0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History

0:03

Class from how Stuff Works dot Com.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

0:14

I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly

0:16

Fry. Today we are going

0:18

to talk about an event that became a really

0:21

huge symbol in the environmental movement,

0:23

and it's often credited with

0:25

helping surpass the Clean Water Act and

0:27

inspire the creation of the Environmental

0:29

Protection Agency. But a lot, like

0:31

a lot of the things that we talked about on the show,

0:34

the actual story is way more complicated

0:37

than that, and the whole thing is often

0:39

portrayed in a way that has a lot of

0:41

inaccuracies. In

0:43

nineteen sixty nine, the Cuyahoga

0:45

River in Cleveland, Ohio caught

0:47

fire. This was not for the first time,

0:50

it was, in fact, for the last time. But

0:52

for the people who have heard of this fire, the

0:54

image that probably came to your mind

0:57

is not from this fire at all. It's from a completely differ

1:00

one. And

1:02

as we mentioned before the episode, the image

1:04

that comes to mind for me is R. E. M. Saying

1:06

about Kuyahoga. It

1:10

has nothing to you know, and

1:12

no no historical significance other

1:15

than it was a great song. I don't

1:17

even know it, so maybe

1:19

after we record, I will go look it up. There

1:21

you go. Cleveland, Ohio,

1:23

sits on the shore of Lake Erie, along

1:25

a very twisty part of the Cuyahoga River

1:28

which empties into the lake. And there

1:30

are a couple of different theories about where

1:32

the river's name comes from, either a

1:34

Mohawk word for crooked or a Seneca

1:36

name meaning place of the jaw bone, and

1:39

sometimes these are also conflated and described

1:41

as being a Seneca word for crooked. Yeah,

1:44

I found out a lot of times before I found

1:47

this thing that's spelled it out completely differently.

1:50

Centuries before the establishment of

1:52

Cleveland, the Cuyahoga River Valley was

1:54

home to several indigenous cultures,

1:56

beginning with prehistoric nomadic

1:59

peoples who came to the area roughly

2:01

thirteen thousand years ago. Later,

2:04

the River Valley's prehistoric inhabitants

2:06

also included people's from the Mound

2:08

building Hopewell culture, followed

2:11

by what's known as the Whittlesey people. What

2:14

we know of these cultures comes from the archaeological

2:17

records, so we don't know their actual name.

2:20

Hopewell comes from Mordecai Hopewell,

2:22

who owned the land that was home to a series

2:24

of their mounds. Whittlesey is

2:26

named for geologist and archaeologist

2:29

Charles Whittlesey. Cleveland

2:32

was established on part of the Connecticut

2:34

Western Reserve. This was land in the Northwest

2:37

Territory that was claimed by Connecticut.

2:39

Although the Seneca likely used

2:42

parts of the Western Reserve as a hunting ground,

2:44

the area that became Cleveland doesn't

2:47

appear to have had a permanent population

2:49

in the decades just before its founding.

2:52

That changed when Moses Cleveland

2:54

surveyed and mapped the Connecticut Land Company's

2:57

Western Reserve holdings. Cleveland

3:00

was the first settlement that was established after

3:02

this survey, which was completed in seventeen

3:04

ninety six. The population

3:07

of the newly established Cleveland grew very

3:09

very slowly, although the immediate

3:12

area wasn't permanently inhabited,

3:14

other parts of what would become the state of Ohio

3:16

were People were reluctant

3:19

to move to the area out of fear of attacks

3:21

by the indigenous population, and

3:23

until the eighteen twenties, it was also hard

3:25

to get to thanks to a lack of roads

3:27

or other transportation options. Eventually,

3:30

steamboats on Lake Erie roads

3:33

railroads, and the construction of the Ohio

3:35

and Erie Canalway made it more accessible.

3:39

As Cleveland grew, it became

3:41

an important industrial center in the United

3:44

States. Standard Oil Company,

3:46

which is still recognizable name,

3:49

was established by John D. Rockefeller,

3:51

and it was founded there around eighteen seventy.

3:54

Steel mills became a huge

3:56

part of Cleveland's economy and also

3:58

one of the major employers, with almost thirty

4:01

percent of the city's population working

4:03

in the steel industry by eighteen eighty.

