The Ministry of Health on Wednesday launched its toll-free 915 suicide prevention hotline, saying the “crucial lifeline” was being supported by emergency responders. “If you call the hotline and they recognise that somebody is in crisis, then they have a rapid response team that would actually go out and get to that person and work ...

Ocurrió hace más de una década, pero el momento permanece en su memoria.

Sara Stewart conversaba con su madre, Barbara Cole, entonces de 86 años, en el comedor de su casa de Bar Harbor, en Maine. Stewart, abogada tenía en ese momento 59 años y estaba haciendo una de sus largas visitas desde fuera del estado.

Dos o tres años antes, Cole había comenzado a mostrar signos preocupantes de demencia, probablemente debido a una serie de pequeños derrames cerebrales. “No quería sacarla de su casa”, contó Stewart.

Así que, con un batallón de ayudantes —una empleada doméstica, visitas familiares frecuentes, un vecino atento y un servicio de entrega de comidas—, Cole pudo quedarse en la casa que ella y su difunto esposo habían construido 30 años atrás.

Se las arreglaba bien y solía parecer alegre y conversadora. Pero esta conversación en 2014 tuvo un dramático giro. “Me dijo: ‘¿De dónde nos conocemos? ¿de la escuela?’”, recordó su hija y primogénita. “Sentí como si me hubieran pateado”.

Stewart recuerda haber pensado: “En el curso natural de las cosas, se suponía que morirías antes que yo. Pero nunca se suponía que olvidaras quién soy”. Más tarde, sola, lloró.

Las personas con demencia avanzada suelen no reconocer a sus seres queridos, a sus parejas, hijos y hermanos. Para cuando Stewart y su hermano menor trasladaron a Cole a un centro de atención para la memoria un año después, la mujer ya había perdido casi por completo la capacidad de recordar sus nombres o vínculos.

“Es bastante común en las últimas etapas” de la enfermedad, dijo Alison Lynn, directora de trabajo social del Penn Memory Center, quien ha dirigido grupos de apoyo para cuidadores de personas con demencia por una década.

Ha escuchado muchas versiones de este relato, un momento descrito con dolor, ira, frustración, alivio o una combinación de estos sentimientos.

Estos cuidadores “ven muchas pérdidas, revierten hitos, y este es uno de esos momentos, un cambio fundamental” en una relación cercana, dijo. “Puede llevar a las personas a una crisis existencial”.

Es difícil determinar qué saben o sienten las personas con demencia —una categoría que incluye la enfermedad de Alzheimer y otros trastornos cognitivos—. “No tenemos forma de preguntarle a la persona ni de ver una resonancia magnética”, señaló Lynn. “Todo es pura deducción”.

Pero los investigadores están comenzando a investigar cómo reaccionan los familiares cuando un ser querido ya parece no reconocerlos. Un estudio cualitativo publicado recientemente en la revista Dementia analizó entrevistas en profundidad con hijos adultos que cuidaban de madres con demencia que, al menos en una ocasión, no los habían reconocido.

“Es muy desestabilizador”, dijo Kristie Wood, psicóloga clínica investigadora del Campus Médico Anschutz de la Universidad de Colorado y coautora del estudio. “El reconocimiento reafirma la identidad, y cuando desaparece, las personas sienten que han perdido parte de sí mismas”.

Aunque comprendían que no implicaba un rechazo sino un síntoma de la enfermedad de sus madres, algunos hijos adultos se culpaban a sí mismos, agregó.

“Se cuestionaban su papel. ‘¿Acaso no era lo suficientemente importante como para que me recuerde?'”, dijo Wood. Esto puede hacer que se alejen o que sus visitas se vuelvan menos frecuentes.

Pauline Boss, la terapeuta familiar que desarrolló hace décadas la teoría de la “pérdida ambigua”, señala que puede implicar ausencia física, como cuando un soldado desaparece en combate, o ausencia psicológica, incluyendo la falta de reconocimiento debido a la demencia.

La sociedad no tiene forma de reconocer la transición cuando “una persona está físicamente presente pero psicológicamente ausente”, dijo Boss. “No hay certificado de defunción, ni ritual donde amigos y vecinos vengan a sentarse contigo y te consuelen”.

“La gente se siente culpable si llora a alguien que aún está vivo”, continuó. “Pero si bien no es lo mismo que una muerte confirmada, es una pérdida real, que ocurre una y otra vez”.

La falta de reconocimiento adopta diferentes formas. Algunos familiares informan que, aunque un ser querido con demencia ya no puede recordar su nombre ni su parentesco exacto, todavía parecen felices de verlo.

“En un sentido narrativo, ya no sabe quién soy, que yo era su hija Janet”, contó Janet Keller, de 69 años, actriz de Port Townsend, Washington, hablando de su difunta madre, diagnosticada con Alzheimer en un correo electrónico. “Pero siempre supo que yo era alguien a quien apreciaba y con quien quería reír y a quien le agarraba la mano”.

A los cuidadores les reconforta seguir sintiendo una conexión. Sin embargo, una de las participantes en el estudio sobre demencia informó que ahora sentía a su madre como una extrañas, y que la relación ya no le proporcionaba ninguna recompensa emocional.

“Era como si estuviera visitando al cartero”, le dijo al entrevistador.

Larry Levine, de 67 años, administrador de atención médica jubilado de Rockville, Maryland, observó cómo la capacidad de su esposo para reconocerlo cambiaba de forma impredecible.

Levine y Arthur Windreich, pareja desde hacía 43 años, se habían casado en 2010, cuando Washington, DC, legalizó el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo. Al año siguiente, Windreich tuvo un diagnóstico de Alzheimer de inicio temprano.

Levine se convirtió en su cuidador hasta su fallecimiento a los 70 años, a finales de 2023.

“Su condición era zigzagueante”, dijo Levine. Windreich se había mudado a una unidad de cuidados de la memoria. “Un día, me llamaba ‘el hombre amable que viene de visita'”, dijo Levine. “Al día siguiente, me llamaba por mi nombre”.

Incluso en sus últimos años, cuando, como muchos pacientes con demencia, Windreich se volvió prácticamente silencioso, “había cierto reconocimiento”, dijo su esposo. “A veces se le veía en los ojos, ese brillo en lugar de la expresión vacía que solía tener”.

Sin embargo otras veces “no había ningún afecto”. Levine a menudo salía del centro llorando.

Buscó la ayuda de su terapeuta y sus hermanas, y recientemente se unió a un grupo de apoyo para cuidadores LGBTQ+ de personas con demencia, a pesar que su esposo ya había fallecido.

Los grupos de apoyo, en persona o por internet, “son medicina para el cuidador”, dijo Boss. “Es importante no aislarse”.

