SIKESTON, Mo. — For residents of Sikeston, as for Black Americans around the country, speaking openly about experiences with racial violence can be taboo and, in some cases, forbidden.
As a child, Larry McClellon’s mother told him not to ask too many questions about the 1942 lynching of Cleo Wright in their hometown of Sikeston. McClellon, now an outspoken activist, wants his community to acknowledge the city’s painful past, as well as the racism and violence.
“They do not want to talk about that subject,” McClellon said. “That’s a hush-hush.”
Also in this episode, host Cara Anthony uncovers details of a police killing in her own family. Anthony unpacks her family’s story with Aiesha Lee, a licensed professional counselor and an assistant professor at Penn State.
“This pain has compounded over generations,” Lee said. “We’re going to have to deconstruct it or heal it over generations.”
Host
In Conversation With …
Editor’s note: If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio of “Silence in Sikeston,” which includes emotion and emphasis not found in the transcript. This transcript, generated using transcription software, has been edited for style and clarity. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
Cara Anthony: A lynching isn’t an isolated, singular act.
The violence — and the silence around it — was a deliberate, community-wide lesson meant to be passed on.
And passed down.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: In Sikeston, Missouri, a 25-year-old soon-to-be father named Cleo Wright was lynched by a white mob.
It happened in 1942. But you didn’t have to be there, or even born yet, to get the message.
Larry McClellon: I grew up here in Sikeston, Missouri. My age … 77.
Cara Anthony: That’s community elder Larry McClellon.
He was born two years after Cleo Wright’s body was dragged across the railroad tracks to the Black side of town.
Larry McClellon: Back in the old days, when dark comes, you don’t want to be caught over here after 6 o’clock. You want to be on this side of the tracks.
I didn’t cross the line. Because I knew what was waiting. I knew what time it was here in Sikeston, Missouri.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: I’m Cara Anthony. I’m a journalist. I’ve been visiting Sikeston for years to work on a documentary film and podcast about the lynching of Cleo Wright.
And the police killing in 2020 of another young, Black father, Denzel Taylor.
Larry McClellon: All these Black men are getting shot down, losing their life.
Cara Anthony: Cleo and Denzel, killed some 80 years apart. In the same city.
Larry McClellon: They do not want to talk about that subject. That’s a hush-hush.
Cara Anthony: In this episode of the podcast, we’re exploring how that “hush” hurts the community. And the way it hurts people’s health.
Here’s an example: Larry says it’s hard to feel safe in your hometown when Black men are killed and nearly everyone looks the other way.
Growing up, Larry had a lot of questions about Cleo.
Larry McClellon: I used to ask Mom. You know, “What is this with this man that supposedly, uh, got lynched?” And she told me, “Hey, you stay away from that. … Don’t you be asking no questions about Cleo Wright because that was just a no-no.”
Cara Anthony: Why was that a no-no?
Larry McClellon: Because she’s afraid for me that they would probably take me out and do something to me. Maybe bodily harm or something like that.
Cara Anthony: “They” being white neighbors.
Despite those lessons, Larry became an outspoken activist for racial justice and police reform in Sikeston. He founded an organization here called And Justice for All.
Being vocal has come at a price, he says.
Larry McClellon: Somebody called me and said, “Uh, Mr. Larry, your building is on fire.”
So, I didn’t even really hang the phone up real good. I just jumped up and come up the highway.
Cara Anthony: It was April 2019 — Larry rushed to the headquarters of And Justice for All.
Larry McClellon: I could see the flame was high as anything in Sikeston, might as well say. So, I gets up there and, uh, fire burning. So, all the fire department get out there pouring water and everything.
Cara Anthony: The building was a total loss.
Larry McClellon: The building was set on fire. That’s what, that’s what happened.
Who would come in and destroy something like that?
Cara Anthony: The police report says it was arson, but nothing really came of the investigation. Larry suspects it was a targeted attack — retaliation for his activism, for speaking out. Retaliation that could continue.
Larry McClellon: I got 4 acres over there. A lot of trees and so forth. And some of my own people, they make jokes out of it sometime, like, “Man, you going to be hanging from one of those trees down there, or somebody’s going to set over in those bushes with a high-powered rifle and going to shoot you when you walk out the door or shoot you when you pull up.”
Cara Anthony: And still, Larry’s decided he’s not going to hold his tongue.
Because keeping quiet causes its own trouble, its own hurt and pain.
This is “Silence in Sikeston.” The podcast all about finding the words to say the things that go unsaid.
From WORLD Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX.