4:06

These industries and the city itself

4:08

grew up in a time when there wasn't a lot of regulation

4:11

about how to handle waste. Sewage

4:14

emptied into the river, as did industrial

4:16

waste and runoff. The water

4:18

became so dirty that if you fell into it,

4:20

you went to the hospital when you got out again.

4:23

This wasn't remotely unique to Cleveland,

4:25

and to a lot of people. A river that was obviously

4:28

visibly filthy was a necessary

4:30

trade off for all of the industry that was bringing

4:32

money into the city. Cleveland's

4:35

population peaked in nineteen fifty

4:38

at nearly a million people, but

4:40

then, as was the case for many other

4:42

industrial cities in the United States,

4:44

the industrial sector started to decline.

4:47

Between nineteen fifty two and nineteen sixty

4:49

nine, the city lost sixty thousand

4:52

manufacturing jobs, and that industrial

4:54

decline brought along with it a loss of jobs,

4:57

an increase and abandoned industrial

4:59

property along the outer front, a higher

5:01

crime rate, and a range of other

5:03

social and economic issues. As

5:05

the city center became increasingly run

5:07

down, anyone who could afford to move

5:09

to the newer suburbs did, and that

5:12

compounded all of these issues. Running

5:15

alongside this was an increase in racism

5:18

and racial tensions in Cleveland. The

5:20

city had experienced the same demographic

5:23

shifts as many other major cities

5:25

after the Civil War and the end of reconstruction.

5:28

African Americans had moved to Cleveland

5:30

and other cities from the Deep South, seeking

5:32

work in factories and trying

5:35

to escape oppressive Jim Crow laws.

5:38

But Cleveland's white citizens had

5:40

then started moving out of the neighborhoods

5:43

that were becoming home to black families,

5:45

in a pattern that's commonly known as white flight.

5:48

Since middle class white families were

5:50

moving out of neighborhoods as lower income

5:52

black families moved in, the

5:54

tax base for these neighborhoods dropped

5:57

dramatically, which led to a corresponding

5:59

decline and all of the systems and services

6:01

that are funded by taxes. And

6:04

even though segregation and discrimination

6:07

weren't as legally codified in Ohio

6:09

as they were in much of the South, they

6:11

still existed. Racism

6:13

and racial bias in policing and housing

6:16

created a lot of the same disparities in Cleveland

6:18

as Jim Crow laws did elsewhere.

6:21

The Supreme Court would eventually rule that Cleveland

6:23

schools were segregated by race,

6:25

even though that racial segregation was not

6:27

spelled out in law. All

6:30

of this culminated in the Huff riots

6:33

of July. It's

6:36

unclear exactly what sparked that

6:38

riot, but the most commonly cited account

6:40

is that white restaurant owners and the predominantly

6:43

black neighborhood of Huff refused

6:45

to give a black customer a glass of water,

6:47

and then they hung a sign in the window that read

6:50

no water for n words. A

6:52

crowd of mostly black protesters gathered

6:54

outside the restaurant, and after police

6:57

arrived to try to disperse the crowd, the

6:59

situation and escalated from an angry

7:01

mob throwing rocks to a six day

7:04

riot that involved looting, arson

7:06

in the deployment of the Ohio National

7:08

Guard. Four people were actually killed

7:11

in this riot, and all of them were black. This

7:14

incident is often cited as contributing

7:16

to the election of Carl Stokes as

7:18

Cleveland's mayor in nineteen sixty seven.

7:21

It was his second attempt at running for mayor,

7:24

having lost in nineteen sixty five.

7:26

He was the first black mayor of a major

7:28

US city, and a number of historians

7:30

suggests that his election was in part

7:33

out of a desire for stability and unity

7:35

in a city that was really struggling. Stokes

7:39

platform during the election focused

7:41

on jobs, housing and attempts

7:43

to revitalize the city.

7:46

But because this fire that we're going to

7:48

talk about happens during his time in office,

7:50

he wound up becoming a really prominent figure

7:52

in a completely different movement. And we'll

7:55

talk about that more after a sponsor break.

8:02

On June at twenty second, nineteen sixty

8:05

nine, sparks from a train passing

8:07

over one of the trestles that crossed the Kuyahoga

8:09

River ignited oil that had

8:11

collected on its surface, and the resulting

8:14

fire was pretty visually dramatic.

8:16

It reached about five stories tall.

