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This Week’s Episode of Reveal: A World War II Incident Nearly Lost to History

28 December 2024 at 13:43

It was their first day in battle and the two best friends had just switched places. Bob Fordyce rested while Frank Hartzell crawled down into the shallow foxhole, taking his turn chipping away at the frozen ground. Just then, German artillery fire began falling all around them. With his body plastered to the ground, Hartzell could feel shrapnel dent his helmet. When the explosions finished, he picked himself up to find that his best friend had just been killed in the blur of combat. 

“When you’re actually in it, it’s very chaotic,” Hartzell said. 

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

The following day, New Year’s Day 1945, Hartzell battled Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne. In the aftermath, American soldiers gunned down dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war in a field—a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. 

“I remember we had been given orders, take no prisoners,” Hartzell said. “When I walked past the field on the left, there were these dead bodies. I knew what they were. I knew they were dead Germans.” News of the massacre reached General George S. Patton, but no investigation followed.

This was an untold story that occurred during the epic Battle of the Bulge that began in December 1944 and continued for six weeks, an event that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described as being “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war.” With 700,000 Allied forces involved, it was the largest battle fought by Americans, resulting in enormous numbers of casualties and marking the last offensive on the Western front.

This week on Reveal, reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway investigates why the soldiers who committed the massacre at Chenogne were never held accountable.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2018. 

This Week’s Episode of Reveal: A World War II Incident Nearly Lost to History

28 December 2024 at 13:43

It was their first day in battle and the two best friends had just switched places. Bob Fordyce rested while Frank Hartzell crawled down into the shallow foxhole, taking his turn chipping away at the frozen ground. Just then, German artillery fire began falling all around them. With his body plastered to the ground, Hartzell could feel shrapnel dent his helmet. When the explosions finished, he picked himself up to find that his best friend had just been killed in the blur of combat. 

“When you’re actually in it, it’s very chaotic,” Hartzell said. 

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

The following day, New Year’s Day 1945, Hartzell battled Nazi soldiers for control of the Belgian town of Chenogne. In the aftermath, American soldiers gunned down dozens of unarmed German prisoners of war in a field—a clear violation of the Geneva Convention. 

“I remember we had been given orders, take no prisoners,” Hartzell said. “When I walked past the field on the left, there were these dead bodies. I knew what they were. I knew they were dead Germans.” News of the massacre reached General George S. Patton, but no investigation followed.

This was an untold story that occurred during the epic Battle of the Bulge that began in December 1944 and continued for six weeks, an event that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill described as being “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war.” With 700,000 Allied forces involved, it was the largest battle fought by Americans, resulting in enormous numbers of casualties and marking the last offensive on the Western front.

This week on Reveal, reporter Chris Harland-Dunaway investigates why the soldiers who committed the massacre at Chenogne were never held accountable.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2018. 

Monica Barbaro on Portraying Joan Baez in ‘A Complete Unknown,’ Having a Mixed Identity in Hollywood and Being Mentored by Tom Cruise

27 December 2024 at 21:05
Monica Barbaro is ready for her big spotlight. From flying high as a pilot in “Top Gun: Maverick” to embodying the iconic Joan Baez, Monica Barbaro is making her mark in Hollywood. With her latest role in the James Mangold-directed Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” Barbaro demonstrates her acting range and untethered ability to […]

Cynthia Erivo Reveals She Co-Wrote an Original Song for Elphaba in ‘Wicked: For Good’: ‘When We Filmed It, the Entire Crew Was in Tears’

26 December 2024 at 21:24
Cynthia Erivo knows how to do this. Erivo has already dazzled audiences with her powerhouse performances on stage and screen. Still, her turn as Elphaba in Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked” has cemented her place as one of her generation’s most versatile and captivating artists. The first half of the two-part Wicked saga is already a […]

Traveling? Download These Reveal Episodes Now for Your Trip

23 December 2024 at 11:55

Reveal has been a weekly investigative podcast for nearly 10 years now, so we’ve produced hundreds of hours of investigative journalism over the years designed to inspire, inform, or infuriate you (and occasionally, all three at the same time). We’ve curated some of our favorite Reveal series and serials to take you through your holiday travel timeepisodes that will resonate today and into 2025. You can find the link to each episode on your preferred podcast platform below.

Four hours+ trip

Mississippi Goddam (seven-part series): Billey Joe Johnson Jr. dreamed of graduating high school, going to college, and one day playing pro football. On a cold December morning in 2008, that future was shattered. His story is a reckoning of justice in America.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

American Rehab (eight-part series): Reveal exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid shadow workforce. This reporting was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

After Ayotzinapa (three-part series): In 2014, students from a rural college in Mexico came under attack by police. Six people were killed and 43 young men disappeared without a trace. Families suspected the government was hiding the truth. Now, Reveal is exposing corruption at the highest levels and an unsettling connection to America’s war on drugs. 

