September 18, 2020 • 10 mins
Holly and Tracy delve into the unverifiable parts of James Forten's life and the problematic idea of respectability. Tracy also talks about her geographical connection to the Lawson family murders which took place in 1929 and how that informed her knowledge about it as a teenager.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class. A production
of I Heart Radio, Hey and Happy Friday. Casual Friday
is here, and I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy Vie Wilson.
I feel like every day is Casual Friday in a
pandemic CADA kind of. UM. One of the things we
(00:25):
talked about this week was James Forton Ye, who we
talked about pretty openly in the episode, having been both
fairly convinced we must have talked about it before. Yeah,
I could find no evidence to support that. Nope, me neither,
which brings up an interesting thing, right, there is no
evidence for a lot of the aspects of his life
(00:47):
that people often talk about. UM. Kind of the biography
of him that that everybody really turns to is um
written by a woman named Julie Wynne. That biography is
titled A Gentleman of Color, and it's kind of like
the one that a lot of people reference, and her
research is really really amazing. UM. But she points out,
(01:10):
like what we know is kind of not ever through
primary source documents with him, because it appears most of
his papers were at some point destroyed, probably in a
property transfer or something. UM. But they're like kind of
put together from the writings of people that knew him
who say, oh, he told me this once, etcetera. And
one of the things that comes up all the time
(01:32):
when you're reading about him is he purchased the freedom
of enslaved people. But I it's a little tricky to
know if if that was really the case. Um. So,
if anybody was looking for that in the episode and
didn't get it or felt like kind of bummed that
they didn't hear about it, it's because if he did,
it was probably a little more indirect than we might think. Yeah,
(01:56):
he was so much a man about the letter of
the law. And really there are some things about his
writing even that troubles me because there is a certain
tone of uh, like a purity standard for black people
(02:16):
to be perfect, um and you know his thing is like, no,
you have to be this much better. So I don't
know if he would have actively participated in something like
that while he was also trying to lobby Congress to
do things. Um that is, it gets to be a
little bit tricky. And again we talked about it in
the episode. Right, this is contextualized at a time and
(02:37):
place when like those kinds of thoughts would not be
perceived quite the same way they are today. Obviously, there
is a problem to it. We don't know what he
was thinking, specifically, aside from his abolitionist writings that we have,
we don't have diaries, we don't have like personal notes
to really know what his logic flow was for the
(02:58):
way he presented certain ideas and thoughts. Even in his
thirteen pamphlet, the end of it is very almost apologetic
in tone, where he's like, I don't want to offend anybody.
I don't want to make anybody feel like I'm pointing
a finger, I'm blaming, Like we just we need to
fix all of this. But even though he has very
clearly outlined, well documented instances of complete disparity in how
(03:21):
people are treated and respected, so there is a weird
back and forth there with him. It's hard to parse
because again we're going off of very little actual source
material from him. So I just wanted to mention that
as people are reading things about him or studying him,
if they if they are inspired to do so, that
you keep that in mind. It's there can be some
(03:43):
tricky parts of his story that are are a little
bit um like I said, you know, it troubles me
a little bit because you hate to see it. Um. Yeah,
this idea of like you have to act right so
white people will treat you right, and it's like, wait, no,
they should have rights the end. That's that's always a problem. Again,
(04:04):
that's me working it out well, and so we've that's
something that has come up on the show relatively often
when we've been talking about social movements advocating for people's
rights and the idea of respectability and how uh, in
a lot of ways, respectability could be a really important tool,
(04:25):
but it was also a double edged sword because it's
just like creating a standard that is like continues to
be applied. Like if you look at uh, if you
look at headlines about Black Lives Matter today, you will
still see things that are about the idea of respectability
rather than the idea that like everybody should have rights. Yeah. Yeah,
(04:49):
there's also some other interesting stuff and it comes up
a lot in that biography. She's pretty unflinching in her
examination of his life about how he could as part
of that kind of obsession with achieving respectability. Uh, he
was a bit controlling of his employees at times, would
really kind of put his teetotal or stamp on any
(05:12):
discussions about that they would have about like, you know,
I'm the person that pays your wages, and I think
you should not drink um. Allegedly, he would even tell
his white employees how to vote, which is an interesting thing.
