My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia HardstarkOn today’s episode, Georgia covers the life and murder of Medgar Evers and Karen tells the story of nurse Cliff Morrison and Ward 5B.
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Hello and welcome. I'm my favorite Murder. That's Georgia hard Star. That's Karen Killer Gariff.
This is a video as well as an audio podcast.
Right crazy, Yeah, I guess we were doing something with our arms recently, but people were freaked out by it.
Was like this.
Yeah, it's called a power move in podcasting. If you've never seen it, get.
Ready podcasting, see it now.
I love people are freaked out, just overexaggerated.
You didn't realize how much we gesture.
There's a lot of gesturing. You can't have a good podcast without just flamboy and gesturing.
I simply need you to know one must. There's going to be a ton of it. This is basically musical theater. Yeah, I know. We're back on the boards. We're trotting the board. Speaking of being on the fucking board. A wow, guys, it's it. That's it.
Karen's banging on the fucking justin here. There's no words to describe tell them.
Well, first of all, I just want to say that the website Blue Sky is a new social media website that has taken the place of Twitter that died long ago, and so because I'm on there, I opened it up in the middle of like a meeting or something, and there's an account called Karmageddon thirteen. Who's there to tell me some of the most exciting news I've ever seen? And that it's we're on Jeopardy.
I actually got my info from Canada. Oh, because I guess it's at different times on there. Yeah, they're all from our friend Casey Corbyn, who's Bence's friend in Texas. Oh nice, Yeah, Texas Canada. Text us that info Texas, No Canada, Canada.
Double Canada, Canada.
And then basically we were us and you're wrong about Yeah, provided the question part of a clue or the answer part of the clue on Jeopardy.
I said kind of, I'll say it said start yapping on your own. This escort as Best of twenty twenty one included You're wrong about and my favorite.
Murder, you have to wait till the end?
The podcast? Oh yeah, podcasts, the answers of podcasting. What is a podcast as a podcast?
Fuck? We lost our own fucking around.
That was like, that was a moment that I was like, that's all I've been waiting for.
We're done. Now, we're done.
It's great to finally be done. It's to wrap it down.
I really wanted to get under nine years, and I think we've done it just under.
Uncomfortably close to nine years. It real close.
So my family has been watching Jeopardy every single night at seven o'clock since I can remember, truly. I think I've told you multiple times the story of me watching it at four point thirty and then again at seven and pretending I knew all the answers, and my mom was like, I'm you kidding. She was getting so excited. I finally had to bust myself. I think I was fourteen when I did it, So for that long, my family's been watching Jeopardy at seven. What's hilarious is so I see that message, we all send it to each other. We're all freaking out. I'm like, oh my god, I'm going to go downstairs watch it with my dad and then there's going to be this reveal and it's going to be incredible. Well, we were preempted by Monday night.
Football happens to the best of us, you know, happens to the best.
So perfect, and later on I said to my dad, like, at the end of the night, I said to my dad, Hey, so you know are you proud that I was on your favorite TV show? And he goes, you were on Monday Night Football?
Wait did it play after? Yeah?
It was preempted to like ten thirty or something. He still played, Okay, still played, but yeah.
Not the same football. You guys just so perfect.
That I would be preempted by Monday Night Football for your dad. That moment your dad's finally going.
To say it, shouldn't you how to tell him instead of watching it?
Yeah?
Well, because I had to send that post to my sister because she lost her mind.
She was just like, oh my god, Yeah I did too. Was that feels like a moment in fucking time? It really did.
I don't think I'll ever not be amazed by I know, thank you Jeopardy, Thank.
You Jeopardy writers. Yeah, that was cool to be included.
It really was.
Congratulations you're wrong about Yeah, I hope you feel the same. Yeah, that was very exciting. You know, how else was your Thanksgiving break?
Good? It was good.
We binged the show that I turkey binged. We binged Darky. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have said it like that.
I ate a whole turkey between two of us.
We binged. No we ate a bunch of them. We forgot to put the leftovers away. It was really sad.
Oh no, I know, yeah, that's fine for good. I'm a leftover person. Those are my fucking favorite.
Yeah yeah, especially Thanksgiving leftovers.
Absolutely. Yeah.
So the show that we binged over the Break is the biopic version of the nonfiction book that we both loved, Say Nothing, Oh Yeah, by Patrick raden Keith. Yes, yes, yeah, about the IRA and the troubles, and especially about Dolorous Price, which I now know how to say her name correctly because of that show, how the Irish say it. It's tough though dolorous Yeah, yeah, right, it's fucking incredible.
Great, it's on Hulu.
I could watch ten more seasons of it, even though I know it's over, Like I know, they don't. They didn't make it up, yeah, so they can't just keep going.
But love it. It's incredible. I'm so glad.
Yeah, because yeah, I've heard a lot about it, and we've talked a lot about it. Yea, And you love one something that you read something like that you know about from it feels like it's the very first iteration of it actually gets executed by people who also loved.
It clearly, and like the acting is incredible, like both the younger generation and then the people who play of course people play them, they're older, they're fucking you know, professionals, but everyone just like killed it.
It was it was just like.
It was phenomenal, great, And it's such a weird period of history that I don't think we really are taught.
Right, Well, it's recent to us, so it is that kind of thing where it maybe doesn't feel like history, right, but yeah, it's America. We don't know enough about the troubles and what's kind of behind it.
Yeah, let's really go. I think this will teach everyone, So say nothing on Hulu. I don't know why we don't say London dairy. Don't say London dairy. Mistake that I will never ever stop thinking about for the rest of it. And Ireland in Scotland or is it. Scotland is not part of the UK.
Ireland's not part of the UK except for this area. And that's the problem, Yes, right exactly.
I know it now.
We all know now, we all know all of the things that we know the most now now now we know them.
After the fact. What about you? What have you got let's.
See, I binged Monday night football, Tuesday night football, Wednesday afternoon football. There was no end to the football experience. But what I loved was I just lay on the couch. My dad watches football, but he gets it straight into his hearing aids, so it goes and then I'm sitting in silence with kind of the background of football. I don't have to listen to it. And then I can just watch TikTok full volume in the middle of the room, and it's like we have a great setup. And then if anybody needs to tell the other person anything, we both stop what we're doing and.
Go, well, okay, so I need to get Vince's hearing aids is what you're saying.
Well, it's pretty great. Yeah, yeah, eventually that's what will happen.
I love a sports nap, Like when Vince puts on a sport I'm like, great, this is the perfect like, you know, atmosphere for a nap.
And it's also I think it's like you don't you understand the value of it, but you don't have to be invested.
You just kind of get.
To enjoy the general vibe and then and then like go to sleep.
