In 1942, in Sikeston Missouri, Cleo Wright was lynched in front of a church. Nearly eight decades later, in 2020, Denzel Taylor was killed in a police shooting in the same small town.
Journalist Cara Anthony is a podcaster who explores the health impact of racial violence. She wanted to explore the connection between these two events - one from the past and one from the present - and to examine how these tragic moments in America’s history might be faced head on. Not erased.
The story started because of a call Cara made to the Sikeston county clerk, who seemed to be one of the few in town willing to talk about Cleo Wright, and introduced her to eyewitnesses of the horrible crime. Cara Anthony’s documentary film is “Silence in Sikeston” - KBIA’s Lucas Johnson sat down to talk to her about it. Here’s an excerpt from their conversation:
Lucas Johnson: Why do you think that there are so many people that were kind of pushing away from that place, and why is it just, why is it just not talked about a lot, like in that area specifically, but just in general, more across the country?
Cara Anthony: Every town has secrets. America has its secrets. America has issues that we need to face head on. But a lot of times - I've heard plenty of professors and people that study this for a living - when we talk about race, we are oftentimes we're talking about power, and that's a really difficult conversation. It's such a big question. I hope I'm answering it right. Yeah, it's just really hard to talk about race in America. We thought it was an absolutely necessary conversation.
Lucas Johnson: And for you personally, how did the going there, you know, the research for this film, the actual production of it: How did that whole process impact you personally? Then you also mentioned the podcast too, but how those two things impacted you personally?
Cara Anthony: I'll tell you this film and the podcast took me on a real journey, and especially as a Black journalist. I had to take a look at my own family's history. At about a year into reporting this, maybe less, it just felt weird that I was extracting all of these stories from the community, but I really didn't know my own story. And so I decided to have a conversation with my father. And he says, like, 'Do you realize that someone in our family was killed by a police officer in the 1940s during this period that you're looking at, do you know your own history?' And the answer was no. And ... after every interview that we collected, especially when we interviewed the witnesses - you know, two of them died not long after we recorded their stories - there was such a sense of like relief. Like, finally, like I'm able to say what I saw without being afraid. ... They had lived in Sikeston for the better part of 80 years and kept this story to themselves for the most part.
Lucas Johnson: Do you think that the conversation around these things are shifting more recently because of George Floyd? How do you kind of see it taking shape right now?
Cara Anthony: Right now, I think you know, it's important for people to continue to honor each other in their communities, to share stories, to keep the conversation going as much as they can, to heal in ways that they find comforting, whether that be with their own family members or with a in a big maybe it's a big, bigger setting, whatever that is. But I really encourage people also to take care [each other], because people have been fighting for a really long time.
Lucas Johnson: For you, what would, what do you think that Justice looks like? Is it just getting people's stories out there, or is there more to it than that?
Cara Anthony: I think that's part of the work as journalists. You know, we're tasked - and I'm a public health journalist as well. So we're tasked with looking at what makes a community sick, and sometimes that is police violence and police killings. But I just want to also acknowledge that I'm a person. I'm a Black woman. I told this story through the lens of a Black woman in America who's raising a child. And so yeah, it does hurt when I see people that look like me that are gunned down by the police and treated unfairly. And so for me, justice looks like health equity. It looks like a fair chance, a fair shake. To live, to be happy and to thrive.
For more information on the documentary 'Silence in Sikeston', check out the podcast from KFF here and the PBS series "Locals, USA"