, theparagon of virtue walking in
somewhere, and just the like,what, what power that has to
kind of incognito, enter spacesand fuck'em up.
(41:39):
Like what would it mean to showup?
Like I, I thought for a secondabout Mandy, maybe I'll remember
this part, where there werewomen who would like go
undercover to the progressivegroups and like write down
everybody's license plates.
And I was like, God, can Istomach sitting through a Mom's
for Liberty meme?
But I kind of wanna do it, Ithink really important to
remember that the lack ofresistance or people not calling
(42:04):
out like, you can't do thatanymore, clerk.
That's not your job.
You can't fill that form outthat way.
Or
Elizabeth McCrae (42:10):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (42:11):
All, those little moments of pushback are certainly not
going to help their project.
Maybe it won't derail itentirely, but if it's death by a
thousand cuts that that's howthey're having their success,
then that has to be
Elizabeth McCrae (42:24):
Right.
Katy (42:25):
what's on the resistant side.
Elizabeth McCrae (42:26):
Yeah.
I mean, I think the other thingsit's made me suspicious of any
organization that has likeconstitution in it, like the
women for Constitutionalgovernment monster.
I mean, I tell my students, I'mlike, when you see a title like
that, you have to start looking
Mandy (42:42):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (42:43):
because it doesn't necessarily mean what
you think it means.
And so I was wary of that.
And I'm also, I think, wary orconscious of when motherhood is
deployed in ways that seemmoral, but are really political.
Like how motherhood, being amom, performs a lot of political
(43:07):
work for certain groups, andthat the class dynamics and
racial dynamics that areembedded in that are oh, I'm a
mom.
I'm doing this for the good ofmy children.
Well, I think that's what bleedsinto the next project on School
Choice.
Like how the deployment ofcertain rights for certain
(43:28):
mothers or parents has overcomeand clouded that there's a whole
group who've been, are beingdenied those rights or multiple
groups that are being denied.
Certain parents' choices mattermore than other parent choices.
And that comes straight out ofthe Post Brown era?
I mean, straight out of how arewe gonna get around integrated
(43:50):
schools.
I'm not saying it's the samenow, but I think the roots of it
seem
Mandy (43:55):
for sure.
Like it's not
Katy (43:57):
don't know that.
Mandy (43:58):
It's really not.
So is that your next project.
Is it gonna be somethingsimilar?
Is it another book you'relooking at publishing?
Elizabeth McCrae (44:06):
I hope I live long enough.
But, um, I think, so I am reallyinterested in sort of how school
and parental choice has beenshaped and deployed.
I don't know exactly, I sort ofstarted at the end, so I don't
know what that will look like.
And I'm also just nowconsidering have I said this out
(44:30):
loud?
I don't think I've said this outloud.
Go into a couple things thissummer being a fan girl.
Kim Crenshaw in the AfricanAmerican Policy Forum, and
they've been talking a lotracial fascism and all the women
I wrote about were not fascists,but I think Mary Dawson Kane
Mandy (44:49):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (44:49):
was maybe, she comes the closest and when I was
writing the book I wanted thesort of everydayness, and this
is your neighbor doing this workto come through.
These aren't like multi-headedwhite supremacist hydras, that
you can pick out.
(45:10):
But some of this stuff that Kanedid was a lot further to the
right than.
Not necessarily her racial pal,but the world she lived in.
Where she was in that, she wasin a far right world then.
So I've thought about like, isnow the moment to think about
doing something with her, giventhe sort of questions that we
(45:35):
might ask about the politicallandscape today?
I don't know.
I don't know that I wanna spendthat much time with her, but I
That's just popped into my head,Over the past couple weeks
thinking about how and this isnot my idea.
This comes really from KimCrenshaw and Carol Anderson and.
(45:56):
Talking about racial fascism andhow it has manifested itself
historically in the UnitedStates.
And so I've been thinking aboutthat since July.
And she is a person that seemsto keep looping back too.
Katy (46:11):
We interviewed, Jesse Daniels, who is a sociologist
who writes about nice whiteladies, a really great book
also.
And she spent a lot of timeonline in far right, hate group
like the Klan, but for ladies,kind of groups.
And I remember us asking herlike, oh, do you just, come
home, take a shower, and justtry to get your heebie-jeebies
(46:33):
out.
Like how do you try not get tooclose in a way that you are able
to stay tethered and grounded,when you're reading through all
these, but maybe that's not eventhe right question to ask
because that is the malu thatpeople have to live in and can't
exit it ever.
So it's just part of being insolidarity and doing the work
(46:56):
that needs to be done.
I wish we had more scholarsdoing the work that you and a
handful of others are doing.
