457 - In With The Goths

On today’s episode, Georgia covers the life and murder of Medgar Evers and Karen tells the story of nurse Cliff Morrison and Ward 5B.

For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello and welcome. I'm my favorite Murder. That's Georgia hard Star.
That's Karen Killer Gariff.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is a video as well as an audio podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Right crazy, Yeah, I guess we were doing something with
our arms recently, but people were freaked out by it.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Was like this.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Yeah, it's called a power move in podcasting. If you've
never seen it, get.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Ready podcasting, see it now.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I love people are freaked out, just overexaggerated.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
You didn't realize how much we gesture.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
There's a lot of gesturing. You can't have a good
podcast without just flamboy and gesturing.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I simply need you to know one must. There's going
to be a ton of it. This is basically musical theater. Yeah,
I know. We're back on the boards. We're trotting the board.
Speaking of being on the fucking board. A wow, guys,
it's it. That's it.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Karen's banging on the fucking justin here. There's no words
to describe tell them.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Well, first of all, I just want to say that
the website Blue Sky is a new social media website
that has taken the place of Twitter that died long ago,
and so because I'm on there, I opened it up
in the middle of like a meeting or something, and
there's an account called Karmageddon thirteen. Who's there to tell
me some of the most exciting news I've ever seen?

(01:40):
And that it's we're on Jeopardy.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
I actually got my info from Canada. Oh, because I
guess it's at different times on there. Yeah, they're all
from our friend Casey Corbyn, who's Bence's friend in Texas.
Oh nice, Yeah, Texas Canada. Text us that info Texas,
No Canada, Canada.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Double Canada, Canada.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
And then basically we were us and you're wrong about Yeah,
provided the question part of a clue or the answer
part of the clue on Jeopardy.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
I said kind of, I'll say it said start yapping
on your own. This escort as Best of twenty twenty
one included You're wrong about and my favorite.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Murder, you have to wait till the end?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
The podcast? Oh yeah, podcasts, the answers of podcasting. What
is a podcast as a podcast?

Speaker 1 (02:32):
Fuck? We lost our own fucking around.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
That was like, that was a moment that I was like,
that's all I've been waiting for.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
We're done. Now, we're done.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
It's great to finally be done. It's to wrap it down.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
I really wanted to get under nine years, and I
think we've done it just under.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Uncomfortably close to nine years. It real close.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
So my family has been watching Jeopardy every single night
at seven o'clock since I can remember, truly. I think
I've told you multiple times the story of me watching
it at four point thirty and then again at seven
and pretending I knew all the answers, and my mom
was like, I'm you kidding. She was getting so excited.
I finally had to bust myself. I think I was

(03:13):
fourteen when I did it, So for that long, my
family's been watching Jeopardy at seven. What's hilarious is so
I see that message, we all send it to each other.
We're all freaking out. I'm like, oh my god, I'm
going to go downstairs watch it with my dad and
then there's going to be this reveal and it's going

(03:34):
to be incredible. Well, we were preempted by Monday night.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Football happens to the best of us, you know, happens
to the best.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
So perfect, and later on I said to my dad, like,
at the end of the night, I said to my dad, Hey,
so you know are you proud that I was on
your favorite TV show? And he goes, you were on
Monday Night Football?

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Wait did it play after? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
It was preempted to like ten thirty or something. He
still played, Okay, still played, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Not the same football. You guys just so perfect.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
That I would be preempted by Monday Night Football for
your dad. That moment your dad's finally going.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
To say it, shouldn't you how to tell him instead
of watching it?

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Well, because I had to send that post to my
sister because she lost her mind.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
She was just like, oh my god, Yeah I did too.
Was that feels like a moment in fucking time? It
really did.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
I don't think I'll ever not be amazed by I know,
thank you Jeopardy, Thank.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
You Jeopardy writers. Yeah, that was cool to be included.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
It really was.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Congratulations you're wrong about Yeah, I hope you feel the same. Yeah,
that was very exciting. You know, how else was your
Thanksgiving break?

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Good? It was good.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
We binged the show that I turkey binged. We binged Darky. Yeah,
maybe I shouldn't have said it like that.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
I ate a whole turkey between two of us.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
We binged. No we ate a bunch of them. We
forgot to put the leftovers away. It was really sad.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Oh no, I know, yeah, that's fine for good. I'm
a leftover person. Those are my fucking favorite.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah yeah, especially Thanksgiving leftovers.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
So the show that we binged over the Break is
the biopic version of the nonfiction book that we both loved,
Say Nothing, Oh Yeah, by Patrick raden Keith. Yes, yes, yeah,
about the IRA and the troubles, and especially about Dolorous Price,

(05:39):
which I now know how to say her name correctly
because of that show, how the Irish say it. It's
tough though dolorous Yeah, yeah, right, it's fucking incredible.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Great, it's on Hulu.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
I could watch ten more seasons of it, even though
I know it's over, Like I know, they don't. They
didn't make it up, yeah, so they can't just keep going.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
But love it. It's incredible. I'm so glad.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, because yeah, I've heard a lot about it, and
we've talked a lot about it. Yea, And you love
one something that you read something like that you know
about from it feels like it's the very first iteration
of it actually gets executed by people who also loved.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
It clearly, and like the acting is incredible, like both
the younger generation and then the people who play of
course people play them, they're older, they're fucking you know, professionals,
but everyone just like killed it.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
It was it was just like.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
It was phenomenal, great, And it's such a weird period
of history that I don't think we really are taught.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Right, Well, it's recent to us, so it is that
kind of thing where it maybe doesn't feel like history, right,
but yeah, it's America. We don't know enough about the
troubles and what's kind of behind it.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Yeah, let's really go. I think this will teach everyone,
So say nothing on Hulu. I don't know why we
don't say London dairy. Don't say London dairy. Mistake that
I will never ever stop thinking about for the rest
of it. And Ireland in Scotland or is it. Scotland
is not part of the UK.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Ireland's not part of the UK except for this area.
And that's the problem, Yes, right exactly.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
I know it now.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
We all know now, we all know all of the
things that we know the most now now now we
know them.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
After the fact. What about you? What have you got let's.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
See, I binged Monday night football, Tuesday night football, Wednesday
afternoon football. There was no end to the football experience.
But what I loved was I just lay on the couch.
My dad watches football, but he gets it straight into
his hearing aids, so it goes and then I'm sitting
in silence with kind of the background of football. I

(07:42):
don't have to listen to it. And then I can
just watch TikTok full volume in the middle of the room,
and it's like we have a great setup. And then
if anybody needs to tell the other person anything, we
both stop what we're doing and.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Go, well, okay, so I need to get Vince's hearing
aids is what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Well, it's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, eventually that's what will happen.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
I love a sports nap, Like when Vince puts on
a sport I'm like, great, this is the perfect like,
you know, atmosphere for a nap.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
And it's also I think it's like you don't you
understand the value of it, but you don't have to
be invested.