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

Three-hour trip

40 Acres and a Lie (three-part series): It’s often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But “40 acres and a mule” was more than that. It was real. This three-part series from Reveal and the Center for Public Integrity tells the history of an often-misunderstood government program that gave more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people land titles, only to take the land back, fueling a wealth gap that remains today.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio

The COVID Tracking Project (three-part series): This three-part series exposes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s bungled response to COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic and takes listeners inside the massive volunteer effort to collect data about tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the US.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

Two-hour trip

Buried Secrets (two-part series): After decades of stripping away Native American identity from its students, a Catholic boarding school seeks to help the community heal. This series was a partnership between Reveal and ICT, formerly known as Indian Country Today.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

Listening to these next two investigations together will deepen your understanding of the risks and consequences for new mothers suspected of drug use:

They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies: Jade Dass began taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant. After Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

Even as medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate mothers from their newborns. To understand the scope of the dragnet, reporter Shoshana Walter, data reporter Melissa Lewis, and a team of Reveal researchers and lawyers filed 100 public records requests, putting together the first-ever tally of how often women are reported to child welfare agencies for taking prescription drugs during pregnancy.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad. Child Services Took Her Baby: Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth. But the tests many hospitals use are notoriously imprecise, with false positive rates of up to 50 percent for some drugs. Our collaboration with The Marshall Project investigates why parents across the country are being reported to child protective services over inaccurate pee-in-a-cup drug tests.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

One-hour trip

Your Retirement Investments Are Probably Fueling Climate Change: Reveal reporter Jonathan Jones was working on a story about a massive coal plant expansion in Montana when he wondered who was bankrolling the project. It turns out a major shareholder of the energy company driving the project was the Vanguard Group, the investment firm where he happens to have his retirement savings. This discovery put Jones on a quest to find out why Vanguard and other asset managers continue to invest in fossil fuels at a time when we need to burn less oil, gas, and coal.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

The Racist Hoax That Changed Boston: After a pregnant woman’s murder, Boston police rounded up countless Black men in search of her killer. But they were chasing a lie.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

Red, Black, and Blue: Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes spent months on the campaign trail talking to Black voters about how they see the goals and limits of their own political power. He paid special attention to Black Republicans and the new crop of Black supporters of former President Donald Trump. 

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

This Week’s Episode of Reveal: A Whistleblower in New Folsom Prison

22 December 2024 at 11:00

When Valentino Rodriguez started his job at a high-security prison in Sacramento, California, informally known as New Folsom, he thought he was entering a brotherhood of correctional officers who hold each other to a high standard of conduct.

Five years later, Rodriguez would be found dead in his home. His unexpected passing would raise questions from his family and the FBI. 

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Before he died, Rodriguez was promoted to an elite unit investigating crimes in the prison. His parents and his widow say he had been hoping for the position for a long time. 

But once inside the unit, the job consumed him. From day one, his fellow officers began to undermine and harass him. Stressed and fed up with how he was being treated, Rodriguez reached a breaking point. 

He left the prison, but his experiences there still haunted him—so he went in for a meeting with the warden. He didn’t know it would be his last.

This week on Reveal, we partner with KQED reporters Sukey Lewis and Julie Small and the On Our Watch podcast to explore what this correctional officer’s story shows about how the second-largest prison system in the country is failing to protect the people who live and work inside it.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2024

Traveling? Download These Reveal Episodes Now for Your Trip

23 December 2024 at 11:55

Reveal has been a weekly investigative podcast for nearly 10 years now, so we’ve produced hundreds of hours of investigative journalism over the years designed to inspire, inform, or infuriate you (and occasionally, all three at the same time). We’ve curated some of our favorite Reveal series and serials to take you through your holiday travel timeepisodes that will resonate today and into 2025. You can find the link to each episode on your preferred podcast platform below.

Four hours+ trip

Mississippi Goddam (seven-part series): Billey Joe Johnson Jr. dreamed of graduating high school, going to college, and one day playing pro football. On a cold December morning in 2008, that future was shattered. His story is a reckoning of justice in America.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

American Rehab (eight-part series): Reveal exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid shadow workforce. This reporting was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

After Ayotzinapa (three-part series): In 2014, students from a rural college in Mexico came under attack by police. Six people were killed and 43 young men disappeared without a trace. Families suspected the government was hiding the truth. Now, Reveal is exposing corruption at the highest levels and an unsettling connection to America’s war on drugs. 

