February 19, 2021 • 12 mins
Tracy and Holly talk about how young everyone had been during the Mississippi Freedom Summer, voter suppression, and Holly's trick to stop crying when recording. There's also talk of how topics get added to phone lists. and Cobb's violin playing.
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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, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
and I'm Holly Frying. One of our episodes this week
was about Mississippi Freedom Summer. We mentioned a couple of
times in the episode the podcast uh CN on Radio
(00:25):
and their series The Land That Has Never Been Yet
in their episode on Freedom Summer. Something we didn't mention,
but which I watched as part of the research and
background into all of this was the Freedom Summer documentary
that came out in and was aired on PBS American Experience.
You can currently watch it on the PBS website UM
(00:46):
that has a lot of interviews with people who were
involved and archival footage from the time. That is where
I heard that that phone call between Johnson and Hoover
about Rita Schwerner. One of the things that was really
striking to me about this particular documentary is it reinforced
(01:07):
how young everyone was UM. Because this took place in
nineteen sixty four, a lot of the volunteers were in
their early twenties, a lot of the organizers or maybe
into their later twenties, So people were doing these interviews
when they were, um, you know, in their sixties. Uh.
Everybody looked really young, except for Pete Seeger, who was
(01:30):
also because of his work with music during the Civil
rights movement, and Pizza her looked ancient. He was significantly
older than a lot of the other people interviewed. But
it was just this huge contrast of like number one,
reminding me of how recent this was and how young
everyone was, and then also this contrast of like, and
then here's Pizza here, who looks like a grizzled old man. Pete. Yeah,
(01:55):
every time I come across something about Pizza gar, I'd
like kind of go, I want to do an episode
of about Pizza here one day. Yeah. Yeah, this episode,
like many, it is hard. I will give us away
and say that we just stop a number of times. Yeah,
I get so angry. I start to cry sometimes, which
(02:16):
is not fun, but I think understandable. I imagine listeners
sometimes experience the same things. Um humans. Yeah. One of
the things that's frustrating for me is the thing that
we touched on at the end about um, how there
is still a lot of voter suppression and a lot
(02:39):
of discriminatory laws surrounding voting. Um that still exists today
and have been sort of creeping forward in a lot
of ways, UM with the most recent presidential election being
so focused on like unfounded allegations of fraud that nobody
(03:01):
has actual evidence that holds up for um, and a
fear that that trend is going to escalate, Like there
that is a response to do baseless accusations of fraud,
There will be further laws to make it harder for
people to vote that are probably going to disproportionately affect
the people that have historically had the hardest time voting already.
(03:24):
I hope not, but yes, that is an ongoing fear
as well. Yeah again, so angry tears. We've gotten a
couple of emails from people when we have previously referenced
the unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, from people who have been
really angry about how we need to tell both sides
of the story. So I just want to take a
(03:46):
moment and say that there aren't two sides of this story.
There just aren't. There is the true side, which is
that there are baseless allegations of fraud that have really
sewed a lot of doubt in a lot of people's minds,
but like unsubstantiated means unsubstantiated and in some cases demonstrably false. Um. So,
(04:07):
like that has just made the whole thing deeply frustrating
and frightening in terms of like what happens next, in
terms of um the idea that we're supposed to be
a democracy where everybody can vote, and whether that's true
or not. I feel like we should say something peppy
here at the end, because normally we get to the
(04:28):
end of these and I kind of go, that feels
like a good stopping place, and like that felt like
a stopping place, but not necessarily a good one. Um.
I imagine our email and Twitter mentions will be full
of well actually emails from people saying that you have
to have an ID to write a check, so why
not to vote? And uh man, there's just so much
information on that easily available on the internet. What information? What? Yeah?
(04:57):
So how you you mentioned that there were some time
that they were just um like angry tears and we
had to take a minute. And often when there is
something really sad happening in in an episode, you have
a trick that you do to try to to to
sort of compartmentalize it. In your mind, right, that helps
me get rid of it. It doesn't work when you're
(05:17):
already angry and not sad, which is that Normally, if
I am weepy over something in an episode, I pretend
I'm B Arthur because b wouldn't cry, she would get
mad and address the problem. But when you're already angry,
that doesn't fix it. Just get more mad, stay mad.