Lynn anima a los participantes de sus grupos a que también encuentren rituales personales para conmemorar la pérdida de reconocimiento y otros hitos que marcan un antes y un después. “Quizás enciendan una vela. Quizás recen una oración”, dijo.

Alguien que se sienta en shivá, parte del ritual de duelo judío, podría reunir a un pequeño grupo de amigos o familiares para recordar y compartir historias, aunque el ser querido con demencia no haya fallecido.

“Que alguien más participe puede ser muy reconfortante”, dijo Lynn. “Dice: ‘Veo el dolor que estás sintiendo'”.

De vez en cuando, la niebla de la demencia parece disiparse brevemente.

Investigadores de Penn y de otros centros han señalado un fenómeno sorprendente llamado “lucidez paradójica”. Alguien con demencia grave, luego de meses o años sin comunicarse, recupera repentinamente la lucidez y puede inventar un nombre, decir algunas palabras apropiadas, contar un chiste, hacer contacto visual o cantar con la radio.

Aunque comunes, estos episodios suelen durar solo unos segundos y no significan un cambio real en el deterioro de la persona. Los esfuerzos por recrear las experiencias tienden a fracasar.

“Es un instante”, dijo Lynn. Pero los cuidadores suelen reaccionar con sorpresa y alegría; algunos interpretan el episodio como evidencia de que, a pesar de la profundización de la demencia, no se les olvida del todo.

Stewart experimentó un pequeño incidente como esos unos meses antes de la muerte de su madre. Estaba en el apartamento de su madre cuando una enfermera le pidió que la acompañara al final del pasillo.

“Al salir de la habitación, mi madre me llamó por mi nombre”, dijo. Aunque Cole solía parecer contenta de verla, “no había usado mi nombre desde que tengo memoria”.

No volvió a ocurrir, pero eso no importó. “Fue maravilloso”, dijo Stewart.

La serie de columnas The New Old Age se producen a través de una alianza con The New York Times.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Who’s on the couch here? The psychiatrist or the poet? The poem or the practice of psychiatry?

As a poet and a psychiatrist/therapist, I exist in both practices, and the worlds of each enrich the other. Each speaks with abandon, and each interrogates the other, and there are many ways in which each discipline supports the other, some obvious, some not so obvious.

Read the rest…

Si te adentras demasiado en la oscuridad, le decían, un gigantesco y monstruoso mono que vive en las sombras podría atraparte.

Ahora, cuando García-Ramírez mira por encima del hombro, no son los monos monstruosos a los que teme. Son los agentes del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas de Estados Unidos (ICE).

“Hay un miedo constante de que vayas caminando por la calle y se te cruce un vehículo”, dijo García-Ramírez, de 57 años. “Te dicen: ‘Somos de ICE; estás arrestado’, o ‘Muéstrame tus papeles’”.

Silverthorne, una pequeña ciudad entre las mecas del esquí de Breckenridge y Vail, ha sido el hogar de García-Ramírez durante los últimos dos años. Trabaja como cajero en un supermercado y comparte un apartamento de dos habitaciones con cuatro compañeros.

La ciudad de casi 5.000 habitantes ha sido un refugio acogedor para el exiliado político, quien fue liberado de prisión en 2023 después que el gobierno autoritario de Nicaragua negociara un acuerdo con el gobierno estadounidense para transferir a más de 200 presos políticos a Estados Unidos.

A los exiliados se les ofreció residencia temporal en Estados Unidos bajo un programa de libertad condicional humanitaria (conocido como parole humanitario) de la administración Biden.

Este permiso humanitario de dos años de García-Ramírez expiró en febrero, apenas unas semanas después que el presidente Donald Trump emitiera una orden ejecutiva para poner fin al programa que había permitido la residencia legal temporal en Estados Unidos a cientos de miles de cubanos, haitianos, nicaragüenses y venezolanos. Esto lo que lo ponía en riesgo de deportación.

A García-Ramírez se le retiró la ciudadanía nicaragüense al llegar a Estados Unidos. Hace poco más de un año, solicitó asilo político. Sigue esperando una entrevista.

“No puedo decir con seguridad que estoy tranquilo o que estoy bien en este momento”, dijo García-Ramírez. “Uno se siente inseguro, pero también incapaz de hacer algo para mejorar la situación”.

Vail y Breckenridge son mundialmente famosos por sus pistas de esquí, que atraen a millones de personas cada año. Pero la vida para la fuerza laboral del sector turístico que atiende a los centros turísticos de montaña de Colorado es menos glamorosa.

Los residentes de los pueblos montañosos de Colorado experimentan altas tasas de suicidio y adicciones, impulsadas en parte por las fluctuaciones estacionales de los ingresos, que pueden causar estrés a muchos trabajadores locales.

Las comunidades latinas, que constituyen una proporción significativa de la población residente permanente en estos pueblos de montaña, son particularmente vulnerables.

Una encuesta reciente reveló que más de 4 de cada 5 latinos encuestados en la región de la Ladera Occidental, donde se encuentran muchas de las comunidades rurales de estaciones de esquí del estado, expresaron una preocupación “extrema o muy grave” por el consumo de sustancias.

Esta cifra es significativamente mayor que en el condado rural de Morgan, en el este de Colorado, que también cuenta con una considerable población latina, y en Denver y Colorado Springs.

A nivel estatal, la preocupación por la salud mental ha resurgido entre los latinos en los últimos años, pasando de menos de la mitad que la consideraba un problema extremada o muy grave en 2020 a más de tres cuartas partes en 2023.

Tanto profesionales de salud como investigadores y miembros de la comunidad afirman que factores como las diferencias lingüísticas, el estigma cultural y las barreras socioeconómicas pueden exacerbar los problemas de salud mental y limitar el acceso a la atención médica.

“No recibes atención médica regular. Trabajas muchas horas, lo que probablemente significa que no puedes cuidar de tu propia salud”, dijo Asad L. Asad, profesor adjunto de sociología de la Universidad de Stanford. “Todos estos factores agravan el estrés que todos podríamos experimentar en la vida diaria”.

Si a esto le sumamos los altísimos costos de vida y la escasez de centros de salud mental en los destinos turísticos rurales de Colorado, el problema se agrava.

Ahora, las amenazas de la administración Trump de redadas migratorias y la inminente deportación de cualquier persona sin residencia legal en el país han disparado los niveles de estrés.

Según estiman defensores, en las comunidades cercanas a Vail, la gran mayoría de los residentes latinos no tienen papeles. Las comunidades cercanas a Vail y Breckenridge no han sufrido redadas migratorias, pero en el vecino condado de Routt, donde se encuentra Steamboat Springs, al menos tres personas con antecedentes penales han sido detenidas por el ICE, según informes de prensa.

