The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Reconciling the Past

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

In this hour, stories of looking backward to forge ahead. Seeking justice for heinous crimes decades old, memories flooding back during a chance encounter, and reconciling darkness during a joyous time. This hour is hosted by The Moth's former Artistic Director, Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Storytellers: Journalist Jerry Mitchell takes on notorious members of the Ku Klux Klan. Reyna Grande finds kinship with a man seeking asylum in the US. In her journey to start a family, Sarah Jane Johnson also finds herself facing her past.

Hello, Moth listeners in Seattle! Want to experience the magic of Moth Stories live and in person? Join us for our upcoming Grand Slam show in Seattle. The Moth is dedicated to finding everyday people to tell extraordinary stories. At our Open Mic Story Slams, these people find us. At the Grand Slam, 10 Seattle Open Mic winners are invited to the Moth stage for the Ultimate Storytelling Competition. Join the Moth on March 22 at the Town Hall for a battle of wits and words featuring local storytellers as they compete to be crowned Seattle's Story Champion.

To buy your tickets or to find out about our monthly shows at Bladel Hall's St. Mark's and Fremont Abbey Center, visit us at the Moth.org forward slash Seattle. Once again, buy your tickets at the Moth.org forward slash Seattle. Once again, buy your tickets at the moth.org forward slash Seattle. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns. One funny thing about storytelling is that you're almost always talking about the past, even if the past just happened a few minutes ago. Sometimes someone will be telling a story about a harrowing life or death incident, and

there's a built-in spoiler alert since the fact that they're here to tell the story means that they survived. The stories in this episode are all told by people who've been forced to confront the past, or in the case of our first story, confront our country's past. The story concerns the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. It was told way back in 2008 in New York City, where we partner with the public radio station WNYC. Jerry Mitchell is a bit of a modern-day Avenger and we're so thrilled to have him tell a story for us. Here's Jerry live at the Moth. I'm standing on the front porch facing Byron D. LeBeckwith,

the notorious Klansman who killed Meg Revers. He wasn't caught doing that, but he was caught trying to plant a ticking time bomb outside a Jewish leader's home in New Orleans. You see, my stories are the ones that got the case reopened against him, as well as other clansmen. But he hadn't figured that out, or at least I thought so. My wife was eight months pregnant at the time. She begged me not to go visit him. It's a trap. I have to go.

I don't want to raise the children by myself. I have to go. If you go, I'll never forgive you. Karen, I have to go. Beckwith made me answer all these questions before he'd ever let me come to his house. Where'd you grow up? What are your parents' names?

Where do they live? Where do you live? Where do you go to church? Are you white? Fortunately, my conservative Christian southern upbringing meant I passed with flying colors. So he welcomed me at his house and walked me into the living room and for six hours he spewed one racist remark after another. After the interview ended he walked me out into the darkness, walked me out to my car, then blocked my way, stood in front of me and said, if you write positive things about white Caucasian Christians, God will

bless you. If you write negative things about white Caucasian Christians. God will bless you if you write negative things about white Caucasian Christians, God will punish you if God does not punish you directly several individuals will do it for him Soon as he got out of the way I was in that car and down the hill. My descent into the world of racist killers began when I saw the movie Mississippi Burning with a couple of FBI agents who investigated that case, which involved three civil rights workers who were killed in 1964 in Mississippi, two of them from here in New York City. But that, the thing that's just always stuck in my craw is for someone to get away with a crime, especially murder,

and that's what happened in these cases. And what made these cases so egregious was the fact not just that these clansmen got away with murder, but the fact that everybody knew these clansmen got away with murder, but the fact that everybody knew these Klansmen got away with murder, that's what upset me. I talked to Beckwith not too long after that and he had figured it out by this point that I'd done the stories.

So I talked to him on the telephone and he said, I'm gonna live to be 120. I don't know how much longer you've got. You're a reckless driver. You may have a wreck or somebody may molest you. Do you know somebody who'd do that? And I said, do you? It frightened me. And I remember checking in on my car for a while. And the thing I realized was he could kill me. But I also hated bullies. Probably because of all those times

I got the crap beaten out of me on the playground. And I wasn't going to be intimidated by Byron D. LeBekwith. So I persisted. He was arrested, hauled into the courtroom, and then one day in the courtroom he spotted me, yelled at me, you see that boy over there? When he dies, he's going to Africa. I turned to my friend Ed and said, you know, I've always wanted to go to Africa. On February 5, 1994, a jury convicted Byron D. LeBecois of the murder of mega-revers. And when the word guilty rang out, the sound cascaded down the hall,

the cries of joy, until it reached an open foyer of white and blacks, and just exploded in applause. I just felt chills down my spine, because I realized what had seemed so impossible really was possible. There were dozens more cases that could be prosecuted other than this one. A couple of days later, the sheriff calls me and tells me that when they took Beckwith off, he kept saying two words. I'm like, what two words? Like Jerry Mitchell? He's like, he would tell me, you know, well, you know, you might not want to go home the same way every night.

And, you know, that kind of disturbed me a little bit. But I never told my wife about that, because she was already worried I was going to be killed and her family harmed. She wanted me to write other investigative stories. But one day, the family of Vernon Damer asked me to come and meet with them in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. And the widow of Vernon Damer with tears in her eyes asked me to help her find justice in her husband's case. So here I weighed my own family's interest and heard her story.

I couldn't say no. You may have never heard of Vernon Damer, but you should have. He was an African American farmer who spent his whole life fighting for the rights of all to be able to vote. The Klan didn't like that. They attacked him and his family one frigid night, January 10th, 1966. They threw fire bombs into the house, began firing their guns into the house.

He woke up, grabbed his shotgun, ran to the front of the house to defend his family so his family could escape safely out of back window. Unfortunately the flames of the fire seared his lungs and he died later that day. A few weeks later in the mail came his voter registration card. He had thought his whole life for the right of all Americans to vote, but had never been able to cast a ballot himself. Americans to vote, but had never been able to cast a ballot himself. The man who ordered that killing was the man by the name of Sam Bowers, the head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, the most violent Klan organization in America.

If you saw Bowers, you looked like a kind grandfather in a seersucker suit. And I had people tell me this too. They're like, Jerry, why don't you bother these old guys? And I say, look, the thing you're forgetting is these are young killers who just happen to get old. You see, the White Knights of the Hukluck stand in response for at least 10 killings in Mississippi. And Bowers ordered every single one of them.

While I was investigating this case, I got a phone call from a Klansman. He said, did you think we were going to let you go unscathed? We know where you live. We've got pictures of you and your family. Well, I've gotten a lot of death threats in doing what I do, but this one really frightened me because he's threatened my family. My wife became extremely upset about it. I tried my best to tell her, look, all right, I promise this is going to be it. I'm not

doing any more after this. This is it. The guy who's the main witness against Bowers back in the 60s was a guy named Billy Roy Pitts. Billy Roy Pitts was involved in the killing, had dropped his gun, got caught, pleaded guilty to murder, and sentenced to life in prison. I've been told the reason there wasn't a record of that was because he went into the Federal Witness Protection Program. But in my research I found out the Federal Witness Protection Program didn't even exist at the time. So guess what?

He had never served a day of his life sentence. Someone to talk to him. But no one seemed to know where he was. And this will sound like an advertisement from an internet site, but I got on switchboard.com and typed his name, and up it popped, Billy Roy Pitts. His address in Denim Springs, Louisiana, and his telephone number.

So I called him. First 20 minutes of the conversation went like this. How'd you find me? How'd you find me? How'd you find me? How'd you find me? It's on the internet. The internet, I got an unlisted telephone number. I like the way I have to take it up with them. So as a result of my story, Mississippi authorities issued a warrant for his arrest.