Speaker 1 (08:19):
You just kind of get.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
To enjoy the general vibe and then and then like
go to sleep.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Yeah, and I'm like, I know he's occupied, so I
don't have to feel like I'm wasted, like you know,
like I have to ask any questions. Yeah, or like
you know what, I'm like, babe, I'm gonna go take
a nap. And it's like, okay, well, I'll just hang
out for an hour and a half then like take
a nap. It's like, no, you were watching the sport. Yeah,
and so my nap.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Is not interfering with your day in any way. They
go together perfectly.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, Like I can feel guilty about it, nap. That's
how much fucking anxiety I have.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
But I wouldn't. Okay, so way, yeah, when.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
He's got, when he's occupied, they have codependency and we're
great at it and.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
You're powering through it. That's right.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Speaking of which, and my uh, I was basically binging TikTok.
I guess that would be on top of forced football
voluntarily binging TikTok. And so I think I told you
the already.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
But one of the.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Things that is now in my experience is I get
to see the clips of Nick Terry's MFM animated all
the time because they're in my feed. The algorithm has
figured out I love myself, and so they come up
all the time. And the other day the I can't
find my mom, little girl in the store story that
you told about a gotha punker, a grandma, and so

(09:31):
I saw that one and I'm like, so cute, and
then I looked down and it was. It was actually
retweeted by a company called Gothcloth, and goth Cloth retweeting
that it got five hundred thousand likes, holy shit and
two million views. Are you fucking serious? I am dead serious.

(09:53):
So Gothcloth, we want to say God, thank you. Just
let me tell you really quick. Go Cloth was founded
by a woman named Jordan K. Hill in twenty twenty three,
so recently. It's a blend of personal design. She creates
and curated items that are must have for ghosts and grules.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
I love ghosts and gouls. Yeah, so which is.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
Thanks Jordan for the RT and the you know, I
guess it's like some nice content for the goths and
the ghouls that might be wanting to buy her clothing.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
I'm glad that we're, like, you know, in with the goths.
I mean, who better to be in with.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
I feel like we were there without being you know,
it's that kind of thing. When I was in high
school in the eighties, you weren't allowed to try to
be in with a group if you weren't going to
like dye your hair or.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Wear the black lipstick or all your eyebrows and put
catliner on.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, yeah, you actually commit.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, but I don't think it's like that anymore.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
You can be whatever you want to be. Yeah, that's good. Yeah,
you don't have to wear a uniform to be like
a murdering No, that's right. Yeah, that's kind of what
it is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
So yeah, Murderinos, go to Gothclothco dot com, Gothclothco if
you want any of those things.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Because those are our new friends. Hey.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
And also, if you're lost in a grocery store and
you can't find your mom, go.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Look for a god. Look for a goth or a
punt or a grandma.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Speaking of being lost and found, it's December, and so
as you know, every year in December we do a
weekly donation for the holidays, ten thousand dollars. So we
always like to find a charity that can make a
real difference in people's lives.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
So yeah, so this December's we don't have a name
for it giving corner. Sure, we're kicking it off with
a donation of ten thousand dollars to an organization called
Feeding America. They're part of a nationwide network of two
hundred food banks and sixty thousand meal programs so people
can access food without judgment or stigma, and.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
They work with lawmakers to make it easier for people
to get food by expanding access to food assistance programs.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
And so if you'd like to join us in giving
to this very important cause, you can go to their
website at Feeding America dot org.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
Or you can explore their volunteer opportunities, which is a
great way to give back. You can like help out
at a food bank, you can host a food drive,
you can just donate food to your local pantry.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Just let's all be looking out for ways to help
each other and support each other and making sure people
in need have what they need.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, when I was a kid, we had to utilize this.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
So yeah, I really and I really love being able to,
you know, help out, help out, Yeah, because it helped
my family out when I was a kid.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Except for the can of peaches that exploded in our
laundry room because they were expired. Don't give expired food
to food banks.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
I mean, please check your please check all those dates. Anyways. Yeah,
that's a nice one. That's a good feeling. Kickoff December.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Love it.

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, all right, well let's get into it. We have
a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media. Here are
some highlights and then we'll get into our stories.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah. So this week on Buried Bones, Kate and Paul
are kicking off two part series on Harvey Glatzman, known
as the Glamour Girl killer. He terrorized Los Angeles in
the fifties.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Lost up story.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Yeah, and a brand new episode of Rewind with Karen
and Georgia.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
That's our third weekly episode. It's out now.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
This week we're recapping episode twenty two, featuring two stories
from the fifteen hundred. So if you haven't started binging Rewind,
check it out.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Please do.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
It's like a cliffs Notes binging. It's like, yeah, my
favorite murder for dummies. Get over there. We'll make it
easy those first couple hundred episodes.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
That's the plan.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Also this week, over on this podcast, I'll Kill You,
the Aaron's are talking about all things scabies, learn about
scape the history of scabies, and dive into scabies before
scabies dives into you.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
I know a fucking dirty ass hipster who got scabies.
My mother was.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Convinced because I bought clothes at vintage store at the Goodwill.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Basically, she's like, you are going to get scabies.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
And then you're gonna come to meet And I'm just
telling you right now where I'm like, it's a coat.
It's an old man's coat, right, No one's going to
give me.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Skating, ye.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
I mean, if it would have happened to someone because
of that, it would have happened to me by now,
so I can guarantee, Yeah, I can't guarantee you guarantee
it never happened to you. Promise, yeah, I think. And
then just a friendly reminder, the holidays are coming up fast,
so get your loved ones something that says I love
you almost as much as I love podcasts at exactly
rightstore dot com. Place your order by December twelfth to

(14:23):
guarantee delivery by the twenty fifth, and get yourself some
fun merch.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
And now that we're doing video, did you know we're
also doing commercials? So let's take a look at the
commercial that we made.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
What Yeah, Hi, it's a coal from the Merch Department.

Speaker 4 (14:41):
You might know me from that email you got about
your recent return and I have a question for you.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Are your buns cold? Don't worry?

Speaker 4 (14:49):
We have the solution and this one is a fan
favorite design never before seen in sweats.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Form cool, I love the cold.

Speaker 4 (14:57):
Just in time for the holidays, it's the hot Dog
Crew sweatshirt. Now you can celebrate the year round delaxy
that is the humble hot Dog. Let your outfit be
a conversation starter at every cockpit party this season. Featuring
this gorgeous hot dog art by Sammy Rich. It's the
perfect gift for everyone in your life, from your grandma
to that random stranger you met online. So Ron don't

(15:20):
walk to our website exactly rightstore dot com and order
your hot Dog sweatshirt today.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
Oh my god, right, I remember you pitching that and
then there it is. Holy shit, my face hurts from
smiling like that is so joyous.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Who better than Nicole to be our sales of our
merch department. Nicole has been selling merch for us and
with us since we started, basically like since right after
we started doing merch.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, she's been with us.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
And I went to her and I was like, would
you do this thing? I just think it would be funny, and.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
She's like, okay.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
She's like always the funniest person in our staff meetings.
And then the day we went to do it, Alison
and I went to go over the scripts with her,
say is there anything you want to change or do
or anything? And then I was like, you took theater
in high school and she goes, no.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
I didn't.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
And then I was like, oh, okay, well tell me
if you want to not do this, you don't have
to do it.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
If you don't want it doesn't seem like something she
would want to do, and yet she nailed it. She
did it so because it's Nicole being Nicole, which I love.
I'm so happy about that.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
Go to our Instagram and our TikTok and watch that
video and then get a hot talk sure.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
And you can see it and you can be a
part of it.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
That was joyous, right, I'm so glad you liked it.
I want a surprise video every episode. Please make me
a surprise video. Okay, as much as possible, you know what,
check and done. I was so scared when you said
that it was going to be like me, like talking,
but I didn't leap about like.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
A plane again. Yeah, it's like the old pictures I
used to love to surprise you with. Oh we made
a commercial. Fuck, no, there's nothing to do with me.
I love it right, and we're selling March. We're selling March.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Okay, okay, I'm first, and my story today is a
heavy one. This is the life and murder of a
civil rights hero whose killer went free for thirty years
as a clear obvious direct result of state sanctioned racism
in good old Mississippi.