8:19

Firefighters extinguished the blaze

8:21

within twenty or thirty minutes, but not before

8:24

it damaged two rail trestles,

8:26

one belonging to Norfolk and Western Railroad

8:28

and the other to Newburg and South Shore. Estimates

8:32

on how much the damage cost to repair

8:34

them varies from between fifty

8:36

thousand and a hundred thousand dollars, depending

8:38

on who you ask. The

8:40

city of Cleveland was not particularly

8:42

traumatized by the burning river. It

8:45

was not the first time that it had caught fire. The

8:47

Kuyahoga had burned at least thirteen

8:50

times over the previous hundred years.

8:52

The most recent fire before the one in nineteen

8:54

sixty nine had occurred in nineteen

8:56

fifty two, and it had been far more destructive,

8:59

leading to about one point three million dollars

9:01

in damages, including the dry docks

9:03

of the Great Lakes Towing Company and multiple

9:06

tugboats. It had nearly reached

9:08

the standard oil refinery, which could

9:10

have been utterly catastrophic. The

9:13

river's deadliest fire, which caused five

9:15

deaths, had happened in nineteen twelve. To

9:19

be clear here, the Cuyahoga River is

9:21

by far not the only river in the world

9:23

to have ever caught fire, just as

9:25

examples other Great Lakes tributaries

9:27

did during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

9:30

as well, including the Chicago and

9:32

Buffalo rivers, and this also

9:35

still happens. As just one other

9:37

example, India's bell Under

9:39

Lake has caught fire more than once this

9:41

year, which is seen, and of course

9:43

there are also lots of other pollutants

9:47

that can be in the water and be dangerous in ways

9:49

that don't involve setting on fire.

9:52

By nineteen sixty nine, the city of Cleveland

9:54

simultaneously shrugged off river

9:57

fires and viewed them as a threat. When

10:00

river caught fire, it wasn't met with a lot of public

10:02

fanfare or panic, but there was

10:04

an increasing awareness of the need to clean up

10:06

the river. That need, though, was

10:08

driven by the risk of fire damage, not really

10:11

a desire to clean the river for its own sake.

10:14

Air pollution, which could easily spread to

10:16

the more distant suburbs, got a lot more attention

10:18

in terms of general pollution. Cleanup

10:21

the flammable river was also a problem

10:24

that Cleveland was actively working on.

10:26

Cleveland's voters had approved a one hundred

10:28

million dollar bond initiative in nineteen

10:31

sixty eight such just the year before, and

10:33

that was aimed at cleaning up one of the big sources

10:35

of pollution, which was untreated human

10:37

waste. This situation was particularly

10:40

bad when heavy rains would cause the sewer

10:42

system to overflow, and the

10:44

bond initiative was meant to upgrade existing

10:47

facilities, add new sewer

10:49

lines, and build a new sewage treatment

10:51

plant. Ben Stefanski, who

10:53

was Cleveland's Director of Public

10:55

Utilities, was the driving force behind the

10:57

spot and a big advocate for getting the public

11:00

support, both for the initiative

11:02

itself and for the taxes that would be necessary

11:04

to fund it. In the days

11:07

immediately after the fire, local news

11:09

coverage and local discussion of what had

11:11

happened was mostly focused on the damage

11:14

and who should pay to repair it. Because

11:16

firefighters extinguished the blaze so quickly,

11:18

photographers didn't get to the scene in time

11:21

to get a picture of the fire in progress. When

11:23

the Cleveland Press and the Cleveland Plane Dealer

11:26

went to press the next day, they did

11:28

so with photos of the damaged railroad

11:30

trestles, not of the fire itself,

11:33

and the press ran photos without a story,

11:35

while the Plane Dealer published a brief

11:37

story as well, but all the way back on page

11:39

eleven c SO to Cleveland

11:42

in nineteen sixty nine, the river catching fire

11:44

was not anywhere near front page news.

11:47

The much worse two fire that we mentioned

11:49

a little while ago, on the other hand, had been

11:53

the political back and forth that followed,

11:55

which was also reported in the local media,

11:57

focused mostly on the damage and the

12:00

lame. Stefanski placed the blame

12:02

on the state, saying that it was issuing

12:04

industrial permits that allowed the dumping

12:07

of industrial waste into the river. Then

12:09

the state countered that it was the city's

12:12

failing sewer system, the one that had

12:14

been targeted to be upgraded with this bond

12:16

initiative, that needed to take the blame for

12:18

a lot of the oil in the water. The

12:20

city then excused the state of failing

12:22

to match the bond funds with funds

12:25

of its own to help with this project. After

12:28

a while, the local media got tired

12:30

of reporting on all of this back and forth.