Las publicaciones en redes sociales que afirman falsamente haber visto a oficiales del ICE merodeando cerca de sus hogares han alimentado aún más la preocupación.

Yirka Díaz Platt, trabajadora social bilingüe de Silverthorne, originaria de Perú, afirmó que el temor generalizado a la deportación ha llevado a muchos trabajadores y residentes latinos a refugiarse en las sombras.

Según trabajadores de salud y defensores locales, las personas han comenzado a cancelar reuniones presenciales y a evitar solicitar servicios gubernamentales que requieren el envío de datos personales. A principios de febrero, algunos residentes locales no se presentaron a trabajar como parte de una huelga nacional convocada por el “día sin inmigrantes”. Los empleadores se preguntan si perderán empleados valiosos por las deportaciones.

Algunos inmigrantes han dejado de conducir por temor a ser detenidos por la policía. Paige Baker-Braxton, directora de salud conductual ambulatoria del sistema de salud de Vail, comentó que ha observado una disminución en las visitas de pacientes hispanohablantes en los últimos meses.

“Intentan mantenerse en casa. No socializan mucho. Si vas al supermercado, ya no ves a mucha gente de nuestra comunidad”, dijo Platt. “Existe ese miedo de: ‘No, ahora mismo no confío en nadie'”.

Juana Amaya no es ajena a la resistencia para sobrevivir. Amaya emigró a la zona de Vail desde Honduras en 1983 como madre soltera de un niño de 3 años y otro de 6 meses. Lleva más de 40 años trabajando como limpiadora de casas en condominios y residencias de lujo en los alrededores de Vail, a veces trabajando hasta 16 horas al día. Con apenas tiempo para terminar el trabajo y cuidar de una familia en casa, comentó, a menudo les cuesta a los latinos de su comunidad admitir que el estrés ya es demasiado.

“No nos gusta hablar de cómo nos sentimos”, dijo, “así que no nos damos cuenta de que estamos lidiando con un problema de salud mental”.

El clima político actual solo ha empeorado las cosas.

“Ha tenido un gran impacto”, dijo. “Hay personas que tienen niños pequeños y se preguntan qué harán si están en la escuela y se los llevan a algún lugar, pero los niños se quedan. ¿Qué hacen?”.

Asad ha estudiado el impacto de la retórica de la deportación en la salud mental de las comunidades latinas. Fue coautor de un estudio, publicado el año pasado en la revista Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, que concluyó que el aumento de esta retórica puede causar mayores niveles de angustia psicológica en los no ciudadanos latinos e incluso en los ciudadanos latinos.

Asad descubrió que ambos grupos pueden experimentar mayores niveles de estrés, y las investigaciones han confirmado las consecuencias negativas de la falta de documentación de los padres en la salud y el rendimiento educativo de sus hijos.

“Las desigualdades o las dificultades que imponemos hoy a sus padres son las dificultades o desigualdades que sus hijos heredarán mañana”, afirmó Asad.

A pesar de los altos niveles de miedo y ansiedad, los latinos que viven y trabajan cerca de Vail aún encuentran maneras de apoyarse mutuamente y buscar ayuda.

Grupos de apoyo en el condado de Summit, donde se encuentra Breckenridge y a menos de una hora en coche de Vail, han ofrecido talleres de salud mental para nuevos inmigrantes y mujeres latinas. Building Hope, en el condado de Summit y Olivia’s Fund en el condado de Eagle, donde se encuentra Vail, ayudan a quienes no tienen seguro médico a pagar un número determinado de sesiones de terapia.

Vail Health planea abrir un centro psiquiátrico regional para pacientes hospitalizados en mayo, y la Alianza de Recursos Interculturales Móviles ofrece servicios integrales, incluyendo recursos de salud conductual, directamente a las comunidades cercanas a Vail.

De vuelta en Silverthorne, García-Ramírez, el exiliado nicaragüense, vive el día a día.

“Si me deportan de aquí, iría directamente a Nicaragua”, dijo García-Ramírez, quien contó haber recibido una amenaza de muerte verbal de las autoridades de su país natal. “Sinceramente, no creo que aguante ni un día”.

Mientras tanto, continúa su rutinario viaje a casa desde su trabajo de cajero, a veces sorteando nieve resbaladiza y calles oscuras después de las 9 pm. Cuando surgen pensamientos de pesadilla sobre su propio destino en Estados Unidos, García-Ramírez se concentra en el suelo bajo sus pies.

“Llueva, truene o nieve”, dijo, “yo camino”.

Este artículo se publicó con el apoyo de Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship, asistida por subvenciones de The Commonwealth Fund.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Adults, he recollects, would scare the kids with tales of the “Mona Bruja,” or “Monkey Witch.” Step too far into the dark, they told him, and you might just get snatched up by the giant monstrous monkey who lives in the shadows.

Now, when García-Ramírez looks over his shoulder, it’s not monster monkeys he is afraid of. It’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“There’s this constant fear that you’ll be walking down the street and a vehicle rolls up,” García-Ramírez, 57, said in Spanish. “They tell you, ‘We’re from ICE; you’re arrested,’ or, ‘Show me your papers.’”

Silverthorne, a commuter town between the ski meccas of Breckenridge and Vail, has been García-Ramírez’s home for the past two years. He works as a cashier at the grocery and shares a two-bedroom apartment with four roommates.

The town of nearly 5,000 has proved a welcome haven for the political exile, who was released from prison in 2023 after Nicaragua’s authoritarian government brokered a deal with the U.S. government to transfer more than 200 political prisoners to the U.S. The exiles were offered temporary residency in the U.S. under a Biden administration humanitarian parole program.

García-Ramírez’s two-year humanitarian parole expired in February, just a few weeks after President Donald Trump issued an executive order to end the program that had permitted temporary legal residency in the U.S. for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans, putting him at risk of deportation. García-Ramírez was stripped of his Nicaraguan citizenship when he came to the U.S. Just over a year ago, he applied for political asylum. He is still waiting for an interview.

“I can’t safely say I’m calm, or I’m OK, right now,” García-Ramírez said. “You feel unsafe, but you also feel incapable of doing anything to make it better.”

Vail and Breckenridge are world famous for their ski slopes, which attract millions of people a year. But life for the tourism labor force that serves Colorado’s mountain resorts is less glamorous. Residents of Colorado’s mountain towns experience high rates of suicide and substance use disorders, fueled in part by seasonal fluctuations in income that can cause stress for many in the local workforce.