Speaker 1 (17:40):
This is the story of Medgar Evers. Oh wow, this one.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
I know the overall I know, the very white child
from a white school.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
Six Yeah, okay, Well.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
The main source for this story is a book called
The Autobiography of Medgar Evers, which combines his speeches and
writings with historical context, written by his incredible wife, Mariley
Evers Williams and Manning Marrable, and the rest of the
sources are in the show notes. So Medgar Evers is
born in nineteen twenty five, grows up in Decatur at Mississippi,

(18:14):
and his parents are James and Jesse Evers. James works
in a sawmill, and Jesse his mom does laundry and
ironing at home for local white families. Medgar has three
other siblings, and James and Jesse are known as extremely
loving and attentive parents. Medgar's father is locally known as
crazy Jim like your dad because he refuses to step

(18:39):
off the sidewalk in town in deference to passing white
people as was the rules, so the bullshit rules. The
Everses are extremely focused on their children getting good educations,
despite the many barriers to this in the Jim Crow South.
The Evers children attend a segregated school which is a
twelve mile walk each way from their house. Twelve miles

(19:02):
that's what half a marathon.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yes, but also like so you have to get up
what at six in the morning to get to school
on tome.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Seriously so, when Medgar is only fourteen years old, a
man in his town named Willie Tingle is lynched for
supposedly insulting a white woman. Medger witnesses Willie, who was
friends with his father, be dragged behind a truck before
being shot and hanged. So he sees us as a
fourteen year old Willy's bloody clothes are left out on

(19:34):
a fence post for a year after this, you know,
to send a message, and the Everest kids have to
walk past them every day on their way to school.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
The horror.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
So in nineteen forty two, when Medgar is seventeen and
still in high school, he volunteers to join the army
by lying about his age and goes to fight in
World War Two. He serves in a segregated battalion in
England and then in France, and like most though not all,
black soul at the time, Medgur is assigned to a
non combat role due to the racist military policies. He

(20:05):
works as a technician loading and unloading shipments of weapons,
and he and his fellow black soldiers are routinely subject
to demeaning treatment from their white commanding officers. And it's
during this time in the army that Medgir resolves to
fight for civil rights when he gets back home. So
right after being discharged in nineteen forty six, Medgar and
his brother bring a group of black veterans to the

(20:28):
courthouse in their hometown of Decatur to register to vote.
But on election day, a group of white men carrying
guns blocks Medgar, his brother, and the others from accessing
the polls, so Medgre finishes high school and then attends
Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College. On the first day of school,
he meets a fellow freshman who's seven years younger named

(20:50):
Merley Beasley, and Merley is who's only seventeen, is warned
by her grandmother to stay away from the older veterans,
but the two get married in December nineteen fifty one
and graduate the following spring. And while in college, Medgar
had been on the debate team, the business club, the
football team, the track team, had been his class president
his junior year, and yearbook editor and newspaper editor.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
In his senior year. Wow, so no small feat.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Also while in college, Medgar had attended an interracial seminar
hosted by one all white college and one all black
college in Mississippi, and it was at this seminar that
he first learned about the NAACP and joined. After graduation
in nineteen fifty two, Medgre and Merley first moved to
a town called Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where Medgar begins working

(21:39):
as an insurance salesman at a business owned by a
prominent black doctor, and the job gives him the opportunity
to travel the Delta region and talk to a lot
of people. He also applies to be the first black
law student at the University of Mississippi, but shocking, his
application is rejected on a technicality. But of course we

(22:00):
know that it's more about the outrage of the alumni,
you know, admitting a black person.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
I mean, but when you were saying that thing of
an all white school and an all black school coming
together to like that seemed very advanced, and that's also
in Mississippi. Yeah, so it's like obviously there's pockets of
people who are really especially what the white people who
knew that change had to happen, And like, I think
it's such a tipping point in history, like a you know,
it's like you've got the old school, you got the

(22:27):
new school, and they're wedding heads, right, It's like the
young people and then the old ways rights.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
It's the like what side of history do you want
to be on? Kind of thing?

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Very valid question to this day, sure is.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
And so you know, getting rejected is in nineteen fifty four,
the same year as the Brown versus Board of Education
decision passes declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional, but southern
states and white school districts will fight this decision for years.
And on the state level, the Mississippi state legislature pas
laws empowering white districts to resist segregation and puts up

(23:04):
obstacles for black students to register for school. And it
also recognizes local bodies called white Citizens' councils, which oppose
integration in individual cities and towns, often with armed resistance.
So people trying to make progress and change, people trying
to keep things the old way, and you.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Know, the fight that makes me think of. Leading up
to the election, there was a video about this woman
who made a t shirt with the receipt from when
she voted the first time. I think when she was eighteen.
Did you see that video? A black woman who's you know,
older now obviously, and it was the two dollars receipt

(23:46):
for her having to pay a poll tax, which all
black people had to pay when they were voting.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
A that's what a poll tax is.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Holy.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
When was this did? Like whenever? When did she vote originally?

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Right?

Speaker 1 (23:58):
It was I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
I think she said it was like in the late forties, ye,
or so God, because I would guess that woman was
somewhere in her seventies or eighties, but I couldn't guess.
But she did a whole speech on it, and I
was like, I've heard the phrase poll tax for so.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Long and I didn't know that that's what it was. Oh,
that's fucking wild, and.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
That kind of like, yeah, figuring out all these ways
to restrict people or just just get in people's way.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Right, Yeah, make it difficult so that they won't try,
let alone succeed.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Yep. Okay.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
So Medgar asked the NAACP for their assistance insuing the
University of Mississippi over his application, but their leadership instead
offers him a job, and in December of nineteen fifty four,
he is named their Field secretary for the state of Mississippi.
So Medgar and Murley, who by this point have two
young children, Darryl and Rena, moved to Jackson, which is

(24:50):
Mississippi's capital. We both totally knew that.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Yeah, absolutely, I know all the state capital.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
They move there in January of nineteen fifty five. Their
third child, a son named James, will be born in Jackson.
In nineteen sixty so in the wake of Brown versus
born of education, there is an increase in violence against
black people in Southern States. As part of Medgar's job,
he investigates murder and assault cases against black people, which
I can't imagine is not just completely traumatizing. He provides

(25:19):
assistance to fourteen year old Emmett Till's family after he
is horrifically lynched in Money, Mississippi, in August of nineteen
fifty four. The tillcase, and as we've heard it, causes
shockwaves around the world because his mother made me Till's
decision to allow the press to document the brutality of
his injuries by having an open casket. Medger himself spends

(25:43):
days on his hands and knees in the town of Money,
looking for evidence in the fields and in the river,
and tills murders are ultimately declared not guilty by an
all white jury.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
Medgar investigates eight other murders, countless assaults, and works to
assist another black applicant to the University of Mississippi law school.
And he also works tirelessly to register black voters in Mississippi,
and as the civil rights movement changes and adapts to
include more direct action like Boycott's Meedgar helps organize those two.

