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Editor’s note: If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio of “Silence in Sikeston,” which includes emotion and emphasis not found in the transcript. This transcript, generated using transcription software, has been edited for style and clarity. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
Cara Anthony: A lynching isn’t an isolated, singular act.
The violence — and the silence around it — was a deliberate, community-wide lesson meant to be passed on.
And passed down.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: In Sikeston, Missouri, a 25-year-old soon-to-be father named Cleo Wright was lynched by a white mob.
It happened in 1942. But you didn’t have to be there, or even born yet, to get the message.
Larry McClellon: I grew up here in Sikeston, Missouri. My age … 77.
Cara Anthony: That’s community elder Larry McClellon.
He was born two years after Cleo Wright’s body was dragged across the railroad tracks to the Black side of town.
Larry McClellon: Back in the old days, when dark comes, you don’t want to be caught over here after 6 o’clock. You want to be on this side of the tracks.
I didn’t cross the line. Because I knew what was waiting. I knew what time it was here in Sikeston, Missouri.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: I’m Cara Anthony. I’m a journalist. I’ve been visiting Sikeston for years to work on a documentary film and podcast about the lynching of Cleo Wright.
And the police killing in 2020 of another young, Black father, Denzel Taylor.
Larry McClellon: All these Black men are getting shot down, losing their life.
Cara Anthony: Cleo and Denzel, killed some 80 years apart. In the same city.
Larry McClellon: They do not want to talk about that subject. That’s a hush-hush.
Cara Anthony: In this episode of the podcast, we’re exploring how that “hush” hurts the community. And the way it hurts people’s health.
Here’s an example: Larry says it’s hard to feel safe in your hometown when Black men are killed and nearly everyone looks the other way.
Growing up, Larry had a lot of questions about Cleo.
Larry McClellon: I used to ask Mom. You know, “What is this with this man that supposedly, uh, got lynched?” And she told me, “Hey, you stay away from that. … Don’t you be asking no questions about Cleo Wright because that was just a no-no.”
Cara Anthony: Why was that a no-no?
Larry McClellon: Because she’s afraid for me that they would probably take me out and do something to me. Maybe bodily harm or something like that.
Cara Anthony: “They” being white neighbors.
Despite those lessons, Larry became an outspoken activist for racial justice and police reform in Sikeston. He founded an organization here called And Justice for All.
Being vocal has come at a price, he says.
Larry McClellon: Somebody called me and said, “Uh, Mr. Larry, your building is on fire.”
So, I didn’t even really hang the phone up real good. I just jumped up and come up the highway.
Cara Anthony: It was April 2019 — Larry rushed to the headquarters of And Justice for All.
Larry McClellon: I could see the flame was high as anything in Sikeston, might as well say. So, I gets up there and, uh, fire burning. So, all the fire department get out there pouring water and everything.
Cara Anthony: The building was a total loss.
Larry McClellon: The building was set on fire. That’s what, that’s what happened.
Who would come in and destroy something like that?
Cara Anthony: The police report says it was arson, but nothing really came of the investigation. Larry suspects it was a targeted attack — retaliation for his activism, for speaking out. Retaliation that could continue.
Larry McClellon: I got 4 acres over there. A lot of trees and so forth. And some of my own people, they make jokes out of it sometime, like, “Man, you going to be hanging from one of those trees down there, or somebody’s going to set over in those bushes with a high-powered rifle and going to shoot you when you walk out the door or shoot you when you pull up.”
Cara Anthony: And still, Larry’s decided he’s not going to hold his tongue.
Because keeping quiet causes its own trouble, its own hurt and pain.
This is “Silence in Sikeston.” The podcast all about finding the words to say the things that go unsaid.
From WORLD Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX.
Episode 2: “Hush, Fix Your Face.”
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Larry’s keeping on with his work in Sikeston. But all those warnings from his mother decades ago to keep quiet about Cleo’s lynching left a mark.
I called up Aiesha Lee to talk about this. She’s a licensed mental health professional and also an assistant professor at Penn State.
One of the first things she wanted me to know is that silence has been used as a tool of systemic oppression in America for a very long time.
Aiesha Lee says lynching — and the community terror it caused — was part of a wider effort to impose white supremacy.
Aiesha Lee: This is a design. Let me be clear, this is, it was very much designed for us to be these subservient, submissive people who do not ask questions, who do not say anything, and just do as they’re told.
