May 12, 2025 • 11 mins
Sinners isn’t just a vampire story, it’s a mirror. Set in Jim Crow Mississippi, it sinks its teeth into the real horrors Black folks faced: chain gangs, racial passing, and survival by any means. And it doesn’t stop there, Mississippi’s Chinese communities had their own battles, caught between exclusion and uneasy alliances.
Join us for Part 2 of my breakdown of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners
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Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2025/apr/21/sinners-ryan-coogler-black-experience-horror https://www.theverge.com/2025/4/17/25058542/sinners-ryan-coogler-movie-review-vampires-horror https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Delta_blues&oldid=1285841739 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Juke_joint&oldid=1286491315 https://slate.com/culture/2025/04/sinners-movie-ryan-coogler-vampires-villains-white-supremacy-review.html https://www.indiewire.com/features/interviews/ryan-coogler-sinners-origins-uncle-james-personal-1235090002/
Music Licenses:
Achaidh Cheide - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/one-mic-black-history--4557850/support.
Join us for Part 2 of my breakdown of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners
Audio Onemichistory.com
Follow me on Instagram: @onemic_history
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/onemichistory
Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Onemichistory
Please support our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=25697914
Buy me a Coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Countryboi2m
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2025/apr/21/sinners-ryan-coogler-black-experience-horror https://www.theverge.com/2025/4/17/25058542/sinners-ryan-coogler-movie-review-vampires-horror https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Delta_blues&oldid=1285841739 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Juke_joint&oldid=1286491315 https://slate.com/culture/2025/04/sinners-movie-ryan-coogler-vampires-villains-white-supremacy-review.html https://www.indiewire.com/features/interviews/ryan-coogler-sinners-origins-uncle-james-personal-1235090002/
Music Licenses:
Achaidh Cheide - Celtic by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/one-mic-black-history--4557850/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brian Coogloys. Centers isn't simply another core story. It is
a powerful revelation of America's real life monsters. For instance,
beneath Mississippi's corching son, Jim Crow's brutal realities transformed chain
gangs into horrific scenes of racial cruelty. In another scene,
(00:21):
the harsh realities forced Black communities into desperate measures, including
the painful practice of racial passing. And at the same time,
Mississippi's local Chinese community quietly faced their own struggles with
the conclusion, marginalization and the complex relationship with their Black neighbors.
(00:41):
So join us today for part two of our breakdown
of the Black experience from the movie Centers. And if
you like stories like this, you can find more stories
like this at one michistory dot com if you're like
all your only episodes, and you can find our podcast
wherever you get your podcasts. But without further ado Le's
get started. The horror film Centers is not just a
(01:04):
typical scary movie. It is a story deeply rooted in
the black experience. In my first breakdown, I didn't get
to fully explore all of the ways this film connects.
Specifically to our history and our struggles. So I decided
today to create another episode where I dive just a
bit deeper. One of the most haunting and powerful moments
(01:27):
in Siners is when Delta Slim shares a traumatic pass
as a prisoner on a Mississippi chain gang. This brief
and stark ignission carries immense weight, and it's not just
physical but deeply emotional, revealing a unseen scars of Jim
Crow's relentless cruelty. Chain gangs were never simply about punishment.
(01:47):
They were a calculated exploitation, a twisted reincarnation of slavery itself.
Black codes and systemic efforts criminalize African Americans, deliberately funneling
them into prisons where their bodies were reclaimed for forced labor.
Shackled together and forced into relentless physical toll, prisoners performed
(02:08):
the humiliating convict shuffle, and with each exhausting step a
visual representation of oppression the irons toward their flesh. They
created swollen, infected shackle stores and left their limbs permanently scarred.
Yet beyond the physical tournament, the psychological devastation was equally crippling.
(02:31):
With every movement dictated and every ounce of dignity stolen.