(26:15):
So at this point, the atmosphere in Jackson is obviously
more than tense, and between nineteen fifty five and nineteen
sixty three, the Evers family is targeted with countless threats
and several acts of violence. Really writes that they used
to get so many threatening phone calls that she would
just put the phone down and walk away, you know,
And she says, quote I began putting the phone quietly

(26:37):
down on the table and directing it toward the wall.
So much hatred has been poured out on that wall
end quote.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Oh god, I know.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Also, that's just like again, you're just going about your day,
you have other stuff to do, and then you have
that kind of like just think of like the last
time somebody yelled at you in a parking lot, or
you are like shaken and whatever, and it's like that
being brought to black people's door multiple.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Times a day, or you know.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
And back then, oh, you try to take any kind
of action, you can't.

Speaker 3 (27:10):
On another occasion, Medgar is run out of a small town.
He drives his car at one hundred miles an hour
to get away. Medgar and Murley teach their children to
army crawl to the bathroom if they ever hear a
loud noise aimed at the house. God And in nineteen
sixty three, someone throws a firebomb at the Evers Homes
car port. Medgar is at home when it happens. The

(27:33):
kids are asleep, and so Murley, this mother of three,
is so afraid of being shot if she goes outside,
but she also doesn't want the house to burn down,
so she goes out and puts the fire out with
an urten hose, like that's the best choice she has.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
She has to do it herself.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, Marley remembers asking Medgar if all of this physical
danger is worth it, So she says, quote what about us?
You have me, your wife, who loves you dearly, You
have these three children. And Medgh would tell her quote
That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. End quote, And
she says also, quote knowing that every day might be
the last day was the force behind the deep love

(28:10):
that Medgar and I had for.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
Each other and our children. End quote.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
So on June twelfth, nineteen sixty three, Medgar comes home
around twelve thirty am from a very long day of
work for the NAACP. And the way Merley tells the story,
it sounds like Medgar thought something might happen to him
that day. He had made sure to spend the previous
Sunday with his family not working, which was rare for him,

(28:35):
and he made sure to kiss the kids before he left,
and he called Merley just to talk three times throughout
the workday. And when Medgar pulls the car into the
car port shortly after midnight, his hands are full. He's
carrying a stack of NAACP T shirts into the house.
Because he had been out of town and traveling a lot,
Merley had let This is the fucking worst. Marley had

(28:55):
let the children wait up to greet their father when
he got home. This is just they hear the engine
stop and the car door open, and then they all
hear the horrifying, unmistakable sound of a gunshot.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
Marley runs to the door.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
Medgar has made it there, his keys in hand, but
then he falls to the ground, bleeding profusely. With the
fucking kids awake to greet their daddy. And the kids
are between three and nine years old, and they see
all of it, and they plead with their father to
get up. Neighbors come over to help, but Medgar dies
later that night. He's just thirty seven years old. Oh

(29:35):
my god, I know. Thousands of people attend Medger's funeral,
and it's documented in Life magazine, and there's this devastating
photo of Merley comforting her nine year old son Darryl
on the.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Cover of Life.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
Metger is buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
So almost immediately it's very clear who shot Medgar Evers
In a small grove of trees about one hundred feet
from the overs, Investigators from the FBI find a rifle
that matches the gun Evers had been shot with. It
belongs to a forty two year old man named Byron
de la Beckweth. Byron is a member of his local

(30:10):
White Citizens Council, one of those all white groups devoted
to maintaining segregation and white supremacy.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
He's also a member of the Klucux.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Klam That kind of go hand in hand. So Byron
is arrested and charged with Medgar's murder, but the case
results in two hung juries, both all white and all male.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
Juries. Both times and he's not tried a third time.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
I mean, just the idea that it was such a
strong case, so clear that actually it made these completely
rigged white juries. Go hold on a second, how are
we going to do this?

Speaker 3 (30:44):
And we're hung Yeah, that's like, yeah, that speaks volumes
rather than innocent right or not guilty right. So it
not being tried a third time remains the state of
affairs for thirty years. That's intell and mistigative reporter named
Jerry Mitchell finds evidence that the State of Mississippi assisted

(31:05):
Byron's defense team in vetting jurors for both trials. Oh
that's a fucking no, no, you can't do that.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
I've never heard of this.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Like this feels like I'm trying to rack my brain
of like have I seen like a movie about this
or something you have?

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Okay, I'll tell you when I go in the movie the.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Movie and book is first of the book, and then
the movie is Ghosts of Mississippi. Oh, okay, you know,
famous amazing movie directed by Ron Howard. But so Jerry
Mitchell finds out evidence. He's this incredible investigative reporter. So
Mississippi has a governing body called the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission,

(31:42):
And in theory, the role of this body was to
protect the rights of the state from federal overreach, which
we can fucking talk a lot about states rights, that's
not in practice, it really functioned to protect the racist
interests of the local white citizens councils. It formed directly
after the passing of Brown versus Board of Education. So

(32:03):
in both trials of Byron, de la Beck with representatives
from this body collected information on potential jurors and pass
this on to Byron's defense team, so very specific, you know,
obviously egregious. So all this starts to happen in the
late eighties and Byron has finally tried a third time

(32:23):
in nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Takes that long.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
In addition to the evidence from the crime scene, which
remains the same from the first two trials, multiple people
testify that Byron had boasted about killing Medger over the years,
including at kkk rallies, And this time a jury which
is no longer all white or all male, finds him
guilty and he is sentenced to life in prison. And
this part of the story is where the book and

(32:48):
movie adaptation of Ghosts of Mississippi happens. Byron dies in
two thousand and one at the age of eighty, so
Byron probably would not have been tried were it not
from early Ever, she eventually remarried and is now known
as Merley Evers Williams, and after the new evidence about
the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission's influence on the First Shoe

(33:09):
Trials was revealed, really tirelessly pushed for several years for
Byron to be retried. Marley says, quote, because I loved Medger.
I didn't want him to be forgotten. That was the
first motivation. The second was to bring positive change if
it possibly could. In the years after her husband's death,
Mrley moved her children to California and attended Pomona College.

(33:31):
She had a career in marketing and corporate community outreach,
and then in the nineties became a member of the
board at the NUBACP. She says that her primary motivation
for attaining such an incredible career was vengeance. Yes, she says,
quote tell me that I can't do something, I'll kill
myself trying to do it.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
That's right. End quote. Yeah, fucking chills.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Marley eventually becomes the NUBACP Board's first chairwoman, firstly first
female leader. In twenty thirteen, she delivers the invocation at
the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
Remember that she's the first woman and the first non
clergy member to do so, which is like, bring us
fucking back, So good member, I mean yeah. Medgar Evers
is still remembered as one of the brightest heroes of
the civil rights movement. There's a college in Brooklyn named
after him, and a statue of him in Jackson, Mississippi.