Episode 2: “Hush, Fix Your Face.”
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Larry’s keeping on with his work in Sikeston. But all those warnings from his mother decades ago to keep quiet about Cleo’s lynching left a mark.
I called up Aiesha Lee to talk about this. She’s a licensed mental health professional and also an assistant professor at Penn State.
One of the first things she wanted me to know is that silence has been used as a tool of systemic oppression in America for a very long time.
Aiesha Lee says lynching — and the community terror it caused — was part of a wider effort to impose white supremacy.
Aiesha Lee: This is a design. Let me be clear, this is, it was very much designed for us to be these subservient, submissive people who do not ask questions, who do not say anything, and just do as they’re told.
Cara Anthony: One of Aiesha’s areas of expertise is how racism can impact physical and mental health — across generations. She sees signs of it in her clients every day.
Aiesha Lee: No one actually comes in and says, “Hey, I’m dealing with intergenerational trauma. Can you help me?” Right?
Cara Anthony: I will have to admit, I’ve been very skeptical about that term, what that means, because, in my family, it was always this thing of like, “We’re good over here. Everything’s OK.”
Aiesha Lee: I love what you just said. And, and for me, as a mental [health] professional, I get really cautious when using, even using the word “trauma.”
Part of the, the generational legacy of Black families is we don’t talk about our problems, we just kind of roll through them, we deal with them, we’re strong, and we just keep it moving forward, right?
It’s protection. It is “Let me teach you the ways of the world according to us” or for us, right? And for us, we need to keep our mouth shut. We can’t ask any questions. We can’t make any noise, because if we do, you’re going to get the same, or worse than, you know, others.
Cara Anthony: My parents. Grandparents. My great-grandparents. Their experiences with racial violence — and what they had to do to stay safe — shaped me.
Stuffing down injustice and pain is a tried-and-true way to cope. But Aiesha says holding hurt in hurts.
Aiesha Lee: It’s almost like every time we’re silent, it’s like a little pinprick that we, we do to our bodies internally.
Cara Anthony: She says over time those wounds add up.
Aiesha Lee: After so long, um, those little pinpricks turn up as heart disease, as cancer, as, you know, all these other ailments.
Cara Anthony: Feeling unsafe, being that vigilant all the time. What can that do to someone’s body?
Aiesha Lee: Imagine every time you walk out of the door, you’re tightening your body, you’re tensing up your body, right? And you’re holding on to it for the entire day until you come home at night. What do we think would happen to our bodies as a result?
Cara Anthony: A study from UCLA found experiences with racism and discrimination correlated with higher levels of inflammation in the bodies of Black and Hispanic people. It affected their immune system, their gut.
Aiesha says always being on edge can rewire how the brain deals with stress.
Aiesha Lee: That’s what that hypervigilance does. That hypervigilance causes our bodies to tense up so that we can’t fully breathe.
Cara Anthony: Yeah, that’s exhausting. And as you were talking about it, like, I even feel my body just being tight as you are speaking about these things.
Cara Anthony: If you don’t deal with the emotional stuff, Aiesha says, it can live in your body.
Aiesha Lee: Arthritis, fibromyalgia, high blood pressure …
Cara Anthony: … and ripple through families as intergenerational trauma.
That makes me wonder about my dad’s high blood pressure.
My mom’s chronic pain.
About my own trouble sleeping.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Despite endless conversations with my parents about this work — somehow, I was months and months into reporting on racial violence in Sikeston before I learned new details about a death in my own family.
Wilbon Anthony: I enjoy reading about history where, you know, my people come from.
Cara Anthony: My dad, Wilbon Anthony, knew the story for nearly a decade, but kept it to himself.
Really, I shouldn’t have been surprised. My whole life I was taught in big and small ways that usually it’s better to stay silent.
There’s a risk — to self — when you speak out.
I’m 37 years old — plenty grown now — but it feels like the “adults” have always tiptoed around the story of Leemon Anthony, my great-uncle on my father’s side.
Leemon served in the military during World War II. Family members remember him as fun-loving and outgoing.
I was told that Leemon died in a wagon-and-mule accident in 1946. But at family reunions, sometimes I’d overhear details that were different.
Wilbon Anthony: There was a hint there was something to do with it about the police, but it wasn’t much.
Cara Anthony: My dad knew that the stories he’d heard about Uncle Leemon’s death were incomplete. That missing piece left him feeling undone.
Wilbon Anthony: Later in life, I started researching it. I just thought about it one day and, uh, just said, “Oh, see if it was something about this.”
