Fresh Air - Revisiting A Chicago Hate Crime And Its Aftermath

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Yohance Lacour's Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast, You Didn't See Nothin', tells the story of Lenard Clark, a 13-year-old Black boy who was beaten into a coma by white teenagers, after riding his bike into a predominantly white neighborhood. Lacour talks about the importance of the case today, and how it shaped his life and the city of Chicago.Also, John Powers reviews the film Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. In 1997, a 13-year-old black boy named Leonard Clark was beaten into a coma after riding his bike into the predominantly white Chicago neighborhood of Bridgeport. Police deemed it a hate crime, and at the time, it was part of a long history of racial strife in the area. And one of the perpetrators was the son of a powerful Chicago union boss with ties to the mafia. The story is the subject of the investigative podcast, You Didn't See Nothin', which earlier this month won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Audio. It was written and reported by Johans LaCour, a Chicago native whose life was forever impacted, not only by the attack on Lenard, but the series of events that happened afterward. The story made national news.

Thirteen-year-old Lenard Clark cannot speak, does not react to his mother, and is in serious danger of dying. In the vicious act that has gone to the heart of Chicago's deep racial divide. This kind of savage, senseless assault strikes at the very heart of America's ideals. Then, almost overnight, the news stories turn to racial reconciliation and forgiveness. This is a podcast about how that happened and how it changed my life. So brace yourself, because this s*** is bananas. That was an excerpt from the Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast You Didn't See Nothin', created by our guest today, Johans LaCour, along with USG Audio

and the Chicago-based nonprofit news organization The Invisible Institute. LaCour was 23 years old in 1997, and the Lenard Clark case was the first story he reported on for a community newspaper called The South Street Journal. Twenty-seven years later, the podcast, which is part investigation and part memoir, delves into details of the crime that weren't heavily reported at the time, and also Johans LaCour's story after the case, which included a 10-year prison sentence. The Pulitzer win for You Didn't See Nothing is the second this year for the 13-person newsroom at the Invisible Institute. The nonprofit

news organization also won for an investigation into how Chicago police handled missing persons cases involving Black women and girls. And Johans LaCour, welcome to Fresh Air and congrats on the Pulitzer. I appreciate it. It's good to be here. Thank you. So, Johans, we're going to go back. March 21st, 1997, 13-year-old Lenara Clark and a friend were riding their bikes in search of a gas station to fix a flat tire. And they chose this station in the predominantly white neighborhood of Bridgeport because it offered free air. And I want you to take the story from there. Once those kids were in Bridgeport, what happened

next? So once those kids were in Bridgeport, they got spotted by Frank Caruso Jr. and a couple of his buddies who were riding around their neighborhood. And Frank Caruso Jr. tells his buddies, you know, let's get these N-words out of our neighborhood. And they attack him and they leave Lenard in a coma. And Frank Caruso is an important name because his father was a union leader with well-known ties to the mob. So they were a very influential family in Bridgeport and in Chicago more broadly. Yeah, Frank Caruso Sr. and his family had mafia ties that dated back to Al Capone. And so they're not just periphery, right? These are mobsters. This is a mob family. And

they're from the same neighborhood as the mayor of Chicago and a huge number of police offices in Chicago. So this was the Chicago political machine when we talk about Bridgeport. Frank Caruso Jr. was 19 years old at the time. He was convicted of a hate crime, the only one convicted of the three that were accused of this. And Bridgeport in particular is an interesting place. It's a neighborhood on the south side of Chicago at the time, predominantly white, Italian and Irish. And it has a history of racial strife. What were your perceptions of Bridgeport growing up? Oh, Bridgeport was where you knew not to go if you were black, because you knew that could happen to you. You knew that you were subject to not make it out alive or healthy. And it was just understood.