(34:29):
Every June, Jackson has the Medgar Evers Homecoming celebration, and
actually BB King played at it every year before his
death in twenty fifteen.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Oh, I know.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
Medgar had told Marley that he was choosing to risk
his life for his children's futures, and they all went
on to do great things. Sadly, Daryl Evers, Medgar and
Murley's oldest oldest son, died of colon cancer in two
thousand and one. He was a prominent artist.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
Grena.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
Evers had a thirty two year career with United Airlines
and now runs the Medgar and Merley Evers Institute and
serves on several nonprofit boards, and James the youngest is
a successful photographer who works on promotional photos for films
and TV. And actually James took this incredible photo of
his two sons with Barack Obama and Murley at that

(35:17):
inauguration of twenty thirteen.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
So last year Murley and Medgar's house was turned into
a national monument which people can visit. At a gala
honoring her, Murley, who's now ninety one, said quote, I
ask you to please always keep Medgar Evers memory in
your minds and in your hearts end quote. And that
is the story of the death and legacy of a

(35:40):
true hero of the civil rights movement, Medgar Evers.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Wow, I did not know.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
These details, Like, yeah, there's just so many stories of
brave people that are not told well.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
And they're like they're crucial stories there. It's the details
of how that kind of work gets done and push forward,
and it's by people who truly knew they were putting
their life on the line and did it. They didn't
back away from the risk, and they didn't back away
from like all of that fear they had to just

(36:17):
they kind of like lived in that fear and powered
through it anyway, And that's the piece of it that's
it's so incredible. It's like he didn't stay home for work.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
He didn't.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
He just kept going, knowing that he had to.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Right.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
It reminds me of when they.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Started the desegregation Ruby Bridges, the five year old girl
who had to with the first little black girl who
went to a white school.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, she's a baby.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
I mean we've talked about this before, but like I
recently saw a picture and it was like her now,
oh my god, and her from then, and it just
like they made a five.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
Year old to do that.

Speaker 3 (36:56):
They made her get escorted into the school so she
could buy some an education.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, like by her she was alone.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
Ye, like for by fear of being killed. It's like
it's just fucking insane.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, amazing job, thank you.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
I wanted to not do that shitty so yeah, I
know you did it great. And also just like yeah,
I love that idea of like we don't know this,
let's tell each other so that we.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Know it and other people know it totally.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
Well, we're going to take a turn, but it isn't
really the turn away that we usually do, which I
kind of love.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
We're going to turn toward different direction, okay, but also serious.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
Okay, because December is HIV AIDS Awareness month, right if
you weren't there, Many of our listeners were not. But
in the spring of nineteen eighty, the national news began
to report on a.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Mysterious fatal disease that was.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Spread across the country, almost entirely in the gay male population.
Almost immediately, those who fell ill were treated like pariahs
in the healthcare system. Being diagnosed with AIDS was seen
as a death sentence, sotaking fear, paranoia, and intense homophobia.
The AIDS crisis in America and the way it was
handled by the Reagan administration and by some average Americans themselves,

(38:24):
will always be a stain on our history. But like
most of the stories that we tell each other, there
is a glimmer of light in this story because at
San Francisco General Hospital. Sorry I can't start it already.
I just feel so proud.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Yeah, I was going to say that, because.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
At San Francisco General Hospital, a young gay male nurse
from Florida will spearhead the first dedicated AIDS word in
the United States.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
Oh my god, this is incredible.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
And when he does, a staff of heroic nurses and
doctors will defy fears and cultural taboos to provide passionate
care to those patients dying from AIDS, and that simple,
generous act of compassion will ultimately prove to be revolutionary.
This is the story of nurse Cliff Morrison and San

(39:13):
Francisco General's Ward five B.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Shit, right, I don't know anything about this, right, incredible?

Speaker 2 (39:19):
I knew like a little, But again it's that same
thing where you're kind of like, I know a little.
There's an incredible documentary called five B that came out
in twenty eighteen. Okay, so definitely watch that, and then
there's also interviews with an articles by Cliff Morrison and
fellow five B nurse Alison Moed.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Those are the two main.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Sources, and the rest of the sources are in our
show notes. Okay, so first I'm gonna tell you about
Cliff Morrison. He is born in the early fifties in
Live Oak, Florida, which is a small town on the
state's panhandle, and by his own description, Cliff says, it's
quote about ninety miles from anywhere, so up in poverty,

(40:01):
no one in his family ever graduated high school, let
alone college. They also didn't own a car, a telephone,
or a TV, so true poverty. But from a young age,
Cliff works as a field hand to support his family
a very young age. That's very hard work, obviously, very
physically demanding. So by the time he's twelve, he decides

(40:24):
that he doesn't want to do that job anymore.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Twelve, he's like enough, So when did he start? We're like, yeah,
that's fucked up. Serious.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
So he heads down to a small local hospital and
he asks if he can please work there?

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, So he gets a job in the housekeeping department.
He mops the floors, he takes out the trash, but
after a while he realizes he wants to care for
the patients. Before long, Cliff is promoted to an orderly position,
a job he holds throughout high school, and after he graduates,
he goes to nursing school in Jacksonville.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
So he admits that he was self conscious about going
into nursing at first because back then the field was
dominated by women. But by nineteen seventy one, twenty year
old Cliff is a registered nurse and he's earning ten
thousand dollars a year, which is about what year, seventy one,
I'm going to go thirty eight thousand, seventy eight thousands.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Holy shit.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah, he's making good money. That's very good money. Yes,
I think even in today's standards for some nurses it's like, yeah,
they don't get paid that okay.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
So that's of course the most anyone in his family
has ever made. But more than that, Cliff has really
found his calling. He says, quote, I realized I really
liked being a nurse. It's where I felt the most comfortable.
I'd always been told that I was a caring person,
so it made sense that I gravitated toward that profession.

(41:50):
So Cliff bounces from Jacksonville down to Miami. There's a
thriving gay community down there. There were lots of job opportunities.
But it's the seventies and at this time, down in
South Florida, there's a woman named Anita Bryant who's decided
to wage war on the LGBTQ community of South Florida.