He didn't like that. In fact, he ran. And while he was on the run, he sent me an audio cassette tape in the mail, and I got it, and I put it and played it. And this is how it began. Jerry, I just thought I'd let you know you've ruined my life. But I promise if I talk to anybody, I'd talk to you. So here's this tape

proceeds to tell me all about his involvement killing Vernon Damer and his involvement in all this other Klan violence. Shortly after that he turned himself in and this led to the arrest of Sam Bowers in his trial in August of 1998. One Klan's man actually got up and said that the Klan was a benevolent organization, passing out fruit baskets to the needy at Christmas. Under cross examination he admitted that he had never actually passed out any fruit baskets himself. Bowers was represented by a lawyer for the Klan back in the 60s who represented all these guys and one of the perks of being a lawyer for the Klan back in the 60s. He represented all these guys. And one of the perks of being a lawyer for the Klan back

in those days was, well, free membership. So he's cross-examining Billy Roy Pitts about this planning meeting took place prior to the actual raid. And he's like, Mr. Pitts, who all was at that planning meeting? And Pitts is like, ah, let's see. I was there.

Sam Bowers was there. Well, you were there. And Bowers is lawyers like, uh, uh, objection your honor. I've covered a lot of trials in my life, but that's the only trial I ever covered where a witness implicated the defense lawyer in the case. On August 21st, 1998, Sam Bowers was convicted and sent to prison just one cell down from Byron de Lebegue.

Back home, I promised my wife I would stop, but I couldn't stop. My heart wouldn't let me. I couldn't let these Klansmen get away with murder. So I started secretly working on these cases, continuing to work on these cases, and sure enough, she caught me. I was worried she'd just be furious with me. She told me she was always going to worry about me.

She would never stop worrying about me. But then she understood these cases were more important than her fears. She gave me her blessing. I felt so, so relieved. This like a burden had been lifted from my soul. Twenty-one more men followed Sam Bowers to prison after this. A miracle, if ever there was one. And the FBI today is investigating dozens more killings

that were unpunished in the Civil Rights Era. Not long after Sam Bowers was convicted, Billy Roy Pitts testified in his hearing. And when he got done testifying, he walked to the back of the courtroom and ran into the Damer family. There was a widow, Mrs. Damer, several of the Damer children, and Billy Roy Pitts apologized to Mrs. Damer for what he had done and she forgave him. And she began to cry and the damer children who were there

began to cry. He began to cry. I began to cry. And isn't that what redemption is all about? Trying to make things right even when they've gone so terribly wrong in the past. May God bless you in your own journey of redemption. Thanks, guys. That was Jerry Mitchell. Jerry's investigative reporting helped put four clansmen and a serial killer behind bars.

He's a MacArthur Fellowship recipient, the author of the book Race Against Time, and founder of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. All of the convicted clansmen he spoke about have died in prison. Coming up, a woman meets a man who reminds her of her own family's complicated past. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Catherine Burns. In this show, we're talking about those moments in life when we're subtly confronted by our past.

We met our next storyteller at a show we produced at the stunning Majestic Theater in Texas, where we partnered with the San Antonio Book Festival and the show sponsored by Lifetime TV. Here's Reina Grande live at the mall. I was at the San Antonio Airport on my way home to Sacramento. This was city number 23 of my latest book tour and I was fed up with airports and hotels. I was tired and homesick, and I just wanted to be back with my children and my husband and celebrate Halloween with them before having to head out again. To be honest, I hated the thought of having to get back on another airplane. So I'm making my way down the jetway

and I noticed this young Latino man. Unlike me, he doesn't seem frustrated by traveling, but rather scared and disoriented. I noticed that he has no luggage with him, not even a backpack. He's wearing stained jeans and that white t-shirt, and he has no jacket. But in his hand, he's clutching a white envelope. And then it hits me.

I know exactly who this young man is. I say to him, no tienes maleta? He breaks into a smile, clearly relieved that I speak Spanish. He says, no, no tengo nada. I have nothing. And then without me asking, he confirms what I suspected. He tells me that he was released from an immigration detention center that morning. It was the envelope that alerted me to his situation.

A few years ago, I took donations to a migrant shelter in Tijuana, and I learned that when released from the tensions, migrants have nothing but the clothes on their backs and an envelope containing their paperwork. He says to me, I've never been on an airplane before. How does this work? Where do I sit? I tell him to follow me and I find us a seat together. After I show him how to put on his seat belt, I learn that his name is Héctor, that he's from Guatemala, and that he's been at the airport for eight hours with nothing to eat and no money. He devours the snacks I offer him while we share our stories, which are mirror images of each other. He tells me about his wife and his one-year-old daughter.

He had to leave them behind in Guatemala when he headed north to try to find a way out of the poverty, the instability and the corruption in his country. the instability and the corruption in his country. Luckily, he's found himself a lawyer who's helping him with his asylum case, and in the meantime, he's been allowed to go live with relatives in Sacramento while he waits for his court date. What he wants more than anything in the world

is to be allowed to stay. And for his wife and his daughter to be able to join him here so that they can start a new life together in this country. I recognize that desire. It's the same desire I once had for me and my siblings and my parents to be reunited, for my family to be put back together and be whole again. Like Héctor, my own father had to leave me behind

when he headed north to look for work in Los Angeles. There were no jobs in my hometown, Iwala, in the state of Guerrero, which is the second poor estate in Mexico and at present it's most violent. I grew up looking at a black and white photograph of my father hanging on the wall, memorizing every detail of his face, wishing that his paper eyes could move and that he could see me, wishing that his paper mouth would open and that he would tell me he missed me

as much as I missed him. I was nine years old the first time I met my father. I stood in my grandmother's living room, rooted to the floor in shock, staring at him. I've almost given up hope that I would ever see him again, and now here he was in living color standing before me. And his skin was a beautiful dark brown, not a dull gray like in his black and white photograph. My aunt said to me, go say hello to your father, pushing me toward him. But he was a complete stranger to me and all I wanted to do was run away.

Still, I forced myself to go to him and I hugged him. He hugged me back too, but briefly, and I realized that I was a stranger to him too. My brother, my sister, and I asked him, So, are you finally back to stay with us? We couldn't bear the thought of losing him again, but he said he couldn't stay. He said, what kind of a life could he give his children earning a measly $5 a day?

He said that someone like him, a maintenance worker with a third grade education, was too poor and uneducated to qualify for a visa. Asylum was also out of our reach. Mexican nationals are rarely granted asylum and poverty, no matter how extreme, is not an asylum category. So because he couldn't come back to live with us and we couldn't travel legally to go live with him, there was only one path for him to take.

He decided to hire a smuggler and take my older brother and sister back with him to Los Angeles. They were 12 and 13, old enough to attempt the dangerous journey across the border. As for me, he said, I was going to have to stay behind again until I got older. I begged my father not to leave me again. Please take me with you, I pleaded. But he said, you're too little Chata. I'll come back for you, I promise. I shook my head and said,

but the last time you left, you were gone for almost eight years. Please, puppy, don't leave me again. I don't know how, but I managed to convince him to bring me along. So I found myself at the US border, risking my life all for a chance to finally have a father. The smuggler which out orders for us and we obeyed.

Walk, run, crawl, hide. My body was burning from the heat of the unforgiving son and the white-hot fear inside me at the thought of being caught and sent back. My father was right. I was too little to make the crossing and I put everyone at risk of being caught. I couldn't make my feet run fast enough, and so my father had to carry me on his back most of the way. And he was there at the U.S. border, where I got my first piggyback ride from my father.

I clung to him as we ran through the bushes, branches grasping at me as if trying to tear me away from him. When we found that that migrant in the bushes, it seemed as if he were sleeping, but then I realized that it was the kind of sleep you don't wake up from, and so I clung to my father even more as we ran. Border patrol caught us twice. Back then, families were not being separated at the border like they are now, so after they took us in for interrogation, they put us all in a van, and then drove us back to Tijuana.