You know, a company that did that today would not
would not fly. Uh. So it is There's a lot
(05:33):
of really interesting stuff to unpack there, and I think
if you go into it kind of appreciating the conflict
of of so much of anyone's story from that period
of time right as viewed through our modern lens. Yeah,
it's a really interesting puzzle to put together. I'm thinking
about all the times that I've gotten newsletters that places
that I've worked that are like, here are the candidates
(05:55):
that are supporting our business, uh, which is uh, not
quite the same as vote for this person, but it's
the same intent. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things we
talked about this week was six Topics, Uh that when
folks asked us to cover it on the show, I'm like,
(06:16):
but there's this one book about it, one book. Um.
I I often will have these these conversations with my
spouse where He's like, what are you working on? And
I explained what I'm working on, and this time, um,
he said what you're working I was like, well, I'm
working on a six impossible episodes and I'm I'm calling it.
(06:36):
There's a book about it. And he had a totally
different read on what that would mean. In his imagination,
it was something that is so big that it is
only possible to cover it in a book and podcast.
And I was like, Oh, that's very interesting, but that's
that's not that's not what it is. Uh. One. The
(07:01):
last thing that we talked about was the loss and
family murders, which actually happened not that far from where
I grew up. Um, I'm not close enough that, uh
that it was like a source of sort of macab
fascination for everyone. Um. And that episode of the podcast
(07:24):
Criminal that we talked about. In the episode, um Phoebe
Judge talked to all of these people from Stokes County
and they talked about it just sort of being uh
like local almost local urban legend at this point, like
a thing that everybody living there knows about and talks about. Um.
But it was a thing that I don't think I
(07:44):
learned about until high school when the book White Christmas,
Bloody Christmas came out and I got a copy of
that book, and I don't know if it's still in
my parents house somewhere. Um. If so, it's super hard
to find. Now if you want to get the like
that edition of that book, you can find people trying
(08:04):
to sell it for like nine dollars. So I have questions.
So you learned about it in high school when that
book came out, did it then become a source of
fascination for people in your peer group? I know it
became a source of fascination for me, um, because I,
like a lot of folks, I had that the the
(08:26):
sort of um fascination with crimes and like really grewesome
historical stories. Um. I. The person that I I'm pretty
sure I learned about it from was actually my drama teacher,
and she had known about it for a really long
time and it was really fascinated with it and was
(08:48):
so excited about that book coming out. Um. She she
had this story that she told us in drama class
about like her son. I don't I'm not sure if
they had known that the book was coming out, um,
but her son had found a copy of it in
the bookstore and was trying to keep her from seeing
that it was there so that he could get it
(09:08):
for her for Christmas. So yeah, there were there were
other weird stories, some of them true and some of
them faults. That were more things that we discussed in
our in our peer group. Um, like, there was this
supposedly haunted road in a place called Rural Hall in
North Carolina called Payne Road, and we talked about pain
(09:29):
Road a lot. Um. I don't think that we really
had Charlie Loss in conversations until possibly after the book
came out. Fascinating. Definitely read that book more than once.
It may or may not be in my parents basement.
I feel like I didn't grow up with any good,
local horrible stories. We had alien sightings. That was our thing.
(09:53):
Slightly different, not as not as I don't know I
was gonna say, not as cool, but some people I
think it's probably more cool. I don't know. I like
the I like crimes and scary things. So yeah, yeah,
it's almost October as of when we're recording this. Oh
(10:14):
it's been October in my heart since July. So yeah,
good Ready, If you would like to write to as
you can do so at a history podcast at i
heart radio dot com, and you can subscribe on the
i heart radio app, at Apple podcast anywhere you listen.
