Buried Truths

In 1946, Orson Welles, the director of Citizen Kane, was at the height of his fame. At the time, he had a national radio show called Orson Welles Commentaries on ABC. After a year on the radio, discussing politics and Hollywood, Welles heard of a shocking crime. It was the end of World War Two. A Black soldier, heading home, was brutally beaten by a white police officer in South Carolina. No one k...

What happened inside of the courtroom when Joe Cameron stood trial for the murder of Reverend Pickett? The trial tells a deeper story about who could receive equal justice in a small southern community where everyone, from the prosecutor, to the judge, and even the lawyer representing Clarence Pickett’s family, knew each other. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Columbus police investigate one of their own, Joe Cameron in the Reverend Pickett’s death and come up with a surprising conclusion. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover sends in the FBI.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Did the World War II battle of Peleliu, where more than 20,000 American and Japanese combatants fought on an island they could walk across, shape Rev. Pickett’s fate? For more, visit buriedtruths.org See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How medical myths about Black people led American health care to fail Clarence Pickett in 1957. It is a tragedy that, 70 years later, is still failing African-Americans. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rev. Clarence Pickett’s final days: his arrest, his beating and how he saw a doctor one day and was dead the next. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rev. Clarence Horatious Pickett was a celebrated young pastor who developed behavioral problems that drew attention and arrests. But none should have led to what followed. For more, visit buriedtruths.org See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After enthralling congregations for several years, Rev. Pickett landed in the Georgia state mental institution, then a county jail where the jailer beat him to the edge of death. For more, visit buriedtruths.org See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Four days before Christmas in 1957, Clarence Horatious Pickett, a preacher and newspaper ad salesman in Columbus, Georgia, walked into town to pick up his paycheck. Forty-eight years old and known as “Reverend” to many, the tall, lean man with wire-rimmed glasses left his home and headed toward The Columbus World, a black newspaper where Pickett worked. Pickett, who’d been a boy preacher, was show...

Caroline Herring is a singer, songwriter and scholar of the South. She discusses the evolution of her music and of the song she wrote for Buried Truths. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Buried Truths Live, Part 2: Our special event continues with a conversation between Hank and Kelley Stinson, granddaughter of the policeman who killed James Brazier. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Buried Truths Live, Part I: a special evening onstage with the daughters of James Brazier, who share the pain of his loss some 60 years after their father died. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

An anonymous letter in the files of Donald Lee Hollowell captures white attitudes in the South. Some whites harbored no hatred for Black people but were too afraid to say so. What about today? And tomorrow? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Voting rights activists in Terrell are met with shootings and arson, attracting the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson and an angry President Kennedy. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Penniless and heartbroken, Hattie Bell Brazier pulls the only lever of power available to her: she sues Mathews and Cherry in federal court, setting up a tense battle between leading lawyers for and against civil rights. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

James Brazier’s family will never forget his killing, but what about the family of Weyman Cherry? His granddaughter reaches out to us after learning of his brutal racism. She accepts the truth but struggles with it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

An underground railroad of information smuggles the story of Terrible Terrell out of Georgia and onto the Washington Post’s front page. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

The police said Willie Countryman had a knife, but did he?  And his girlfriend is left to wonder about his love for her. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

The cops had already hurt James Brazier when they arrested him and took him to jail. But they returned late that night to finish him. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

On one April day, three generations of the Brazier family, including 10-year-old James Jr., were beaten by white Dawson police. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

Terrell County was like a lot of rural communities in Georgia. But in some ways, it was like no other place on earth.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

James and Hattie Brazier worked hard and earned more than most people in Dawson, white or black. But this black couple's prosperity was a provocation to white police. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info .

An interview with Margaret Burnham about her new book, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners.  The book is so revealing that we wanted to share a conversation she had with the public radio program, Fresh Air (produced by WHYY in Philadelphia and distributed by NPR).   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-...

A gruesome, unpunished 1967 murder reveals little-known stories of the civil rights movement and Black resistance in Mississippi and Louisiana. " American Reckoning " on Frontline, from PBS, tells the story of Wharlest Jackson Sr. and the search for those who killed him. In this episode of Buried Truths, host Hank Klibanoff talks to the filmmakers behind this documentary, Brad Lichtenstein and Yor...

The men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery have now been sentenced. Host Hank Klibanoff and his Emory colleague, professor Carol Anderson, talk about Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley’s decision on the public radio program Closer Look with Rose Scott,  from WABE Atlanta.  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-i...