KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony and Emily Kwong, hosts of the NPR podcast “Walkie talkie”, are about black families living in the wake of lynchings and police killings in their communities. Anthony shares his reporting from southeast Missouri with “Silence in Sikeston,” a documentary, podcast and print reporting project. Discusses the newest research on the health effects of racism and violence, including the emerging, controversial field of epigenetics.
Listen to full podcast episodes featuring Anthony and Kwong from “Silence in Sikeston” here. They discuss material from Episode 1, “Racism Can Make You Sick”; Episode 2, “Hush, Fix Your Face”; and episode 3, “Trauma Lives in the Body.”
In 1942, Mable Cook was a teen. She was standing on the porch when she witnessed the lynching of Cleo Wright.
Following this, Cook received advice from her father to make sure her safety.
“He didn’t want us to talk about it,” Cook said. “He told us to forget about it.”
More than 80 years later, residents of Sikeston, Missouri, still find it difficult to discuss lynching.
Conversations with Cook, who was one among the few remaining witnesses to the lynching, begin a discussion concerning the health consequences of racism and violence within the United States. Racial equity researcher Keisha Bentley-Edwards explains the physical, mental and emotional burdens placed on Sikeston residents and black Americans usually.
“Often, people who have experienced racial trauma are forced not to acknowledge it,” Bentley-Edwards said. “First of all, they are forced to ask themselves whether this has happened.”
When Anthony discovered details of a police murder in her family while reporting on this project, she told her family’s story to Aiesha Lee, a licensed skilled counselor and adjunct professor at Penn State.
“This pain has built up over generations,” Lee said. “We will have to deconstruct it or heal it over generations.”
KFF Health News is a nationwide newsroom coping with broadly understood journalism about health issues and is one among the most important operational programs of KFF – an independent source of health policy research, surveys and journalism. Find out more about KFF.
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