(05:38):
My My other trick is to think of odd Star
Wars characters that make me laugh, and sometimes that works
in a situation like this, but really be Arthur is
always the good go to, and it doesn't It doesn't
work in this scenario. Yeah, this week we talked about
w Montague Cobb, and I just want to tell the
story of how this wound up. Finally on my episodes
(06:01):
to do UM often when I am out and about
in the world, which of course is not something that's
really happening now. I'm obviously not laughing at the pandemic,
just that we all have come to just live in
this strange time where we're like, I guess I live
in my house all the time. Yeah, yeah, so in uh,
(06:24):
in the before times, UM, if I would be at
it about somewhere and I would see something that caught
my eye for a potential podcast subject, I would just
put it in a note in my phone, because a
lot of times, if I am out and about in
the world, i'm taking a break. I don't want to
devote a whole lot of mental time and space to work.
(06:46):
But I also don't want to lose ideas that I
stumble across it seemed like they could be really interesting.
So then the downside to that is sometimes years will
pass between when I put something in a note in
my phone and when I put the phone notes into
any kind of more usable list of ideas. So back
(07:08):
in I think t eighteen, you and I were in Washington,
d c UM for a tour, and I went to
the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and
I wrote down like six or seven things on little
note in my phone. W Montagu Cob was one of them.
(07:30):
I have no recollection of what the context was, like,
what specific thing I had seen at the museum that
made me go, oh, this would make a really good
topic for the show. Um. But I did not actually
put the note that I took into a you know,
a place where I would see it on a regular basis,
like on my computer at work until late so years
(07:53):
passed between when I made that list and when I
actually made the list into something more recognizable. I did
a just a ball passed through the phone, but all
the ideas that I had jotted down out in the
world into my actual like short list of ideas um
And one of the things that I thought was a
list of topic ideas that I had seen somewhere was
(08:14):
actually locations from Skyrim. Uh So anyway, that's how finally, finally,
more than two years of after having having seen something
that sparked my attention in Washington, d C, finally got
to this episode. I um, I never moved them off
the phone. Yeah, yeah, I put them on the phone,
(08:37):
and I just now have a list on my phone
and I don't usually put context, so it's like a
second layer of fun discovery when I go, what is
what is that person? Stay? What is that word about?
And then I'll look it up online and go, oh,
that was fascinating. Good job me putting it on a list,
So I think I will do an episode now. Yeah.
It was pretty much scanning back through my short list,
including the uh the late last year trans for it
(09:00):
over um from the phone topic ideas, and I was like, oh, yeah,
this does sound really interesting. Let's do this right now. UM.
One thing that we did not get into in the
in the episode, we alluded to it a little bit,
we didn't really go into it in a lot of
detail was that Cobb was really focused on, uh, the
(09:22):
needs of black doctors and black patients and black people
as a whole. That was something he was obviously focused on,
and it really makes sense that he would be focused on.
And if there was anything that I could see as
like a shortcoming in his work, it was that he
did not seem entirely conscious of the fact that indigenous
(09:44):
people were also still living in large numbers UM. Like.
I would occasionally find he would be describing sort of
the state of medical care, and some of his descriptions
of of like the needs of indigenou patients UM would
sound kind of dismissive, but it sounds sort of like, well,
(10:04):
but they're not there aren't many anymore. That's like not
really so much of a concern. But it definitely was
and is still a concern. And I think that was
just a you know, sort of a trickle down effect
of his own focus in his own life experience and
his own immersion in the world that he was immersed in.
I generally love the idea that during cadaver labs, maybe
(10:27):
the anatomy professor would be playing the violin to try
to keep everyone relaxed. Um. I have never done a
cadaver lab, but I have watched, uh like recorded video
could of cadaver labs when I was taking a an
anatomy course of that level, and UM, it wasn't that
(10:49):
it was a stressful experience, but I can just see
it being nice to have some musical accompaniment to kind
of occupy part of your mind during all that. I
feel like that is something that should be adopted for
like any kind of lab where you're not necessarily interacting
with language while you're doing it right, Um, like a
(11:12):
geology lab. Also perfectly great when you do analysis of
of for example, pictures of the night sky and an
astronomy lab. I would love to have someone playing violin
for any of that in my classes. That sounds amazing.
So yeah, Um, he seems to have had a very
larger than life personality in a lot of ways, uh,
(11:34):
including playing the violin for his dissection labs. Uh so
it's Friday. Whatever is coming up for your weekend. I
hope it goes as well as possible. Uh if you'd
like to drop us a note about anything where History
podcast at i heart radio dot com and you can
subscribe to the show on the iHeart radio app and
Apple Podcasts and anywhere else that you get your podcasts.