Yeah, and I'm like, I know he's occupied, so I don't have to feel like I'm wasted, like you know, like I have to ask any questions. Yeah, or like you know what, I'm like, babe, I'm gonna go take a nap. And it's like, okay, well, I'll just hang out for an hour and a half then like take a nap. It's like, no, you were watching the sport. Yeah, and so my nap.
Is not interfering with your day in any way. They go together perfectly.
Yeah, Like I can feel guilty about it, nap. That's how much fucking anxiety I have.
But I wouldn't. Okay, so way, yeah, when.
He's got, when he's occupied, they have codependency and we're great at it and.
You're powering through it. That's right.
Speaking of which, and my uh, I was basically binging TikTok. I guess that would be on top of forced football voluntarily binging TikTok. And so I think I told you the already.
But one of the.
Things that is now in my experience is I get to see the clips of Nick Terry's MFM animated all the time because they're in my feed. The algorithm has figured out I love myself, and so they come up all the time. And the other day the I can't find my mom, little girl in the store story that you told about a gotha punker, a grandma, and so I saw that one and I'm like, so cute, and then I looked down and it was. It was actually retweeted by a company called Gothcloth, and goth Cloth retweeting that it got five hundred thousand likes, holy shit and two million views. Are you fucking serious? I am dead serious. So Gothcloth, we want to say God, thank you. Just let me tell you really quick. Go Cloth was founded by a woman named Jordan K. Hill in twenty twenty three, so recently. It's a blend of personal design. She creates and curated items that are must have for ghosts and grules.
I love ghosts and gouls. Yeah, so which is.
Thanks Jordan for the RT and the you know, I guess it's like some nice content for the goths and the ghouls that might be wanting to buy her clothing.
I love that.
I'm glad that we're, like, you know, in with the goths. I mean, who better to be in with.
I feel like we were there without being you know, it's that kind of thing. When I was in high school in the eighties, you weren't allowed to try to be in with a group if you weren't going to like dye your hair or.
Wear the black lipstick or all your eyebrows and put catliner on.
Yeah, yeah, you actually commit.
Yeah, but I don't think it's like that anymore.
You can be whatever you want to be. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, you don't have to wear a uniform to be like a murdering No, that's right. Yeah, that's kind of what it is. Yeah.
So yeah, Murderinos, go to Gothclothco dot com, Gothclothco if you want any of those things.
Because those are our new friends. Hey.
And also, if you're lost in a grocery store and you can't find your mom, go.
Look for a god. Look for a goth or a punt or a grandma.
Speaking of being lost and found, it's December, and so as you know, every year in December we do a weekly donation for the holidays, ten thousand dollars. So we always like to find a charity that can make a real difference in people's lives.
So yeah, so this December's we don't have a name for it giving corner. Sure, we're kicking it off with a donation of ten thousand dollars to an organization called Feeding America. They're part of a nationwide network of two hundred food banks and sixty thousand meal programs so people can access food without judgment or stigma, and.
They work with lawmakers to make it easier for people to get food by expanding access to food assistance programs.
And so if you'd like to join us in giving to this very important cause, you can go to their website at Feeding America dot org.
Or you can explore their volunteer opportunities, which is a great way to give back. You can like help out at a food bank, you can host a food drive, you can just donate food to your local pantry.
Yeah.
Just let's all be looking out for ways to help each other and support each other and making sure people in need have what they need.
Yeah, when I was a kid, we had to utilize this.
So yeah, I really and I really love being able to, you know, help out, help out, Yeah, because it helped my family out when I was a kid.
Yeah, that's good.
Except for the can of peaches that exploded in our laundry room because they were expired. Don't give expired food to food banks.
I mean, please check your please check all those dates. Anyways. Yeah, that's a nice one. That's a good feeling. Kickoff December.
Love it.
Yeah, all right, well let's get into it. We have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights and then we'll get into our stories.
Yeah. So this week on Buried Bones, Kate and Paul are kicking off two part series on Harvey Glatzman, known as the Glamour Girl killer. He terrorized Los Angeles in the fifties.
Lost up story.
Yeah, and a brand new episode of Rewind with Karen and Georgia.
That's our third weekly episode. It's out now.
This week we're recapping episode twenty two, featuring two stories from the fifteen hundred. So if you haven't started binging Rewind, check it out.
Please do.
It's like a cliffs Notes binging. It's like, yeah, my favorite murder for dummies. Get over there. We'll make it easy those first couple hundred episodes.
That's the plan.
Also this week, over on this podcast, I'll Kill You, the Aaron's are talking about all things scabies, learn about scape the history of scabies, and dive into scabies before scabies dives into you.
I know a fucking dirty ass hipster who got scabies. My mother was.
Convinced because I bought clothes at vintage store at the Goodwill.
Basically, she's like, you are going to get scabies.
And then you're gonna come to meet And I'm just telling you right now where I'm like, it's a coat. It's an old man's coat, right, No one's going to give me.
Skating, ye.
I mean, if it would have happened to someone because of that, it would have happened to me by now, so I can guarantee, Yeah, I can't guarantee you guarantee it never happened to you. Promise, yeah, I think. And then just a friendly reminder, the holidays are coming up fast, so get your loved ones something that says I love you almost as much as I love podcasts at exactly rightstore dot com. Place your order by December twelfth to guarantee delivery by the twenty fifth, and get yourself some fun merch.
Yeah.
And now that we're doing video, did you know we're also doing commercials? So let's take a look at the commercial that we made.
What Yeah, Hi, it's a coal from the Merch Department.
You might know me from that email you got about your recent return and I have a question for you.
Are your buns cold? Don't worry?
We have the solution and this one is a fan favorite design never before seen in sweats.
Form cool, I love the cold.
Just in time for the holidays, it's the hot Dog Crew sweatshirt. Now you can celebrate the year round delaxy that is the humble hot Dog. Let your outfit be a conversation starter at every cockpit party this season. Featuring this gorgeous hot dog art by Sammy Rich. It's the perfect gift for everyone in your life, from your grandma to that random stranger you met online. So Ron don't walk to our website exactly rightstore dot com and order your hot Dog sweatshirt today.
Oh my god, right, I remember you pitching that and then there it is. Holy shit, my face hurts from smiling like that is so joyous.
Who better than Nicole to be our sales of our merch department. Nicole has been selling merch for us and with us since we started, basically like since right after we started doing merch.
Yeah, she's been with us.
And I went to her and I was like, would you do this thing? I just think it would be funny, and.
She's like, okay.
She's like always the funniest person in our staff meetings. And then the day we went to do it, Alison and I went to go over the scripts with her, say is there anything you want to change or do or anything? And then I was like, you took theater in high school and she goes, no.
