This podcast season focused on the Memphis Massacre of 1866, a little-known act of racial terror instigated by local police that left more than 50 Black people dead, and its present-day connections.
Just as we started learning about this tragedy, Tyre Nichols died after being beaten by Memphis police, which caught international attention. We immediately knew this was a connection worth exploring in our reporting.
At the same time, rape survivors in Memphis had been in a decade-long battle to have their cases properly investigated, a cry echoed by the recently emancipated Black women in 1866 who testified openly about the sexual violence they experienced during the massacre — despite the real danger they could be retaliated against. Their testimonies and the justice denied them exposed blatant disregard that has lasted more than a century.
Considering the Memphis Massacre became a key factor in ratifying the landmark 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — guaranteeing equal protection under the law — we knew our audience would be left wondering: Why don’t we know this history? So, in our final episode, we explored ways in which history is told, framed, and taught and how hard it can be for the truth to take root in the American psyche.
We did all this by mining investigative records of the massacre, poring over testimony transcripts and old newspapers, attending city council meetings and press conferences, as well as interviewing rape survivors and experts on constitutional law, history, and education. We employed the use of voice actors to animate historical records, commissioned music to match the emotion of the topic, and partnered with a local art gallery that had been creating pieces related to racial terror in the South.