It was just a matter of fact that everybody knew. It wasn't a rumor. It wasn't a myth. It was a real thing. So you knew that you don't get caught over there at the dark, if at all. It was a sundown town of a neighborhood right there in the middle of the south side of Chicago. And you knew that half the reason that, you know, this could happen to you is because you knew they knew they could get away with it because of their ties to police and

the political machine in Chicago. The attack left Lenard not only in a coma, but he recovered but suffered brain damage. In this case made national news, the president of the United States at the time, Bill Clinton, even spoke about it and called for peace. Who were you back then? And how were you processing what was happening in those days after the attack? I think at the time, I would have told you that I knew exactly who I was. I would have called myself a revolutionary. I would have called myself a gangster. I would have called myself an intellectual, you know, on any given Sunday during that time of my life. I was selling weed in the neighborhood and across the south side of the city.

And I smoked weed and, you know, did very well in school, smoking weed. So, you know, I saw weed the way the world sees it today. So I just looked at myself as an entrepreneur. You and your friends actually went over to Bridgeport in the days after the attack because you were angry. You wanted to find the guys who did this and beat them up. Yeah, yeah, we did. So at the time, you know, my friends and I would have long conversations about, like, who we would have been during slavery. Right. like who we would have been during um slavery right we had long conversations praising the Nat Turners and the Harriet Tubmans of the world and we were no stranger to racial strife and

tension and racists and situations with with racists or whatever and so when this happened my good friend Rahsan Gordon called me and told me about it. And he and I were on a similar page around all of these things. I mean, his parents were Black Panthers. I mean, serious, like, you know, plotting on hijacking planes. And I mean, they were at that level of the movement. You know, my uncles had been Panthers. My mother was like a fierce advocate of Black literature and the movement. You know, my uncles had been Panthers. My mother was like a fierce advocate

of Black literature and the struggle. We were trained to believe, like, trying to train ourselves to be kind of community-oriented. So your child is my child. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so we were personally attacked when Lenard Clark was left in a coma. He was a child, right? We know what goes on in Bridgeport. But this was a child beat to a coma by a gang of what we looked at as our white counterparts. These young men were just a little younger than us at the time. And so, yeah, we wanted to get revenge.

But it was very emotional looking back when I think about it because us going into Bridgeport, or the guys who did this. This podcast really delves also into what you're talking about here and how this story brought up this internal conflict I think many black youth of every generation grapple with. And that's the peaceful MLK approach versus this I for an I Malcolm X approach. And you were especially irritated by the messages that you were hearing from civil rights leaders in the podcast. I think you say that can't we all just get along messages because you felt like it dismissed the real harm that people were feeling uh yeah so it dismissed what people were feeling that approach um that approach starts to feel like surrender that approach starts to feel like uh you know because we can't get we can't all get along if any of us are under attack, you know, that kind of kumbaya approach, yeah, it's too passive. It's a give up. And so I felt that, you know, you got to fight back at some point. I mean, I understand the desire to respond peacefully and turn the other cheek and be Christ-like. And I get that

deeply. But at some point you realize that, you know, even just about survival. So this boy was a child and he was left in a coma. He had no power, no control over whether everybody gets along. How do you stop an attacker peacefully? How do you protect yourself? At some point, it just becomes about survival. And, you know, it's the first law of human nature, self-preservation, right? A few days after Lenard was beaten, because you were talking about this at the time, you were talking with your father about it, talking about the anger that you were feeling and he encouraged you to write about it had you had you written before were you a writer at the time when your dad was talking to you about using this avenue to be able to um voice your frustrations yeah yeah I'd been I'd been writing

since I was a kid um My father, I mean, I'd been writing on his typewriter, writing comic books, writing short essays, writing poems that eventually turned to raps as I became a huge fan of rap. And so Pops, yeah, Pops looked at that as a much better way of reacting and handling and responding to the story. You became a freelance writer for the South Street Journal, which was a black community newspaper, with this one goal in mind, and that was to write about the perpetrators, Frank Caruso and his friends, who Frank Caruso was then charged and convicted of the hate crime. He was 19 years old at the time.

During your reporting in 97, you encountered a police officer who shared some information with you at the time that you weren't able to corroborate. What did she share with you? She told me that as far as she knew, that there was a list going around 47th Street, the low end of Chicago, the area where Lenar was attacked with the names of the community activists and leaders who were most vocal and had started marching and protesting after his attack. And it was a list of people that were to be contacted and offered money in exchange for their silence or even their support. You were never able to corroborate that, but that sent you on a path.