The Latino communities who make up significant proportions of year-round populations in Colorado’s mountain towns are particularly vulnerable. A recent poll found more than 4 in 5 Latino respondents in the Western Slope region, home to many of the state’s rural ski resort communities, expressed “extremely or very serious” concern about substance use. That’s significantly higher than in rural eastern Colorado’s Morgan County, which also has a sizable Latino population, and in Denver and Colorado Springs.

Statewide, concerns about mental health have surged among Latinos in recent years, rising from fewer than half calling it an extremely or very serious problem in 2020 to more than three-quarters in 2023. Health care workers, researchers, and community members all say factors such as language differences, cultural stigma, and socioeconomic barriers may exacerbate mental health issues and limit the ability to access care.

“You’re not getting regular medical care. You’re working long hours, which probably means that you can’t take care of your own health,” said Asad Asad, a Stanford University assistant professor of sociology. “All of these factors compound the stresses that we all might experience in daily life.”

Add sky-high costs of living and an inadequate supply of mental health facilities across Colorado’s rural tourist destinations, and the problem becomes acute.

Now, the Trump administration’s threats of immigration raids and imminent deportation of anyone without legal U.S. residency have caused stress levels to soar. In communities around Vail, advocates estimate, a vast majority of Latino residents do not have legal status. Communities near Vail and Breckenridge have not experienced immigration raids, but in neighboring Routt County, home to Steamboat Springs, at least three people with criminal records have been detained by ICE, according to news reports. Social media posts falsely claiming local ICE sightings have further fueled concerns.

Yirka Díaz Platt, a bilingual social worker in Silverthorne originally from Peru, said a pervasive fear of deportation has caused many Latino workers and residents to retreat into the shadows. People have begun to cancel in-person meetings and avoid applying for government services that require submitting personal data, according to local health workers and advocates. In early February, some locals didn’t show up to work as part of a nationwide “day without immigrants” strike. Employers wonder whether they will lose valuable employees to deportation.

Some immigrants have stopped driving out of fear they will be pulled over by police. Paige Baker-Braxton, director of outpatient behavioral health at the Vail Health system, said she has seen a decline in visits from Spanish-speaking patients over the last few months.

“They’re really trying to keep to themselves. They are not really socializing much. If you go to the grocery stores, you don’t see much of our community out there anymore,” Platt said. “There’s that fear of, ‘No, I’m not trusting anyone right now.’”

Juana Amaya is no stranger to digging in her heels to survive. Amaya immigrated to the Vail area from Honduras in 1983 as a single mother of a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old. She has spent more than 40 years working as a house cleaner in luxury condos and homes around Vail, sometimes working up to 16 hours a day. With barely enough time to finish work and care for a family at home, she said, it is often hard for Latinos in her community to admit when the stress has become too much.

“We don’t like to talk about how we’re feeling,” she said in Spanish, “so we don’t realize that we’re dealing with a mental health problem.”

The current political climate has only made things worse.

“It’s had a big impact,” she said. “There are people who have small children and wonder what they’ll do if they’re in school and they are taken away somewhere, but the children stay. What do you do?”

Asad has studied the mental health impacts of deportation rhetoric on Latino communities. He co-authored a study, published last year in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that found escalated deportation rhetoric may cause heightened levels of psychological distress in Latino noncitizens and even in Latino citizens.

Asad found that both groups may experience increased stress levels, and research has borne out the negative consequences of a parent’s lack of documentation on the health and educational attainment of their children.

“The inequalities or the hardships we impose on their parents today are the hardships or inequalities their children inherit tomorrow,” Asad said.

Despite heightened levels of fear and anxiety, Latinos living and working near Vail still find ways to support one another and seek help. Support groups in Summit County, home to Breckenridge and less than an hour’s drive from Vail, have offered mental health workshops for new immigrants and Latina women. Building Hope Summit County and Olivia’s Fund in Eagle County, home to Vail, help those without insurance pay for a set number of therapy sessions.

Vail Health plans to open a regional inpatient psychiatric facility in May, and the Mobile Intercultural Resource Alliance provides wraparound services, including behavioral health resources, directly to communities near Vail.

Back in Silverthorne, García-Ramírez, the Nicaraguan exile, takes things one day at a time.

“If they deport me from here, I’d go directly to Nicaragua,” said García-Ramírez, who said he had received a verbal death threat from authorities in his native country. “Honestly, I don’t think I would last even a day.”

In the meantime, he continues to make the routine trek home from his cashier job, sometimes navigating slick snow and dark streets past 9 p.m. When nightmarish thoughts about his own fate in America surface, García-Ramírez focuses on the ground beneath his feet.

“Come rain, shine, or snow,” he said, “I walk.”

This article was published with the support of the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS) Health Journalism Fellowship, assisted by grants from The Commonwealth Fund.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Colorado families say their state was a haven for those health services for a long time, but following executive orders from the Trump administration, even hospitals in Colorado limited the care they offer for trans patients under age 19. KFF Health News Colorado correspondent Rae Ellen Bichell spoke with youth and their families.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — On a Friday after school, 6-year-old Esa Rodrigues had unraveled a ball of yarn, spooked the pet cat, polled family members about their favorite colors, and tattled on a sibling for calling her a “butt-face mole rat.”

Next, she was laser-focused on prying open cherry-crisp-flavored lip gloss with her teeth.

“Yes!” she cried, twisting open the cap. Esa applied the gloopy, shimmery stuff in her bedroom, where a large transgender pride flag hung on the wall.

Esa said the flag makes her feel “important” and “happy.” She’d like to take it down from the wall and wear it as a cape.

Her parents questioned her identity at first, but not anymore. Before, their anxious child dreaded going to school, bawled at the barbershop when she got a boy’s haircut, and curled into a fetal position on the bathroom floor when she learned she would never get a period.

Now, that child is happily bounding up a hill, humming to herself, wondering aloud if fairies live in the little ceramic house she found perched on a stone.

Her mom, Brittni Packard Rodrigues, wants this joy and acceptance to stay. Depending on a combination of Esa’s desire, her doctors’ recommendations, and when puberty sets in, that might require puberty blockers, followed by estrogen, so that Esa can grow into the body that matches her being.

“In the long run, blockers help prevent all of those surgeries and procedures that could potentially become her reality if we don’t get that care,” Packard Rodrigues said.

The medications known as puberty blockers are widely used for conditions that include prostate cancer, endometriosis, infertility, and puberty that sets in too early. Now, the Trump administration is seeking to limit their use specifically for transgender youth.