Yet these chain gangs were insanely profitable. Changgangs reduced the
cost dramatically for Southern governments funding roads, bridges, and infrastructure
built on black suffering. White politicians boasted proudly of their
(02:51):
tough justice, using racial violence to boast their popularity and
elevate themselves politically. Changgangs reinforced a system of intimidation and
racial hierarchy, visually reminding black communities in anyone who challenged
the white power structure that oppression is institutionalized, persistent, and merciless.
(03:11):
Yet by the nineteen fifties, public outrage and mounting activism
finally forced changgangs into decline, though their threat never truly faded.
Even today proposals periodical reservice in states like Alabama and
Arizona to revive this grotesque system under the guise of
being tough on crime. Yet beyond overt violence and oppression,
(03:36):
like Changay's, systemic racism often operates subtly, compelling black individuals
into a painful personal sacrifice. Centers highlights this in the
movie Through the Tragic Legacy of racial passing. In an
era where black life constantly faced the struggles of segregation,
economic violence, and literal lynchings, racial passing sometime seemed as
(04:00):
the only viable escape. This is seen vividly through Mary
stax complicated love interests, who confides to him that her
grandfather was half black, and because of that, she passes
through life as white. Her story exposes passing as a
survival strategy for those with the correct features. For Mary
(04:22):
and her grandfather, entry into whiteness meant safety, but it
also came at an unbearable cost, permanent exile from your
family and community heritage in your identity. Mary embodies this
wound with her attachment to Stack and the Juke Joint
in showcasing her internal weight of concealment and the aching
sorrow for in identity loss. This survival tactic isn't new,
(04:46):
though it reaches all the way back to the very
beginning of slavery. Light skin enslaved individuals sometimes risk everything
to adopt white personas to free bondage and escape perpetual
violence take time. Thomas Jefferson and his enslaved concubine Sally Hemmings,
who had three children together and after they were emancipated,
(05:07):
they would vanish into whiteness, exchanging their authentic heritage for
the safety of anonymity. As years passed, slavery would transform
into the rigid restrictions of Jim Crow. Passing would turn
into a survival tool. In the bustling cities of the
Great Migration North, the promises of a new identity scene alluring.
(05:29):
Stack even sharply notes this illustration when he states that
Chicago ate nothing but Mississippi with tall buildings. Indeed, these
cities were supposed to be a refuge and a chance
at a new identity, and passing in these city seemed
less like permanent exile and more like an exhausting daily
masquerade for employment, education, and basic dignity. Through the complexities
(05:54):
of passing, some individuals do rise to the top, like
Walter Francis White, a fair skin NAACP investigator who infiltrated
Lynch mobs undetected due to his whiteness, expertly leveraging his
racial ambiguity as a radical form of resistance. Yet the
brutal costs of benefit analysis still lingered in White himself,
(06:17):
who described the oppressive weight of navigating this dangerous tightrope,
and he himself was even called a black man living
in a white body, but with then sinners. Cougar skillfully
portrays not only the black experience like passing and chain gangs,
but he also tells a often overlook story of the
(06:38):
Mississippi Chinese community through Bow and Grace, shopkeepers who navigate
this complex racial landscape. Initially, the Mississippi Chinese were brought
here to of the Americas as labor replacement full emancipated
black folks. Yet when they got here, these Chinese immigrants
found themselves in a racial middle ground, neither fully accepted
as white nor integrated into black communities. By the eighteen seventies,
(07:03):
they had transitioned from plantation to small grocery stores, establishing
a quiet yet significant space of economic and communal and
of action, all the while picking up a Southern accent.