On our third attempt, my father decided to try at night under the cover of darkness. The border that night was pitch black. We couldn't see where we were going, and so we had to hold hands so that we wouldn't lose our way. A helicopter came by and we ran into the bushes to hide from its searchlight. A beam of light fell on my shoes

and the coyote made me take off my white socks so that they wouldn't give us away. After the helicopter left, I ran into the darkness. I ran and I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. And when the Sun finally came up over Otai Mountain, we were looking at it from the other side of the border. We had made it into California, and later that day, we finally arrived at my father's home. After finishing my story, I tell Héctor, I have been in this country for 33 years now. But what I don't

tell him is that I came when things were different. When a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, passed a law that forgave 3 million people, including both of my parents, for coming into the country illegally. And he had allowed them to remain as legal permanent residents and build a life here. I don't tell Héctor how free and limitless I felt when our green cards arrived in the mail when I was 15. I don't tell him how I took that green card and I ran with it to my American dream all the way to being a college graduate, a best-selling author, and a public speaker. I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I came at a time when forgiveness and a chance of legal status were still possible. I wish I could give him hope. I

wish I could assure him that those times will come again. I wish with all my heart that Hector's daughter doesn't have to grow up looking at her father's photograph hanging on the wall. When we land Hector gives me a hug goodbye and he whispers, Gracias por todo. Se lo agradezco. Thank you for everything. I'm very grateful. And I'm grateful too, because he has reminded me why I do what I do. He has reminded me why I have to push past my exhaustion and keep going.

Two days later, when I'm back at the airport, heading to city number 24, I think of Héctor and his one-year-old daughter back in Guatemala. And I get on that airplane determined to keep on riding and fighting for him, for her, for all those fatherless daughters and daughterless fathers separated by border walls, longing for the day when they will see each other again. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. sequel, A Dream Called Home. We asked Reina if she kept in touch with her fellow passenger. She said she was able to connect with him briefly, and he was still waiting for his court hearing. Something that stayed with her was that when she met him, he hadn't had anything to eat for 17 hours. She wrote, I offered him all the snacks I had, and he accepted all except for the can of tuna. He said the smell of tuna would bring back bad memories. He'd eaten nothing but tuna for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as he made his way across Mexico to the border. I imagine that for the rest of his life,

the smell of tuna will trigger the trauma of his journey. Reina says now the smell of tuna will always remind her of him. Reina continues to fight for people's right to have better ways to gain citizenship legally. To see a photo of Reina with her father, go to themoth.org. Coming up, a woman on the verge of motherhood struggles to make peace with parts of her past. That's when the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Catherine Burns. Our final story took years to develop. It's about how the past can sometimes get in our way when we're trying to live out our dreams. A warning to listeners, the story includes a depiction of sexual violence. Here's Sarah Jane Johnson, live at the Moth. My partner and I are at a fertility clinic in a downtown Brooklyn high-rise. It feels sterile and expensive because it is. I don't have any fertility issues, at least none that I know of yet anyways, outside of

the fact that my wife doesn't make sperm. I think Kari Ann is pretty nervous too, but per usual. She's playing a pretty cool. She has a high pressure job, so it's often quite serious, but luckily for me, she's pretty soft on the inside. And I remember the first time I saw her rough housing with her nephews, and she's just throwing them around the air, and they can't get enough of it. And I thought to myself, I can't wait to make a baby with this woman. So we're waiting for the specialist, and I'm thinking about how expensive sperm is. It's also a really

unfortunate word so I like to call it batter. So unless you're using a friend's batter or a friend's of a friend's batter and this works beautifully for a lot of people but if you are like me and are married to an attorney who manages risk for a living this is not your path. You are pouring over anonymous donor profiles and reading case laws about same sex couples having to adopt their own children. So this process is starting to get a little tricky for me. I'm starting to feel myself pulling in these procedures.

When I'm examined, I sometimes feel like my body is not my own, and it takes me to a place in my past that was one of the darkest things I've ever lived through. Fourteen years ago, I was stunning abroad, and I went to Paris for the weekend and One night I hung out with a couple of guys And when they offered to walk me back to my hotel room One of them raped me in the lobby of an apartment building He was caught three days later and this thrust me into a seven-year journey, being in a foreign legal system,

in a language that I could only order a sandwich in. But I chose to prosecute, and I went back multiple times. And one minute it was wildly empowering. And the next minute I was drinking my memories away. Being a survivor became my identity and it determined my worth. And there was a time when I was so broken, I actually thought it was the only thing that made me really interesting. The daily experience of living with it was like a boulder on my chest. It was suffocating, a weight. I just didn't know how to carry. And you really never know

where a reminder will come from. I mean, going through airport security for me is a nightmare. I have no power. You have to fully submit. It doesn't matter if I don't want to be touched in that way. I mean, I used to even carry a card I could hand to an agent that said, I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and please make sure you tell me everything you're going to do before you touch me. A few years ago, I was living in a small town, and I went to this cozy family planning clinic. And kind of felt like the furniture came from staff members' homes over the years. And one of the exam rooms has posters

of these different cities on the walls. I put my feet in stirrups. It's my yearly exam. You can imagine. This is not the greatest day for me. And I lean back, and there on the ceiling is a poster of the Eiffel Tower. The poster card image of the city, the source of all of my pain. You think being a survivor, those moments where you're walking down a dark sidewalk and the guy walking towards you gives you

this feeling, washes over your ears are ringing, you have flashes behind your eyes, your stomach drops, heart pounding, and it is those moments. But it's also the cozy family planning clinic. So you learn to keep your fists up. And I learned that that is an utterly exhausting way to live. So I tried to work that boulder, rub it down, make it a little bit smaller. And eventually I tried to believe, I tried this concept of thinking that maybe I deserved a little bit more stability in my life, some more goodness. And so I'm out with a group of friends and I meet a friend of a friend and she's pretty cool.

And they're bragging about their glory days playing college basketball. And I'm like, I played basketball too in high school. And they were like, yeah, cool. And I was like, no, no, no high school. And they were like, yeah, cool. And I was like, no, no, no, no. Like I had a uniform and everything. And they were like, right, cool. And no surprise, there had been some drinks

involved in Truth Be Told. I was not good at basketball in high school. And I just, I can't tell if I'm like on her radar at all. And before you know it, I'm on my feet. And I'm doing something that I actually was really good at in high school, which is cheerleading. And I've got my best turkey, I'm landing jumps, spirit fingers, I do a kick,

and I get us kicked out of this bar. I never, that never happened to me before. And things got a little blurry that night, but two years later we were married. And, little blurry that night, but two years later we were married. And the safety of Carrie Ann had filled holes in me that I didn't know how to fill. And I used to not know if I deserved a family relies on me changing the concept I have of my body and it's stirring all of this stuff up and I just can't reconcile how I'm supposed to make a baby in the same exact place in my body that I've received so much violence.

So we decide to try and get pregnant at home. And this is stretching her boundaries, but it makes me feel cared for in a way that I never had been. So I read a 528 page gay Bible called the new essential guide to lesbian conception, pregnancy and birth. And I'm a little cheap so I don't have the batter shipped to our home. I slept in midtown and the tank is really heavy so they have a special backpack for it and I strap it on and I walked to Grand Central for babies for a subway ride. And I get home and when Carrie Hunt,

Carrie-Anne comes home that night, she sees the tank on the counter and she looks at me, she looks at the tank, she looks at me and yells fire in the hole! And we're so nervous and excited and when finally the time comes we put on garden gloves so that we don't burn ourselves on the dry eyes to pull out the violet batter And we do this routine for four months, but it's not working. We're getting really frustrated But then we hear about this midwife who will actually come to your home and help you be a little bit more exact and medical about this Turkey baster situation and just for the record. You don't actually use a turkey baster situation, and just for the record, you don't actually use a turkey baster. So we're waiting for her to arrive, and we're in the bedroom, having a glass of wine, trying to relax. We have our Lucky Cubs t-shirts on because they had won the World Series that year.