We hope you have a wonderful weekend however that plays
out for you, and we'll see you next week. Stuff
(10:38):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class. A production
of I Heart Radio, Hey and Happy Friday. Casual Friday
is here, and I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy Vie Wilson.
I feel like every day is Casual Friday in a
pandemic CADA kind of. UM. One of the things we
(00:25):
talked about this week was James Forton Ye, who we
talked about pretty openly in the episode, having been both
fairly convinced we must have talked about it before. Yeah,
I could find no evidence to support that. Nope, me neither,
which brings up an interesting thing, right, there is no
evidence for a lot of the aspects of his life
(00:47):
that people often talk about. UM. Kind of the biography
of him that that everybody really turns to is um
written by a woman named Julie Wynne. That biography is
titled A Gentleman of Color, and it's kind of like
the one that a lot of people reference, and her
research is really really amazing. UM. But she points out,
(01:10):
like what we know is kind of not ever through
primary source documents with him, because it appears most of
his papers were at some point destroyed, probably in a
property transfer or something. UM. But they're like kind of
put together from the writings of people that knew him
who say, oh, he told me this once, etcetera. And
one of the things that comes up all the time
(01:32):
when you're reading about him is he purchased the freedom
of enslaved people. But I it's a little tricky to
know if if that was really the case. Um. So,
if anybody was looking for that in the episode and
didn't get it or felt like kind of bummed that
they didn't hear about it, it's because if he did,
it was probably a little more indirect than we might think. Yeah,
(01:56):
he was so much a man about the letter of
the law. And really there are some things about his
writing even that troubles me because there is a certain
tone of uh, like a purity standard for black people
(02:16):
to be perfect, um and you know his thing is like, no,
you have to be this much better. So I don't
know if he would have actively participated in something like
that while he was also trying to lobby Congress to
do things. Um that is, it gets to be a
little bit tricky. And again we talked about it in
the episode. Right, this is contextualized at a time and
(02:37):
place when like those kinds of thoughts would not be
perceived quite the same way they are today. Obviously, there
is a problem to it. We don't know what he
was thinking, specifically, aside from his abolitionist writings that we have,
we don't have diaries, we don't have like personal notes
to really know what his logic flow was for the
(02:58):
way he presented certain ideas and thoughts. Even in his
thirteen pamphlet, the end of it is very almost apologetic
in tone, where he's like, I don't want to offend anybody.
I don't want to make anybody feel like I'm pointing
a finger, I'm blaming, Like we just we need to
fix all of this. But even though he has very
clearly outlined, well documented instances of complete disparity in how
(03:21):
people are treated and respected, so there is a weird
back and forth there with him. It's hard to parse
because again we're going off of very little actual source
material from him. So I just wanted to mention that
as people are reading things about him or studying him,
if they if they are inspired to do so, that
you keep that in mind. It's there can be some
(03:43):
tricky parts of his story that are are a little
bit um like I said, you know, it troubles me
a little bit because you hate to see it. Um. Yeah,
this idea of like you have to act right so
white people will treat you right, and it's like, wait, no,
they should have rights the end. That's that's always a problem. Again,
(04:04):
that's me working it out well, and so we've that's
something that has come up on the show relatively often
when we've been talking about social movements advocating for people's
rights and the idea of respectability and how uh, in
a lot of ways, respectability could be a really important tool,
(04:25):
but it was also a double edged sword because it's
just like creating a standard that is like continues to
be applied. Like if you look at uh, if you
look at headlines about Black Lives Matter today, you will
still see things that are about the idea of respectability
rather than the idea that like everybody should have rights. Yeah. Yeah,
(04:49):
there's also some other interesting stuff and it comes up
a lot in that biography. She's pretty unflinching in her
examination of his life about how he could as part
of that kind of obsession with achieving respectability. Uh, he
was a bit controlling of his employees at times, would
really kind of put his teetotal or stamp on any
(05:12):
discussions about that they would have about like, you know,
I'm the person that pays your wages, and I think
you should not drink um. Allegedly, he would even tell
his white employees how to vote, which is an interesting thing.