Yes, yes, absolutely did. And I contacted everyone that she knew to be on the list, and they all either gave no comment or denied it. And they also were doing this kind of apology tour in the media, even though they were denying Frank's involvement. And this was before Frank went to court and pleaded not guilty. This is what stuck with you for a long time after the case as well. It did. And it's funny, we refer to it as an apology tour, but they never apologized. But it was this kind of, can't we all get along tour? It was this, you know, we're sorry that this happened to Lenard. But, you know, we love your community. And at the same time, it wasn't us, yet we're the most vocal ones about, you know, how horrible this was. It was, you know, looking back, it was offensive, you know, especially offensive.

You know, you just kind of look back with some sense. Like, you beat this boy into a coma, deny it, but ask to be understood. It was some real abracadabra stuff going on. And so I was offended by that. I was still very mad and upset for Lenard Clark. I felt like justice needed to be done. I felt like, you know, they needed some sort of justice for this boy. Johans, the sound of the podcast, it feels like you're just talking to us.

You're just telling us a story. You're just sitting down and just letting us know what happened. Did you end up coming to who you were talking to during the process? Yeah, yeah. I realized that I was talking to everybody, but I was talking for black people. And so the way I could best find my voice was to think about, you know, the environment I had been in just some years earlier, which was prison, where I would talk to, obviously, all of the other inmates who were mostly black, but I would also speak to the staff on behalf of inmates. So I found myself talking to a lot of white people as an advocate on behalf of black inmates.

And I think that's where I found the voice I was most comfortable with using for the podcast. And it was probably just the most natural for me and probably still is. You take us to 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. This is 11 years after the Lenard Clark beating. And during that time, you told us how in 97, you were selling weed while also writing. But then over the decade, you started to get into harder drugs and you started to sell heroin. And that is when life for you changed. It was bittersweet. It was more bitter than sweet. I'm seeing faces I know in that crowd. And I'm feeling like, damn, I'm supposed to be out there.

I mean, the fact that I'm facing 10 to life while the first black president is getting elected is really f***ing me up. But that night we were celebrating in the hooch work. We partied till it was time to be locked down. Then we went to our cells. Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America. That was a clip from the Pulitzer Prize winning podcast, You Didn't See Nothing, hosted and reported by my guest today, Johans LaCour. And what this podcast does is take us to 1997, but then takes us to what happened to you, Johans, in the decades after.

And what you're referring to is one of the darkest times of your life. You went to prison for a decade for selling drugs. And you say it was the darkest time, but in that darkness, so much was illuminated. What were some things that were illuminated for you while you were in prison serving that time to make clear to you that you had another shot at life once you got out? Yeah, you know, I discovered talents I didn't know I had. I think I found myself in prison. I realized where I'm most comfortable. I realized what and who I was most passionate about. You know, so I'm in here stuck with all these other black men who have been, you know, in prison for crazy long sentences. And I realized that, you know, yeah, this is where

my fight is. This is who my fight is for. And it came natural to me to advocate and to fight for us. I remember when Mandela died, Obama ordered the country, you saw it on the news, he ordered the country to fly the flags at half mass. And we've known, we've seen, you know, countless times where U.S. soldiers or for whatever reason, flags would be flown at half mass. And the staff at the prison I was at did not lower the flag. You know, it's like we can't have this. So, you know, I took some of the guys over to, we call it a control. That's where the staff and the warden's office are and told them, y'all got to lower that flag. Obama said it, he's the president, but it's a super

racist prison. So while I'm there, I'm having experiences like that. And, you know, in terms of what's being illuminated to me is I'm kind of finding my purpose again. I think the streets and selling dope, it kind of, it had become a distraction for me. It's a lifestyle that comes with it. There's an allure to it. There's an adventure to it. It's also a full-time job. And it distracted me from what I think my purpose was. Our guest today is Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Johans LaCour. We're talking about his latest podcast, You Didn't See Nothing, which won this year's Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get