Esa’s home state of Colorado has long been known as a haven for gender-affirming care, which the state considers legally protected and an essential health insurance benefit. Medical exiles have moved to Colorado for such treatment in the past few years. As early as the 1970s, the town of Trinidad became known as “the sex-change capital of the world” when a cowboy-hat-wearing former Army surgeon, Stanley Biber, made his mark performing gender-affirming surgeries for adults.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order refuting the existence of transgender people by saying it is a “false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.” The following week, he issued another order calling puberty blockers and hormones for anyone under age 19 a form of chemical “mutilation” and “a stain on our Nation’s history.” It directed agencies to take steps to ensure that recipients of federal research or education grants stop providing it.

Subsequently, health care organizations in Colorado; California; Washington, D.C.; and elsewhere announced they would preemptively comply. In Colorado, that included three major health care organizations: Children’s Hospital Colorado, Denver Health, and UCHealth. At the end of January and in early February, the three systems announced changes to the gender-affirming care they provide to patients under 19, effective immediately: no new hormone or puberty blocker prescriptions for patients who hadn’t had them before, limited or no prescription renewals for those who had, and no surgeries, though Children’s Hospital had never offered it, and such surgery is rare among teens: For every 100,000 trans minors, fewer than three undergo surgery.

Children’s Hospital and Denver Health resumed offering puberty blockers and hormones on Feb. 24 and Feb. 19, respectively, after Colorado joined a U.S. District Court lawsuit in Washington state. The court concluded that Trump’s orders relating to gender “discriminate on the basis of transgender status and sex.” It granted a preliminary injunction blocking them from taking effect in the four states involved in the lawsuit.

Surgeries, however, have not resumed. Denver Health said it will “continue its pause on gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 19 due to patient safety and given the uncertainty of the legal and regulatory landscape.”

UCHealth has resumed neither medication nor surgery for those under 19. “Our providers are awaiting a more permanent decision from federal courts that may resolve the uncertainty around providing this care,” spokesperson Kelli Christensen wrote.

Trans youth and their families said the court ruling and the two Colorado health systems’ decisions to resume treatments haven’t resolved matters. It has bought them time to stockpile prescriptions, to try to find private practice physicians with the right training to monitor blood work and adjust prescriptions accordingly, and, for some, to work out the logistics of moving to another state or country.

The Trump administration has continued to press health providers beyond the initial executive orders by threatening to withhold or cancel federal money awarded to them. In early March, the Health Resources and Services Administration said it would review funding for graduate medical education at children’s hospitals.

KFF Health News requested comment from White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai but did not receive a response. HHS deputy press secretary Emily Hilliard responded with links to two prior press releases.

Medical interventions are just one type of gender-affirming care, and the process to get treatment is long and thorough. Researchers have found that, even among those with private insurance, transgender youth aren’t likely to receive puberty blockers and hormones. Interestingly, most gender-affirming breast reduction surgeries performed on men and boys are done on cisgender — not transgender — patients.

Kai, 14, wishes he could have gone on puberty blockers. He lives in Centennial, a Denver suburb. KFF Health News is not using his full name because his family is worried about him being harassed or targeted.

Kai got his period when he was 8 years old. By the time he realized he was transgender, in middle school, it was too late to start puberty blockers.

His doctors prescribed birth control to suppress his periods, so he wouldn’t be reminded each month of his gender dysphoria. Then, once he turned 14, he started taking testosterone.

Kai said if he didn’t have hormone therapy now, he would be a danger to himself.

“Being able to say that I’m happy in my body, and I get to be happy out in public without thinking everyone’s staring at me, looking at me weird, is such a huge difference,” he said.

His mom, Sherry, said she is happy to see Kai relax into the person he is.

Sherry, who asked to use her middle name to prevent her family from being identified, said she started stockpiling testosterone the moment Trump got elected but hadn’t thought about what impact there would be on the availability of birth control. Yet after the executive orders, that prescription, too, became tenuous. Sherry said Kai’s doctor at UCHealth had to set up a special meeting to confirm the doctor could keep prescribing it.

So, for now, Kai has what he needs. But to Sherry, that is cold comfort.

“I don’t think that we are very safe,” she said. “These are just extensions.”

The family is coming up with a plan to leave the country. If Sherry and her husband can get jobs in New Zealand, they’ll move there. Sherry said such mobility is a privilege that many others don’t have.

For example, David, an 18-year-old student at Western Colorado University in the Rocky Mountain town of Gunnison. He asked to be identified only by his middle name because he worries he could be targeted in this conservative, rural town.

David doesn’t have a passport, but even if he did, he doesn’t want to leave Gunnison, he said. He is studying geology, is learning to play the bass, and has a good group of friends. He has plans to become a paleontologist.

His dorm room shelves are scattered with his essentials: fossils, Old Spice deodorant, microwave macaroni and cheese. But there are no mirrors. David said he got in the habit of avoiding them.

“For the longest time, I just had so much body dysphoria and dysmorphia that it can be kind of hard to look in the mirror,” David said. “But when I do, most of the time, I see something that I really like.”

He’s been taking testosterone for three years, and the hormone helped him grow a beard. In January, his doctor at Denver Health was told to stop prescribing it. His mom drove hours from her home to Gunnison to deliver the news in person.

That prescription is back on track now, but the mastectomy he’d planned for this summer isn’t. He’d hoped to have adequate recovery time before sophomore year. But he doesn’t know anyone in Colorado who would perform it until he is 19. He could easily get surgery to enhance his breasts, but he must seek surgical options in other states to reduce or remove them.

“Colorado as a state was supposed to be a safe haven,” said his mother, Louise, who asked to be identified by her middle name. “We have a law that makes it a right for trans people to have health care, and yet our health care systems are taking that away.”

It has taken eight years and about 10 medical providers and therapists to get David this close to the finish line. That’s a big deal after living through so many years of dysphoria and dysmorphia.

“I’m still going, and I’m going to keep going, and there’s almost nothing they can do to stop me — because this is who I am,” David said. “There have always been trans people, and there always will be trans people.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Along the way, she learned about her own family’s history with such trauma.

This formed the multimedia “Silence in Sikeston” project from KFF Health News, Retro Report, and WORLD as told through a documentary film, educational videos, digital articles, and a limited-series podcast. Hear about Anthony’s journey and join this conversation about the toll of racialized violence on our health and our communities.

Explore more of the “Silence in Sikeston”project:

LISTEN: The limited-series podcast is available on PRX, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• Episode 1: “Racism Can Make You Sick”
• Episode 2: “Hush, Fix Your Face”
• Episode 3: “Trauma Lives in the Body”
• Episode 4: “Is There a Cure for Racism”

WATCH: The documentary film “Silence in Sikeston,” a co-production of KFF Health News and Retro Report, is now available to stream on WORLD’s YouTube channel, WORLDchannel.org, and the PBS app.