I didn't.
And then I was like, oh, okay, well tell me if you want to not do this, you don't have to do it.
If you don't want it doesn't seem like something she would want to do, and yet she nailed it. She did it so because it's Nicole being Nicole, which I love. I'm so happy about that.
Go to our Instagram and our TikTok and watch that video and then get a hot talk sure.
And you can see it and you can be a part of it.
That was joyous, right, I'm so glad you liked it. I want a surprise video every episode. Please make me a surprise video. Okay, as much as possible, you know what, check and done. I was so scared when you said that it was going to be like me, like talking, but I didn't leap about like.
A plane again. Yeah, it's like the old pictures I used to love to surprise you with. Oh we made a commercial. Fuck, no, there's nothing to do with me. I love it right, and we're selling March. We're selling March.
Okay, okay, I'm first, and my story today is a heavy one. This is the life and murder of a civil rights hero whose killer went free for thirty years as a clear obvious direct result of state sanctioned racism in good old Mississippi.
This is the story of Medgar Evers. Oh wow, this one.
I know the overall I know, the very white child from a white school.
Six Yeah, okay, Well.
The main source for this story is a book called The Autobiography of Medgar Evers, which combines his speeches and writings with historical context, written by his incredible wife, Mariley Evers Williams and Manning Marrable, and the rest of the sources are in the show notes. So Medgar Evers is born in nineteen twenty five, grows up in Decatur at Mississippi, and his parents are James and Jesse Evers. James works in a sawmill, and Jesse his mom does laundry and ironing at home for local white families. Medgar has three other siblings, and James and Jesse are known as extremely loving and attentive parents. Medgar's father is locally known as crazy Jim like your dad because he refuses to step off the sidewalk in town in deference to passing white people as was the rules, so the bullshit rules. The Everses are extremely focused on their children getting good educations, despite the many barriers to this in the Jim Crow South. The Evers children attend a segregated school which is a twelve mile walk each way from their house. Twelve miles that's what half a marathon.
Yes, but also like so you have to get up what at six in the morning to get to school on tome.
Seriously so, when Medgar is only fourteen years old, a man in his town named Willie Tingle is lynched for supposedly insulting a white woman. Medger witnesses Willie, who was friends with his father, be dragged behind a truck before being shot and hanged. So he sees us as a fourteen year old Willy's bloody clothes are left out on a fence post for a year after this, you know, to send a message, and the Everest kids have to walk past them every day on their way to school.
The horror.
So in nineteen forty two, when Medgar is seventeen and still in high school, he volunteers to join the army by lying about his age and goes to fight in World War Two. He serves in a segregated battalion in England and then in France, and like most though not all, black soul at the time, Medgur is assigned to a non combat role due to the racist military policies. He works as a technician loading and unloading shipments of weapons, and he and his fellow black soldiers are routinely subject to demeaning treatment from their white commanding officers. And it's during this time in the army that Medgir resolves to fight for civil rights when he gets back home. So right after being discharged in nineteen forty six, Medgar and his brother bring a group of black veterans to the courthouse in their hometown of Decatur to register to vote. But on election day, a group of white men carrying guns blocks Medgar, his brother, and the others from accessing the polls, so Medgre finishes high school and then attends Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College. On the first day of school, he meets a fellow freshman who's seven years younger named Merley Beasley, and Merley is who's only seventeen, is warned by her grandmother to stay away from the older veterans, but the two get married in December nineteen fifty one and graduate the following spring. And while in college, Medgar had been on the debate team, the business club, the football team, the track team, had been his class president his junior year, and yearbook editor and newspaper editor.
In his senior year. Wow, so no small feat.
Also while in college, Medgar had attended an interracial seminar hosted by one all white college and one all black college in Mississippi, and it was at this seminar that he first learned about the NAACP and joined. After graduation in nineteen fifty two, Medgre and Merley first moved to a town called Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where Medgar begins working as an insurance salesman at a business owned by a prominent black doctor, and the job gives him the opportunity to travel the Delta region and talk to a lot of people. He also applies to be the first black law student at the University of Mississippi, but shocking, his application is rejected on a technicality. But of course we know that it's more about the outrage of the alumni, you know, admitting a black person.
I mean, but when you were saying that thing of an all white school and an all black school coming together to like that seemed very advanced, and that's also in Mississippi. Yeah, so it's like obviously there's pockets of people who are really especially what the white people who knew that change had to happen, And like, I think it's such a tipping point in history, like a you know, it's like you've got the old school, you got the new school, and they're wedding heads, right, It's like the young people and then the old ways rights.
It's the like what side of history do you want to be on? Kind of thing?
Very valid question to this day, sure is.
And so you know, getting rejected is in nineteen fifty four, the same year as the Brown versus Board of Education decision passes declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional, but southern states and white school districts will fight this decision for years. And on the state level, the Mississippi state legislature pas laws empowering white districts to resist segregation and puts up obstacles for black students to register for school. And it also recognizes local bodies called white Citizens' councils, which oppose integration in individual cities and towns, often with armed resistance. So people trying to make progress and change, people trying to keep things the old way, and you.
Know, the fight that makes me think of. Leading up to the election, there was a video about this woman who made a t shirt with the receipt from when she voted the first time. I think when she was eighteen. Did you see that video? A black woman who's you know, older now obviously, and it was the two dollars receipt for her having to pay a poll tax, which all black people had to pay when they were voting.
A that's what a poll tax is.
Holy.
When was this did? Like whenever? When did she vote originally?
Right?
It was I can't remember.
I think she said it was like in the late forties, ye, or so God, because I would guess that woman was somewhere in her seventies or eighties, but I couldn't guess. But she did a whole speech on it, and I was like, I've heard the phrase poll tax for so.
Long and I didn't know that that's what it was. Oh, that's fucking wild, and.
That kind of like, yeah, figuring out all these ways to restrict people or just just get in people's way.
Right, Yeah, make it difficult so that they won't try, let alone succeed.
Yep. Okay.
So Medgar asked the NAACP for their assistance insuing the University of Mississippi over his application, but their leadership instead offers him a job, and in December of nineteen fifty four, he is named their Field secretary for the state of Mississippi. So Medgar and Murley, who by this point have two young children, Darryl and Rena, moved to Jackson, which is Mississippi's capital. We both totally knew that.
Yeah, absolutely, I know all the state capital.
Yeah.