Cara Anthony: He called up family members, dug through newspaper archives online, and searched ancestry websites. Eventually, he found Leemon’s death certificate.
To show me what he found, Dad and I sat in his home office. He pulled up the death certificate on his computer. Leemon was 29.
Wilbon Anthony: It says, “Shot by police, resisting arrest.”
Well, no one ever, I never heard this in my, uh, whole life.
Then item 21, it lists the causes of death: accident or suicide or homicide, and the list says that item is homicide.
Cara Anthony: OK, OK, um, that’s a lot. I need to pause.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Shot by police.
Even now, I only have bits and pieces of the story, mostly from whispers from my family.
There was a wagon accident.
One of my older cousins says a local white woman saw it and called the police. An article published in The Jackson Sun quoted Leemon’s father saying that Leemon had been “restless” and “all out of shape” since he returned home from the war.
What we do know is that the police showed up. And they killed Leemon.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: When I learned about my Uncle Leemon’s death, when I got slammed by that grief and anger, I called my Aunt B — my dad’s sister Bernice Spann — and told her what my dad had found.
Cara Anthony: OK, I just sent you the death certificate, um, just so you can …
Bernice Spann: What does it say, his death, how he died?
Cara Anthony: It says homicide, and that he was shot by the police.
Bernice Spann: Wow.
Cara Anthony: Yeah. Yeah.
Bernice Spann: And they said “homicide”?
Cara Anthony: Right.
Bernice Spann: And nobody was charged?
Cara Anthony: No charges.
So, what are you thinking right now?
Bernice Spann: I’m heartbroken.
Cara Anthony: Yeah. Yeah.
Bernice Spann: I mean, that’s close. That is not … it’s an uncle.
Cara Anthony: That’s your uncle. That’s my great-uncle. That’s your uncle. Yeah.
Bernice Spann: Well, that’s my uncle. And he died and nobody fought.
Cara Anthony: Yeah.
Bernice Spann: Nobody fought for a resolution ’cause nobody … everybody felt powerless.
Cara Anthony: Even now there’s so much silence in our family around Leemon’s death.
Bernice Spann: I think there’s something in our DNA that still makes us scared to talk about it. I need for us to look at it. I don’t know. Does it make sense? And maybe you’re the one who, it’s time for you to look at it.
Cara Anthony: So, that’s what I’m doing.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: This storytelling — this journalism — is about what’s at stake for our health, and our community, and loved ones when we’re silent in the face of racial violence — and the systemic racism that allows it to exist.
So on one reporting trip to Sikeston, I asked my family to take the ride with me.
We loaded into a van.
[Cara’s mom hums in the background.]
And during the drive from Illinois to southeastern Missouri, my mom hummed hymns, while my daughter, Lily, napped and inhaled snacks.
Cotton is still king in Sikeston. It’s a huge part of the town’s economy, and culture, and history. So just before we got to town, we stopped at a cotton field.
[Car door shuts.]
Cara Anthony: OK, Lily, come here.
Cara Anthony: Lily was just 5 back then.
Cara Anthony: What is this? What are we looking at right now?
Lily: Cotton.
Cara Anthony: Lily was excited, but when I turned around, my dad, Wilbon, looked watchful.
Wary.
As for lots of Black Americans, cotton’s a part of our family’s history.
Cara Anthony: OK, Dad. Come over here. So, Dad, Lily just said that cotton looks like cotton candy and potatoes ’cause it looks fluffy. When you look out at this field, what do you see?
Wilbon Anthony: Well, I see. First, I see a lot of memories. I remember … picking cotton as a kid. Actually, I can remember waiting on my parents while they were in the fields picking cotton. And then I remember a lot of days of hard work.
So, yeah, I … yeah, I have a lot, a lot of memories about cotton.
Cara Anthony: My mom has memories, too. As a little girl in Tennessee, around Lily’s age, my mom was already working in a field like this.
Days and days hunched over. Carrying heavy bales, working until her hands were sore.
My mom’s still in grief about the violence and punishing labor — and lost opportunity — so tightly woven into all this cotton.
As a child, she hid that pain. She’d lie face down in the dirt when the school bus drove past, hoping the other kids wouldn’t see.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Standing in that cotton — three generations together — I worried I was dredging up old wounds or causing new hurt.
Still, I want to try to have these conversations without passing the pain and stress down to the next generation — to my daughter.
Cara Anthony: Why did we come down here to Sikeston?
Lily: Because there’s important work here.