READ: KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony wrote an essay about what her reporting for this project helped her learn about her own family’s hidden past.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

USE OUR CONTENT

This story can be republished for free (details).

In the series finale of the podcast, a confident, outspoken Sikeston teenager shares her feelings in an uncommonly frank conversation with Chief James McMillen, head of Sikeston’s Department of Public Safety, which includes Sikeston police. 

Host Cara Anthony asks what kind of systemic change is possible to reduce the burden of racism on the health of Black Americans. Health equity expert Gail Christopher says it starts with institutional leaders who recognize the problem, measure it, and take concrete steps to change things. 

“It is a process, and it’s not enough to march and get a victory,” Christopher said. “We have to transform the systems of inequity in this country.” 

Host

Cara Anthony
Midwest correspondent, KFF Health News

@CaraRAnthony

Read Cara's stories

Cara is an Edward R. Murrow and National Association of Black Journalists award-winning reporter from East St. Louis, Illinois. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time magazine, NPR, and other outlets nationwide. Her reporting trip to the Missouri Bootheel in August 2020 launched the “Silence in Sikeston” project. She is a producer on the documentary and the podcast’s host.

In Conversation With …

Gail Christopher
Public health leader and health equity expert 

click to open the transcript

Transcript: Is There a Cure for Racism?

Editor’s note: If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio of “Silence in Sikeston,” which includes emotion and emphasis not found in the transcript. This transcript, generated using transcription software, has been edited for style and clarity. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast. 

[Ambient sounds from Sikeston, Missouri’s 2021 Juneteenth celebration — a DJ making an announcement over funky music, people chatting — begin playing.] 

Cara Anthony: It’s 2021. It’s hot and humid. We’re at a park in the heart of Sunset — Sikeston, Missouri’s historically Black neighborhood. 

Emory: Today is Juneteenth, baby. 

Cara Anthony: The basketball courts are jumping. And old-school funk is blaring from the speakers. Kids are playing. 

Cara Anthony: [Laughter] Are you enjoying the water?  

Cara Anthony: People are lining up for barbecue. 

I’ve been here reporting on the toll racism and violence can take on a community’s health. But today, I’m hoping to capture a little bit of Sikeston’s joy.  

Taneshia Pulley: When I look out to the crowd of my people, I see strength. I see power. I just see all magic. 

Cara Anthony: I drift over to a tent where people are getting their blood pressure, weight, and height checked … health screenings for free. 

Cara Anthony: I’m a journalist. 

Community Health Worker: Ooooh! Hi! Hi! 

Cara Anthony: The ladies working the booth are excited I’m there to report on the event. 

Cara Anthony: OK, and I’m a health journalist. 

Community health worker: Baby, that’s what I told them. Yeah, she healthy. [Laughter] 

[Dramatic instrumental music plays.] 

Cara Anthony: This Juneteenth gathering is happening a little over a year after Sikeston police officers shot and killed 23-year-old Denzel Taylor. 

We made a documentary about Denzel’s death and the death of another young Black man — also killed in Sikeston. 

Denzel was shot by police. Nearly 80 years earlier, Cleo Wright was lynched by a white mob. 

Both were killed before they got their day in court. 

In these years of reporting, what I’ve found is that many Black families worry that their kids don’t have an equal chance of growing up healthy and safe in Sikeston. 

[Dramatic instrumental ends.] 

Rosemary Owens: Being Black in the Bootheel can get you killed at any age. 

Cara Anthony: That’s Rosemary Owens. She raised her children here in Southeast Missouri. 

Cara Anthony: About 10 Sikeston police officers showed up to Juneteenth — for security and to connect with the community. Some are in uniform; some are in plain clothes. 

Rosemary has her doubts about why they came today. 

Cara Anthony: You see the police chief talking to people. What’s going through your mind as you see them milling about? 

Rosemary Owens: I hope they are real and wanting to close the gap between the African Americans and the white people. 

Anybody can come out and shake hands. But at the end of the day, did you mean what you said? Because things are still going on here in Sikeston, Missouri. 

Cara Anthony: For Rosemary, this brings to mind an encounter with the police from years ago. 

[Slow, minor, instrumental music plays softly.] 

When her son was maybe 16 years old, she says, she and her sister gave their boys the keys to their new cars — told them they could hang out in them. 

Rosemary had gotten her new car for Mother’s Day. 

Rosemary Owens: A brand-new red Dodge Caravan. We, we knew the boys were just going from the van to the car. You know, just showing out — they were boys. They weren’t driving. 

Cara Anthony: Someone nearby saw the boys …  

Rosemary Owens: … called and told the police that two Black men were robbing cars. 

 When the boys saw the police come up, there was three police cars. So they were like, something’s going on. So their intention, they were like, they were trying to run to us. And my brother said, stop. When they looked back, when the police got out of the car, they already had their guns drawn on my son and my nephew.  Cara Anthony: That’s what Rosemary thinks about when she sees Sikeston police at Juneteenth. 

[Slow, minor, instrumental music ends.] 

[“Silence in Sikeston” theme song plays.]  Cara Anthony: In this podcast series, we’ve talked about some of the ways racism makes Black people sick. But Juneteenth has me thinking about how we get free — how we STOP racism from making us sick. 

The public health experts say it’s going to take systemwide, institutional change. 

In this episode, we’re going to examine what that community-level change looks like — or at least what it looks like to make a start. 

From WORLD Channel and KFF Health News, distributed by PRX, this is “Silence in Sikeston.” 

Episode 4 is our final episode: “Is There a Cure for Racism?” 

[“Silence in Sikeston” theme song ends.] 

James McMillen: How you doing? 

Juneteenth celebration attendee: Good. Good.  

James McMillen: Good to see you, man.  

Juneteenth celebration attendee: What’s up? How are you?   

Cara Anthony: When I spot Sikeston’s director of public safety in his cowboy hat, sipping soda from a can, I head over to talk.  James McMillen: Well, you know, I just, I, I’m glad to be … on the inside of this. 

Cara Anthony: James McMillen leads the police department. He says he made it a point to come to Juneteenth. And he encouraged his officers to come, too. 

James McMillen: I remember as being a young officer coming to work here, not knowing anybody, driving by a park and seeing several Black people out there. And I remember feeling, you know, somewhat intimidated by that. And I don’t really know why. 

I hadn’t always been, um, that active in the community. And, um, I, I have been the last several years and I’m just wanting to teach officers to do the same thing. 

Cara Anthony: The chief told me showing up was part of his department’s efforts to repair relations with Sikeston’s Black residents. 

James McMillen: What’s important about this is, being out here and actually knowing people, I think it builds that trust that we need to have to prevent and solve crimes. 

Cara Anthony: A few minutes into our conversation, I notice a teenager and her friend nearby, listening. 