They move there in January of nineteen fifty five. Their third child, a son named James, will be born in Jackson. In nineteen sixty so in the wake of Brown versus born of education, there is an increase in violence against black people in Southern States. As part of Medgar's job, he investigates murder and assault cases against black people, which I can't imagine is not just completely traumatizing. He provides assistance to fourteen year old Emmett Till's family after he is horrifically lynched in Money, Mississippi, in August of nineteen fifty four. The tillcase, and as we've heard it, causes shockwaves around the world because his mother made me Till's decision to allow the press to document the brutality of his injuries by having an open casket. Medger himself spends days on his hands and knees in the town of Money, looking for evidence in the fields and in the river, and tills murders are ultimately declared not guilty by an all white jury.
Ridiculous.
Yeah.
Medgar investigates eight other murders, countless assaults, and works to assist another black applicant to the University of Mississippi law school. And he also works tirelessly to register black voters in Mississippi, and as the civil rights movement changes and adapts to include more direct action like Boycott's Meedgar helps organize those two. So at this point, the atmosphere in Jackson is obviously more than tense, and between nineteen fifty five and nineteen sixty three, the Evers family is targeted with countless threats and several acts of violence. Really writes that they used to get so many threatening phone calls that she would just put the phone down and walk away, you know, And she says, quote I began putting the phone quietly down on the table and directing it toward the wall. So much hatred has been poured out on that wall end quote.
Oh god, I know.
Also, that's just like again, you're just going about your day, you have other stuff to do, and then you have that kind of like just think of like the last time somebody yelled at you in a parking lot, or you are like shaken and whatever, and it's like that being brought to black people's door multiple.
Times a day, or you know.
And back then, oh, you try to take any kind of action, you can't.
On another occasion, Medgar is run out of a small town. He drives his car at one hundred miles an hour to get away. Medgar and Murley teach their children to army crawl to the bathroom if they ever hear a loud noise aimed at the house. God And in nineteen sixty three, someone throws a firebomb at the Evers Homes car port. Medgar is at home when it happens. The kids are asleep, and so Murley, this mother of three, is so afraid of being shot if she goes outside, but she also doesn't want the house to burn down, so she goes out and puts the fire out with an urten hose, like that's the best choice she has.
She has to do it herself.
Yeah, Marley remembers asking Medgar if all of this physical danger is worth it, So she says, quote what about us? You have me, your wife, who loves you dearly, You have these three children. And Medgh would tell her quote That's why I'm doing what I'm doing. End quote, And she says also, quote knowing that every day might be the last day was the force behind the deep love that Medgar and I had for.
Each other and our children. End quote.
So on June twelfth, nineteen sixty three, Medgar comes home around twelve thirty am from a very long day of work for the NAACP. And the way Merley tells the story, it sounds like Medgar thought something might happen to him that day. He had made sure to spend the previous Sunday with his family not working, which was rare for him, and he made sure to kiss the kids before he left, and he called Merley just to talk three times throughout the workday. And when Medgar pulls the car into the car port shortly after midnight, his hands are full. He's carrying a stack of NAACP T shirts into the house. Because he had been out of town and traveling a lot, Merley had let This is the fucking worst. Marley had let the children wait up to greet their father when he got home. This is just they hear the engine stop and the car door open, and then they all hear the horrifying, unmistakable sound of a gunshot.
Marley runs to the door.
Medgar has made it there, his keys in hand, but then he falls to the ground, bleeding profusely. With the fucking kids awake to greet their daddy. And the kids are between three and nine years old, and they see all of it, and they plead with their father to get up. Neighbors come over to help, but Medgar dies later that night. He's just thirty seven years old. Oh my god, I know. Thousands of people attend Medger's funeral, and it's documented in Life magazine, and there's this devastating photo of Merley comforting her nine year old son Darryl on the.
Cover of Life.
Metger is buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. So almost immediately it's very clear who shot Medgar Evers In a small grove of trees about one hundred feet from the overs, Investigators from the FBI find a rifle that matches the gun Evers had been shot with. It belongs to a forty two year old man named Byron de la Beckweth. Byron is a member of his local White Citizens Council, one of those all white groups devoted to maintaining segregation and white supremacy.
He's also a member of the Klucux.
Klam That kind of go hand in hand. So Byron is arrested and charged with Medgar's murder, but the case results in two hung juries, both all white and all male.
Juries. Both times and he's not tried a third time.
I mean, just the idea that it was such a strong case, so clear that actually it made these completely rigged white juries. Go hold on a second, how are we going to do this?
And we're hung Yeah, that's like, yeah, that speaks volumes rather than innocent right or not guilty right. So it not being tried a third time remains the state of affairs for thirty years. That's intell and mistigative reporter named Jerry Mitchell finds evidence that the State of Mississippi assisted Byron's defense team in vetting jurors for both trials. Oh that's a fucking no, no, you can't do that.
I've never heard of this.
Like this feels like I'm trying to rack my brain of like have I seen like a movie about this or something you have?
Okay, I'll tell you when I go in the movie the.
Movie and book is first of the book, and then the movie is Ghosts of Mississippi. Oh, okay, you know, famous amazing movie directed by Ron Howard. But so Jerry Mitchell finds out evidence. He's this incredible investigative reporter. So Mississippi has a governing body called the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, And in theory, the role of this body was to protect the rights of the state from federal overreach, which we can fucking talk a lot about states rights, that's not in practice, it really functioned to protect the racist interests of the local white citizens councils. It formed directly after the passing of Brown versus Board of Education. So in both trials of Byron, de la Beck with representatives from this body collected information on potential jurors and pass this on to Byron's defense team, so very specific, you know, obviously egregious. So all this starts to happen in the late eighties and Byron has finally tried a third time in nineteen ninety four.
Takes that long.
In addition to the evidence from the crime scene, which remains the same from the first two trials, multiple people testify that Byron had boasted about killing Medger over the years, including at kkk rallies, And this time a jury which is no longer all white or all male, finds him guilty and he is sentenced to life in prison. And this part of the story is where the book and movie adaptation of Ghosts of Mississippi happens. Byron dies in two thousand and one at the age of eighty, so Byron probably would not have been tried were it not from early Ever, she eventually remarried and is now known as Merley Evers Williams, and after the new evidence about the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission's influence on the First Shoe Trials was revealed, really tirelessly pushed for several years for Byron to be retried. Marley says, quote, because I loved Medger. I didn't want him to be forgotten. That was the first motivation. The second was to bring positive change if it possibly could. In the years after her husband's death, Mrley moved her children to California and attended Pomona College. She had a career in marketing and corporate community outreach, and then in the nineties became a member of the board at the NUBACP. She says that her primary motivation for attaining such an incredible career was vengeance. Yes, she says, quote tell me that I can't do something, I'll kill myself trying to do it.
That's right. End quote. Yeah, fucking chills.
Marley eventually becomes the NUBACP Board's first chairwoman, firstly first female leader. In twenty thirteen, she delivers the invocation at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.