the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Hi, this is Molly. And I'm Seth. We're two of the producers at Fresh Air. If you like listening to Fresh Air, we think you'll also like reading our newsletter. You'll find the interviews and reviews from the show all in one place. Plus, staff recommendations you won't hear on the show,

behind-the-scenes Q&As, bonus audio. It's also the only place to find out what interviews are coming up. We keep it fun, and it comes straight to your inbox once a week. Subscribe for yourself at whyy.org slash fresh air. Writing and creative self-expression has always been something you were into. You mentioned how you had been writing all of your life. And so when your dad told you to write about the anger that you were feeling about Lenore Clark, that was just natural. Your dad was a professor, your mom an elementary school teacher. Several of your uncles were lawyers. But I think it's interesting that I've

heard you say you've watched them all struggle. And that did something to you, seeing that. It made you have less faith in the system. It made you question this idea of Black excellence as a route to success. And I'm just wondering how that all played into you being a part of the drug game, because while you knew that marijuana early on was something that you didn't see as like criminal, you started to go darker and darker and deeper and deeper into this life. And you knew it was further away from the life that your parents had set out for you. Yeah. So, you know, people talk about how weed is a gateway drug. That's what they used to say. I guess they probably don't say that anymore now that everybody smokes it and sells it legally everywhere um but what weed was a gateway drug to

was harder drugs for weed salesmen you know i always say that like once you start selling weed it's like you now you're in the building right now you are in the underworld now you're in this this building of the underworld and so now you're much closer to everybody else in the underworld operating there so it's it's it happens very easily and very naturally and it's really that simple and easy it's not as you know as in the dark and nefarious as it's depicted, it's just really a natural occurrence of people networking to do business. Nobody's really trying to hurt anybody. Right. You were a businessman, but this choice that you made in part was also in response to something else, if I understand it correctly. Is you watching your family, your parents who had chosen this straight and narrow way, the one that we are all told is the route to success, still struggle?

That changed your perception of the ways to be able to be successful. Yeah, yeah. I'm watching my black father, my black mother, my black uncles having gone to college, gotten degrees, some of them several degrees, and then working, you know, what felt like day and night, you know, dedicated to their work, come home frustrated about what they can or don't feel comfortable saying at work, about who they can or can't respond to. You know, they're still working for, you know, generally with or in some kind of shape, form, or fashion, white folks who they don't feel free to speak their minds to. And they taught me to speak my mind. They taught me to be honest and to be a truth teller.

And here they are, you know, having worked so hard, and they can't tell their truths. I saw frustration, and I also saw struggle, right? My mother was a grammar school teacher. She was a second-grade teacher. Chicago public school system ain't making nobody rich, but she is dedicating her life to children, bringing children home for the weekend because these kids ain't got nowhere to stay. And, you know, and then the ghettos of the west side of

Chicago. And, you know, I look up and they become my friends. You know, we walked the blouse of Chicago and to this day, you know, grown women are talking about how she changed their lives and she was never properly compensated for that so I'm watching people do good work um that they're passionate about and still struggle to make ends meet um and yeah that's like you know why I kind of why would I do that is kind of what I thought to myself coming up um Why would I go to school and spend all of this time? And it was frustrating to see folks work that hard and honestly, and still not be able to make it like the people they're working for, who weren't working as hard, but seem to be in much more control and seemed to be, you know, gaining much, much larger

profit. And so at that point, you know, again, it just felt like smart business to me to work for myself. And yet the drug game was very accessible. Going back to that time in 97, when you were working for the community newspaper and also selling drugs, selling weed at that time, I thought it was an interesting note. Did selling drugs actually allow you then to be able to spend the time to do the journalism? Because you weren't really being paid that much to work for a community newspaper. Yeah, it absolutely did. You weren't really being paid that much to work for a community newspaper. Yeah, it absolutely did. Look, I remember Ron Carter was the editor, founder, publisher, owner, operator of the South Street Journal, a guy from the projects who, you know, in his younger years, like me and mine, had something to say and wanted to tell black people's stories and wanted to get them out to the world. So he started this newspaper. And so, you know, obviously that's where I did the Lenard Clark reporting in 97. In 07 or 08,

