Silence in Sikeston Podcast
Special: 'Meet the Makers with Cara Anthony and Chris Hastings' Transcript
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.
[Silence in Sikeston” theme music begins playing]
Cara Anthony: Hey, everyone. It’s Cara. We have something different for you to listen to today.
It’s a conversation between me and Chris Hastings, executive producer and editor-in-chief of WORLD Channel. We talk about what it took to make this podcast and film. You’ll hear a little more about my family too.
There are still two more episodes of “Silence in Sikeston.” We’ll start dropping them for you here next week.
[“Silence in Sikeston” theme music fades out]
[Jazzy percussive music begins playing]
Chris Hastings: Hi, everybody. I'm Chris Hastings, executive producer for WORLD, and welcome to our "Meet the Makers" series.
"Meet the Makers" is a series of conversations and interviews that we produce for YouTube where we get to introduce you, the audience, to the makers of the films we present on WORLD.
Today I'm joined by Cara Anthony, who is Midwest correspondent for KFF Health News, one of our partners on a film that we're going to be presenting called “Silence in Sikeston.”
[Train horn blares]
We're going to get into “Silence in Sikeston” in a minute, but first I'm going to introduce you to the producer of the film, Cara Anthony. Cara, tell me a little bit about yourself.
[Soft, contemplative music begins playing quietly]
Cara Anthony: Thanks for having me, Chris.
Well, I still live in Illinois, but I have family in Missouri. I like to tell people that I am a daughter of the Great Migration, a descendant of the Great Migration, because my parents and grandparents moved from the South to the Midwest during that period. And so, they've settled there, and I've made my home there, and now I'm telling stories from there, which is great.
I've been a journalist now for about 15 years. The last five years I've really focused on public health in the Midwest. I'm from East St. Louis, Illinois, but we look at public health issues from across the country, but particularly, you know, looking at what's going on in Illinois and Missouri, which is where this story is based.
Chris Hastings: How'd you get into health reporting?
Cara Anthony: That's an interesting question. I really love telling stories about people, and so health, just kind of...it aligns because we all live in a body, we all care about our health. Public health, in particular, is in the air that we breathe. It's something that we think about all the time.
I tell people that as public health reporters it's our job to look at the wellness of a community. What makes a community sick? What's maybe even harming a community? What's causing death in a community? And so, I look at all of the above, but it's been quite a journey getting there, but that's what I've been doing the last five years.
Chris Hastings: Excellent. So, I'm going to shift a little bit because we're going to talk about Sikeston. Give us a good summary of what “Silence in Sikeston” is.
Cara Anthony: Yeah, so “Silence in Sikeston” is both a film and a podcast about a small community in the rural part of Missouri where a man named Cleo Wright was lynched in 1942.
A lot of people don't know this, but his case was America's first federally investigated lynching, but the story largely went untold. And for a long time, people in Sikeston didn't really talk about it because they were afraid to talk about it, even though they were living under the weight of that burden. And so, we examined the silence around his case.
We also look at the case of Denzel Taylor. He was a young Black father who was shot and killed by Sikeston police in 2020.
It helps us understand where we were, how we're doing, and maybe even where we're going next.
Chris Hastings: In the podcast, you intentionally are really looking at the health effects, and I'm wondering why you decided you wanted to go into the podcast in that way.
Cara Anthony: I really want people to understand that when you see a case, when you see a headline run across your news screen about another Black man being killed or another Black person being killed by the police in America, it's not just affecting that family, the victim's family; it's affecting an entire community. And racism, and including violence that can come with racism, can make you sick. It can make an entire community sick. Communal mourning is real; communal grief is real. That's one thing that I really learned in Sikeston, and it can be even harder when we cannot talk about these things.
And so, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to make sure that we looked at this as a public health story, so people understood that these things weren't happening — they're not isolated incidents. They're not just happening to, again, one family or one person, but rather this can impact an entire community and really across generations going all the way back to the lynching era up until now.
Chris Hastings: You made a hard connection between what happened to Cleo Wright and what happened to this young man more recently. Talk to me why you felt those stories needed to be together.
Cara Anthony: These are stories about Black men who were dealing with public health threats that were unique to the time that they were living in. For Cleo Wright, who was a Black man who was killed in the 1940s, the public health threat of that time that people really didn't want to talk about was lynching. For Denzel Taylor, the public health threat of his time, and that we're still dealing with today, is police violence and police killings.
And so, it was really important for us to tackle both, because they are deeply connected. Black people in this country are still trying to figure out how to stay safe, how to keep their families safe, and so it was important for us to make sure that we made that modern-day connection and that it wasn't just a historical story, because people are still living under of the threat of the violence that persists today.
Chris Hastings: What is the connection between silence and trauma?
Cara Anthony: It's one thing to experience trauma and witness it and witness something like a lynching, watch another Black man, watch another Black person be killed by the police on camera.
It's another thing not to be able to talk about it. And so, not being able to talk about it is an added layer of pain. It's an added layer of hurt that can have all sorts of health effects, which we explore in the podcast, right?
And so, it's like suffering in silence is not just a thing that people say or — that is happening in real time. People have experienced that across generations, and I think it's important for us to shine a light on those stories because it can have a real impact on everyone really.
And not only can you have mental health effects, mental anxiety, depression, stress, always being alert, always being on guard — that kind of vigilance can really weigh on your body and you can start to experience physical health effects as well.