12:32

An editorial that ran in The Plain Dealer

12:35

about two weeks after the fire read quote

12:37

bickering between Cleveland and the state over

12:39

who bears responsibility for the condition

12:41

of the Cuyahoga, a stream so polluted

12:44

it catches fire From time to Time, will

12:46

not improve the quality of the filthy

12:48

stream.

12:50

All of this discussion was really pretty

12:52

local. There was little to nothing in

12:54

the national media until Time

12:57

magazine published a story on river

12:59

pollution in August of nineteen sixty

13:01

nine. This story largely

13:03

focused on the Kuyahoga River and it reference

13:06

to the June nine fire, but

13:08

because there were no pictures of that

13:10

fire, Time used a picture from the

13:12

much more serious nineteen

13:14

fifty two fire. This is actually

13:16

the picture of the fire that is on our website

13:19

for this episode. And although there are

13:21

online versions of the article that exists today

13:24

with the photo clearly captioned as being

13:26

from a different fire, the one

13:28

that actually ran in Time in nineteen sixty

13:30

nine just said quote boat caught in flaming

13:33

kaya Hooga. Suddenly,

13:35

Cleveland and the Cuyahoga River were in

13:37

the national spotlight as evidence of

13:39

the dire state of the nation's polluted

13:42

waterways, not just in Ohio, but

13:44

elsewhere too. More national

13:46

coverage followed. In nineteen seventy,

13:49

National Geographics cover announced Our

13:51

Ecological Crisis as a title,

13:54

with pictures of the kaya Hooga, not at

13:56

that time on fire, being part of a

13:58

fold out that accompanied the store. The

14:02

river at that point was still visibly incredibly

14:04

filthy, and all the retrospectives

14:07

that are written today usually note

14:09

correctly that the nineteen sixty nine

14:11

fire was the last and not the first,

14:14

and they don't usually use an out of contact

14:16

context picture with no explanation

14:18

that it's really from an earlier fire. In

14:21

the nineteen seventies and even nineteen eighties,

14:23

a lot of the articles that evoked this fire

14:25

were just sloppy. They got key

14:27

dates wrong. They described the fire

14:30

as something that stretched over miles of river

14:32

when it was really pretty contained. There

14:34

were lots of other embellished details,

14:36

and they made it sound like the nineteen

14:39

sixty nine fire was both unique

14:41

and a massive disaster rather

14:43

than something that was appalling. I

14:45

mean, the river should not catch fire, but

14:48

it was also contained, quickly extinguished,

14:51

and was something that happened, as the newspaper

14:53

said from time to time. With

14:56

all of this inflated coverage, the

14:58

nineteen sixty nine fire took on a almost

15:00

mythical aspect. People started

15:02

remembering and we're using the air quotes. They're

15:05

seeing the fire on TV, even though

15:07

no television footage existed. Do

15:09

you recall we mentioned that reporters got

15:11

there too late to even get photographs. Randy

15:14

Newman wrote the song burn On about

15:16

the fire in nineteen seventy two, and

15:18

in the liner notes to a later album said

15:20

he had seen this non existent TV broadcast

15:24

in part because he was the first black

15:27

mayor of a major US city.

15:29

Carl Stokes became a very

15:31

visible presence in all of this coverage,

15:34

and eventually this blossoming national

15:36

focus circled back around locally,

15:38

with Cleveland Areas school children writing

15:41

hundreds of letters to him asking

15:43

him to clean up the city's pollution, including

15:46

the quality of the air and the health of

15:48

Lake Erie. Most of the letters

15:50

were from suburban kids who didn't

15:52

live near the river, and few of them actually

15:55

mentioned the river, but they advocated

15:57

in general for a cleaner Cleveland and a

15:59

cleaner planet. More

16:02

about how that idea spread from

16:06

elementary school children onward

16:08

is going to happen after we first pause and have a little

16:10

sponsor break.