And the midwife arrives with her kit, and the lights are low, so she plunks on this headlamp and essentially just hops into bed with us. And you can imagine the thoughts racing through Karrion's mind like, good God, why are we not at a doctor's office? But this is how much I needed to control this. And this is how much she loves me. And it works. And so now I'm going through this incredible process of this pregnancy,

and I'm actually feeling more in my body than I ever have. And I'm dreaming of this super crunchy birth where I'm rolling around in a wheat field. Like, I desperately want to have a home birth but you all know who I married to so this is not my path. But now I'm obsessing about a birth plan and I want no drugs. I'm truly terrified of being inside of a process where I'll have to have medical intervention and an epidural and an epidural means that I won't

be able to move from the waist down, and this is a level of feeling trapped that I can't grasp. But those thoughts are opening the doors to this darkness and these doubts. And I'm starting to panic. Like, maybe I'm not as far along, and my healing is I thought that I was. And what if I can't show up?

And what if I can't feel it all, even the good stuff? That these feelings are countered with this carnal desire to finally push this boulder off of my chest and get on with my life. I think a lot of new parents worry about losing their identity. I welcomed it. I couldn't wait for my baby to be the center of my story. So I go to bed on a Tuesday and just after midnight, the contraction starts.

And I thought that it would have been a little bit more of a crescendo, but they start pretty strong. But it takes us a full day for them to get close enough for us to be able to go to the hospital. And once there, we spend another full day of me walking the halls, trying to work this baby down. And we're getting nervous, and it's getting complicated. And I'm trying to believe Kariyan when she tells me that I'm a warrior, and I'm trying desperately to not leave my body. I'm trying so hard to not let the pain of my labor talk to the pain of my trauma.

The midwife had warned me that it could be similar. my trauma, the midwife had warned me that it could be similar. And in the darkness these thoughts keep creeping in. Like, maybe you didn't get all of that darkness out. Like, there's still something in your way. But after 65 hours of labor, that included four hours of pushing, I had a C-section. But they pulled this ray of light from me and lifted him into the air and said,

Welcome to the world, Harvey. And the room went wild. And they finally brought him to me and Carrie-Ann was at my shoulder and everything faded away. And his skin was on my skin and I finally saw that little face. And I realized in that moment I had never been so proud of my body. Harvey is a daily reminder of where I have come from and the goodness that lies ahead. I know now that trauma is not linear. I suppose I take some comfort in knowing that it will always be here, but that I am who

I am because of it. But I don't have to carry this boulder every day. It's small enough to fit in my pocket. And can sometimes be awkward, I might sit on it out of the blue. But my hands are free to do other things. I called my baby boy. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah Jane Johnson is the writer and performer of the solo show Devil in a Box, which chronicles her journey from sexual assault through the French justice system and into life after trauma. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Sarah Jane gave us a powerful range of photographs, which you can view at themoth.org. Sarah Jane's appearance on the moth stage was a long time coming. Potential storytellers sometimes go through quite a process trying to figure out what story they want to tell. Sarah Jane is actually on our staff at the moth, and she worked with us for years before finally telling her story. Well, and certainly the moments where we would pass each other

in the hallway, and I would not make eye contact with you because you were like, are we going to talk about your story yet? And I think that we thought the story would be about the trial. But we talked about the story, and I would ask you, how are you doing? And blah, blah, blah. And you were in the middle of your pregnancy

and you would just tell me all these fascinating, deep, beautiful things. And I think one day I was like, holy crap, you might not want to hear this, but I think you might be currently living your mouth story. That was a moment that we had. I don't think I realized how much my trauma was gonna come up in my pregnancy journey, and you had seen my one-woman show.

And so I just kind of also had this assumption that like, oh, this will just be kind of a, you know, boiled down version of that, which primarily focuses on the trial. Which I thought too. Yeah. And I guess sort of finding myself like stuck in this previous identity I had for myself. I didn't really let myself think down the road about what else I had to say. Sarah Jane and I talked about what it was like for her wife, Carrie Ann, who was famously private. To hear Sarah Jane tell such an intimate story

from their lives on stage. Yeah, oh man, that was so wonderful. I felt like she was, I think that she was really proud and it was cool we had her aunt and uncle were also there and their response afterwards was like, oh wow, that was so beautiful to get to see your love story. Which was, I loved that that was their takeaway, because so much of this is all possible

because of our love story and the healing and the strength that Kieran has given me. And so it was pretty cool. I love that. Okay, one last question for you. We talked a little bit about your one-woman show. So you had a one-woman show about your assault. So you actually spent years on the road telling your story, talking to survivors.

Was telling a story at the moth different from telling it on stage, night after night in theaters? The process of devil on a box, you know, there's many minutes go by and the process of memory in my script, if you will, like the audience has a long time to get to know me and my humor and feel safe before I tell them about the violence and the assault. So in, you know, and I'm very much in character, while I'm myself, there's still a performative nature where the moth is about stripping away that performance and really living in the telling of it. And so much about this process has been acknowledging

how trauma was showing up in my birth story and discovering that giving birth was really another rebirth for me as a person, as a survivor. That was Sarah Jane Johnson and that's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us next time for the Moth Radio Hour. Your host this hour was the Moss artistic director, Catherine Burns, who also directed the stories in the show along with Jody Powell. The rest of the Moss directorial staff include Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin-Genese, Jennifer Hickson and Meg Bowles, production support from Emily Couch. Special thanks to Nicole James

for her years of dedication to the Moth. Moth stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers, our theme music is by The Drift, other music in this hour from Bill Frizzell, Henry Kaiser and David Lindley, Yvonne Rezendes and Stellwagen Symphonet. The Moth is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. To find out more about our podcast, to get information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, TheMoth.org. We hope you enjoyed this episode.

We're excited to introduce you to another fantastic podcast. By tuning in, you're directly supporting your favorite podcast and discovering new content. Thanks for listening. When I was growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and was maybe 17, I spent a lot of time with three women. Actually, statues of three women. The Hamilton's. One sister was a physician, the other a scholar,

and their cousin a social worker. A plaque spelled out how they'd each had a string of accomplishments. I must have read that plaque dozens of times, and looking back, I realized how much it expanded my sense of what I could accomplish, which is part of the work I hope monuments can do. the work I hope monuments can do. You could build 100,000 monuments tomorrow to women. And if doing that doesn't change the fact that the Dobs decision came down,

if doing that isn't part of building towards not having a hand-picked judge in Texas strip the right medical abortion to every pregnant person in this country, then it's not actually a monument. It's not actually doing the work that building a monument does. That's Sue Moebley, director of research at Monument Lab. The work that a monument does is consolidating and stamping the act of defining that society, defining the bounds of who's in and who's out, defining who gets to be in public. It is about power. In 2021, Sue Mobley and Monument Lab conducted an audit of monuments across the country. Of the top 50 people most commonly commemorated,

only three were women who actually existed. We seem to prefer mythical or allegorical women. Think a lady in robes holding the scales of justice in front of a courthouse. I see now how rare it was for me to have the Hamilton sisters to look up to. Real women being honored for what they actually did in the world. All of which sets the stage for the story you're about to hear.

This is Monumental, a podcast series produced by PRX. I'm your host, Ashley Seaford. I'm your host, Ashley Seaford. Wyoming is known as the equality state, because it was the first in the nation to pass women's suffrage. And for decades, it's proudly recognized that history with a statue of Esther Hobart Morris, Wyoming's first justice of the peace, and a vocal participant in the women's suffrage movement.