Cara Anthony: Yeah, there is important work here.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Someday I need to tell Lily about lynching in America. About Cleo Wright and our Uncle Leemon. I want her to know their names. I need to tell Lily about her personal risk of encountering that kind of violence.
But, truthfully, I’m not quite ready yet.
Here’s some advice I got from psychologist Aiesha Lee.
Aiesha Lee: This pain has compounded over generations, and so we’re going to have to deconstruct it or heal it over generations, right? And so, you know, our generation and the generations that come behind us will have little pieces of the work to do.
[BEAT]
As we put mental health more so at the forefront, and as we start to communicate more and more within our families, that’s how we engage in, in this healing.
Cara Anthony: I was told to keep quiet a lot when I was a kid, but I want to nurture Lily’s curiosity and teach her what she needs to know to stay safe.
My parents did what they thought was best. Now it’s my turn to try to find that balance.
Sometimes when Lily’s jumpy and restless, having a hard time falling asleep, we’ll sing together.
Cara Anthony and Lily [singing]: Hush. Hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name. Hush, hush, somebody’s calling my name.
Cara Anthony: At first listen, that might sound like a message to stay silent.
Actually, it’s a song enslaved people sang as they worked in cotton fields. As they dreamed and planned. It’s a call to be acknowledged. Named. And counted.
Lily has grown up a lot since we visited that cotton field in Sikeston. She’s 7 now. I want her to know that she can speak out more freely than her ancestors could.
More than I have.
Cara Anthony: Sit over, come over here. Come over here. Seriously. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when you were crying? And I told you to fix your what?
Lily: Face.
Cara Anthony: That wasn’t very nice. I want you to know that we can talk about things. Because when we talk about things, we often feel better, right?
Lily: Yes.
Cara Anthony: Can we keep talking to each other while you grow up in life about stuff? Even hard stuff?
Lily: Like doing 100 math facts?
Cara Anthony: Sure. That’s the biggest thing in your life right now. But yes, all of that. We’re just going to keep talking to each other. So, can we make a promise?
Lily: Yeah.
Cara Anthony: All right, cool.
Cara Anthony: Talking just might help us start to heal.
[BEAT]
Cara Anthony: Next time on “Silence in Sikeston” …
Mikela Jackson: The Bootheel knows what happened to him. The world — they have no idea who Denzel Taylor is.
CREDITS
Cara Anthony: Thanks for listening to “Silence in Sikeston.”
Next, go watch the documentary. It’s a joint production from Retro Report and KFF Health News, presented in partnership with WORLD.
Subscribe to WORLD Channel on YouTube. That’s where you can find the film “Silence in Sikeston,” a Local, USA special.
This podcast is a co-production of WORLD Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX.
It was produced with support from PRX and made possible in part by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The audio series was reported and hosted by me, Cara Anthony.
Zach Dyer and Taylor Cook are the producers.
Editing by Simone Popperl.
Taunya English is the managing editor of the podcast.
Sound design, mixing, and original music by Lonnie Ro.
Podcast art design by Colin Mahoney and Tania Castro-Daunais.
Oona Zenda was the lead on the landing page design.
Julio Ricardo Varela consulted on the script.
Sending a shoutout to my vocal coach, Viki Merrick, for helping me tap into my voice.
Music in this episode is from BlueDot Sessions and Epidemic Sound.
Some of the audio you’ll hear across the podcast is also in the film.
For that, special thanks to Adam Zletz, Matt Gettemeier, Roger Herr, and Philip Geyelin, who worked with us and colleagues from Retro Report.
Kyra Darnton is executive producer at Retro Report.
I was a producer on the film.
Jill Rosenbaum directed the documentary.
Kytja Weir is national editor at KFF Health News.
WORLD Channel’s editor-in-chief and executive producer is Chris Hastings.
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Credits
Additional Newsroom Support
Lynne Shallcross, photo editor
Oona Zenda, illustrator and web producer
Lydia Zuraw, web producer
Tarena Lofton, audience engagement producer
Hannah Norman, visual producer and visual reporter
Chaseedaw Giles, audience engagement editor and digital strategist
Kytja Weir, national editor
Mary Agnes Carey, managing editor
Alex Wayne, executive editor
David Rousseau, publisher
Terry Byrne, copy chief
Gabe Brison-Trezise, deputy copy chief
Tammie Smith, communications officer
The “Silence in Sikeston” podcast is a production of KFF Health News and WORLD. Distributed by PRX. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Watch the accompanying documentary from WORLD, Retro Report, and KFF starting Sept. 16, here.
To hear other KFF Health News podcasts, click here.
This article was produced by KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.