(12:00):
M Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson,
and I'm Holly Frying. One of our episodes this week
was about Mississippi Freedom Summer. We mentioned a couple of
times in the episode the podcast uh CN on Radio
(00:25):
and their series The Land That Has Never Been Yet
in their episode on Freedom Summer. Something we didn't mention,
but which I watched as part of the research and
background into all of this was the Freedom Summer documentary
that came out in and was aired on PBS American Experience.
You can currently watch it on the PBS website UM
(00:46):
that has a lot of interviews with people who were
involved and archival footage from the time. That is where
I heard that that phone call between Johnson and Hoover
about Rita Schwerner. One of the things that was really
striking to me about this particular documentary is it reinforced
(01:07):
how young everyone was UM. Because this took place in
nineteen sixty four, a lot of the volunteers were in
their early twenties, a lot of the organizers or maybe
into their later twenties, So people were doing these interviews
when they were, um, you know, in their sixties. Uh.
Everybody looked really young, except for Pete Seeger, who was
(01:30):
also because of his work with music during the Civil
rights movement, and Pizza her looked ancient. He was significantly
older than a lot of the other people interviewed. But
it was just this huge contrast of like number one,
reminding me of how recent this was and how young
everyone was, and then also this contrast of like, and
then here's Pizza here, who looks like a grizzled old man. Pete. Yeah,
(01:55):
every time I come across something about Pizza gar, I'd
like kind of go, I want to do an episode
of about Pizza here one day. Yeah. Yeah, this episode,
like many, it is hard. I will give us away
and say that we just stop a number of times. Yeah,
I get so angry. I start to cry sometimes, which
(02:16):
is not fun, but I think understandable. I imagine listeners
sometimes experience the same things. Um humans. Yeah. One of
the things that's frustrating for me is the thing that
we touched on at the end about um, how there
is still a lot of voter suppression and a lot
(02:39):
of discriminatory laws surrounding voting. Um that still exists today
and have been sort of creeping forward in a lot
of ways, UM with the most recent presidential election being
so focused on like unfounded allegations of fraud that nobody
(03:01):
has actual evidence that holds up for um, and a
fear that that trend is going to escalate, Like there
that is a response to do baseless accusations of fraud,
There will be further laws to make it harder for
people to vote that are probably going to disproportionately affect
the people that have historically had the hardest time voting already.
(03:24):
I hope not, but yes, that is an ongoing fear
as well. Yeah again, so angry tears. We've gotten a
couple of emails from people when we have previously referenced
the unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, from people who have been
really angry about how we need to tell both sides
of the story. So I just want to take a
(03:46):
moment and say that there aren't two sides of this story.
There just aren't. There is the true side, which is
that there are baseless allegations of fraud that have really
sewed a lot of doubt in a lot of people's minds,
but like unsubstantiated means unsubstantiated and in some cases demonstrably false. Um. So,
(04:07):
like that has just made the whole thing deeply frustrating
and frightening in terms of like what happens next, in
terms of um the idea that we're supposed to be
a democracy where everybody can vote, and whether that's true
or not. I feel like we should say something peppy
here at the end, because normally we get to the
(04:28):
end of these and I kind of go, that feels
like a good stopping place, and like that felt like
a stopping place, but not necessarily a good one. Um.
I imagine our email and Twitter mentions will be full
of well actually emails from people saying that you have
to have an ID to write a check, so why
not to vote? And uh man, there's just so much
information on that easily available on the internet. What information? What? Yeah?
(04:57):
So how you you mentioned that there were some time
that they were just um like angry tears and we
had to take a minute. And often when there is
something really sad happening in in an episode, you have
a trick that you do to try to to to
sort of compartmentalize it. In your mind, right, that helps
me get rid of it. It doesn't work when you're
(05:17):
already angry and not sad, which is that Normally, if
I am weepy over something in an episode, I pretend
I'm B Arthur because b wouldn't cry, she would get
mad and address the problem. But when you're already angry,
that doesn't fix it. Just get more mad, stay mad.