16:16

Until nineteen sixty nine, none

16:18

of the Kuyahoga's many fires had

16:20

gotten much national attention. The

16:23

Time magazine article and that photograph

16:25

that was very dramatic are certainly

16:27

part of why it's suddenly got so much

16:29

more pressed. But apart from that, the

16:32

nineteen Sine fire happened at a time

16:34

of both growing environmental awareness

16:37

and increasing social activism

16:39

overall. Rachel Carson's

16:41

Silent Spring, which outlined the dangers

16:44

of the pesticide DT, had come out

16:46

in nineteen sixty two, and while still

16:48

somewhat controversial, the book became

16:50

a hugely influential bestseller and

16:53

it was a lot of people's first introduction

16:55

to the idea of environmentalisms.

16:57

And that was just a few years

16:59

before. For this river fire, we have,

17:02

I feel compelled to mention, gotten a lot of

17:04

requests to cover Rachel Carson and Silent

17:06

Spring. We have done. Uh,

17:09

but we have done. I mean that by saying we got a lot of request

17:11

not that we have written an edit on her at this time.

17:13

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. But just for those of you

17:15

who might hear that and say, hey, that would be a great

17:17

episode, we know we've gotten that. That

17:19

requestment definitely covered on

17:22

the list. Uh. By

17:24

nineteen seventy, the federal government had heard

17:26

about the Kuyahoga fire as well. Louis

17:29

Stokes, brother of Mayor Carl Stokes

17:31

and a member of the U. S. House of Representatives

17:34

spoke before the House in late nineteen seventy

17:36

advocating adding language to a flood

17:38

control bill that would allow the U. S. Army

17:41

Corps of Engineers to study water quality

17:43

in the kuya Hooga River. He described

17:45

the fact that it had even caught fire as shameful.

17:49

He also made it seemed like the Kyahoga was

17:51

the only flammable river. Yad,

17:54

I don't think it's definitely

17:57

not the only flammable river, but

17:59

I think it was more of an oversight than a like

18:01

a deliberate effort to make it focus

18:04

only on Cleveland. But after this

18:06

point, both Stokes Brothers and the

18:08

fire itself became a huge, visible

18:11

part of a campaign for federal regulations

18:13

of both the environment and water quality.

18:16

Outside the halls of government, the environmental

18:19

movement was also continuing to grow. The

18:21

First Earth Day was observed on April twenty

18:24

second, nineteen seventy and as part of

18:26

that First Earth Day, which had UH

18:29

celebrations, slash protests,

18:31

slash observances all around the country,

18:34

college students at Cleveland State University

18:37

marched from campus to the Cuyahoga River. The

18:40

National Environmental Protection Act and

18:42

e p A was signed into law

18:44

on January one of nineteen seventy.