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

Three-hour trip

40 Acres and a Lie (three-part series): It’s often thought of as a promise that was never kept. But “40 acres and a mule” was more than that. It was real. This three-part series from Reveal and the Center for Public Integrity tells the history of an often-misunderstood government program that gave more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people land titles, only to take the land back, fueling a wealth gap that remains today.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio

The COVID Tracking Project (three-part series): This three-part series exposes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s bungled response to COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic and takes listeners inside the massive volunteer effort to collect data about tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the US.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

Two-hour trip

Buried Secrets (two-part series): After decades of stripping away Native American identity from its students, a Catholic boarding school seeks to help the community heal. This series was a partnership between Reveal and ICT, formerly known as Indian Country Today.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

Listening to these next two investigations together will deepen your understanding of the risks and consequences for new mothers suspected of drug use:

They Followed Doctors’ Orders. The State Took Their Babies: Jade Dass began taking medication to treat her addiction to opioids before she became pregnant. After Dass delivered a healthy daughter, the hospital reported her to the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

Even as medications like Suboxone help pregnant women safely treat addiction, taking them can trigger investigations by child welfare agencies that separate mothers from their newborns. To understand the scope of the dragnet, reporter Shoshana Walter, data reporter Melissa Lewis, and a team of Reveal researchers and lawyers filed 100 public records requests, putting together the first-ever tally of how often women are reported to child welfare agencies for taking prescription drugs during pregnancy.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad. Child Services Took Her Baby: Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth. But the tests many hospitals use are notoriously imprecise, with false positive rates of up to 50 percent for some drugs. Our collaboration with The Marshall Project investigates why parents across the country are being reported to child protective services over inaccurate pee-in-a-cup drug tests.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

One-hour trip

Your Retirement Investments Are Probably Fueling Climate Change: Reveal reporter Jonathan Jones was working on a story about a massive coal plant expansion in Montana when he wondered who was bankrolling the project. It turns out a major shareholder of the energy company driving the project was the Vanguard Group, the investment firm where he happens to have his retirement savings. This discovery put Jones on a quest to find out why Vanguard and other asset managers continue to invest in fossil fuels at a time when we need to burn less oil, gas, and coal.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

The Racist Hoax That Changed Boston: After a pregnant woman’s murder, Boston police rounded up countless Black men in search of her killer. But they were chasing a lie.

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

Red, Black, and Blue: Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes spent months on the campaign trail talking to Black voters about how they see the goals and limits of their own political power. He paid special attention to Black Republicans and the new crop of Black supporters of former President Donald Trump. 

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora

This Week’s Episode of Reveal: A Whistleblower in New Folsom Prison

22 December 2024 at 11:00

When Valentino Rodriguez started his job at a high-security prison in Sacramento, California, informally known as New Folsom, he thought he was entering a brotherhood of correctional officers who hold each other to a high standard of conduct.

Five years later, Rodriguez would be found dead in his home. His unexpected passing would raise questions from his family and the FBI. 

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Before he died, Rodriguez was promoted to an elite unit investigating crimes in the prison. His parents and his widow say he had been hoping for the position for a long time. 

But once inside the unit, the job consumed him. From day one, his fellow officers began to undermine and harass him. Stressed and fed up with how he was being treated, Rodriguez reached a breaking point. 

He left the prison, but his experiences there still haunted him—so he went in for a meeting with the warden. He didn’t know it would be his last.

This week on Reveal, we partner with KQED reporters Sukey Lewis and Julie Small and the On Our Watch podcast to explore what this correctional officer’s story shows about how the second-largest prison system in the country is failing to protect the people who live and work inside it.

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2024

Steve McQueen on Casting Saoirse Ronan in ‘Blitz’ and Why Cinema ‘Is the Best Medium in the World’

19 December 2024 at 18:43
When Steve McQueen was casting “Blitz,” his World War II drama about the bombings over London, actress Saoirse Ronan expressed interest. But there was a hitch. The role of a mother in search of her young son who has gone missing required some singing. So he hopped on a Zoom with Ronan, and they had a […]

‘Yellowjackets’ Star Jasmin Savoy Brown Launches New Podcast ‘Today in Gay’

18 December 2024 at 13:00
“Yellowjackets” and “Scream” star Jasmin Savoy Brown has a new podcast, titled “Today in Gay.” Described as a “short, joyful daily news podcast by and for the queer community,” Brown came up with the show three years ago when she realized there’s no queer equivalent to NPR’s “Up First” or the NY Times’ “The Headlines.” […]

The Fall of Roe, Through the Eyes of High School Girls

14 December 2024 at 14:56

Every summer, 50 of the nation’s best and brightest teenage girls gather in Mobile, Alabama, to embark on two of the most intense weeks of their lives. Everybody wants the same thing: to walk away with a $40,000 college scholarship and the title of Distinguished Young Woman of America.