(42:11):
She and her cronies are lobbying hard to have a
recently passed ordinance that outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation repealed.
She wants they want to get rid of that.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
I want you to take the steps you've you've so
fought for so hard, and take them away from you. Like,
let's go back in fucking history instead of forward.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
What the fuck? What does that sound like to you?
I don't know. It sounds really familiar, though.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Hmm let's repeal right, Huh. How's your body feel right now?
It feels like I want to get a hysterectomy a
little second class? Yeah, Anita Bryant, I believe there's her
getting pied.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yes, she yes.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
If I'm right, there's an amazing video because she did it.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
It's someone who did it.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
That's because she was also she wasn't She was a performer.
She was like a singer and stuff, and she was
kind of like back it was like back in those
Perry Como days where people were very like clean cut.
It was all about like late sixties kind of like
all American, clean cut whatever, and so she was kind
of like popular in a way. And then suddenly she

(43:21):
was like, but you know who I really want to
opress is these gays. And so yeah, there's that legendary
video where she gets pied while she's doing I think
a press conference.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah, it was by gay activist Tom Higgins.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, you can look that video up on YouTube. It's
pretty great. But also it's like at the time, it's
like how dare you? And it's like it's pie. You're
an asshole, and you got a pie in the face.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
You deserve it.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
So basically, those bigoted activists drum up such an increasingly
hostile energy in South Florida, which is up until then
been a safe haven for gay people, that Cliff decides
it's time for heid him to move to California. He's
always wanted to spend time in the Bay Area, and
of course San Francisco has become like the mecca for

(44:08):
gay people to escape to from all around the country.
So in nineteen seventy nine, Cliff moves there and takes
a job at San Francisco General, which is at the
time a teaching hospital for University of California at San Francisco.
So what's funny is Cliff doesn't actually take to the
city right away.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
It's cold, it's foggy.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
But whether there's not a lot of sunshine in San Francisco,
so he misses the Florida sunshine. He's also not clicking
with the gay community, like so many places that can
become emblematic of, like a movement or a subculture. San
Francisco's filled with transplants, so he feels like it's a
little artificial. So he figures he'll stay for a year

(44:52):
or two and then he's going to go try somewhere else.
But all that changes. In nineteen eighty one, the murmurings
of a strange dead illness that's largely affecting young gay
men begin to circulate, so Cliff and his colleagues at
s of General start seeing some of these patients come
into their ICU. They're all suffering from the same symptoms.

(45:13):
They've lost weight, they have fevers that last for days,
they have lesions on their skin, swollen lymph nodes. Some
of them are confused and delirious, and they almost always
die from this illness. The news goes from calling it
a mystery illness to saying it's a new type of
cancer affecting gay men because they just have no idea.

(45:35):
By nineteen eighty two, and I have told you this story.
I told you the last time we talked about the
AIDS crisis. But this happening in nineteen eighty one. I
absolutely remember where I was sitting in the living room
watching the six o'clock news with my mom or if
it was my mom was there. It was the seven
o'clock news, and Dave maclhattan on the Channel two news,
and the little chiron next to him just said mystery illness,

(45:58):
and he basically was like a mystery. This is in
San Francisco. H Yeah, really strange. So by nineteen eighty two,
this mystery illness is given a name, Acquired immuno deficiency
syndrome or AIDS for short, cases are being identified throughout
the country now, with many, but most importantly not all,

(46:18):
of the victims being gay men. So even the best
medical experts and the most decorated doctors can't fully explain
why these patients are getting sick, and that uncertainty begins
to fuel a widespread panic and blatant homophobia. According to
the website Hospital Watchdog, they say quote some men suspected
as gay and infected with HIV were kicked out of

(46:41):
their apartments and fired from their jobs. In one instance,
their desks were taken to a parking lot and set
on fire. Insurance companies were screening out gay men to
deny coverage by sending out surveys asking if they worked
as a florist or a hairdresser.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Holy shit.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah, in actuality, AIDS is affecting people from all walks
of life. But it's an extremely hostile time for members
of the day gay community. It's a hostile time anyway,
and then this comes along.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Right then it's like they almost feel justified, right, the
homophobia those bigots.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
So, even within the medical establishment and even in progressive
cities like San Francisco, some nurses, doctors, and orderlies are reluctant,
or they outright refuse to treat patients with certain symptoms
or if they suspect that they're gay. And when those
patients are admitted, they are usually isolated and treated more

(47:39):
like walking biohazards than as human beings. Actually, literal hazard
signs are sometimes plastered on their hospital room doors, Meals
are left in the hallway outside of their rooms. Basic
care like changing their bed sheets or cleaning them goes
undone out of this fear of being infected. And Cliff

(47:59):
is seen all of this as a nurse, and then
one day it hits even closer to home. He comes
back from work to find his roommate Wayne, collapsed on
the hallway floor. Cliff says, quote, we had been talking
a lot about the disease because it was just starting
to make headlines, and I had a feeling that's what
he had. So for days, Cliff does everything he can

(48:22):
to care for Wayne at home, but Wayne's condition doesn't improve,
and it's not easy to find a hospital that can
or will admit him, which is such a weird thing
to think of, Like.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
The place you're supposed to go and you're sick.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
The given yeah, and they're like ooh no, like when
you need.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
Care and they're like, well, their laws say that I
can't take care of you and write give you the
care that you used.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Or we're just going to to protect ourselves. Yeah, we're
gonna not admit you.

Speaker 1 (48:49):
Right, sounds so familiar.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yeah, So Cliff reaches out to his colleagues at San
Francisco General. He's finally given the name of a doctor
who works out of a private hospital that will take Wwayne,
and there Cliff watches as his friend is rushed into
an isolation room, surrounded by fearful staff, then shut away
and left alone. When Cliff tries to go into that room,

(49:11):
the medical staff stops him. They warn him that it's
too dangerous, but Cliff doesn't hesitate. He tells them, quote,
I'm a nurse and I've been taking care of Wayne
for days. Whatever he's got, I probably have, and he
goes into the room. So at the time, it's very
common for medical staff treating these patients to wear head
to toe PPE, including what's casually referred to as a spacesuit,

(49:35):
which are those heavy duty biohazard suits that we've all
seen in movies. So the staff who have been wearing
suits like that, if not the heavy duty PPE, is
just staring at Cliff in shock and horror as he
walks into Wayne's room without any protective gear on it all.
Cliff later says, I didn't want to wear a spacesuit

(49:56):
to take care.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Of my friend.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
So seeing these patients at San Francisco General, as well
as his roommate, being neglected, isolated, and denied compassion in
the final days of their lives, infuriates Cliff. The fact
is at this time, most patients with AIDS do not survive,
and Cliff sees that their deaths are neither peaceful nor dictified,
and then.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
So many of their families had shunned them already, so
it's not like, yes, all they have is each other
and they're not even being allowed to see.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
They're not allowed in or like their friends don't know
that this is the part that they're in, Like they're
just not It's like everyone's freaking out.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
It's like a lec A colony. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
So these patients die in pain, surrounded by fear, and
often alone, and the diagnosis of this disease cuts them
off from care in a time that they needed the most.
So Cliff decides he needs to change this. He starts
by volunteering with the Shanty Project, which is like San
Francisco based nonprofit that provides people with terminal illnesses compassion

(51:01):
and human connection as they die. By the early eighties,
many of the people they work with are sick members
of the gay community, so for Cliff, this volunteer work
becomes an invaluable education in palliative care back at San Francisco.
General word spreads quickly about his work with the Shanty Project,
and before long, doctors, nurses, and even patients are coming

(51:24):
to Cliff for guidance. He's suddenly a very helpful middleman
who can see, share, and translate both the clinical and
patient perspectives in a time that's incredibly confusing and incredibly scary.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
But as more people get sick, the hysteria is dialed
up and the misinformation only increases. Meanwhile, I see you
beds at San Francisco General hit capacity as hundreds of
patients being diagnosed with AIDS, all spread throughout different words.
The quality of their care is entirely inconsistent, depending on