18:47

This was one of the nation's first general laws

18:49

to protect the environment. President

18:51

Richard Nixon also announced his intention

18:54

to establish an Environmental

18:56

Protection Agency in the spring of nineteen

18:58

seventy. The Agency it's self was

19:00

established on December two of that year,

19:02

and the Clean Water Act followed in nineteen seventy

19:05

two. President Nixon actually

19:07

vetoed the Clean Water Act because of the cost

19:09

involved, but Congress overrode his

19:11

veto. This was

19:14

not the nation's first law specifically

19:16

related to water pollution. That,

19:19

at least in the most concrete terms, would

19:21

be the Federal Water Pollution Control Act

19:23

of ninety eight. The Clean

19:25

Water Act was essentially a series of amendments

19:28

to that ninety eight law, among

19:30

other things, that established a structure

19:32

for regulating the discharging of pollutants

19:34

into the water. It funded the building

19:37

of a new of new suits treatment plants

19:39

in places that needed them, and it authorized

19:41

the Environmental Protection Agency to implement

19:44

programs for pollution control. Of

19:46

course, that's not the end of the story. There

19:48

have continued to be new laws and rules about

19:50

pollution and water since then, with a continuing

19:53

focus on weighing the cleanliness

19:55

and safety of waterways with the impact

19:57

to businesses to maintain it. This

19:59

include it's the Heavily Contested Waters

20:02

of the United States Rule, also known

20:04

as the Clean Water Rule, which is currently

20:06

undergoing a review process through the e

20:08

p A, the Army, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

20:12

In spite of the various agencies and regulations,

20:15

polluted waterways and municipal water

20:17

systems also continue to make headlines,

20:19

including the Flint, Michigan water crisis,

20:22

in which the city has not had clean

20:24

water since a

20:26

number of sources like to sort

20:29

of well, actually, the Cuyahoga River

20:31

fire of nineteen sixty nine it's impact

20:33

on environmental protection laws. They

20:36

note that cities and states have begun had

20:38

begun doing their own work on cleaning

20:40

up rivers, lakes, and streams before the federal

20:42

government ever got involved. The

20:44

industrial decline in Cleveland

20:47

also meant there were a lot fewer factories

20:49

discharging waste into the river, which

20:51

meant that the river was cleaner than it had

20:53

been in decades prior. And

20:56

while all of this is technically true, the

20:58

Kuyahoga River was still really really

21:01

dirty in nineteen sixty nine, as were

21:03

many other rivers that had been adjacent to

21:06

a similar cycle of industrial rise

21:08

and fall. It's also difficult

21:10

for any one state or municipality

21:12

to tackle the problem of water pollution on

21:14

their own, since most bodies of water crossed

21:17

through multiple jurisdictions. As

21:21

it became a symbol for catastrophe

21:23

and a need for environmental stewardship,

21:25

the city of Cleveland also became a

21:27

national target of embarrassment. Articles

21:30

in the wake of the fire described it as a

21:33

crumbling relic of a fading industrial

21:35

era, with white flight leaving the city's

21:37

downtown as a derelict shell. And

21:40

while some of the criticism was

21:42

warranted, we talked about a lot of these issues

21:44

in the first act of the show,

21:47

a lot of the coverage really became unnecessarily

21:50

mean spirited, with Cleveland being

21:52

nicknamed the Mistake on the Lake. Even

21:55

after years of environmental cleanup

21:57

and a downtown renewal that started in the nineteen

21:59

eight east, Cleveland's reputation

22:01

as a collapsing miss persisted. There

22:04

is even a joke in the two thousand three series

22:06

finale of Buffy the Vampires Layer that

22:08

Cleveland is on a hell mouth I

22:11

think a lot of people who grew up

22:14

after this era, like

22:17

after the Nixon

22:19

presidency and the creation of the

22:21

E p A and all that stuff, you don't remember this specific

22:24

story about Cleveland still

22:26

grew up with the idea that Cleveland

22:28

was some sort of rundown laughing stock without

22:30

really knowing why. Yeah, and

22:33

this is a lot of why.

22:35

And of course, obviously industry was not the only

22:38

thing that there was going on in Cleveland before any

22:40

of this happened. It's just the thing that's most relevant to

22:42

what we were talking about today and

22:45

today, the Cuyahoga River Fire of

22:47

nineteen sixty nine has been somewhat

22:49

reclaimed by the city of Cleveland with

22:51

a pinch of self deprecating humor. Great

22:54

Lakes Brewing Company opened in the Ohio

22:57

City neighborhood of Cleveland, not far

22:59

from the river and n and

23:01

they brew a Burning River pale ale

23:03

which launched in and has

23:06

labeling that gives a nod both to the infamous

23:08

river fire and the Clean Water Act

23:10

that followed it. Uh and Great

23:13

Lakes Brewing Company also hosts Burning

23:15

Riverfest, which is a festival to support

23:18

the environmental organization Burning

23:20

River Foundation. I

23:22

think a lot of the rest of the world is gradually

23:25

catching up to the idea that that

23:27

Cleveland has renewed a lot

23:29

of itself since nineteen six when

23:31

the river caught on fire, at

23:33

least I hope uh.

23:38

Featured on The Drew Carey Show with

23:40

much positive um

23:43

framing well too too.

23:45

Dear dear friends of mine who grew up

23:48

both in Ohio and then

23:50

lived in Atlanta for many years, which is where

23:52

I knew them, have just moved back to Cleveland,

23:55

and they certainly would not have moved

23:58

to a place that was terrible.

24:00

So I definitely

24:03

hope that. I mean, every place has

24:05

legitimate criticisms, but I

24:08

don't think Cleveland deserves to be the

24:10

laughing stock that it was for so many decades.

24:13

Yeah. I have a good friend that that moved there

24:15

uh uh several years ago.

24:18

That's more than several who had never been

24:20

there and was kind of like dreading it because still

24:22

that shadow of of stuff that we grew

24:24

up with that it was not a great place.

24:26

And she had this like, this

24:29

is actually a wonderful place to live. So

24:34

reports only good things. Yeah,

24:37

speaking of cities that became laughing

24:39

stocks, I have listener mail that's about

24:41

the Scopes trial. This

24:45

is from K and this is a correction

24:47

and also fascinating because it is

24:50

an error that is literally everywhere

24:53

cases. Dear Tracy and Holly.