Cara Anthony: Yeah, we have two people who are watching us pretty closely. Come over here. Come over here. Tell us your names. 

Lauren: My name is Lauren. 

Michaiahes: My name is Michaiahes. 

Cara Anthony: Yeah. And what are you all … ? 

James McMillen: I saw you over there. 

Cara Anthony: So, what do you think about all of this?  

Michaiahes: Personally, I don’t even know who this is because I don’t mess with police because, because of what’s happened in the past with the police. But, um … 

Cara Anthony: As she starts to trail off, I encourage her to keep going. 

Cara Anthony: He’s right here. He’s in charge of all of those people. 

Michaiahes: Well, in my opinion, y’all should start caring about the community more. 

Cara Anthony: What are you hearing? She’s speaking from the heart here, Chief. What are you hearing? 

James McMillen: Well, you know what? I agree with everything she said there. 

Cara Anthony: She’s confident now, looking the chief in the eye. 

Michaiahes: And let’s just be honest: Some of these police officers don’t even want to be here today. They’re just here to think they’re doing something for the community. 

James McMillen: Let’s be honest. Some of these are assumptions that y’all are making about police that y’all don’t really know. 

[Subtle propulsive music begins playing.] 

Michaiahes: If we seen you protecting community, if we seen you doing what you supposed to do, then we wouldn’t have these assumptions about you. 

James McMillen: I just want to say that people are individuals. We have supervisors that try to keep them to hold a standard. And you shouldn’t judge the whole department, but, but just don’t judge the whole department off of a few. No more than I should judge the whole community off of a few. 

Cara Anthony: But here’s the thing … in our conversations over the years, Chief McMillen has been candid with me about how, as a rookie cop, he had judged Sikeston’s Black residents based on interactions with just a few. 

James McMillen: Some of, um, my first calls in the Black community were dealing with, obviously, criminals, you know? So if first impressions mean anything, that one set a bad one. I had, um, really unfairly judging the whole community based on the few interactions that I had, again, with majority of criminals. 

Cara Anthony: The chief says he’s moved past that way of thinking and he’s trying to help his officers move past their assumptions. 

And he told me about other things he wants to do …  

Hire more Black officers. Invest in racial-bias awareness education for the department. And open up more lines of communication with the community. 

James McMillen: I know that we are not going to see progress or we’re not going to see success without a little bit of pain and discomfort on our part. 

Cara Anthony: I don’t think I’ve ever heard the chief use the term institutional change, but the promises and the plans he’s making sound like steps in that direction. 

Except … here’s something else the chief says he wants …  

[Subtle propulsive music ends with a flourish.] 

James McMillen: As a police officer, I would like to hear more people talk about, um, just complying with the officer. 

Cara Anthony: That phrase is chilling to me. 

[Quiet, dark music starts playing.] 

When I hear “just comply” … a litany of names cross my mind. 

Philando Castile. 

Sonya Massey. 

Tyre Nichols. 

Cara Anthony: After Denzel Taylor was killed, people felt unsafe. I talked to a lot of residents on the record about them feeling like they didn’t know if they could be next. 

One thing that you told me was, like, well, one thing that people can do is comply with the officers, you know, if they find themselves having an interaction with law enforcement. 

James McMillen: Well, I mean, I think that’s, that’s a good idea to do. 

And if the person is not complying, that officer has got to be thinking, is this person trying to hurt me? So, asking people to comply with the officer’s command — that’s a reasonable statement. 

Cara Anthony: But, it’s well documented: Black Americans are more likely than our white peers to be perceived as dangerous by police. 

That perception increases the chances we’ll be the victim of deadly force. Whether we comply — or not. 

[Quiet, dark music ends.] 

That’s all to say … even with the promise of more Black officers in Sikeston and all the chief’s other plans, I’m not sure institutional change in policing is coming soon to Sikeston. 

[Sparse electronic music starts playing.] 

Cara Anthony: I took that worry to Gail Christopher. She has spent her long career trying to address the causes of institutional racism. 

Cara Anthony: We’ve been calling most of our guests by their first name, but what’s your preference? I don’t want to get in trouble with my mom on this, you know? [Cara laughs.] 

Gail Christopher: If you don’t mind, Dr. Christopher is good. 

Cara Anthony: OK. All right. That sounds good. I’m glad I asked. 

Cara Anthony: Dr. Christopher thinks a lot about the connections between race and health. And she’s executive director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity. Her nonprofit designs strategies for social change. 

She says the way to think about starting to fix structural racism … is to think about the future. 

Gail Christopher: What do you want for your daughter? What do I want for my children? I want them not to have interactions with the police, No. 1, right? 

Uh, so I want them to have safe places to be, to play, to be educated … equal access to the opportunity to be healthy. 

Cara Anthony: But I wonder if that future is even possible. 

[Sparse electronic music ends.] 

Cara Anthony: Is there a cure for racism? And I know it’s not that simple, but is there a cure? 

Gail Christopher: I love the question, right? And my answer to you would be yes. It is a process, and it’s not enough to march and get a victory. We have to transform the systems of inequity in this country. 

Cara Anthony: And Dr. Christopher says it is possible. Because racism is a belief system. 

[Hopeful instrumental music plays.] 

Gail Christopher: There is a methodology that’s grounded in psychological research and social science for altering our beliefs and subsequently altering our behaviors that are driven by those beliefs. 

Cara Anthony: To get there, she says, institutions need a rigorous commitment to look closely at what they are doing — and the outcomes they’re creating. 

Gail Christopher: Data tracking and monitoring and being accountable for what’s going on. 

We can’t solve a problem if we don’t admit that it exists. 

Cara Anthony: One of her favorite examples of what it looks like to make a start toward systemic change comes from the health care world. 

I know we’ve been talking about policing so far, but — bear with me here — we’re going to pivot to another way institutional bias kills people. 

A few years ago, a team of researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston reviewed admission records for patients with heart failure. They found that Black and Latinx people were less likely than white patients to be admitted to specialized cardiology units. 

Gail Christopher: Without calling people racist, they saw the absolute data that showed that, wait a minute, we’re sending the white people to get the specialty care and we’re not sending the people of color. 

Cara Anthony: So, Brigham and Women’s launched a pilot program. 

When a doctor requests a bed for a Black or Latinx patient with heart failure, the computer system notifies them that, historically, Black and Latinx patients haven’t had equal access to specialty care. 

The computer system then recommends the patient be admitted to the cardiology unit. It’s still up to the doctor to actually do that. 

The hard data’s not published yet, but we checked in with the hospital, and they say the program seems to be making a difference. 