Bo and Grace's grocery symbolizes this delicate position of the
Mississippi Chinese, simultaneously a refuge and a reminder of their
(07:25):
outsider status. Cougar emphasizes how white supremacy strategically separates marginalized groups,
fostering isolation to maintain control. Yet he reveals subtle, meaningful
solidarity between communities. Bo and Grace's genuine friendship with Smoke
and Stack moves beyond pure business and highlights an understanding
(07:49):
that built through shared hardship and depicting Bo and Grace,
Kugler recovers the largely forgotten experience of Mississippi's Chinese Americans
and under school is a broader truth of fresh and
thries to marginalized communities remain divided, and it weakens through connection,
friendship and is shared struggle, but beyond imprisonment, exclusion, and
(08:14):
painful disguises. Perhaps cooglest most chisling metaphor emerges through the charismatic,
villain reemic rhemic echoes historic cult like manipulators like Jim Jones,
leaders who preyed upon the genuine aspirations and vulnerabilities of
the black community. Jim Jones notoriously promised safety, belonging, and
(08:34):
emancipation from racial terror, only to exploit and ultimately destroy
his own followers. The nineteen seventy eight Jamestown massacred claimed
over nine hundred lies, most of them being black parishioners
desperately seeking community and liberation and dignity and just like
Jim Jones, Rhemiic Too seduces through charisma, promising empowerment while
(08:56):
secretly feeding off their hopes and dreams. Juke Join it
wants a haven for black culture, becomes twisted into a
site that mirrors the horrors of Jamestown. Sinister transformation under remis,
vampiric obsession, desires for emancipation become tools for exploitation, spiritual
(09:17):
hunger weaponized to subjugate minds, bodies, and souls through remixed,
calculated cruelty, Coogler employers viewers not to look away, but
instead to recognize how timeless, persistent exploitation remains today. The
film insists that its charismatic promises of safety and salvation,
devoid of genuine care and authentic liberation, represent America's enduring
(09:42):
legacy of racial predation. In the end, Sinners is not
simply a narrative about supernatural horrors. It compels uncomfortable reckoning
with America's actual racial terrorists and their long lasting effects.
Through Delta, Slim's chains, Mary's white passing Bow, and grace,
careful negotiation of their own identity, and remix chilling charisma,
(10:06):
the film intricately weaves a tapestry of historical truths that
demand understanding, reflection, and encourage. Koglar brilliantly frames these intertwining
oppressions not as relatives of a long time ago, but
an urgent, living, breathing truths permeating today's struggle. By examining
how those truths haunt both our history and our present,
(10:29):
the film instructs us plainly to acknowledge these tragedies and
reckon courageously with America's patent realities. Thank you. This has
been one of my Black History I'm the host, country Boy.
This episode didn't really follow the plot Black Episode one.
I still thought that these bits and pieces of the
(10:50):
black experience deserve to be talked about, and they all
kind of ended up as individual pieces that all tie
together back to Senators instead of something that just follow
the plot like the original episode. Yet, I hope that
you enjoyed it as much as I enjoy making it. Additionally,
if you like more episodes like this, or you want
to listen to episode one, you can find that at
(11:11):
one microhistory dot com. If you like to support the channel,
you could do someone buy me coffee Patreon page in
the description below. If it's like audio only episodes, you
can find my podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And
I like to think all my financial contributors. Without you,
none of this could be possible. And I love you all. Peace,
Brian Coogloys. Centers isn't simply another core story. It is
a powerful revelation of America's real life monsters. For instance,
beneath Mississippi's corching son, Jim Crow's brutal realities transformed chain
gangs into horrific scenes of racial cruelty. In another scene,
(00:21):
the harsh realities forced Black communities into desperate measures, including
the painful practice of racial passing. And at the same time,
Mississippi's local Chinese community quietly faced their own struggles with
the conclusion, marginalization and the complex relationship with their Black neighbors.
(00:41):
So join us today for part two of our breakdown
of the Black experience from the movie Centers. And if
you like stories like this, you can find more stories
like this at one michistory dot com if you're like
all your only episodes, and you can find our podcast
wherever you get your podcasts. But without further ado Le's
get started. The horror film Centers is not just a
(01:04):
typical scary movie. It is a story deeply rooted in
the black experience. In my first breakdown, I didn't get
to fully explore all of the ways this film connects.