Wow.
Remember that she's the first woman and the first non clergy member to do so, which is like, bring us fucking back, So good member, I mean yeah. Medgar Evers is still remembered as one of the brightest heroes of the civil rights movement. There's a college in Brooklyn named after him, and a statue of him in Jackson, Mississippi. Every June, Jackson has the Medgar Evers Homecoming celebration, and actually BB King played at it every year before his death in twenty fifteen.
Oh, I know.
Medgar had told Marley that he was choosing to risk his life for his children's futures, and they all went on to do great things. Sadly, Daryl Evers, Medgar and Murley's oldest oldest son, died of colon cancer in two thousand and one. He was a prominent artist.
Grena.
Evers had a thirty two year career with United Airlines and now runs the Medgar and Merley Evers Institute and serves on several nonprofit boards, and James the youngest is a successful photographer who works on promotional photos for films and TV. And actually James took this incredible photo of his two sons with Barack Obama and Murley at that inauguration of twenty thirteen.
Wow.
So last year Murley and Medgar's house was turned into a national monument which people can visit. At a gala honoring her, Murley, who's now ninety one, said quote, I ask you to please always keep Medgar Evers memory in your minds and in your hearts end quote. And that is the story of the death and legacy of a true hero of the civil rights movement, Medgar Evers.
Wow, I did not know.
These details, Like, yeah, there's just so many stories of brave people that are not told well.
And they're like they're crucial stories there. It's the details of how that kind of work gets done and push forward, and it's by people who truly knew they were putting their life on the line and did it. They didn't back away from the risk, and they didn't back away from like all of that fear they had to just they kind of like lived in that fear and powered through it anyway, And that's the piece of it that's it's so incredible. It's like he didn't stay home for work.
He didn't.
He just kept going, knowing that he had to.
Right.
It reminds me of when they.
Started the desegregation Ruby Bridges, the five year old girl who had to with the first little black girl who went to a white school.
Yeah, she's a baby.
I mean we've talked about this before, but like I recently saw a picture and it was like her now, oh my god, and her from then, and it just like they made a five.
Year old to do that.
They made her get escorted into the school so she could buy some an education.
Yeah, like by her she was alone.
Ye, like for by fear of being killed. It's like it's just fucking insane.
It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, amazing job, thank you.
Thank you.
I wanted to not do that shitty so yeah, I know you did it great. And also just like yeah, I love that idea of like we don't know this, let's tell each other so that we.
Know it and other people know it totally.
Well, we're going to take a turn, but it isn't really the turn away that we usually do, which I kind of love.
We're going to turn toward different direction, okay, but also serious.
Okay, because December is HIV AIDS Awareness month, right if you weren't there, Many of our listeners were not. But in the spring of nineteen eighty, the national news began to report on a.
Mysterious fatal disease that was.
Spread across the country, almost entirely in the gay male population. Almost immediately, those who fell ill were treated like pariahs in the healthcare system. Being diagnosed with AIDS was seen as a death sentence, sotaking fear, paranoia, and intense homophobia. The AIDS crisis in America and the way it was handled by the Reagan administration and by some average Americans themselves, will always be a stain on our history. But like most of the stories that we tell each other, there is a glimmer of light in this story because at San Francisco General Hospital. Sorry I can't start it already. I just feel so proud.
Yeah, I was going to say that, because.
At San Francisco General Hospital, a young gay male nurse from Florida will spearhead the first dedicated AIDS word in the United States.
Oh my god, this is incredible.
And when he does, a staff of heroic nurses and doctors will defy fears and cultural taboos to provide passionate care to those patients dying from AIDS, and that simple, generous act of compassion will ultimately prove to be revolutionary. This is the story of nurse Cliff Morrison and San Francisco General's Ward five B.
Shit, right, I don't know anything about this, right, incredible?
I knew like a little, But again it's that same thing where you're kind of like, I know a little. There's an incredible documentary called five B that came out in twenty eighteen. Okay, so definitely watch that, and then there's also interviews with an articles by Cliff Morrison and fellow five B nurse Alison Moed.
Those are the two main.
Sources, and the rest of the sources are in our show notes. Okay, so first I'm gonna tell you about Cliff Morrison. He is born in the early fifties in Live Oak, Florida, which is a small town on the state's panhandle, and by his own description, Cliff says, it's quote about ninety miles from anywhere, so up in poverty, no one in his family ever graduated high school, let alone college. They also didn't own a car, a telephone, or a TV, so true poverty. But from a young age, Cliff works as a field hand to support his family a very young age. That's very hard work, obviously, very physically demanding. So by the time he's twelve, he decides that he doesn't want to do that job anymore.
Twelve, he's like enough, So when did he start? We're like, yeah, that's fucked up. Serious.
So he heads down to a small local hospital and he asks if he can please work there?
Oh my god.
Yeah, So he gets a job in the housekeeping department. He mops the floors, he takes out the trash, but after a while he realizes he wants to care for the patients. Before long, Cliff is promoted to an orderly position, a job he holds throughout high school, and after he graduates, he goes to nursing school in Jacksonville.
Wow.
So he admits that he was self conscious about going into nursing at first because back then the field was dominated by women. But by nineteen seventy one, twenty year old Cliff is a registered nurse and he's earning ten thousand dollars a year, which is about what year, seventy one, I'm going to go thirty eight thousand, seventy eight thousands.
Holy shit.
Yeah, he's making good money. That's very good money. Yes, I think even in today's standards for some nurses it's like, yeah, they don't get paid that okay.
So that's of course the most anyone in his family has ever made. But more than that, Cliff has really found his calling. He says, quote, I realized I really liked being a nurse. It's where I felt the most comfortable. I'd always been told that I was a caring person, so it made sense that I gravitated toward that profession. So Cliff bounces from Jacksonville down to Miami. There's a thriving gay community down there. There were lots of job opportunities. But it's the seventies and at this time, down in South Florida, there's a woman named Anita Bryant who's decided to wage war on the LGBTQ community of South Florida. She and her cronies are lobbying hard to have a recently passed ordinance that outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation repealed. She wants they want to get rid of that.
I want you to take the steps you've you've so fought for so hard, and take them away from you. Like, let's go back in fucking history instead of forward.
What the fuck? What does that sound like to you? I don't know. It sounds really familiar, though.
Hmm let's repeal right, Huh. How's your body feel right now? It feels like I want to get a hysterectomy a little second class? Yeah, Anita Bryant, I believe there's her getting pied.
Yes, she yes.
If I'm right, there's an amazing video because she did it.
It's someone who did it.