You know, a company that did that today would not
would not fly. Uh. So it is There's a lot
(05:33):
of really interesting stuff to unpack there, and I think
if you go into it kind of appreciating the conflict
of of so much of anyone's story from that period
of time right as viewed through our modern lens. Yeah,
it's a really interesting puzzle to put together. I'm thinking
about all the times that I've gotten newsletters that places
that I've worked that are like, here are the candidates
(05:55):
that are supporting our business, uh, which is uh, not
quite the same as vote for this person, but it's
the same intent. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things we
talked about this week was six Topics, Uh that when
folks asked us to cover it on the show, I'm like,
(06:16):
but there's this one book about it, one book. Um.
I I often will have these these conversations with my
spouse where He's like, what are you working on? And
I explained what I'm working on, and this time, um,
he said what you're working I was like, well, I'm
working on a six impossible episodes and I'm I'm calling it.
(06:36):
There's a book about it. And he had a totally
different read on what that would mean. In his imagination,
it was something that is so big that it is
only possible to cover it in a book and podcast.
And I was like, Oh, that's very interesting, but that's
that's not that's not what it is. Uh. One. The
(07:01):
last thing that we talked about was the loss and
family murders, which actually happened not that far from where
I grew up. Um, I'm not close enough that, uh
that it was like a source of sort of macab
fascination for everyone. Um. And that episode of the podcast
(07:24):
Criminal that we talked about. In the episode, um Phoebe
Judge talked to all of these people from Stokes County
and they talked about it just sort of being uh
like local almost local urban legend at this point, like
a thing that everybody living there knows about and talks about. Um.
But it was a thing that I don't think I
(07:44):
learned about until high school when the book White Christmas,
Bloody Christmas came out and I got a copy of
that book, and I don't know if it's still in
my parents house somewhere. Um. If so, it's super hard
to find. Now if you want to get the like
that edition of that book, you can find people trying
(08:04):
to sell it for like nine dollars. So I have questions.
So you learned about it in high school when that
book came out, did it then become a source of
fascination for people in your peer group? I know it
became a source of fascination for me, um, because I,
like a lot of folks, I had that the the
(08:26):
sort of um fascination with crimes and like really grewesome
historical stories. Um. I. The person that I I'm pretty
sure I learned about it from was actually my drama teacher,
and she had known about it for a really long
time and it was really fascinated with it and was
(08:48):
so excited about that book coming out. Um. She she
had this story that she told us in drama class
about like her son. I don't I'm not sure if
they had known that the book was coming out, um,
but her son had found a copy of it in
the bookstore and was trying to keep her from seeing
that it was there so that he could get it
(09:08):
for her for Christmas. So yeah, there were there were
other weird stories, some of them true and some of
them faults. That were more things that we discussed in
our in our peer group. Um, like, there was this
supposedly haunted road in a place called Rural Hall in
North Carolina called Payne Road, and we talked about pain
(09:29):
Road a lot. Um. I don't think that we really
had Charlie Loss in conversations until possibly after the book
came out. Fascinating. Definitely read that book more than once.
It may or may not be in my parents basement.
I feel like I didn't grow up with any good,
local horrible stories. We had alien sightings. That was our thing.
(09:53):
Slightly different, not as not as I don't know I
was gonna say, not as cool, but some people I
think it's probably more cool. I don't know. I like
the I like crimes and scary things. So yeah, yeah,
it's almost October as of when we're recording this. Oh
(10:14):
it's been October in my heart since July. So yeah,
good Ready, If you would like to write to as
you can do so at a history podcast at i
heart radio dot com, and you can subscribe on the
i heart radio app, at Apple podcast anywhere you listen.
We hope you have a wonderful weekend however that plays
out for you, and we'll see you next week. Stuff
(10:38):
you Missed in History Class is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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