Reporter Shima Oliaee competed for Nevada when she was a teenager, and was invited back as a judge more than 20 years later. Oliaee accepted, and recorded the experience for a six-part audio series called The Competition.

In the final days of the competition, there was news from Washington that had big implications for women across the nation: Roe v. Wade had fallen. 

The girls are faced with a tough decision: Do they speak up for their political beliefs or stay focused on winning the money? And what might this mean for their futures—and their friendships?

“This series changed how I view America,” Oliaee said. “I came away from it thinking, damn. American teen girls are the canaries in the coal mine.”

This week, Reveal is partnering with The Competition podcast, from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios and hosted by Oliaee, to explore the dreams of young women, America’s promise, and what it takes to survive being a teen girl today.

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

The Fall of Roe, Through the Eyes of High School Girls

14 December 2024 at 14:56

Every summer, 50 of the nation’s best and brightest teenage girls gather in Mobile, Alabama, to embark on two of the most intense weeks of their lives. Everybody wants the same thing: to walk away with a $40,000 college scholarship and the title of Distinguished Young Woman of America.

Reporter Shima Oliaee competed for Nevada when she was a teenager, and was invited back as a judge more than 20 years later. Oliaee accepted, and recorded the experience for a six-part audio series called The Competition.

In the final days of the competition, there was news from Washington that had big implications for women across the nation: Roe v. Wade had fallen. 

The girls are faced with a tough decision: Do they speak up for their political beliefs or stay focused on winning the money? And what might this mean for their futures—and their friendships?

“This series changed how I view America,” Oliaee said. “I came away from it thinking, damn. American teen girls are the canaries in the coal mine.”

This week, Reveal is partnering with The Competition podcast, from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios and hosted by Oliaee, to explore the dreams of young women, America’s promise, and what it takes to survive being a teen girl today.

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Denzel Washington on ‘Gladiator 2’ and Calling Ryan Coogler to Apologize for Spilling ‘Black Panther 3’ News

12 December 2024 at 19:31
When Denzel Washington enters the room, you sit up straight. You pay attention. After all, you are in the presence of greatness. But even legends can be re-imagined. Washington is entering a new career chapter, but he’s far from slowing down. As the two-time Oscar winner gears up for his 70th birthday on Dec. 28, […]

The Racist Hoax That Changed Boston

7 December 2024 at 15:56

In 1989, Chuck Stuart called 911 on his car phone to report a shooting. 

He told a dispatcher that he and his wife Carol were leaving a birthing class at a Boston hospital when a man forced him to drive into the mixed-race Mission Hill neighborhood, and shot them both. Carol Stuart would die that night, hours after her son was delivered by cesarean section. Days later, her son would die, too.

Chuck Stuart said he saw the man who did it: a Black man in a tracksuit. 

Within hours, the killing had the city in a panic, and Boston police were tearing through Mission Hill looking for a suspect.  

For a whole generation of Black men in Mission Hill who were subjected to frisks and strip searches, this investigation shaped their relationship with police. And it changed the way Boston viewed itself when the story took a dramatic turn and the true killer was revealed.

On this week’s Reveal, in a show that first aired earlier this year, Adrian Walker of the Boston Globe and the Murder in Boston podcast bring you the untold story of the Stuart murder: one that exposed truths about race and crime that few white people in power wanted to confront.  

Listen to the episode in the player below.

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

The Buried Secrets of America’s Indian Boarding Schools

23 November 2024 at 15:58

In the early 1990s, Justin Pourier was a maintenance man at Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. One day, he says he stumbled upon small graves in the school’s basement. For nearly 30 years, Pourier would be haunted by what he saw and told no one except his wife. 

“Those are Native children down there…hopefully their spirit was able to travel on to whatever is beyond this world,” Pourier says. In 2022, he urged school officials to search the basement for the graves.

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

The hunt for unmarked graves of Native children isn’t happening just at Red Cloud, now called Maȟpíya Lúta. It’s one of more than 400 Indian boarding schools across the country that were part of a program designed by the federal government to “kill the Indian and save the man”—those were the actual words of one of the architects of the plan to destroy Native culture. In a historic first this fall, President Joe Biden apologized to Native Americans on behalf of the United States for the country’s past Indian boarding school policies.