That's because she was also she wasn't She was a performer. She was like a singer and stuff, and she was kind of like back it was like back in those Perry Como days where people were very like clean cut. It was all about like late sixties kind of like all American, clean cut whatever, and so she was kind of like popular in a way. And then suddenly she was like, but you know who I really want to opress is these gays. And so yeah, there's that legendary video where she gets pied while she's doing I think a press conference.
Yeah, it was by gay activist Tom Higgins.
Yeah, you can look that video up on YouTube. It's pretty great. But also it's like at the time, it's like how dare you? And it's like it's pie. You're an asshole, and you got a pie in the face.
You deserve it.
So basically, those bigoted activists drum up such an increasingly hostile energy in South Florida, which is up until then been a safe haven for gay people, that Cliff decides it's time for heid him to move to California. He's always wanted to spend time in the Bay Area, and of course San Francisco has become like the mecca for gay people to escape to from all around the country. So in nineteen seventy nine, Cliff moves there and takes a job at San Francisco General, which is at the time a teaching hospital for University of California at San Francisco. So what's funny is Cliff doesn't actually take to the city right away.
It's cold, it's foggy.
But whether there's not a lot of sunshine in San Francisco, so he misses the Florida sunshine. He's also not clicking with the gay community, like so many places that can become emblematic of, like a movement or a subculture. San Francisco's filled with transplants, so he feels like it's a little artificial. So he figures he'll stay for a year or two and then he's going to go try somewhere else. But all that changes. In nineteen eighty one, the murmurings of a strange dead illness that's largely affecting young gay men begin to circulate, so Cliff and his colleagues at s of General start seeing some of these patients come into their ICU. They're all suffering from the same symptoms. They've lost weight, they have fevers that last for days, they have lesions on their skin, swollen lymph nodes. Some of them are confused and delirious, and they almost always die from this illness. The news goes from calling it a mystery illness to saying it's a new type of cancer affecting gay men because they just have no idea. By nineteen eighty two, and I have told you this story. I told you the last time we talked about the AIDS crisis. But this happening in nineteen eighty one. I absolutely remember where I was sitting in the living room watching the six o'clock news with my mom or if it was my mom was there. It was the seven o'clock news, and Dave maclhattan on the Channel two news, and the little chiron next to him just said mystery illness, and he basically was like a mystery. This is in San Francisco. H Yeah, really strange. So by nineteen eighty two, this mystery illness is given a name, Acquired immuno deficiency syndrome or AIDS for short, cases are being identified throughout the country now, with many, but most importantly not all, of the victims being gay men. So even the best medical experts and the most decorated doctors can't fully explain why these patients are getting sick, and that uncertainty begins to fuel a widespread panic and blatant homophobia. According to the website Hospital Watchdog, they say quote some men suspected as gay and infected with HIV were kicked out of their apartments and fired from their jobs. In one instance, their desks were taken to a parking lot and set on fire. Insurance companies were screening out gay men to deny coverage by sending out surveys asking if they worked as a florist or a hairdresser.
Holy shit.
Yeah, in actuality, AIDS is affecting people from all walks of life. But it's an extremely hostile time for members of the day gay community. It's a hostile time anyway, and then this comes along.
Right then it's like they almost feel justified, right, the homophobia those bigots.
Yeah.
So, even within the medical establishment and even in progressive cities like San Francisco, some nurses, doctors, and orderlies are reluctant, or they outright refuse to treat patients with certain symptoms or if they suspect that they're gay. And when those patients are admitted, they are usually isolated and treated more like walking biohazards than as human beings. Actually, literal hazard signs are sometimes plastered on their hospital room doors, Meals are left in the hallway outside of their rooms. Basic care like changing their bed sheets or cleaning them goes undone out of this fear of being infected. And Cliff is seen all of this as a nurse, and then one day it hits even closer to home. He comes back from work to find his roommate Wayne, collapsed on the hallway floor. Cliff says, quote, we had been talking a lot about the disease because it was just starting to make headlines, and I had a feeling that's what he had. So for days, Cliff does everything he can to care for Wayne at home, but Wayne's condition doesn't improve, and it's not easy to find a hospital that can or will admit him, which is such a weird thing to think of, Like.
The place you're supposed to go and you're sick.
The given yeah, and they're like ooh no, like when you need.
Care and they're like, well, their laws say that I can't take care of you and write give you the care that you used.
Or we're just going to to protect ourselves. Yeah, we're gonna not admit you.
Right, sounds so familiar.
Yeah, So Cliff reaches out to his colleagues at San Francisco General. He's finally given the name of a doctor who works out of a private hospital that will take Wwayne, and there Cliff watches as his friend is rushed into an isolation room, surrounded by fearful staff, then shut away and left alone. When Cliff tries to go into that room, the medical staff stops him. They warn him that it's too dangerous, but Cliff doesn't hesitate. He tells them, quote, I'm a nurse and I've been taking care of Wayne for days. Whatever he's got, I probably have, and he goes into the room. So at the time, it's very common for medical staff treating these patients to wear head to toe PPE, including what's casually referred to as a spacesuit, which are those heavy duty biohazard suits that we've all seen in movies. So the staff who have been wearing suits like that, if not the heavy duty PPE, is just staring at Cliff in shock and horror as he walks into Wayne's room without any protective gear on it all. Cliff later says, I didn't want to wear a spacesuit to take care.
Of my friend.
So seeing these patients at San Francisco General, as well as his roommate, being neglected, isolated, and denied compassion in the final days of their lives, infuriates Cliff. The fact is at this time, most patients with AIDS do not survive, and Cliff sees that their deaths are neither peaceful nor dictified, and then.
So many of their families had shunned them already, so it's not like, yes, all they have is each other and they're not even being allowed to see.
They're not allowed in or like their friends don't know that this is the part that they're in, Like they're just not It's like everyone's freaking out.
It's like a lec A colony. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So these patients die in pain, surrounded by fear, and often alone, and the diagnosis of this disease cuts them off from care in a time that they needed the most. So Cliff decides he needs to change this. He starts by volunteering with the Shanty Project, which is like San Francisco based nonprofit that provides people with terminal illnesses compassion and human connection as they die. By the early eighties, many of the people they work with are sick members of the gay community, so for Cliff, this volunteer work becomes an invaluable education in palliative care back at San Francisco. General word spreads quickly about his work with the Shanty Project, and before long, doctors, nurses, and even patients are coming to Cliff for guidance. He's suddenly a very helpful middleman who can see, share, and translate both the clinical and patient perspectives in a time that's incredibly confusing and incredibly scary.
Wow.