But that statue is no longer standing in front of the Wyoming State Capitol. Producer Irina Zhurov examines what that says about the status of women in Wyoming. On the third floor of the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne, there are four sculptures arranged under the building's golden cupola. Their patina gives them an aged look, but they were only commissioned in 2018. They're called the Four Sisters, and Tony Ross, a retired legislator, loves them. They're kind of his legacy.

Pretty cool star. So how do you feel standing in front of him? Um, well, I'm trying to be really cool. The First Sister is truth, lighting the way with a lamp, then justice who holds the Wyoming Constitution. Next is courage, hand-gripped around the serpent's neck. Finally is hope, a golden wreath in each hand. I well up.

I welling up right now. Ross served as a state representative here, then-Senator, and finally a Senate president. His biggest project in that position was overseeing an immense capital renovation. It cost more than $300 million, and starting in 2015 took four years. I was here every day. I looked through every swatch of carpeting to painting to everything. The four statues we're looking at now where the project's finale. They fill four niches in the building's rotunda that have stood empty since the capitol's construction in 1888.

Their bodies are draped in gauzy fabric, belly button shining through. The women look self-assured, muscular, also feminine. Ross says they embody the state's highest principles. The reason it was allegorical was to represent values of the people of the state of Wyoming are then and now. And that doesn't necessarily equate to just an individual. We all have our own flaws. Instead, they're idealized figures embodying ideals.

They are absolutely fabulous. You can say, hope, courage, justice, but that's an intangible. This is Peg Osland. She's a Wyoming native, 70 years old, and she doesn't love the allegorical statues as much as Tony Ross does. It takes a human being who had a story to tell. These don't have stories to tell.

It's just to feel good, like a fantasy." Aslan grew up in the land in Wyoming, and the more she looked at the sisters, the more out of place they seemed to her. For her, the aesthetics didn't fit the state's founding or history. You got rattlesnakes. Out at our ranch, we had mountain lions. You got bears. You got bears. You've got bandits.

You know, a token of bare feet and themes. That wouldn't work with that. That was grit. That was dust. That was bathrooms on the side of the road, broken down carriages. Their different opinions get at this tension around female figures and monuments. They're usually allegorical. Real women and their accomplishments are represented so rarely. Lately, though, people have been demanding more representation of important women. Wyoming actually did have a prominent statue of a real woman at the Capitol. It's a big reason Oslin has such strong feelings about the Four Sisters.

Because around the time they were commissioned, that statue of a woman named Esther Hobart Morris disappeared from where she stood, right in front of the Capitol. There's a group of us that are walkers. So when she was outside, you talked to her in the morning. I'd ask her for a lot of strength, courage. The statue was eight feet tall plus a pedestal. In her hand, she held what looked like a bouquet of flowers.

I would have been about 10 when she was put out front here. And that's how I just remember her is just this powerful figure of a woman. Esther Hobart Morris was a suffragette who moved to Wyoming in 1869. By most accounts, she was instrumental in the passage of Wyoming's suffrage law that same year. It was the first such law in the whole country, signed 50 years before the 19th Amendment

and franchised all American women. Then, Morris herself was appointed the first female justice of the peace. Wyoming became known as the equality state. We were the first government in the world, in the world, to grant women the right to hold. And so coming from a rural area, that really had an impact on me. One small example? In high school, Oslin ran to be the first woman student body president. She channeled Esther in her pamphlets.

It was, you know, dear everybody, these little letters, Peg is a girl. So is Esther Hobart Morris. She won. In 2015, when the Capitol renovation started, Oslin watched through offense as workers packed the statue into a wood crate and removed her. A crane needed to park in her spot. Plus, Esther needed some restoration of her own. She'd been hit by a car twice and had been battered by the Wyoming weather for more than half a century. In 2019, the 150th anniversary of women getting the vote in Wyoming, the Capitol reopened to great fanfare.

Well, I mean, citizens, this is your house. This is for you. This is where your business is done. Austin went to look for Esther, but Esther never reappeared outside. Like, where is she? It's just astounding to me that, that forward-looking statue is gone." When the renovation started, in addition to doing necessary structural work, the driving ethos was to restore the building to historic accuracy.

Tony Ross again. Tony Ross, Director, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's Office, The Hitchhiker's it back to the way it should be." Workers uncovered glass skylights, repainted trompe-loy designs on the walls, restored

paint colors, chandeliers, and art. Esther and another statue that stood outside of a 19th century leader of the Eastern Shoshone tribe, Chief Washiki, weren't original to the building, but they'd been there a while. Everyone assumed they'd just go back to their spots once work wrapped up. But there was this underground connector between the Capitol and another government building that became more important as the renovation dragged on. It had meeting rooms, an auditorium,

skylights that frame the Capitol's restored dome. And Ross says this question came up about the statues. There was debate over whether or not they should go back out in front or not. Legislators reasoned that in this expanded basement space, school groups could gather around the statues without standing in the frigid Wyoming weather. Esther and Chief Washiki could have a richer interpretive life indoors. The committee voted to move them. It didn't seem like a big deal. But when Peg Osland and others realized what happened, it was.

I think it was one sort of shock, because they went to every damn detail to restore, restore, restore history around here. How could you overlook something that had been in front of the Capitol for 60 years? That's already a golden dome, and Esther descended underground, these statues became inextricably linked. For Oslin, the statues and their placement in the capital said a lot about the state's commitment to its women. The new statues felt hypothetical, promising nothing but the future of the world.

The statues were not only the first to be built, but also the first to be built. For Oslin, the statues and their placement in the Capitol said a lot about the state's commitment to its women. The new statues felt hypothetical, promising nothing specific. Esther on the other hand had been a real woman who stood for Wyoming's radical history of suffrage and women's contributions. For women's equality. To Oslin, her move felt like a demotion.

One reflected in other facets of Wyoming life. I think we're regressing. Wyoming has the highest wage gap in the nation. It's among the worst for the proportion of women serving in state legislatures. Maternal mortality rates are higher than average. Participation by women in business is lower than average. The list goes on. In 2022, US News and World Report ranked Wyoming number 45 out of 50 for best states for gender

equality. There's something wrong with that picture. And that statue of Esther, to Oslin, she was a reminder of the state's promises and potential. Of the story it told about itself to the world, we are the equality state. The statue had a message Wyomingites needed to hear. Women count. Women count. They don't just take a back seat to their husbands,

that they have equal say, equal say, equal rights, and we can't let that go. We cannot let our guard down. We can't get complacent about it. But as I dug deeper into the statue and the story behind it, I found that simple story was not so simple. The equality state was founded on some problematic principles, and even the statue itself has some baggage around what it means to be a woman in the West. But before we explore all that, let's start with the woman in the monument herself. Esther Hobart Morris.

Esther Hobart Morris is born in upstate New York in 1814. She's part of a large family and a politically engaged community. There's a whole religious revival movement happening. There's a lot of abolition and temperance activity happening. So she's kind of growing up in that climate. This is Jennifer Hilton. She's from Wyoming, though now she's an assistant professor of history at Ohlone College in California.

She studies women's suffrage in the West. There are differing accounts of ages, but according to Helton, Esther's mother passes away when she's about 12. Her father dies when she's 19. And so what you would expect is that a young woman kind of without a lot of economic resources at that point would probably get married and start a family of her own. Esther puts that off.

She started to millinery business making women's hats. For a while she's on her own. Eventually, she does marry at what would have been considered an advanced age for that time, 27. She has a son, but her husband soon dies too. So then she's left alone with an infant child to raise by herself. These hardships in her life, the death of her parents, and then her husband, are formative. But maybe not in the ways you'd think.