Specifically to our history and our struggles. So I decided
today to create another episode where I dive just a
bit deeper. One of the most haunting and powerful moments
(01:27):
in Siners is when Delta Slim shares a traumatic pass
as a prisoner on a Mississippi chain gang. This brief
and stark ignission carries immense weight, and it's not just
physical but deeply emotional, revealing a unseen scars of Jim
Crow's relentless cruelty. Chain gangs were never simply about punishment.
(01:47):
They were a calculated exploitation, a twisted reincarnation of slavery itself.
Black codes and systemic efforts criminalize African Americans, deliberately funneling
them into prisons where their bodies were reclaimed for forced labor.
Shackled together and forced into relentless physical toll, prisoners performed
(02:08):
the humiliating convict shuffle, and with each exhausting step a
visual representation of oppression the irons toward their flesh. They
created swollen, infected shackle stores and left their limbs permanently scarred.
Yet beyond the physical tournament, the psychological devastation was equally crippling.
(02:31):
With every movement dictated and every ounce of dignity stolen.
Yet these chain gangs were insanely profitable. Changgangs reduced the
cost dramatically for Southern governments funding roads, bridges, and infrastructure
built on black suffering. White politicians boasted proudly of their
(02:51):
tough justice, using racial violence to boast their popularity and
elevate themselves politically. Changgangs reinforced a system of intimidation and
racial hierarchy, visually reminding black communities in anyone who challenged
the white power structure that oppression is institutionalized, persistent, and merciless.
(03:11):
Yet by the nineteen fifties, public outrage and mounting activism
finally forced changgangs into decline, though their threat never truly faded.
Even today proposals periodical reservice in states like Alabama and
Arizona to revive this grotesque system under the guise of
being tough on crime. Yet beyond overt violence and oppression,
(03:36):
like Changay's, systemic racism often operates subtly, compelling black individuals
into a painful personal sacrifice. Centers highlights this in the
movie Through the Tragic Legacy of racial passing. In an
era where black life constantly faced the struggles of segregation,
economic violence, and literal lynchings, racial passing sometime seemed as
(04:00):
the only viable escape. This is seen vividly through Mary
stax complicated love interests, who confides to him that her
grandfather was half black, and because of that, she passes
through life as white. Her story exposes passing as a
survival strategy for those with the correct features. For Mary
(04:22):
and her grandfather, entry into whiteness meant safety, but it
also came at an unbearable cost, permanent exile from your
family and community heritage in your identity. Mary embodies this
wound with her attachment to Stack and the Juke Joint
in showcasing her internal weight of concealment and the aching
sorrow for in identity loss. This survival tactic isn't new,
(04:46):
though it reaches all the way back to the very
beginning of slavery. Light skin enslaved individuals sometimes risk everything
to adopt white personas to free bondage and escape perpetual
violence take time. Thomas Jefferson and his enslaved concubine Sally Hemmings,
who had three children together and after they were emancipated,
(05:07):
they would vanish into whiteness, exchanging their authentic heritage for
the safety of anonymity. As years passed, slavery would transform
into the rigid restrictions of Jim Crow. Passing would turn
into a survival tool. In the bustling cities of the
Great Migration North, the promises of a new identity scene alluring.
(05:29):
Stack even sharply notes this illustration when he states that
Chicago ate nothing but Mississippi with tall buildings. Indeed, these
cities were supposed to be a refuge and a chance
at a new identity, and passing in these city seemed
less like permanent exile and more like an exhausting daily
masquerade for employment, education, and basic dignity. Through the complexities
(05:54):
of passing, some individuals do rise to the top, like
Walter Francis White, a fair skin NAACP investigator who infiltrated
Lynch mobs undetected due to his whiteness, expertly leveraging his
racial ambiguity as a radical form of resistance. Yet the
brutal costs of benefit analysis still lingered in White himself,
(06:17):
who described the oppressive weight of navigating this dangerous tightrope,
and he himself was even called a black man living
in a white body, but with then sinners. Cougar skillfully
portrays not only the black experience like passing and chain gangs,
but he also tells a often overlook story of the
(06:38):
Mississippi Chinese community through Bow and Grace, shopkeepers who navigate
this complex racial landscape. Initially, the Mississippi Chinese were brought
here to of the Americas as labor replacement full emancipated
black folks. Yet when they got here, these Chinese immigrants
found themselves in a racial middle ground, neither fully accepted
as white nor integrated into black communities. By the eighteen seventies,
(07:03):
they had transitioned from plantation to small grocery stores, establishing
a quiet yet significant space of economic and communal and
of action, all the while picking up a Southern accent.