If you could like, assemble ateam or, or kind of direct
people, like here are a wholebunch of other.
(47:16):
Places that need excavating withthis particular lens.
What would you want to seepeople asking about studying in
terms of deepening ourunderstanding, our ability to
document and witness and callout the work that white women
have been doing for so long inthe United States.
Elizabeth McCrae (47:36):
I think there's certainly a lot of work
to be done post 19 74, 75.
And the landscape does change,pretty significantly with the
rise of the religious right.
As a political force.
And so I, I'd be curious howthat manifests itself.
I mean, I think we see like adeep dive into that,?
Among communities of sort ofwhite women, I think there's a
(47:59):
lot of local or geographicallylittle tighter studies that
could be done that paint is somebroad brushes, but show how it
works in places.
I mean, Pasadena kept coming upin LA right?
In this book, and MichelleNickerson has written about
this, some of those people inour earlier period, or right
(48:20):
around World War ii.
But I think.
It's helpful to think about howthose systems have been
maintained at a sort of morelocal level.
And how the resistance to thebrown decision manifests itself
in particular places.
Because I wonder if we wouldn'tfind a group of actors that has
then shifted the politics ofthat place in subsequent
(48:43):
generations.
If we could draw lines through,I'm not sure, but I think that's
worth doing too.
Mandy (48:51):
curious, kind of taking off from those lines, since you
are a professor and you areworking with students, college
age students, I'm alwayswondering.
What the youth of today arereally thinking and doing and do
we have like people coming upwho care about this as
passionately who want to getinto that kind of thing?
(49:12):
And especially being in thesouth,
Katy (49:14):
Hmm.
Mandy (49:14):
what, what do you see in your students?
Like, do you have hope?
Do you,
Elizabeth McCrae (49:18):
Yes, I do have hope
Mandy (49:20):
okay.
Elizabeth McCrae (49:21):
if their brains don't disintegrate on
TikTok.
I have hope.
I mean, again, I think there's,college age students doing
amazing, things.
I keep coming back to thissummer in Nashville, the
Democracy defenders, but likeJustin Jones from Tennessee and
the sort of youth that he hasgathered, that are doing all
(49:45):
kinds of work all over theplace.
And I was, sounds like I'm namedropping, but I was talking to,
I had emailed Carol, I'm,
Mandy (49:54):
Yeah.
Elizabeth McCrae (49:55):
emailed, um, Carol Anderson the other day to
ask
Katy (50:00):
Hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (50:00):
for some help.
Like, I'm working on this classon reconstruction and I was
like, can I come pick yourbrain?
And she's like, my students areon fire.
Right.
So I do think that, there's alot of hope and I think they're
rightly so.
They're pretty pissed that we'veleft them a world that.
Seems, really problematic.
(50:21):
So I think there is, and I findeven across the political
spectrum, I mean, not on the farends, but like caring about
things that our central to theirlives and what they believe in
that aren't really representedby the political discourse that
we have today.
(50:41):
So yeah.
I'm hopeful.
Katy (50:43):
I think there's something to be said too for when these
things are, like all the quietparts are said out loud kind of
moment.
That of course is painful andviolent and hurting people and
you know, that's needs to stop.
But there's, there is somethingabout that that actually can be
empowering too.
(51:04):
Like it's pretty obvious, therereally isn't any subtlety to any
of this right now.
And I, I wonder as things.
Escalate as those efforts, moveeven from far right into
authoritarianism or
Elizabeth McCrae (51:23):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Katy (51:25):
and the ways, like I'm thinking about, Mandy and I
talked about this a coupleepisodes ago, like the bargain
that some of these women made toshift to a more colorblind,
conversational approach
Elizabeth McCrae (51:38):
This is strategy?
I mean, a well articulatedstrategy.
Katy (51:42):
and maybe this is me being naively like I am the more
naively optimistic, one of thetwo of us and I have run since
we were 12.
But I, I do wonder if thatdecision bought them time, but
if there isn't something in thatdecision to go that way, that
also is exploitable because, atsome point people bought in.
(52:04):
Like I'm thinking people in myown family who.
Are appalled at what'shappening, but have voted
Republican their whole livesand, are like really disoriented
and kind of piecing thingstogether.
But they were lulled by thatcolorblind language and now
they're recognizing that that'swhat it was.
And they're, they are distancingthemselves from that community.
(52:25):
So I wonder as things get moreexplicit and get more on the
surface and this agenda that'sso extremist, although not the
exception in the United States,it's like always been there.
Um, again, maybe that's naivelyoptimistic of me, but there's
part of me that, hopes that likeas they kind of commented their.
Elizabeth McCrae (52:49):
Mm-hmm.