So one of the things that comes across in Esther's letters that I think is really interesting is she writes about how because her father died and because her husband died, she didn't have a man telling her what to do. And so she had a lot of freedom in terms of figuring out where she was going to live and how she was going to raise her kids. And she had a lot of more opportunity to kind of make decisions than a lot of women did. And she liked it. In this letter to her niece,

she writes about her oldest son, Archie. I have acted more independent with Archie than I could have done if his father had been living, and it has given me strength. And no doubt, that is what made me strong in early life. I had no parent to control or what is worse to do just enough to keep me from doing for myself. After her first husband's death,

she packs up and moves to Illinois, where he owns some land. She marries again, has three more kids, but then more tragedy. One of her sons dies and her husband begins a downward spiral. He drinks a lot and their marriage becomes tense. Leaving it isn't much of an option in those times, but Esther does her own thing in the

confines of a hard marriage. She's interested in radical causes. She reads suffragist literature, has close relationships with other suffragists. She attends abolitionist lectures and subscribes to The Atlantic, which started as an abolitionist newspaper. She writes a lot of letters, especially to nieces she's close with, also suffragists, like this excerpt from 1864, at the height of the Civil War. I sometimes think I feel a little like the Democrats that I had no hand in making this war, and that I shall not be drafted. And as she's writing her letters during the Civil War, she's getting grouchier and grouchier

about the fact that the world has just, you know, is burning down, and here she has to put up with it, but she didn't have any voice in creating this mess. And so she clearly is expressing that, you know, if she was able to vote, like she would at least have some kind of say, but she doesn't. And then in 1868, an article appears in the Chicago Tribune that changes the course of her life. It's about a new gold rush. In 1867, some soldiers on leave found a gold vein in the rocks around an important

immigration route in what is now central Wyoming. They showed off the gold and news of their fine got into the Chicago paper. Esther's husband and her oldest son are instantly interested. They packed their bags and head out. One year later, Esther follows them. On an August morning, I visited the old mining town called South Pass City. I wanted to see where Esther made history. By car, it's about 40 minutes from the nearest town, Lander. Turned off the asphalt road and it's another two miles to south past city on this bumpy

gravel road. I rattled along for a few minutes looking for signs of a town and saw none. Oh wow it's really pretty. The planes were green with sage and yellow with flowers. The sky, immense. Finally, I spotted an old mineral processing facility and a little further. Here I am, South Pass City Historic Site. These days, five people live here full-time. One of them is Joe Ellis, the superintendent of the historic site. That's what he calls it. He doesn't like the term ghost town. There was always somebody living here. And in different time periods, it was a fairly substantial community.

In the late 1800s, there were some 300 buildings, 2,500 people. You know, it was probably a busy place, probably filthy too. Three stamp mills to crush and process ore operated just above town. They're incredibly noisy, Just this relentless beating sound. There were horses, wood fires. You know, there were a lot of saloons. Fourteen saloons, to be exact. So a lot of chaos, but also a bit of luxury.

You could get anything. Oysters. You could order off of the Union Pacific and they'd be here within three to four days. Oysters. You could barely get oysters in Wyoming today. Yeah, yeah. They loved that. That was one of the things.

The saloons served incredible amounts of champagne because it was the drink of the day." The social makeup of the town included a small black population, a small Chinese population, the white settlers, and Native American tribes on the Settlements periphery. In 1858, men outnumbered women five to one. So while settlers brought their strict social mores around race and gender, A lot of the normal lines would have been blurred. The frontier town is a necessity. You don't have enough population to do all of the roles in the classic women's work and men's work. You needed a lot of people to operate a lot of saloons, and that wasn't necessarily always going to be a man.

So yes, women own the saloons too, but they weren't allowed to drink in them. It was an expanded, yet still restrained kind of freedom. The political atmosphere was also unique. The vibe was definitely of a boom town. Wyoming only became a state in 1890, so back then the area was a territory and a remote one at that. But the settlers who came brought a hopefulness to South Pasadena and the territory beyond. A hopefulness to strike it rich, yes, but also to create something. The idea of starting fresh and building an idealized place was

appealing to people just starting to reckon with the Civil War. There are people who are coming west with some kind of vision. We've kind of been through this very traumatic experience and now we're going to build a new country. we've abolished slavery and it's going to be a new world. This is suffrage historian Jennifer Hilton again. Hilton says people are arriving with pretty distinct visions for this new world. The progressives of the time are the Republicans. Their policies towards Native Americans in Wyoming, which include crowding warring tribes onto a newly created reservation are catastrophic.

But for settlers, they envision a more equal society. The conservatives of the time are the Democrats, mostly from the South. Many are white supremacists who want to reestablish some semblance of the social order they thought they lost in the Civil War. Between the two main parties, there's a tension. But also a truce grounded in optimism.

So this is the climate in South Pass City when Esther Hobart Morris arrives in 1869. She's 55 at this point, self-assured in her values, a dominating presence and strong personality. And though her family comes seeking financial opportunity, she's also likely aware that the West could present other opportunities too, likes, as Jennifer Helton, around an issue that's very dear to her heart. Women's suffrage. There was a general sense of, you know, in the East, we have all these vested interests and those legislatures have been around a long time. They're kind of hidebound, doing things the way they've always been doing them. So if we're going to have a breakthrough, it's more likely to happen in the West.

Esther brings suffragist literature along. Suffragist friends come to visit her. to happen in the West. Esther brings suffragist literature along. Suffragist friends come to visit her. And soon, she starts meeting locals too. She has a pretty active social life. One important friendship she develops is with a couple, William and Julia Bright. Julia also wants the vote. William is a Democrat from Virginia, and he's running to be a legislator for South Pass City.

Esther starts to talk to the Brites about suffrage. Then she reaches out more. Esther, once story goes, holds a gathering. Some people say it was a dinner party, some people say it was a tea party. She invites all the local candidates for the legislature, including William Bright. In an era when women did not have political power and you wanted to shape the course of political events, what you had to do was talk to the men who were in power. She sits these men down and asks them all to support suffrage. This party story is central to Esther's legend today. True or not, it's come to represent her work to win key people to this cause. William Bright himself gives her credit for educating him. Decades later, in 1902, in a speech, he'll say,

quote, Mrs. Esther Morris had loaded me down with women's suffrage before I went to the legislature. I had never thought much about it before knowing her. That September, in 1869, William Bright wins his seat. By October, he's in Cheyenne for Wyoming's first territorial legislative session. And something strange happens. Even though women's rights are not a priority for Democrats nationally, and all of the legislators in that first session are conservatives from the Democratic Party, the lawmakers from South Pass City start sponsoring a bunch of bills related to women's rights.

Divorce laws, inheritance laws, and equal pay law, saying that women teachers have to be paid the same as men. And these bills make it through the legislature pretty quickly. And then towards the end of the session, William Bright proposes the suffrage bill. And at that point, even the other guys from South Pass are like, whoa, that might be a bridge too far, are you sure? Remember the legislators are all conservative Democrats, all men. In theory, they shouldn't be interested in this bill.

But they are. Hilton's has some of the men, like William Bright, have a genuine belief in suffrage. They're also motivated by racism. Bright thinks that enfranchising women could help secure white supremacy in the territory and keep the Democrats in power. The thinking goes, white female voters will cancel out black voters, men and women. So it's a mixture of what today we might call progressive motives towards equality

and racist motives that are against equality. There's some resistance to the bill, but it does make it through both chambers. It ends up on the desk of the progressive Republican governor, John Campbell. And so he kind of sits on it, basically until the last minute, and then he decides, yeah, we're gonna do it. He signs it.

That night, the story goes, in the bars of Cheyenne, men recite a toast. To the ladies, once their superiors, now are equals. It's December 10th, 1869, and all of a sudden, Wyoming women can vote. And not just that, they can hold office, too. It basically puts women on the exact same political plane as men. So it's actually quite radical. Two months after the governor signs the bill granting suffrage in 1869, Esther Hobart Morris is appointed justice of the peace in South Pass City.