(51:58):
their respective nurses and doctor's mindsets. So you get a
bad area of the hospital, you get a bad doctor
or nurse.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
The idea of that is, like, we take it for granted.
I mean, anybody that has insurance and then gets to
even go to the hospital, it takes it for granted.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
I definitely do.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
But then this idea that you would get a thing
that would suddenly turn those people against you.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
They have hatred towards you, Yeah, and they're supposed to
be treating you while you're actively dying.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
Yeah. So the hospital administrators quickly realize that they're in
over their heads, and again they turn to Cliff for help.
They want him to take on a clinical coordinator job
so they can oversee these patients with aids in the hospital,
and Cliff accepts. There's immediately a plan to quarantine these
patients in a separate part of the hospital. Then, at

(52:50):
first Cliff hates this idea. He compares it to being
sent to a leper colony. But then the more he
thinks about it, the more practical a separate ward feels.
They'll have dedicated space and an opportunity to provide a
more tailored kind of care, so he agrees. He's given
an area of the hospital on the fifth floor used

(53:11):
as a sleeping area for resident doctors known as Ward
five B, and an outpatient clinic called.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Ward eighty six. But Cliff realizes.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
He's going to need money to set up and fund
this new dedicated clinic, and that's when doctor Mervin Silverman,
San Francisco's director of public health at the time, invites
Cliff to meet with Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Cliff remembers quote,
we went to her office and sat down, and she said,
we just so happened to have several million dollars surplus

(53:40):
in the budget this year. If you promise me that
you will spend this money appropriately. I will give you
some of the surplus, and you do what you need
to do, just make sure you do it right.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
Wow. When did that fucking happen?

Speaker 2 (53:54):
I mean, for real, especially considering at this time nineteen
eighty one, President Ronald Reagan hasn't even addressed this public
health issue, a very pressing public health issue to the.

Speaker 1 (54:06):
Country at all.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
He has not acknowledged it, and he won't until nineteen
eighty five, and even then, in nineteen eighty five, he
just very briefly mentions AIDS in a press conference, just
like in passing, and then after that it's two more
years before he addresses this national health crisis in any
significant way. It takes them six years to talk about

(54:30):
AIDS because people are actively dying, Yes, and by then,
nearly forty seven thousand Americans have been infected with HIV
or have died from AIDS. Cliff adds quote, as I
look back on that meeting with Diane Feinstein, that was
one of the more more wonderful moments of my career.
That's the first time I'd actually seen a politician show

(54:53):
true leadership. So now that he is both the space
and funding Cliff needs nurses and doctors to work in
Ward five B, so he post notices about the forthcoming
AIDS ward throughout the hospital. He ends up hiring eleven nurses,
as well as a team of social workers, physical therapists, dietitians, chaplains,

(55:15):
and occupational therapists. And for him, staffing five B isn't
just about finding qualified medical professionals. It's about hiring people
who genuinely want to work there. He knows that'll be
the key to improving this poor quality of care that
everyone is seeing everywhere else. But Cliff insaysts on being
honest about the risks.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Of this work.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
He has worked with enough AIDS patients without contracting the
illness himself to know that that's possible, but generally information
is sparse, and he needs his staff to be informed
and accepting of the unknowns. One five B staffer later
recalls an early conversation with Cliff where he says, quote,
go home and talk to your significant others because we

(55:58):
don't know. We can't tell you that you're not going
to get this disease. That's terrifying, Yeah, brave, And then
Cliff talks to the patients themselves to find out what
they want out of this word. He'll later say, quote
the first thing I heard was I want to feel
like I'm being.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
Treated like a person. I have just stopped crying on
this podcast. It's fucking well, you need to do it
for both of us because I can because of all
those meds. We're getting all that botar, like, I just
don't have the pas see it. There's a tear in
that eye right there is. Yeah, Well, it's just look,
I lost a friend to AIDS who was twenty one
years old.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
My god, and it was it was a big surprise,
and it was he was my friend from sixth grade.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
And I loved him very much, Ken Mason, and to
see him he, thank god, had a very loving, very
accepting family who took care of him right till the end.
And so I got to go see him basically in
his at his mom's house, and it was one of
the worst things I've ever experienced to kind of see that.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
He was ravaged.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
I mean, he was just like he was emaciated. And
it's so easy to think about all of these men
who in the seventies were like, oh, you know, everyone's
encouraged to come out and we need to fight for
right and we need to be the people who we are.

(57:27):
And then suddenly this happens, and it enables these bigots
to talk about gay people gay men like you got
what you deserve, which is cruel, so disgusting, it's just like, yeah,
everything about it is so it is so horrifying.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
And then the leadership that intentionally didn't help.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
Right, Like you got to wonder what would have happened
if a Democrat had been in the had been in
office at the time.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
Or a decent human being, like somebody that.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
Would empathy look at that and say it's insane, but
here's what's beautiful. Basically, that's where a cliff comes in.
He goes, we'll do it ourselves, and we'll do it
for each other. And there's a lot of lesbian women
and a lot of female nurses who went in. We
were like, we will take care of them, will do this,
and we'll take these risks because we cannot just let

(58:22):
these men die to protect ourselves. That is not the
point of being a nurse or a doctor. And they
weren't the only ones who felt that way, thank god.
And because of that, then essentially, after being able to
give that care they proved that you can give that care.
And basically they went out there and they were the

(58:44):
first line, were first responders to go, look, we did
it and we didn't catch it, therefore you need to
do it.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
The idea that they had to do.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
That though, and not know and the in between of
all the people that died alone and isolated, and it's
just it's disgusting and horrible. So when Cliff asked those
patients what they wanted out of the ward, he said,
the first quote, the first thing I heard was I

(59:15):
want to feel like I'm being treated like a person.
They said, I want people who are not afraid of me.
I want people to touch me. I want to note
that I'm going to be cleaned up every day. They
were talking about being treated with dignity and compassion.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
Yeah, basics, the very the lowest bar. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
So, the virus that causes AIDS HIV is finally identified
in May of nineteen eighty three, and two months later,
in July of nineteen eighty three, Ward five B officially
opens to the public. It's helmed by head nurse Alison Mohed,
who oversees a team of eleven dedicated nurses. Some of
these nurses are straight, some are gay. All of them

(59:57):
have agreed to put aside their personal fears surround AIDS
to offer compassionate care to their sick and vulnerable patients.
Allison later says, quote, I was enthralled by this idea
of love for your fellow being. This was a confluence
of nurses of people who wanted to take care of
this population that had been stigmatized, discriminated against, not cared

(01:00:21):
for during a period of their lives where their lives
were ending. Professionally, how do we care for them? Caring
is what we were about.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Wow, imagine that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
So five B is unlike anywhere else at the time. Here,
the doctors and nurses don't speak down to their patients,
and they certainly don't judge them. In fact, patients are
treated as a member of their own care team, and
they're involved in all the conversations about their treatment. Five
B is one of the only units in the US
where people can visit outside of set visiting hours. Oh wow,

(01:00:56):
And those visitors don't have to be literal family members
in the biological sense. They can be members of the
patient's chosen family. The staff even sneaks in their patient's
pets when they can. Also, on five BE, staffers don't
use the same full body ppe many other facilities across
the country do. Instead, they wear protective equipment when necessary.