Cara Anthony: One of Aiesha’s areas of expertise is how racism can impact physical and mental health — across generations. She sees signs of it in her clients every day.
Aiesha Lee: No one actually comes in and says, “Hey, I’m dealing with intergenerational trauma. Can you help me?” Right?
Cara Anthony: I will have to admit, I’ve been very skeptical about that term, what that means, because, in my family, it was always this thing of like, “We’re good over here. Everything’s OK.”
Aiesha Lee: I love what you just said. And, and for me, as a mental [health] professional, I get really cautious when using, even using the word “trauma.”
Part of the, the generational legacy of Black families is we don’t talk about our problems, we just kind of roll through them, we deal with them, we’re strong, and we just keep it moving forward, right?
It’s protection. It is “Let me teach you the ways of the world according to us” or for us, right? And for us, we need to keep our mouth shut. We can’t ask any questions. We can’t make any noise, because if we do, you’re going to get the same, or worse than, you know, others.
Cara Anthony: My parents. Grandparents. My great-grandparents. Their experiences with racial violence — and what they had to do to stay safe — shaped me.
Stuffing down injustice and pain is a tried-and-true way to cope. But Aiesha says holding hurt in hurts.
Aiesha Lee: It’s almost like every time we’re silent, it’s like a little pinprick that we, we do to our bodies internally.
Cara Anthony: She says over time those wounds add up.
Aiesha Lee: After so long, um, those little pinpricks turn up as heart disease, as cancer, as, you know, all these other ailments.
Cara Anthony: Feeling unsafe, being that vigilant all the time. What can that do to someone’s body?
Aiesha Lee: Imagine every time you walk out of the door, you’re tightening your body, you’re tensing up your body, right? And you’re holding on to it for the entire day until you come home at night. What do we think would happen to our bodies as a result?
Cara Anthony: A study from UCLA found experiences with racism and discrimination correlated with higher levels of inflammation in the bodies of Black and Hispanic people. It affected their immune system, their gut.
Aiesha says always being on edge can rewire how the brain deals with stress.
Aiesha Lee: That’s what that hypervigilance does. That hypervigilance causes our bodies to tense up so that we can’t fully breathe.
Cara Anthony: Yeah, that’s exhausting. And as you were talking about it, like, I even feel my body just being tight as you are speaking about these things.
Cara Anthony: If you don’t deal with the emotional stuff, Aiesha says, it can live in your body.
Aiesha Lee: Arthritis, fibromyalgia, high blood pressure …
Cara Anthony: … and ripple through families as intergenerational trauma.
That makes me wonder about my dad’s high blood pressure.
My mom’s chronic pain.
About my own trouble sleeping.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Despite endless conversations with my parents about this work — somehow, I was months and months into reporting on racial violence in Sikeston before I learned new details about a death in my own family.
Wilbon Anthony: I enjoy reading about history where, you know, my people come from.
Cara Anthony: My dad, Wilbon Anthony, knew the story for nearly a decade, but kept it to himself.
Really, I shouldn’t have been surprised. My whole life I was taught in big and small ways that usually it’s better to stay silent.
There’s a risk — to self — when you speak out.
I’m 37 years old — plenty grown now — but it feels like the “adults” have always tiptoed around the story of Leemon Anthony, my great-uncle on my father’s side.
Leemon served in the military during World War II. Family members remember him as fun-loving and outgoing.
I was told that Leemon died in a wagon-and-mule accident in 1946. But at family reunions, sometimes I’d overhear details that were different.
Wilbon Anthony: There was a hint there was something to do with it about the police, but it wasn’t much.
Cara Anthony: My dad knew that the stories he’d heard about Uncle Leemon’s death were incomplete. That missing piece left him feeling undone.
Wilbon Anthony: Later in life, I started researching it. I just thought about it one day and, uh, just said, “Oh, see if it was something about this.”
Cara Anthony: He called up family members, dug through newspaper archives online, and searched ancestry websites. Eventually, he found Leemon’s death certificate.
To show me what he found, Dad and I sat in his home office. He pulled up the death certificate on his computer. Leemon was 29.
Wilbon Anthony: It says, “Shot by police, resisting arrest.”
Well, no one ever, I never heard this in my, uh, whole life.
Then item 21, it lists the causes of death: accident or suicide or homicide, and the list says that item is homicide.
Cara Anthony: OK, OK, um, that’s a lot. I need to pause.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Shot by police.
Even now, I only have bits and pieces of the story, mostly from whispers from my family.