24:55

I've listened to your podcast for several years and always

24:58

enjoy it, but the recent podcast on this Scopes

25:00

trial was particularly interesting to

25:02

me. One small correction to begin

25:05

the Druggist slash school board chair

25:07

was Frank eat Robinson, not

25:09

Fred Robinson. Edward

25:12

Lawson made that mistake in his Pulitzer Prize

25:14

winning books Summer of the Gods, and it has been

25:16

reproduced often. I'm

25:18

gonna take a pause from the letter to say here to say

25:20

I would almost call it it has been reproduced

25:23

everywhere, Like I think every

25:26

source that I used UH had

25:29

the wrong name. And then

25:31

as I was, um, you know, we

25:33

we we love our listeners, but also

25:36

need to fact check things because

25:38

sometimes we do get corrections that are not

25:40

correct. Um. And when

25:43

I was fact checking this

25:46

correction, UM, I found

25:48

all of these notes in the Smithsonian

25:50

Archives. That was like the Smithsonian

25:52

Archive correcting incorrect

25:55

photo captions that had the wrong

25:57

name. So this error

25:59

is ubiquitous. UH, And K specifies,

26:02

I'm not going to go into exact detail because

26:04

privacy, but she specifies that the reason that

26:07

she knows this is because he's family

26:09

member, and

26:12

then I'll get back to the letter. In

26:14

addition to selling the school

26:16

books in question, serving as

26:18

a school board chair, helping come

26:20

up with the plan for the trial, et cetera, he

26:23

also testified his wife,

26:25

Clark Haggard Robinson, was a stringer

26:27

for the Chattanooga Times, and her brother Wallace,

26:30

was one of the prosecution attorneys. The

26:32

family home, built about nineteen

26:34

ten by Mr. Robinson's father in law, was

26:36

diagonally across the street from the courthouse,

26:39

and Clark was happy to entertain many

26:42

of the attorney's reporters and other visitors

26:44

to Dayton at her table, including

26:46

both both Darrow and Brian. The

26:48

one exception was H. L. Mencken, who was,

26:50

as he noted, famously uncomplimentary

26:53

of the South in general and Dayton in particular.

26:56

She refused to have him in her house. M

27:01

Southern hospitality goes a long way,

27:03

but not that far. You

27:05

also talked about the chimpanzee Joe

27:07

Mindy, who was part of the circus

27:09

atmosphere surrounding the trial. If you search

27:12

for pictures of the chimp, you will probably come across this

27:14

one has a link. I don't

27:16

know the identity of the woman in the photographs,

27:18

but the man is Fred Robinson, and

27:21

the children are his daughter Francis and his brother

27:23

Wallace, and some of the pictures Wallace

27:26

has cut off. Francis always said

27:28

that as soon as Joe Mindy had his coke and

27:30

left the drug store, she made sure that

27:32

her father broke the glass and

27:34

threw it away so no one would

27:37

drink out of it. Uh.

27:42

That cracks me up, because I know I have

27:45

drunk after my cats

27:48

previous areas. Thanks

27:51

for the podcast. You did an excellent job

27:53

of telling the real story of the trial and it was great fun

27:55

for my husband and me to listen to. And

27:57

then she has a few concluding notes and says signs

28:00

off as Kay, thank you so much. Kay. As

28:02

I alluded to when I took a break for reading the

28:04

letter, I did not know that that

28:06

ubiquitous error is all over the place

28:09

everywhere. Um.

28:11

It reminds me of when we did that episode

28:14

on the eradication of

28:17

of smallpox and how

28:19

we said that it was the only disease that mankind

28:22

has ever intentionally uh

28:24

eradicated and the

28:27

a lot of people, not a lot, but some people wrote in

28:29

to be like, actually render pest um

28:32

and I was like, not only did I

28:34

not know that, but there are a whole lot of sources

28:36

about this that are wrong. So

28:40

thank you so much for that A fascinating account.

28:42

Hey, if you would like to write

28:44

to us about this or any other podcast or

28:46

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28:48

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28:50

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28:55

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28:57

in History. You can come to our

29:00

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29:02

com, and you will find offense

29:04

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29:06

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29:09

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29:17

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29:20

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29:22

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