when I got indicted, I needed to prove that I had legal income in order to remain out on bond. And so I went to Ron Carter to ask him for a job, and I let him know, like, you know, what I was doing, why I needed a job. And he, you know, started giving me assignments. And so, but I remember him telling me, like, man now now it all makes sense you know like because back in the day when he had needed money to keep the paper going and he was gonna need money to go to print and and uh I would give it to him and I would tell him stuff like you know my father's donating this or something like that you would give money to keep the paper afloat. Yeah. And it was your drug money.

It was absolutely drug money. And so, yeah, so drug money and my lifestyle absolutely allowed materially and in terms of my own time me to space to report and work on that story. It definitely did. That's so interesting, Johans, because, you know, there is discourse about the industry and especially the ability for people to make a living and afford doing it. And so what often happens is many people who work in journalism are privileged enough to be able to be paid little to nothing because it allows them the ability to do the work. Look, I'm starting to reflect on similar things right now.

So, you know, this Pulitzer Prize winning Peabody winning podcast, you know, it didn't it's not like it paid me a boatload of money. I still live with my sister that I was released to when I came home from prison. My life is super modest. And right, you know, even right now, I think that's why I'm, you know, always, I'm still a hustler. I'm still an entrepreneur. It's just, you know, I just only pursue legal endeavors, not legitimate. I'm not going back to jail. But yeah, journalism, truth telling doesn't pay. It's not, no, it's not lucrative. These are passion projects. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is journalist Johans LaCour. Johans and his team won the Pulitzer Prize this year for audio reporting for their podcast series, You Didn't See Nothing, which revisits a 1997 hate crime in Chicago. We'll continue our conversation after a short break.

This is Fresh Air. Lenard Clark was 13 years old when he was beaten into a coma. Today he's a man. You vividly describe him in this podcast, who he is, has salt and pepper in his hair, his dreadlocks. He's the father of six kids. And I'm not spoiling anything to say that Lenard spoke for this podcast, but not to you. Can you share briefly how that came to be? Yeah. So when I was locked up, I met a brother named Rodney Phillips. We call him Hot Rod, incredible dude. And we used to walk the yard in the joint and talk about you know all the things we wanted

to do when we got out but but initially you know we introduced each other i never forget he came to the pound after i've been there for some time and so he's kind of standard to figure out where people are from so if you from minnesota you can tell them okay there go your guys over there if you from right so you meet people from chicago so it's like man where you from Minnesota, you can tell them, OK, there go your guys over there. If you from right. So you meet people from Chicago. So that's what I mean. Where you from in Chicago? He told me. So he was from Stateway Gardens, which was the same project. So the Clark was from and and I knew some guys and I had even done some business with some guys in the streets from Stateway. One of them happened to be a guy who was Rodney's hot rod's best friend who wound up being killed later. And so, you know, we had a, like, you know, we had this

intersection. We had this, this point of connection through, through knowing mutual people. And so we talked about the Lenard Clark story countless times. I told him a million times and to different levels of detail what I had experienced and come to find out he knew Lenard Clark and his family and all that. Now, at the time, I'm not knowing that I'll ever do a podcast or will ever tell this story again. We're just talking about our future and all the things we want to do. So when I get out and I got the opportunity to tell this story,

and I wound up talking to Lenard Clark myself in person early on in the process. And cool young man, honest. But once I started reaching out to him to be recorded, after a while, I just realized, oh, he doesn't want to talk to me. Talk to you. But he did agree to talk to Hot Rod. And I want to play a clip of Hot Rod talking to Lenara Clark as an adult, speaking about why he didn't want to talk to you and why he hasn't really spoken to anyone in the press about what happened to him. Let's listen. Tell me this, why you've been reluctant to tell your story and why you choose now to tell your story? Because I know, like you said, you've been wanting to tell your story but because of your experience of people

just trying to benefit off you facts you didn't you didn't want to uh share your story so talk to me about that now it's to the point where a lot of folks be trying to get me to talk and come out my shell about any and everything but at this point i don't trust people i don't even really like people to be really honest as far as when it comes to uh trying to obtain information now at this point when i'm coming out now because it's like it's pretty much a situation as far as comfortability you know trust relationship wise you know you come from where iability, you know, trust, relationship-wise, you know. He come from where I come from, you know. That was a clip from the Pollard Surprise winning podcast,