But as more people get sick, the hysteria is dialed up and the misinformation only increases. Meanwhile, I see you beds at San Francisco General hit capacity as hundreds of patients being diagnosed with AIDS, all spread throughout different words. The quality of their care is entirely inconsistent, depending on their respective nurses and doctor's mindsets. So you get a bad area of the hospital, you get a bad doctor or nurse.
Yeah.
The idea of that is, like, we take it for granted. I mean, anybody that has insurance and then gets to even go to the hospital, it takes it for granted.
I definitely do.
But then this idea that you would get a thing that would suddenly turn those people against you.
They have hatred towards you, Yeah, and they're supposed to be treating you while you're actively dying.
Yeah. So the hospital administrators quickly realize that they're in over their heads, and again they turn to Cliff for help. They want him to take on a clinical coordinator job so they can oversee these patients with aids in the hospital, and Cliff accepts. There's immediately a plan to quarantine these patients in a separate part of the hospital. Then, at first Cliff hates this idea. He compares it to being sent to a leper colony. But then the more he thinks about it, the more practical a separate ward feels. They'll have dedicated space and an opportunity to provide a more tailored kind of care, so he agrees. He's given an area of the hospital on the fifth floor used as a sleeping area for resident doctors known as Ward five B, and an outpatient clinic called.
Ward eighty six. But Cliff realizes.
He's going to need money to set up and fund this new dedicated clinic, and that's when doctor Mervin Silverman, San Francisco's director of public health at the time, invites Cliff to meet with Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Cliff remembers quote, we went to her office and sat down, and she said, we just so happened to have several million dollars surplus in the budget this year. If you promise me that you will spend this money appropriately. I will give you some of the surplus, and you do what you need to do, just make sure you do it right.
Wow. When did that fucking happen?
I mean, for real, especially considering at this time nineteen eighty one, President Ronald Reagan hasn't even addressed this public health issue, a very pressing public health issue to the.
Country at all.
He has not acknowledged it, and he won't until nineteen eighty five, and even then, in nineteen eighty five, he just very briefly mentions AIDS in a press conference, just like in passing, and then after that it's two more years before he addresses this national health crisis in any significant way. It takes them six years to talk about AIDS because people are actively dying, Yes, and by then, nearly forty seven thousand Americans have been infected with HIV or have died from AIDS. Cliff adds quote, as I look back on that meeting with Diane Feinstein, that was one of the more more wonderful moments of my career. That's the first time I'd actually seen a politician show true leadership. So now that he is both the space and funding Cliff needs nurses and doctors to work in Ward five B, so he post notices about the forthcoming AIDS ward throughout the hospital. He ends up hiring eleven nurses, as well as a team of social workers, physical therapists, dietitians, chaplains, and occupational therapists. And for him, staffing five B isn't just about finding qualified medical professionals. It's about hiring people who genuinely want to work there. He knows that'll be the key to improving this poor quality of care that everyone is seeing everywhere else. But Cliff insaysts on being honest about the risks.
Of this work.
He has worked with enough AIDS patients without contracting the illness himself to know that that's possible, but generally information is sparse, and he needs his staff to be informed and accepting of the unknowns. One five B staffer later recalls an early conversation with Cliff where he says, quote, go home and talk to your significant others because we don't know. We can't tell you that you're not going to get this disease. That's terrifying, Yeah, brave, And then Cliff talks to the patients themselves to find out what they want out of this word. He'll later say, quote the first thing I heard was I want to feel like I'm being.
Treated like a person. I have just stopped crying on this podcast. It's fucking well, you need to do it for both of us because I can because of all those meds. We're getting all that botar, like, I just don't have the pas see it. There's a tear in that eye right there is. Yeah, Well, it's just look, I lost a friend to AIDS who was twenty one years old.
My god, and it was it was a big surprise, and it was he was my friend from sixth grade.
Wow.
And I loved him very much, Ken Mason, and to see him he, thank god, had a very loving, very accepting family who took care of him right till the end. And so I got to go see him basically in his at his mom's house, and it was one of the worst things I've ever experienced to kind of see that.
He was ravaged.
I mean, he was just like he was emaciated. And it's so easy to think about all of these men who in the seventies were like, oh, you know, everyone's encouraged to come out and we need to fight for right and we need to be the people who we are. And then suddenly this happens, and it enables these bigots to talk about gay people gay men like you got what you deserve, which is cruel, so disgusting, it's just like, yeah, everything about it is so it is so horrifying.
And then the leadership that intentionally didn't help.
Right, Like you got to wonder what would have happened if a Democrat had been in the had been in office at the time.
Or a decent human being, like somebody that.
Would empathy look at that and say it's insane, but here's what's beautiful. Basically, that's where a cliff comes in. He goes, we'll do it ourselves, and we'll do it for each other. And there's a lot of lesbian women and a lot of female nurses who went in. We were like, we will take care of them, will do this, and we'll take these risks because we cannot just let these men die to protect ourselves. That is not the point of being a nurse or a doctor. And they weren't the only ones who felt that way, thank god. And because of that, then essentially, after being able to give that care they proved that you can give that care. And basically they went out there and they were the first line, were first responders to go, look, we did it and we didn't catch it, therefore you need to do it.
The idea that they had to do.
That though, and not know and the in between of all the people that died alone and isolated, and it's just it's disgusting and horrible. So when Cliff asked those patients what they wanted out of the ward, he said, the first quote, the first thing I heard was I want to feel like I'm being treated like a person. They said, I want people who are not afraid of me. I want people to touch me. I want to note that I'm going to be cleaned up every day. They were talking about being treated with dignity and compassion.
Yeah, basics, the very the lowest bar. Yeah.
So, the virus that causes AIDS HIV is finally identified in May of nineteen eighty three, and two months later, in July of nineteen eighty three, Ward five B officially opens to the public. It's helmed by head nurse Alison Mohed, who oversees a team of eleven dedicated nurses. Some of these nurses are straight, some are gay. All of them have agreed to put aside their personal fears surround AIDS to offer compassionate care to their sick and vulnerable patients. Allison later says, quote, I was enthralled by this idea of love for your fellow being. This was a confluence of nurses of people who wanted to take care of this population that had been stigmatized, discriminated against, not cared for during a period of their lives where their lives were ending. Professionally, how do we care for them? Caring is what we were about.
Wow, imagine that. Yeah.
So five B is unlike anywhere else at the time. Here, the doctors and nurses don't speak down to their patients, and they certainly don't judge them. In fact, patients are treated as a member of their own care team, and they're involved in all the conversations about their treatment. Five B is one of the only units in the US where people can visit outside of set visiting hours. Oh wow, And those visitors don't have to be literal family members in the biological sense. They can be members of the patient's chosen family. The staff even sneaks in their patient's pets when they can. Also, on five BE, staffers don't use the same full body ppe many other facilities across the country do. Instead, they wear protective equipment when necessary. The five B staff use common sense precautions that keep the patient's dignity in mind, remembering the value of human touch and connection. Cliff says, quote, we knew by now that AIDS was not transmitted casually. I had no qualms about climbing onto the bed with my patients to hold them. That had never been done before. As a nurse. You might touch someone's hand, but you would never take them in your arms.