(05:38):
My My other trick is to think of odd Star
Wars characters that make me laugh, and sometimes that works
in a situation like this, but really be Arthur is
always the good go to, and it doesn't It doesn't
work in this scenario. Yeah, this week we talked about
w Montague Cobb, and I just want to tell the
story of how this wound up. Finally on my episodes
(06:01):
to do UM often when I am out and about
in the world, which of course is not something that's
really happening now. I'm obviously not laughing at the pandemic,
just that we all have come to just live in
this strange time where we're like, I guess I live
in my house all the time. Yeah, yeah, so in uh,
(06:24):
in the before times, UM, if I would be at
it about somewhere and I would see something that caught
my eye for a potential podcast subject, I would just
put it in a note in my phone, because a
lot of times, if I am out and about in
the world, i'm taking a break. I don't want to
devote a whole lot of mental time and space to work.
(06:46):
But I also don't want to lose ideas that I
stumble across it seemed like they could be really interesting.
So then the downside to that is sometimes years will
pass between when I put something in a note in
my phone and when I put the phone notes into
any kind of more usable list of ideas. So back
(07:08):
in I think t eighteen, you and I were in Washington,
d c UM for a tour, and I went to
the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and
I wrote down like six or seven things on little
note in my phone. W Montagu Cob was one of them.
(07:30):
I have no recollection of what the context was, like,
what specific thing I had seen at the museum that
made me go, oh, this would make a really good
topic for the show. Um. But I did not actually
put the note that I took into a you know,
a place where I would see it on a regular basis,
like on my computer at work until late so years
(07:53):
passed between when I made that list and when I
actually made the list into something more recognizable. I did
a just a ball passed through the phone, but all
the ideas that I had jotted down out in the
world into my actual like short list of ideas um
And one of the things that I thought was a
list of topic ideas that I had seen somewhere was
(08:14):
actually locations from Skyrim. Uh So anyway, that's how finally, finally,
more than two years of after having having seen something
that sparked my attention in Washington, d C, finally got
to this episode. I um, I never moved them off
the phone. Yeah, yeah, I put them on the phone,
(08:37):
and I just now have a list on my phone
and I don't usually put context, so it's like a
second layer of fun discovery when I go, what is
what is that person? Stay? What is that word about?
And then I'll look it up online and go, oh,
that was fascinating. Good job me putting it on a list,
So I think I will do an episode now. Yeah.
It was pretty much scanning back through my short list,
including the uh the late last year trans for it
(09:00):
over um from the phone topic ideas, and I was like, oh, yeah,
this does sound really interesting. Let's do this right now. UM.
One thing that we did not get into in the
in the episode, we alluded to it a little bit,
we didn't really go into it in a lot of
detail was that Cobb was really focused on, uh, the
(09:22):
needs of black doctors and black patients and black people
as a whole. That was something he was obviously focused on,
and it really makes sense that he would be focused on.
And if there was anything that I could see as
like a shortcoming in his work, it was that he
did not seem entirely conscious of the fact that indigenous
(09:44):
people were also still living in large numbers UM. Like.
I would occasionally find he would be describing sort of
the state of medical care, and some of his descriptions
of of like the needs of indigenou patients UM would
sound kind of dismissive, but it sounds sort of like, well,
(10:04):
but they're not there aren't many anymore. That's like not
really so much of a concern. But it definitely was
and is still a concern. And I think that was
just a you know, sort of a trickle down effect
of his own focus in his own life experience and
his own immersion in the world that he was immersed in.
I generally love the idea that during cadaver labs, maybe
(10:27):
the anatomy professor would be playing the violin to try
to keep everyone relaxed. Um. I have never done a
cadaver lab, but I have watched, uh like recorded video
could of cadaver labs when I was taking a an
anatomy course of that level, and UM, it wasn't that
(10:49):
it was a stressful experience, but I can just see
it being nice to have some musical accompaniment to kind
of occupy part of your mind during all that. I
feel like that is something that should be adopted for
like any kind of lab where you're not necessarily interacting
with language while you're doing it right, Um, like a
(11:12):
geology lab. Also perfectly great when you do analysis of
of for example, pictures of the night sky and an
astronomy lab. I would love to have someone playing violin
for any of that in my classes. That sounds amazing.
So yeah, Um, he seems to have had a very
larger than life personality in a lot of ways, uh,
(11:34):
including playing the violin for his dissection labs. Uh so
it's Friday. Whatever is coming up for your weekend. I
hope it goes as well as possible. Uh if you'd
like to drop us a note about anything where History
podcast at i heart radio dot com and you can
subscribe to the show on the iHeart radio app and
Apple Podcasts and anywhere else that you get your podcasts.
(12:00):
M Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. H
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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