(01:01:22):
The five B staff use common sense precautions that keep
the patient's dignity in mind, remembering the value of human
touch and connection. Cliff says, quote, we knew by now
that AIDS was not transmitted casually. I had no qualms
about climbing onto the bed with my patients to hold them.
That had never been done before. As a nurse. You

(01:01:45):
might touch someone's hand, but you would never take them
in your arms.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Oh my god, the image.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Yeah, this is a huge deal for a sense of timeline.
This is five years before that famous moment where Princess
Diana made history publicly shaking the hand of someone with HIV.
Five years before that, so it was at a time
where touching a person who had AIDS, let alone holding

(01:02:11):
them to provide comfort, is seen as extremely risky by
almost everyone. There's also a large outside component to Ward
five B, which includes a roster of volunteers from the
gay community, local hospices, and the Shanty Project who do
things like decorate and furnish the wardness.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
That's so hacky. It's like the gay men go in
and they're like, oh, the lighting and here is terrible.
It's just like, but it matters. Yeah, it's all about dignity. Yeah,
it's quality of life.

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
They also run errands, they offer counseling, They look for
housing for the patients when they get discharged, because there
are patients who are getting discharged. Nurse Alison Mowood says, quote,
on a broad level, we learned how to take care
of patients who were going through this terrible disease. It
was about carrying, about curing. It was about touching and interacting,

(01:03:03):
letting people know they were safe, letting people know that
they were accepted, letting people know that their wishes were
going to be listened to, that their thoughts about their
care and options were going to be respected and heard.
That was not necessarily the mode in those days. So
very quickly, the demand for Ward five BEE exceeds its capacity.

(01:03:23):
When a patient passes away and a bed becomes available,
it's quickly filled by someone from a lengthy wait list. Then,
in May of nineteen eighty six, the unit expands into Ward.

Speaker 1 (01:03:34):
Five A, adding.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
About thirty more beds, so as Ward five be's profile rises, politicians, advocates,
and celebrities stop by to show support for the staff's
efforts and the patient's recovery. Of course, given the stigma
around HIV and AIDS at the time, not everyone is
in support of what's going on at sf General. Homophobic

(01:03:57):
members of the public are in sense that public dots
have gone to the funding of five B, and in
cases where the patients are well enough to move around
the hospital and visit the cafeteria, hysteria erupts around five
BE patients using.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
The water fountains. Oh my God.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
A group of four nurses even sue San Francisco General
over fears that five B is risking their personal health,
but that case is ultimately shot down as five be's
model of care is deemed safe and appropriate treatment. Before long,
it becomes the gold standard for HIV and AIDS care
throughout the world. Meanwhile, the mission of five B stands firm.

(01:04:38):
In nineteen eighty five, The New York Times reports that
just two staffers have left the ward in its first
two years of operation, which is quote a much lower
number than hospital wards normally experience. Alison Moed says, quote,
we learn that compassion is one of those things that
doesn't become depleted. The more you give it, it actually replenishes.

(01:05:00):
It's one of those things where the more you give,
the better you feel and want to give. That's what
love's about, right. There was a very loving exchange and
loving feeling on the unit, and I know you could
see it. We were really committed to what we were
doing and passionate about being able to do it. So
by the mid nineteen nineties, advancements in medication change everything.

(01:05:22):
An aid's diagnosis is no longer an automatic death sentence,
and before long HIV is regarded as a manageable chronic condition.
Fewer and fewer beds in Wards five A and five
B are occupied, and by two thousand and six both
wards are officially disbanded.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
And six that's like such a long time, such a
long time.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
Cliff Morrison continues working as an advocate for those people
with HIV and AIDS. In interviews, he's not one to
talk about his own emotions or experience, which is on
brand for such a dedicated healthcare provider. But like so
many gay men of his age, he lost an unimaginable
number of loved.

Speaker 1 (01:06:02):
Ones to this disease.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
Cliff has said, quote, I have dealt with survivor's guilt
on and off through the years, and still suffer from PTSD.
I don't have any peers because they all died today.
The majority of my friends are twenty years younger than me.
But I have absolutely no regrets. I would do it
all again. I was a gay man, but I was
a nurse first. The impact of his work with five

(01:06:27):
b endurers today. There's a memorial plaque hanging at the
hospital that says, quote, on July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three,
here on word five B, a group of caregivers gathered
to confront a new epidemic AIDS. They created a haven
of acceptance and compassion at a time when others were
calling for isolation and rejection. They saw fellow human beings

(01:06:50):
where others saw only disease and contagion. Together with a generous,
loving volunteer community, they developed a world renowned center of
excellent dedicated to quality of care for the living and
the dying. This plaque commemorates all who served here and
remembers all who died, and that is the story of
Cliff Morrison and the heroic staff at Ward five B.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
I mean, holy shit, right, unbelievable, good job.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
I mean, I think being in any way first, yeah,
is one of the hardest things to do. You don't
have anybody behind you, especially like in Cliff's situation, he
was having to teach and basically lecture doctors of that

(01:07:41):
whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Of I'd have it. I have it already.

Speaker 2 (01:07:44):
If it's bad, I have it, so there's no reason
I don't go take care of my friend and that
kind of energy, which is like risking it. That's the
ultimate sacrifice for something as like, so you're not just
standing by letting something go on.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Courageous compassion and being the first person to do that
is scary and hard, but it must be done.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
And then you become Cliff became this example of like, well,
if he's doing it, then it must be okay for me,
which must mean that this hysteria is not the truth
that it's essentially like we actually have to figure and
now you know, now we know that, like there was
very specific ways that HIV was transmitted, so that whole

(01:08:29):
idea was completely incorrect. It was just no one knew
the exact medical truths.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
Because there wasn't enough research going into it, because the
government was ignoring it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Completely because the president wouldn't say it was happening. I mean, like,
if you want to read Cliff Morrison's actual own writing
about this, there is a website you can go to.
It'll be listed in the sources, and it's an article
he wrote called they Did Not Die Peacefully and he
wrote it in twenty eleven, So it really is like

(01:09:00):
the first hand account. If you're looking for that, that's
the source that you should pull and read because I'm
his first hand account.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
You know. Sure, it's incredible what everyone should read.

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):
Can I do what I do best and recommend a
fictionalized version of this a book in book form? This
sounds exactly like a book that I listened to recently
that was incredible that I highly recommend is called The
Great Believers by Rebecca Mackay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:30):
It's an incredible book.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
It takes place in the nineteen eighties in this world
in Chicago, and it just gives you, you know, it's
almost historical fiction, and it gives you a time and
a place of this specific one that is that's hard
to imagine unless you've lived through it, but's so necessary
so we can have compassion and empathy. Yeah, well, great job.
I mean, what a fucking episode, right, Yeah, hard hitting.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
We're kicking off December the way only we can. Yeah,
that's what we're here for. If you know, go listen
to Hagan, you're wrong about two. If you want more info,
that's right, more interesting info.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
And be brave and take care of your fellow man.
That's right. And do your best. Do your best. You've
got it in you, you do. Be first. Yeah, and
stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis. Do you
want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:10:34):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
Our managing producers Hannah Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalach.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
Our researchers are Mareon mcclashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
Follow the show on Instagram at Facebook at my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
Byebye