These are the things that people deal with across the country. But it's really important, I think, for us to look at what's happening in small towns, where it's not as easy to talk about these things because you can't escape your oppressor. You can't get away from the person or the institution that might be suffocating you. And so, it's really important for us to tell these stories in towns that are big and towns that are small because, unfortunately, police violence is everywhere.
Chris Hastings: Let's get back to the process of covering this story. Like I said, you've covered this for five years and there are other partners on this. So there's KFF News, — Health News, and there's Retro Report. Talk to me a little bit about the process of covering this story, and how did it affect you personally?
[Soft piano music plays in the background]
Cara Anthony: I mean, covering this story really was a wake-up call in a lot of ways. If we don't tell the stories, if we don't share the stories, even when they're difficult to look at, there are people who have challenged me and said, well, it's easier to focus on Black joy, but I make an argument that we cannot have joy without pain and the two go together. And so, it's really important for us to look at both, even when it makes people uncomfortable.
One of my favorite quotes that I came across as we were reporting this, and one of my colleagues also really leans on this, is something that Jay-Z said in a New York Times interview. He was talking about how you cannot heal what you won't reveal. That really kind of became my mantra as we pursued this story. I'm like, of course. That makes sense. You cannot heal what you won't reveal, so if we don't talk about our wounds, if we don't talk about our trauma, then how can we heal? How can we move on?
You know, some people might say, well, we are the injured party; that is not our responsibility. People might even challenge me and say, well, as a Black journalist, that is not your responsibility; you don't have to carry that weight. But I say, yes, we should be participants. We should be focusing on these narratives just as much as we focus on Black joy and Black resilience and Black resistance. Our pain matters too, because people are hurting, communities are hurting. Unfortunately, Black Americans are still dying at the hands of the police. This is an issue that, again, it's difficult to look at, but it's absolutely necessary for us to look at. It was necessary for Ida B. Wells to look at it during the lynching era, so if she looked at it and lived through it, certainly, I can too.
Chris Hastings: Let's talk a little bit about the differences between the film and the podcast. The film, which is directed by Retro Report, is markedly different than the podcast. Can you walk me through what you think the differences are?
Cara Anthony: Yeah, so it was really important for me to share this story all different ways. There's a film, there's a podcast, and there is an essay, where I dive deep into my family’s story.
The director of the film, Jill Rosenbaum, really made it clear that she wanted the residents of Sikeston to tell their own story. And so, you might see them talking in clusters. In one particular interview, a lynching witness is being interviewed by her granddaughter, which is unique and a special way to tell the story.
In the podcast, though, I kind of come in there a little bit and we talk about public health. We talk more about my family story, what happened to my uncle — my great-uncle was killed by the police. My early tape from when I first went to Sikeston: My first trip to Sikeston was in 2020. I didn't have a camera crew. It was just kind of like me and a recorder, and so you'll hear some of those early interactions that I had with Sikeston residents as I started to realize how big this story was in this really small town and all these things started to be revealed, and I thought, there's something here. There's something going on here. We had no idea that it was America's first federally investigated lynching, but as time went on I started to learn more.
And so, in the podcast you'll hear, again, more about the public health: how racism can make you sick, how racial violence can make you sick, how to talk about it with your family members. I've had tough conversations with my father. I'm even trying to figure out how to talk to my seven-year-old daughter already about these things. One thing that I really cherish is, like, being able to have kind of a template to have a conversation with her, and I hope that other people feel inspired by that as well.
Chris Hastings: How has this film affected your family?
Cara Anthony: I would say this film has taught my family about the importance of sharing stories. In the film, you get to meet two lynching witnesses who are now gone. They were the matriarchs of their family and they're no longer with us, and we're glad that we were able to capture those stories. I think that made us really look at, what stories are we not telling that we should tell? What stories should we preserve?
My parents are of a generation where you just did not talk about racial violence. You did not talk about lynching. You did not talk about your trauma, your pain. You just said, “Everything's good. We move on, we go forward.” They really had some tough questions about why I wanted to do this, my motivations for this whole project. I really explained to them that it needed to be done because even though it was difficult and made people maybe even uncomfortable, it's an absolutely necessary story to listen to and to watch.
Cara Anthony: Racism is still making people sick, whether we want to talk about it or not. I can still — I live in a relatively small town now. I still feel sometimes that record-scratch effect when I walk into a restaurant. You know what I mean? It's like even if we're not talking about something as much, even if people feel jaded, it doesn't mean that it's not happening.
Black Americans are still being gunned down by police officers. People are still witnessing and trying to figure out how to stay safe and be Black in America. I think it's still a huge issue even if the news cycle changes. As a journalist, it's really important for me to kind of stay focused and stay on mission because we know that the problem — it's still a problem.
Larry McClellon: [excerpt from the film plays] They say right now that we've come a long way, but we haven't really came a long way.
Chris Hastings: Cara Anthony, Midwest correspondent for KFF Health News and the producer of the film “Silence in Sikeston,” which is playing across WORLD Channel's platforms, thank you for being here today.
Cara Anthony: Thanks for having me, Chris.
[Silence in Sikeston theme music plays]
Cara Anthony: Thanks for listening.
We can’t wait to share our last two episodes with you. See you next week!