This week on Reveal, in a two-part collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), we expose the painful legacy of boarding schools for Native children with ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe. She’s been writing about these schools for more than two decades. 

This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in October 2022.

The Buried Secrets of America’s Indian Boarding Schools

23 November 2024 at 15:58

In the early 1990s, Justin Pourier was a maintenance man at Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. One day, he says he stumbled upon small graves in the school’s basement. For nearly 30 years, Pourier would be haunted by what he saw and told no one except his wife. 

“Those are Native children down there…hopefully their spirit was able to travel on to whatever is beyond this world,” Pourier says. In 2022, he urged school officials to search the basement for the graves.

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

The hunt for unmarked graves of Native children isn’t happening just at Red Cloud, now called Maȟpíya Lúta. It’s one of more than 400 Indian boarding schools across the country that were part of a program designed by the federal government to “kill the Indian and save the man”—those were the actual words of one of the architects of the plan to destroy Native culture. In a historic first this fall, President Joe Biden apologized to Native Americans on behalf of the United States for the country’s past Indian boarding school policies.

This week on Reveal, in a two-part collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), we expose the painful legacy of boarding schools for Native children with ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe. She’s been writing about these schools for more than two decades. 

This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in October 2022.

The Many Contradictions of Trump’s Victory

16 November 2024 at 13:22

As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term, the reasons people voted him into office are becoming more clear. 

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

For Micki Witthoeft, it’s cause for celebration. Her daughter, Ashli Babitt, was shot and killed by a police officer after storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Today, Witthoeft is confident Trump will stand by his word and pardon everyone involved. 

“He said his administration’s going to be one on ‘promises made and promises kept,’ ” she said. “I felt like he was talking right to me.”

But it’s not the same sentiment for all voters. This week, the Reveal team looks at the many contradictions behind Trump’s victory, with stories from hosts Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober of the new podcast from The Atlantic, We Live Here NowMother Jones reporter Tim Murphy; and Reveal producer Najib Aminy. The show delves into January 6ers seeking pardons, “messy middle” voters who split their ballots, and members of the Uncommitted movement who wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris despite being opposed to Trump.

The Many Contradictions of Trump’s Victory

16 November 2024 at 13:22

As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term, the reasons people voted him into office are becoming more clear. 

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

For Micki Witthoeft, it’s cause for celebration. Her daughter, Ashli Babitt, was shot and killed by a police officer after storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Today, Witthoeft is confident Trump will stand by his word and pardon everyone involved. 

“He said his administration’s going to be one on ‘promises made and promises kept,’ ” she said. “I felt like he was talking right to me.”

But it’s not the same sentiment for all voters. This week, the Reveal team looks at the many contradictions behind Trump’s victory, with stories from hosts Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober of the new podcast from The Atlantic, We Live Here NowMother Jones reporter Tim Murphy; and Reveal producer Najib Aminy. The show delves into January 6ers seeking pardons, “messy middle” voters who split their ballots, and members of the Uncommitted movement who wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris despite being opposed to Trump.

Remembering an Actual Stolen Election—and the Terror of a White Supremacist Coup

2 November 2024 at 17:29

With the election on everyone’s mind, it’s a good moment to revisit a consequential election from the past. No, we’re not talking about 2016. Let’s go way further back—to what’s considered the only successful coup d’etat in US history. 

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

In the late 1800s, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a city where African Americans thrived economically and held elected office. This did not sit well with white supremacists, who during the election of 1898 used violence to intimidate voters and overthrow the elected government.

The leader of the coup, a former Confederate colonel named Alfred Moore Waddell, gave a speech in which he told white people: “If you see the Negro out voting tomorrow, tell him to stop. If he doesn’t, shoot him down. Shoot him down in his tracks.”

This week, the team at Reveal looks back at that coup and its consequences. After the overthrow, North Carolina legislators passed laws segregating white and Black people in housing, trains, schools, libraries, and other public spaces. Those laws were copied in states across the South, sowing the seeds of the Jim Crow era and much of the structural racism that continues today.

Glen Harris, a history professor at UNC Wilmington, sees a direct line of connection between this white supremacist uprising and events like George Floyd’s murder in 2020. “How Blacks are treated in American society is not a one-off event,” says Harris on the episode. “Part of the problem is that to suppress it, you look at these as one-off events.”

Also on this episode: Just after the Civil War, the US government made its famous “40 acres and a mule” promise to formerly enslaved people. Most Americans assume the promise of land was never kept, but over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed records that prove freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts of land that once were part of plantations.  

This is an update of episodes that originally aired in October 2020 and June 2024

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