Bo and Grace's grocery symbolizes this delicate position of the
Mississippi Chinese, simultaneously a refuge and a reminder of their
(07:25):
outsider status. Cougar emphasizes how white supremacy strategically separates marginalized groups,
fostering isolation to maintain control. Yet he reveals subtle, meaningful
solidarity between communities. Bo and Grace's genuine friendship with Smoke
and Stack moves beyond pure business and highlights an understanding
(07:49):
that built through shared hardship and depicting Bo and Grace,
Kugler recovers the largely forgotten experience of Mississippi's Chinese Americans
and under school is a broader truth of fresh and
thries to marginalized communities remain divided, and it weakens through connection,
friendship and is shared struggle, but beyond imprisonment, exclusion, and
(08:14):
painful disguises. Perhaps cooglest most chisling metaphor emerges through the charismatic,
villain reemic rhemic echoes historic cult like manipulators like Jim Jones,
leaders who preyed upon the genuine aspirations and vulnerabilities of
the black community. Jim Jones notoriously promised safety, belonging, and
(08:34):
emancipation from racial terror, only to exploit and ultimately destroy
his own followers. The nineteen seventy eight Jamestown massacred claimed
over nine hundred lies, most of them being black parishioners
desperately seeking community and liberation and dignity and just like
Jim Jones, Rhemiic Too seduces through charisma, promising empowerment while
(08:56):
secretly feeding off their hopes and dreams. Juke Join it
wants a haven for black culture, becomes twisted into a
site that mirrors the horrors of Jamestown. Sinister transformation under remis,
vampiric obsession, desires for emancipation become tools for exploitation, spiritual
(09:17):
hunger weaponized to subjugate minds, bodies, and souls through remixed,
calculated cruelty, Coogler employers viewers not to look away, but
instead to recognize how timeless, persistent exploitation remains today. The
film insists that its charismatic promises of safety and salvation,
devoid of genuine care and authentic liberation, represent America's enduring
(09:42):
legacy of racial predation. In the end, Sinners is not
simply a narrative about supernatural horrors. It compels uncomfortable reckoning
with America's actual racial terrorists and their long lasting effects.
Through Delta, Slim's chains, Mary's white passing Bow, and grace,
careful negotiation of their own identity, and remix chilling charisma,
(10:06):
the film intricately weaves a tapestry of historical truths that
demand understanding, reflection, and encourage. Koglar brilliantly frames these intertwining
oppressions not as relatives of a long time ago, but
an urgent, living, breathing truths permeating today's struggle. By examining
how those truths haunt both our history and our present,
(10:29):
the film instructs us plainly to acknowledge these tragedies and
reckon courageously with America's patent realities. Thank you. This has
been one of my Black History I'm the host, country Boy.
This episode didn't really follow the plot Black Episode one.
I still thought that these bits and pieces of the
(10:50):
black experience deserve to be talked about, and they all
kind of ended up as individual pieces that all tie
together back to Senators instead of something that just follow
the plot like the original episode. Yet, I hope that
you enjoyed it as much as I enjoy making it. Additionally,
if you like more episodes like this, or you want
to listen to episode one, you can find that at
(11:11):
one microhistory dot com. If you like to support the channel,
you could do someone buy me coffee Patreon page in
the description below. If it's like audio only episodes, you
can find my podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And
I like to think all my financial contributors. Without you,
none of this could be possible. And I love you all. Peace,
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