Katy (52:49):
Power that that's sort of their undoing because people are
like, no, not, not that, butmay.
Maybe again, maybe this is me,and she's chuckling from her
grave like, oh, you areunderestimating the white
supremacy.
That is
Elizabeth McCrae (53:02):
I think, you know, there are people that are
gonna work at it and are workingat it, but you know, there's
also, I don't know, I thinkabout students like they think
they should be safe when they goto school, wherever they are on
the political spectrum, most of'em don't think you should go to
jail for the possession ofmarijuana?
Mandy (53:21):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (53:22):
I think the racial politics are.
Are more fraught for sure.
Or the racist politics.
'cause I think there, there'sbeen so much work done to shape
those.
But, I don't wanna speak for, Idon't think most of our students
would say, oh, what really asegregated society is what we
should return to.
(53:42):
I mean, they could use someeducation, but couldn't we all I
think we're no different thanthat.
But
Mandy (53:48):
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth McCrae (53:48):
I think the color blindness the mask has
been pulled off of that, I thinkin this moment, I just can't
imagine that discourse works.
But I think we have to becareful of what discourse comes
next.
Katy (53:59):
Oh, you just gave me goosebumps and like,
Mandy (54:04):
Yeah.
Katy (54:04):
That was actually a question.
We were thinking of each chapteras like part one of the horror
movie, part two of the horrormovie, and, maybe now is the
grand final.
Like again, maybe it's not,maybe it doesn't have that sort
of buildup, but is there becauseyou do such a great job at
showing at how it doesn't evolveorganically, but these mutations
(54:27):
are being engineered to protectthese systems.
That's gonna keep, like peopleare gonna keep trying to mutate
it to engineer.
What would you have us watchingfor?
Or knowing these women well, andtheir, what their legacies are,
what would you be suspicious ofor watching for?
Elizabeth McCrae (54:45):
Well, you know, I like being a historian
'cause I don't have to.
Be knowledge, like super, youknow, it's different than being
a political s who's commentingon what's happening now.
But I do think we both shouldreform institutions and also
protect those that havedemocratic possibilities.
When an institution comes undersuch fire that we gotta think
(55:07):
about what's the story behindthat, right?
Do all institutions haveproblems for sure?
But which ones can be in pursuitof democracy and humanity and
equality and can be reformed.
And I think sometimes theattacks are the loudest on ones
that have that potential even ifit has not been met.
(55:28):
And then I think we have to lookfor political discourses that
cloud political realities Whichcolorblindness did family values
did.
Um, that seem to be politicallyneutral and are not politically
neutral.
Mandy (55:44):
Yep.
Great places to start.
There's so much underneath allof those.
Elizabeth McCrae (55:48):
Or we could retreat and binge watch, you
know, whatever, something tolike.
Mandy (55:54):
we're leaning into the both and that's what we talked
about earlier today, binge watchNetflix, go to your PTA
meetings.
You gotta, you gotta do both.
Well, we're so thankful that youwould spend time talking to us.
We always say, we don't know whypeople say yes to us.
We're so grateful that they do.
Elizabeth McCrae (56:11):
well, I'm so grateful to be asked.
Thank you so much.
Mandy (56:15):
Anyone who's been listening, who's been reading
along with us, if you weretrying to think of, the next
birthday present you get foryour friend or, holidays, just
push this book out to everyone,not even subtly.
Just demand that people lookinto this history and know more
about it.
Start your own book clubs.
I think it's really important.
(56:36):
To discuss these issues, notjust to read it and know it for
yourself.
Katie and I learned so much justtalking to each other from it
and, we love talking to all ofthe people that come on and it
helps
Elizabeth McCrae (56:47):
Well, thank you.
Yeah.
Mandy (56:48):
that.
Elizabeth McCrae (56:49):
Thank you so much.
Yes.
And if you ever have otherquestions, I'm happy to answer
emails from people, if you havequestions or,
Mandy (56:57):
Okay,
Elizabeth McCrae (56:58):
and I'm so glad to know about you now, so I
can put you on my podcast list.
Yeah,
Katy (57:04):
Well, we can't wait to read your next book or article
or whatever comes out.
I think school choice for me isdefinitely a place to fight and
to be super aware of.
That's one of those cloudinglanguage, like who's gonna be
anti it just sounds like, oh, ofcourse you want people to have
choice or parental rights orwhatever it is.
But just how, how that's usedinto what ends And, um, just
(57:28):
yeah.
Appreciate your work so much andwhat
Elizabeth McCrae (57:31):
you have ideas, either of you, please
send them my way.
Thank you so much.
Mandy (57:35):
Thank you.
Elizabeth McCrae (57:37):
you too.
Bye bye.
Popular Podcasts
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.