The position as a minor judge does not require specific credentials. Usually it was held by a prominent man in town. Esther is the first woman to ever hold this public office. Hilton says this may have been a nod to how involved she was with suffrage. I think that appointing Esther Morris was kind of a Republican statement of, okay, now we've got suffrage, we're going to enforce it, and we're going to put this woman in charge. And Esther Morris was a no-nonsense

kind of woman. And a letter to her niece soon after her appointment, Esther writes, If it does belong to men to take care of women, I have ever been engaged in the men's work, so will be nothing new to me. The Democrats passed the bill and the Republicans made appointments so that some in both parties are for it, it seems, in both parties accepted. I shall take things as they come, even if I should be made President of the United States,

but really, do have too much to do to do things well." She signs the letter, misses, and Justice E. Morris. A lot of her cases that she tried were public drunkenness. Morris. This is Joe Ellis again, superintendent of the South Pass City Historic Site. He says she tried tax issues, legal disputes between individuals, physical altercations, that kind of thing. She held court sometimes in the three-room jail, sometimes in a saloon. Basically anywhere people could gather. None of her rulings were ever overturned. It's probably a testimony that there wasn't a massive controversy about her. That's probably a testimony to how good of a judge she was, as she was very based in the law.

Her historic role makes her famous nationally, and she gets invited to various suffrage meetings and conventions. In a public letter responding to one such invitation, she reflects on her role in pushing forward equality for women. Circumstances have transpired to make my position as Justice of the Peace a test of women's ability to hold public office. And I feel that my work has been satisfactory, although I have often regretted I was not better qualified to fill the position.

Like all pioneers, I have labored more in faith and hope. And in performing all these duties, I do not know as I have neglected my family any more than in ordinary shopping, and I must admit that I have been better paid for the services rendered than for any I have ever performed. Esther loves getting paid for her work, by the way. It provides her the independence she always craved, and which was so novel for women at the time. She does this job for nine months.

On the last day of her tenure, Esther's son writes to his cousin. It is surprising to note how public sentiment has changed in this little community in regard to women voting. You hear no open sneering about it as at first, and many have become open and declared advocates. In 1872, Esther leaves her husband. She leaves South Pass City. She tries out a couple of other places places but settles in Cheyenne. She dies there in 1902 at 87 years old. When we come back, producer Irina Zhurov explains how after her death, Esther Hobart-Morris' story takes on a life of its own. That's next on Monumental from PRX.

Back in a moment. This is Monumental from PRX. I'm your host, Ashley C. Ford. Let's get back to our story. Even before Esther Hobart Morris dies in 1902, early Wyoming historians are already penning the story of suffrage in the state. So when they're writing up the story of women's suffrage, they give Esther Morris a central role and they celebrate her as the mother of women's suffrage. Historian Jennifer Helton says most of these early historians are women.

At the University of Wyoming, the state's sole university in the entire state to this day, the history department is all women. It's a place of opportunity for people who can't break into the more rigid and connected legacy institutions in the East. And so there's a lot of educated women professionals who come West and they become things like professors and doctors and lawyers because they can't do that

in other parts of the country. And the way these historians tell it, Esther isn't just important to suffrage, and suffrage isn't just important to women. They're both fundamental to the state's story. Suffrage and Esther specifically are at the center of the narrative Wyoming constructs about itself

in the late 1800s and first decades of the 1900s. It is an important part of Wyoming's identity and its history and it's how Wyoming explains itself to the world. In the 1950s a U.S. Senator for Wyoming suggests the state build a monument to Esther to go in the National Statuary Hall in Washington, DC. Each state has allowed two statues there to represent its people. In a referendum, Wyomingites agree this is a good idea. Edna's Kimball Wilkins,

who serves in the state's House of Representatives at the time, along with one other woman, introduces a bill to commission the statue. In the House, it passes without a hitch. But over in the Senate, it was a different picture. This is Kimball Wilkins in an interview in 1960. She says a senator proposes chief washiki instead. Then, other senators start proposing kind of ridiculous alternatives. They propose a train robber and a humorist.

It devolves pretty quickly. bust. Then they talked about Esther's bust and the result right then was that the statue was left to death. The next day, though, the senator who originally proposed Chief Washakie. Well, he said in fact he had telegrams all night and they telephone calls and people knocking on his door and he wanted him to take the women off his back. He caves to public pressure. He puts the bill before the Senate once again, and it passes almost unanimously. To raise the $30,000 needed for the sculpture,

the Esther Morris Memorial Commission launches a statewide fundraising effort. Peg Oslin, the Wyoming native who used to talk to the Esther statue, says people chip in what they can. Beauty shops, school kids, church organizations, newspapers, the whole gamut collected dollars. Dollars in were a big deal.

There's a statement of contributions that list reams of donors. Mrs. Alice Felton of Green River gives $1. Josephine M. Bryce of Wheatland gives $5. The Jackson Hole Business and Professional Women's Club contributes $219.63. Green River High School gives $0.25. It's moving. The statue's installed in DC in 1960. Then a replica is commissioned to put

in front of the Capitol back home too. But the senator's mocking of the statue hints at how the narrative around Esther is starting to change by the 1950s. By the time of the vote, she's starting to lose her prominence in Wyoming's story. Jennifer Helton, a historian, says, that's thanks to one man.

So we have to talk about T.A. Larson. In 1938, the University of Wyoming hires T.A. Larson to join the history department. A decade in, he's the head of the department. And in the 1950s, right around the time the Esther statue is proposed, he starts to challenge her importance. And if you go look up newspaper articles from the time, it's pretty clear that T.A. Larson does not think that Esther Morris should get a statue.

T.A. Larson has a lot of beef with Esther. Remember the Tea Party story, how Esther gathered all the important men in South Pass City and lobbied them to pass suffrage? T. A. Larson says the Tea Party never happened. He rejects the idea that Esther was actively agitating for suffrage. He just seems to be stuck on this idea that it's ridiculous that women might have had something to do with their own enfranchisement. It's not just that T. A. Larson downplays Esther's role in Suffrage. He says suffrage altogether wasn't a game changer. He says, you know, women's suffrage didn't really make any impact in Wyoming because

sure they elected a few women to the school board, but otherwise it was, you know, men still ran everything and, you know, didn't really make a difference, right? So he really kind of minimizes the significance. And people listen because T.A. Larson is kind of a big deal. In 1965, he publishes a seminal history of Wyoming. He becomes known as Mr. Wyoming and educates generations of Wyomingites with his takes. He really kind of shaped the narrative both publicly and within the Academy as well. And little by little, this idea that suffrage is at the center of Wyoming's story, it recedes.

Today, most people know Wyoming as the cowboy state, not the equality state. Hilton says this evolution happens in the context of larger political forces in the country. The second way feminism is happening, the civil rights movement, Vietnam protests. Women's equality was associated in some ways with, you know, we don't want to get too close perhaps to some of these more radical interpretations of things happening today. That conservatism also probably had an effect on what the statue actually looked like. Esther was six feet tall, kind of severe-looking, squarish in shape.

Not an attractive woman, people kept telling me. But the statue is hyperfeminine, almost willowy. Maybe the details of what the actual woman, Esther Morris, looked like are less important to the people who are embracing these monuments than is a general idea of here's what a woman ought to look like. This is Cynthia Culver Prescott. She's a historian at the University of North Dakota. Prescott studies early monuments to what she calls pioneer mothers. Prescott studies early monuments to what she calls pioneer mothers. A white woman and a sun bonnet, either striding westward on the trail or seated, resting from her labors later in life are the two sort of standard images.

Many of these monuments to unnamed frontiers women were put up in the 1910s and 1920s. And the women they depict are full of symbols. Typically surrounded by children emphasizing her nurturing role and also this portrayal of this white woman as being an embodiment of white civilization. That with the coming of white women you have Christianity, you have book learning, and all of these things are seen as being sort of part of the trappings of white society arriving, the implication being displacing Indigenous cultures

in the region. The most prolific sculptor of pioneer mothers was Avard Fairbanks, the same artist commissioned to make Esther. Prescott has documented about 200 of these sculptures by Fairbanks and others, all with similar tropes. These pioneer mother monuments are a way to kind of instruct the next generation and what a true woman really looks like, what a true woman should act like.