Oh my god, the image.
Yeah, this is a huge deal for a sense of timeline. This is five years before that famous moment where Princess Diana made history publicly shaking the hand of someone with HIV. Five years before that, so it was at a time where touching a person who had AIDS, let alone holding them to provide comfort, is seen as extremely risky by almost everyone. There's also a large outside component to Ward five B, which includes a roster of volunteers from the gay community, local hospices, and the Shanty Project who do things like decorate and furnish the wardness.
That's so hacky. It's like the gay men go in and they're like, oh, the lighting and here is terrible. It's just like, but it matters. Yeah, it's all about dignity. Yeah, it's quality of life.
They also run errands, they offer counseling, They look for housing for the patients when they get discharged, because there are patients who are getting discharged. Nurse Alison Mowood says, quote, on a broad level, we learned how to take care of patients who were going through this terrible disease. It was about carrying, about curing. It was about touching and interacting, letting people know they were safe, letting people know that they were accepted, letting people know that their wishes were going to be listened to, that their thoughts about their care and options were going to be respected and heard. That was not necessarily the mode in those days. So very quickly, the demand for Ward five BEE exceeds its capacity. When a patient passes away and a bed becomes available, it's quickly filled by someone from a lengthy wait list. Then, in May of nineteen eighty six, the unit expands into Ward.
Five A, adding.
About thirty more beds, so as Ward five be's profile rises, politicians, advocates, and celebrities stop by to show support for the staff's efforts and the patient's recovery. Of course, given the stigma around HIV and AIDS at the time, not everyone is in support of what's going on at sf General. Homophobic members of the public are in sense that public dots have gone to the funding of five B, and in cases where the patients are well enough to move around the hospital and visit the cafeteria, hysteria erupts around five BE patients using.
The water fountains. Oh my God.
A group of four nurses even sue San Francisco General over fears that five B is risking their personal health, but that case is ultimately shot down as five be's model of care is deemed safe and appropriate treatment. Before long, it becomes the gold standard for HIV and AIDS care throughout the world. Meanwhile, the mission of five B stands firm. In nineteen eighty five, The New York Times reports that just two staffers have left the ward in its first two years of operation, which is quote a much lower number than hospital wards normally experience. Alison Moed says, quote, we learn that compassion is one of those things that doesn't become depleted. The more you give it, it actually replenishes. It's one of those things where the more you give, the better you feel and want to give. That's what love's about, right. There was a very loving exchange and loving feeling on the unit, and I know you could see it. We were really committed to what we were doing and passionate about being able to do it. So by the mid nineteen nineties, advancements in medication change everything. An aid's diagnosis is no longer an automatic death sentence, and before long HIV is regarded as a manageable chronic condition. Fewer and fewer beds in Wards five A and five B are occupied, and by two thousand and six both wards are officially disbanded.
And six that's like such a long time, such a long time.
Wow.
Yeah.
Cliff Morrison continues working as an advocate for those people with HIV and AIDS. In interviews, he's not one to talk about his own emotions or experience, which is on brand for such a dedicated healthcare provider. But like so many gay men of his age, he lost an unimaginable number of loved.
Ones to this disease.
Cliff has said, quote, I have dealt with survivor's guilt on and off through the years, and still suffer from PTSD. I don't have any peers because they all died today. The majority of my friends are twenty years younger than me. But I have absolutely no regrets. I would do it all again. I was a gay man, but I was a nurse first. The impact of his work with five b endurers today. There's a memorial plaque hanging at the hospital that says, quote, on July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three, here on word five B, a group of caregivers gathered to confront a new epidemic AIDS. They created a haven of acceptance and compassion at a time when others were calling for isolation and rejection. They saw fellow human beings where others saw only disease and contagion. Together with a generous, loving volunteer community, they developed a world renowned center of excellent dedicated to quality of care for the living and the dying. This plaque commemorates all who served here and remembers all who died, and that is the story of Cliff Morrison and the heroic staff at Ward five B.
I mean, holy shit, right, unbelievable, good job.
I mean, I think being in any way first, yeah, is one of the hardest things to do. You don't have anybody behind you, especially like in Cliff's situation, he was having to teach and basically lecture doctors of that whole thing.
Of I'd have it. I have it already.
If it's bad, I have it, so there's no reason I don't go take care of my friend and that kind of energy, which is like risking it. That's the ultimate sacrifice for something as like, so you're not just standing by letting something go on.
Courageous compassion and being the first person to do that is scary and hard, but it must be done.
And then you become Cliff became this example of like, well, if he's doing it, then it must be okay for me, which must mean that this hysteria is not the truth that it's essentially like we actually have to figure and now you know, now we know that, like there was very specific ways that HIV was transmitted, so that whole idea was completely incorrect. It was just no one knew the exact medical truths.
Because there wasn't enough research going into it, because the government was ignoring it.
Completely because the president wouldn't say it was happening. I mean, like, if you want to read Cliff Morrison's actual own writing about this, there is a website you can go to. It'll be listed in the sources, and it's an article he wrote called they Did Not Die Peacefully and he wrote it in twenty eleven, So it really is like the first hand account. If you're looking for that, that's the source that you should pull and read because I'm his first hand account.
You know. Sure, it's incredible what everyone should read.
Can I do what I do best and recommend a fictionalized version of this a book in book form? This sounds exactly like a book that I listened to recently that was incredible that I highly recommend is called The Great Believers by Rebecca Mackay.
It's an incredible book.
It takes place in the nineteen eighties in this world in Chicago, and it just gives you, you know, it's almost historical fiction, and it gives you a time and a place of this specific one that is that's hard to imagine unless you've lived through it, but's so necessary so we can have compassion and empathy. Yeah, well, great job. I mean, what a fucking episode, right, Yeah, hard hitting.
We're kicking off December the way only we can. Yeah, that's what we're here for. If you know, go listen to Hagan, you're wrong about two. If you want more info, that's right, more interesting info.
And be brave and take care of your fellow man. That's right. And do your best. Do your best. You've got it in you, you do. Be first. Yeah, and stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis. Do you want a cookie?
This has been an exactly right production.
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
Our managing producers Hannah Kyle Crichton.
Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalach.
Our researchers are Mareon mcclashan and Ali Elkin.
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.
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Byebye