You Didn't See Nothing. And that was Lenard Clark as an adult speaking to a mutual friend, Hot Rod, who was interviewing him about why he hadn't spoke about what happened to him in all these years. He trusted Hot Rod because he had a relationship with him, as he said in the interview. This gives us a lens, this conversation, into really how Lenard has been impacted over the last 27 years. What insights did you learn about how he's doing now

and processing what happened to him back then? I think it's the type of experience for him that will always be the one that most influences and shapes how he looks at the world. It's not like he got beat up, healed and went about his life. You know, he was the center of a firestorm. And so I think but however, I also think he struggles to some degree to reconcile the fact that his attackers and the family of his attacker have also been friendly.

Right, because they have a relationship. What was their relationship? You mentioned in the podcast and earlier how the Caruso family reached out to Lenard's family and they gave them money and there's still a relationship, specifically with the senior, what has been the relationship with them over the last 25 years? So I can only speak to that to a certain degree, right? But from what I understand, the family has looked out for him and his mother financially here and there. However, he wanted it to be understood that in no way did he think what he experienced was worth it,

but he still can't deny the fact that these folks have come to aid and assist him in times of need. He hasn't, you know, in terms of forgiveness, I can't say where his heart lies, but yes, it's still a process for him and it probably will be for the rest of his life. It's been reported that Leonard had lasting brain damage from that attack. Do you know of any other lasting physical challenges or pain for him? I can't tell whether or not he had lasting cognitive effects from the attack, but I know that he suffered some emotional trauma that will affect how he just socializes for the rest of his life. Like you even heard in the clip, he doesn't even trust people anymore. And that's a huge statement for a man to make.

And so clearly, yeah, he's suffered some emotional trauma that'll last him the rest of his days. You've thought about for a long time what reconciliation really looks like, what it could look like. What have you come to? So unfortunately, I don't think it's possible. Because I don't think that white folks at large are going to do what they would have to do for reconciliation to be real. Reconciliation is a weird word to even use when we're talking about what's going on between black folks and white folks in America. Because to reconcile means like you're looking past some differences.

It means like, you know, it kind of suggests that you've got two parties, both of whom have some sort of responsibility in the divide, in the split. Right. And that's not the case here. You beat me to a pulp and you want me to forgive you. But you never acknowledge what you've done. You never try to repair any of what you've done. You kind of continue doing it in new ways. You pay other people to do it for you in my face and let them off for doing it.

And I'm supposed to forgive you and embrace you. Where's the reconciliation there, especially if the assault is ongoing. And so, yeah, I feel like reconciliation ain't a real thing, ain't going to be a real thing in America. As part of your reporting, you explore how the Caruso family might have worked to rechange the narrative, including possibly buying off activists in the community to silence them. What kind of reaction overall have you gotten since this podcast has been out? So I've gotten nothing but amazing feedback from folks who listen to the podcast. I've gotten a few pieces of hate mail from folks in Bridgeport who are like, are you going to cover this story about this black guy beating up this white girl in this side of the city that happened on this date? You know, it's kind of like that, you know, well, you know, you point out police brutality and it's like, well, you know, what about black on black crime? So I get a little bit of that. But for the most part, I've gotten amazing feedback.