Statues of women can be complicated even today. Remember those four sisters in the Wyoming Capitol? Truth, justice, courage, and hope? Tony Ross, the retired senator, says the artist's initial build of the statues was a little too risque for a government building. There was a bait over their clothing, and so whether or not it was too revealing. The artist, Delisle, had to add heavier dripping. Also, there were issues raised by several different

legislatures as to the size of the women's nipples. And so we had to literally, we had to have Dullesaw knock him down a little bit. It's a true story. The allegorical woman is a beautiful, sexualized woman. But the real woman couldn't be herself either. The statue of Esther represents a woman who accomplished real things and wielded power. But by making her form more traditionally feminine, her sculptor also refused to see her fully. The statue ignored that Esther Hobart Morris consistently defied other people's ideas

of her and what her life should look like. And it turns out it's not the only monument to this woman that didn't get the facts right. Back in South Pass City, site superintendent Joe Ellis strolls down the main street until he reaches one of the rebuilt historic cabins. Out front stands a stone marker. So here's my monument.

Ha ha ha. Hulman office site of Esther Hobart Morris marker. This spot is actually where her son's newspaper office stood. When the curators realized the marker was in the wrong spot, they put up a metal text panel explaining that. Ella says he's not sure why this happened. The site had the town's maps with land ownership labeled all along, but he sees it as a symptom of a larger injustice. That the story of Esther hasn't been fully explored or told in South Pass City,

that she hasn't been given her due. For the equality state, and that became our motto, and it became something that we built monuments in the wrong spot for. On the spot where Esther actually lived, now stands a section of the site's sewer system. Something about the optics, putting sewer lines near her home, or more recently, placing her in the capital basement, even though it's a really, really nice basement. Rob Zellis, the wrong way.

The placement is, it's important because it was that first impression of the capital building. Here's the sculpture of this woman that represents a major portion of our history. And yeah, it probably is a better place in the basement in terms of preserving the statue and also giving it an opportunity to build more programs around. But it's also that statement of, you know, this is front and center is important to people. And there's a lot of people that miss her at that location. I meet Peg Osland at Esther's old spot

in front of the Capitol on a blustery August morning. She shows up wearing a suffragette white blazer, a colorful stone butterfly brooch affixed to the lapel. I'm kind of emotional about this. She's emotional because Esther has been gone from her place in front of the Capitol for so long. In 2019, Osland, along with her mother and some friends, as Esther has been gone from her place in front of the Capitol for so long. In 2019, Oslin, along with her mother and some friends,

started a campaign to get Esther back outside. Now it's 2023, and her mom, Mary, passed away in 2021. I really fight for this statue, for the generation before me. My mom and then my grandmother, these are real frontier women." Oslin says her mother grew up poor in Mount Vernon, New York. She trained as a nurse, met her husband in the hospital. Then he brought her to Wyoming

where she couldn't even get a job as a nurse. Started having children. She had eight, Oslin's the oldest. Meanwhile, Oslin's father was elected to the state senate, ran for governor, and helped set the stage for the development of Wyoming's Coal Fields, the biggest in the world. That worked skyrocketed the state's wealth. Mary Oslin often stayed in the background.

She took a backseat a lot of times as the wife, but as she got older and then in her widowed years, she really became much more outspoken of her own views. One of the things she became adamant about later in life was putting Esther back in front of the Capitol. What, I wonder, did the Esther monuments say to Mary Ausland and women like her? What about her absence? Historian Cynthia Culver Prescott says the monuments we see, or don't, have a subconscious

effect. If you're a woman and realize there aren't any statues of women, or if you're a person of color and you don't see any statues that look like you, then that has a psychological impact that's not easy to measure about what's important, what's powerful in our society. MUSIC Lindsay Linton Buck has spent a lot of time thinking about this type of subconscious messaging in Wyoming. She's a photographer who lives in Jackson. We are the cowboy state that kind of more patriarchal imagery is still very strong. In 2015, she started a project called Women in Wyoming,

photographing and interviewing Wyoming women. I wanted to show and highlight stories that you haven't necessarily heard of or that you necessarily think about when you think about Wyoming. She photographed a cowgirl, a wildlife biologist, a choreographer, completely different career paths, an abstract painter, a writer, the state's first female Supreme Court justice, Wyoming's first Native American senator. I think at the root it was my experience of growing up in Wyoming and never imagining a future for myself here and wanting to create something that girls growing up in the state could see those pictures of themselves seeing as ever imagining a future for myself here and wanting to create something that girls growing

up in the state could see those pictures of themselves, seeing as believing and it's so powerful to see a reflection of yourself out in the world. And then as I continued to move along, it was wanting to create something that adds to the cultural history of Wyoming, of American history, and then tie back to this pioneering history that we do have as a state that kind of got lost for a lot of years. The project features 25 people, kind of iconography of the women of contemporary Wyoming. They're photographed in their work clothes, on the land, in their element. There's a Wyoming-ness about the images as a set.

Animals and landscape ever present. Hair windswept. Satisfied grins. But the portraits offer individual stories. When you can see a representation of yourself, that opens your imagination. It expands your mind. It expands your perception of what is possible. That is everything, right? It expands your mind. It expands your perception of what is possible.

That is everything, right? That is how we keep moving forward. That is how we keep stretching ourselves. Back at the Capitol, Peg Oslin marches across the empty spread of concrete where Esther once stood. Up the Capitol steps, down the checkered marble hall, descends a set of stairs, walks around the corner, then another set of stairs into the underground connector,

through to its terminus, to Esther's current perch. Look at that face. Esther holds her head high, and there's forward movement in the bronze, as if she's defiantly striding into the future. The pedestal is gone, but her bigness is still imposing. Oslin keeps gazing up at her eyes shiny, like she's got a crush on her. The statues move and Oslin's campaign got a lot of media attention and some sympathetic

allies and government, but in the spring of 2023, legislators affirmed their decision to keep Esther in the basement connector. There are rumors that someone will introduce another bill to move her back outside. She's so needed now, and by men and women. ["Summer's Day"] But Esther can do it alone, right? Can't be a lone voice for women, for broader equality. I imagine she'd want some sisters in bronze,

with their own stories dotting the prairie, even in the Wyoming elements. Who might they be? Wyoming boys and girls in some not too distant future. Might they pause on a walk, raise a hand against the sun and sharp wind, and look up at some new statue, reading her face. This episode was written and produced by Irina Zhurov. She is the author of the new novel, Lost Believers. Special thanks to musician John Mainzinski

for sharing recordings of his piano music. Voice acting and archival readings in this episode from Robin Lin and Tommy Bissaria. Thanks also to Jennifer Heltin, Peg Ostelin, Joe Ellis, Wyoming PBS, and the American Heritage Center for providing archival materials. Thanks also to Renee Lagrid and Wendy Madsen. The senior editor for Monumental is Rosalind Tortasilius and our senior producer is Nancy

Rosenbaum. Jamie York is our writer and our production assistant is Perry Gregory. The show is recorded by Bryce Bowman and Ben Erickson at Earshot Audio Post and mixed by Tommy Bizarrean, with support from Emmanuel Di Sarme, Pedro Rafael Rosado, Morgan Flannery, and Sandra Lopez-Monsalve. Fact-checking by Christina Rubello, our theme was composed and produced by Jelani Bowman with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. Edwin Ochoa is our project manager

and our executive producer is Jocelyn Gonzalez. Monumental is produced by PRX Productions and made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. For more on the show, visit us at prx.org slash monumental. I'm Ashley C. Ford, thanks for listening.