Johans LaCour, thank you so much for this conversation. I appreciate it. Thank you. You're more than welcome. Johans LaCour is the host and writer of the Pulitzer Prize winning podcast. You didn't see nothing. Coming up, critic at large John Powers reviews the new Italian film Kidnapped. This is Fresh Air. The new Italian film Kidnapped tells the true story of how a young Jewish boy was taken away from his parents by the Catholic Church. The film was made by the celebrated director Marco Bellocchio. Our critic-at-large, John Power, says it's a strong, often surprising film

that uses a historical incident to raise issues that are of the moment. From India and Eastern Europe to the Middle East and America, we're living through days of powerful, often violent, religious feeling. Stories that might have felt like old, dead history now take on a stinging new relevance. That's the case with Kidnapped, the abduction of Edgardo Mortara, the ferocious true story of a young Jewish boy forcibly taken from his parents by emissaries of the Pope. It was made by Marco Bellocchio, the great Italian filmmaker who first burst on the scene 59 years ago with his scorched-earth debut Fists in the Pocket.

Now 84, but still far from mellow, Bellocchio takes us back to the 19th century to tell a historical horror story steeped in Roman Catholic anti-Semitism. The action begins in 1850's Bologna, which was then under the rule of the unpopular and highly conservative Pope Pius IX. The just-born Edgardo Mortara is the sixth son of a Jewish Bolognese family, whose housemaid, unbeknownst to them, baptizes the baby to save his soul. When the church's inquisitor in Bologna learns of this baptism six years later, he declares Edgardo a Christian.

And because it's illegal for non-Christians to raise a Christian child, he grabs the six-year-old boy away from his agonized parents and ships him to Rome. There, as he yearns for his mother, Edgardo's put into a boarding school for the children of converted Jews, where he's surrounded by images of the crucifixion. Naturally, Edgardo's parents are shattered and do everything they can to get him back, even waging a huge international PR campaign. Going to Rome, they make heart-rending appeals to stony-faced priests who say they understand their sadness but can do nothing to alleviate it. After all, they're helping the boy become a proper Christian. To avoid seeming politically weak, Pius refuses the world's calls for Edgardo's freedom.

In fact, he doubles down on the kidnapping, personally guiding the boy's Catholic education and having him baptized a second time. Although Kidnapped is a straightforward historical drama about religious oppression, Edgardo's tale is filled with startling twists and turns, especially when in 1860, nationalist rioters overthrow Pius IX's rule in Bologna. With new people in charge, the Bologna Inquisitor is arrested for the kidnapping, and we see how Edgardo has fallen through one of the trap doors of history. Had he simply been born a few years later, he wouldn't have been taken from his Jewish home

and forcibly made a Christian. Even as the rebels go after the Pope, we keep worrying about Edgardo's fate in Rome. What happens to a young Jewish boy who's cut off from his family and trained not just to be a good Catholic, but to become a priest. What core of the original Edgardo remains? Who does he become as he moves into manhood? The answers are unsettling. Now, at moments, Kidnap feels old-fashioned, yet Bellocchio never falls into boring costume drama realism. Working in a painterly style, he pushes things toward the operatic, laying on surging music, endowing Edgardo with innocent good looks that border on the angelic, and having actor Paolo Pirabon play Pope Pius as a kind of Oprah Buffa figure, hammy in a Marlon Brando sort of way,

and once silly and creepy and sinister. In one of the film's best scenes, Edgardo has a hallucinatory encounter with the crucifix that directly answers the falsehood that the Jews killed Christ. Like me, Bellocchio was raised a Roman Catholic, and he's clearly appalled by the church's cruelty to the Mortara family and to all Jews, whom they treated as inferiors who must literally kiss the Pope's feet for decent treatment. He wants us to be appalled and angry too. Yet what gives the movie its timely resonance is not merely its depiction of anti-Semitism, but what it shows about the dangerous politics of religious belief. Although religion officially deals in timeless universal

truths, Kidnap reminds us that these timeless universals are always bound up with historical questions of power. And where there's power, there will be abuse. Critic-at-large John Powers reviewed the film Kidnapped. If you'd like to catch up on interviews you've missed, like our conversation with journalist and professor Rachel Summerstein on the history and controversies surrounding C-sections, or with revered cellist Yo-Yo Ma on his career and learning his first Bach solo cello suite at four years old, check out our podcast. You'll find lots of Fresh Air interviews. And to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers' recommendations on what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at whyy.org slash freshair. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Thank you. Susan Nakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Thea Chaloner directed today's show.

With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.