Gail Christopher: It starts with leadership. Someone in that system has the authority and makes the decision to hold themselves accountable for new results. 

[Hopeful instrumental music ends.] 

Cara Anthony: OK, so it could be working at a hospital. Let’s shift back to policing now. 

Gail Christopher: There should be an accountability board in that community, a citizens’ accountability board, where they are setting measurable and achievable goals and they are holding that police department accountable for achieving those goals. 

Cara Anthony: But, like, do Black people have to participate in this? Because we’re tired. 

Gail Christopher: Listen, do I know that we’re tired! Am I tired? After 50 years? Uh, I think that there is work that all people have to do. This business of learning to see ourselves in one another, to be fully human — it’s all of our work. 

[Warm, optimistic instrumental music plays.] 

Now, does that preclude checking out at times and taking care of yourself? I can’t tell you how many people my age who are no longer alive today, who were my colleagues and friends in the movement. But they died prematurely because of this lack of permission to take care of ourselves. 

Cara Anthony: Rest when you need to, she says, but keep going. 

Gail Christopher: We have to do that because it is our injury. It is our pain. And I think we have the stamina and the desire to see it change. 

Cara Anthony: Yep. Heard. It’s all of our work. 

Dr. Christopher has me thinking about all the Black people in Sikeston who aren’t sitting around waiting for someone else to change the institutions that are hurting them. 

People protested when Denzel Taylor was killed even with all the pressure to stay quiet about it. 

Protesters: Justice for Denzel on 3. 1, 2, 3 … Justice for Denzel! Again! 1, 2, 3 …  Justice for Denzel! 

Cara Anthony: And I’m thinking about the people who were living in the Sunset neighborhood of Sikeston in 1942 when Cleo Wright was lynched. 

Harry Howard: They picked up rocks and bricks and crowbars and just anything to protect our community. 

Cara Anthony: And Sunset did not burn. 

[Warm, optimistic instrumental music begins fading out.] 

[Piano starts warming up.] 

Cara Anthony: After nearly 80 years of mostly staying quiet about Cleo’s lynching, Sikeston residents organized a service to mark what happened to him — and their community. 

Reverend: We are so honored and humbled to be the host church this evening for the remembrance and reconciliation service of Mr. Cleo Wright. 

[Piano plays along with Pershard singing.] 

Pershard Owens: [Singing] It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will. It’s been too hard a-livin but I’m afraid to die and I don’t know what’s up next, beyond the sky … 

[Pershard singing and piano accompaniment fade out.] 

Cara Anthony: I want to introduce you to that guy who was just singing then. His name is Pershard Owens. 

Remember Rosemary Owens? The woman who told us about someone calling the police on her son and nephew when they were playing with their parents’ new cars? Pershard is Rosemary’s younger son. 

Pershard Owens: Yeah, I definitely remember that. 

Cara Anthony: Even after all this time, other people didn’t want to talk to us about it. We couldn’t find news coverage of the incident. But Pershard remembers. He was in his weekly karate practice when it happened. He was 10 or 11 years old. 

Pershard Owens: My brother and cousin were, like, they were teens. So what do you think people are going to feel about the police when they do that, no questions asked, just guns drawn? 

Cara Anthony: Pershard’s dad works as a police officer on a different police force in the Bootheel. Pershard knows police. But that didn’t make it any less scary for him. 

Pershard Owens: You know, my parents still had to sit us down and talk and be like, “Hey, this is, that’s not OK, but you can’t, you can’t be a victim. You can’t be upset.” That’s how I was taught. So we acknowledge the past. But we don’t, we don’t stay down. 

Cara Anthony: So years later, when Chief James McMillen started a program as a more formal way for people in Sikeston and the police to build better relationships, Pershard signed up. They started meeting in 2020. 

The group is called Police and Community Together, or PACT for short. 

  [Sparse, tentative music begins playing.] 

Pershard Owens: It was a little tense that first couple of meetings because nobody knew what it was going to be. 

Cara Anthony: This was only five months after Sikeston police killed Denzel Taylor. 

PACT is not a citizens’ accountability board. The police don’t have to answer to it. 

The committee met every month. For a while. But they haven’t met in over a year now. 

Pershard Owens: We would have steps forward and then we would have three steps back. 

Cara Anthony: People have different accounts for why that is. Busy schedules. Mutual suspicion. Other things police officers have done that shook the trust of Black residents in Sikeston. 

Pershard Owens: And people were like, bro, like, how can you work with these people? 

The community is like, I can’t fully get behind it because I know what you did to my little cousin and them. Like, I know what the department did back in, you know, 15 years ago, and it’s hard to get past that. 

So, I mean, I’m getting both sides, like, constantly, and listen, that is, that is tough. 

[Sparse, tentative music ends.] 

Cara Anthony: But Pershard says something important changed because he started working with PACT. 

Pershard Owens: Chief did not like me at first [Pershard laughs]. He did not. 

Chief didn’t … me and Chief did not see eye to eye. Because he had heard things about me and he — people had told him that I was, I was anti-police and hated police officers, and he came in with a defense up. 

So, it took a minute for me and him to, like, start seeing each other in a different way. But it all happened when we sat down and had a conversation. 

[Slow instrumental music begins playing.] 

Cara Anthony: Just have a conversation. It sounds so simple; you’re probably rolling your eyes right now hearing it. 

But Pershard says … it could be meaningful. 

Pershard Owens: I truly want and believe that we can be together and we can work together and we can have a positive relationship where you see police and y’all dap each other up and y’all legit mean it. I think that can happen, but a lot of people have to change their mindsets. 

Cara Anthony: That’s a challenge Pershard is offering to police AND community members: Have a conversation with someone different from you. See if that changes the way you think about the person you’re talking to. See if it changes your beliefs. 

The more people do that, the more systems can change. 

Pershard Owens: We got to look in the mirror and say, “Am I doing what I can to try and change the dynamic of Sikeston, even if it does hurt?” 

Cara Anthony: Pershard says he’s going to keep putting himself out there. He ran for City Council in 2021. And even though he lost, he says he doesn’t regret it. 

Pershard Owens: When you’re dealing with a place like Sikeston, it’s not going to change overnight. 

Cara Anthony: And he’s glad he worked with PACT. Even if the community dialogue has fizzled for now, he’s pleased with the new relationship he built with Chief McMillen. And all of this has broadened his view of what kind of change is possible. 

[Slow instrumental music ends.] 

Pershard Owens: If you want something that has never been done, you have to go places that you’ve never been. 

[“Silence in Sikeston” theme music plays.] 

Cara Anthony: Places that you’ve never been … stories that you’ve never told out loud … maybe all of that helps build a Sikeston where Black residents can feel safer. Where Black people can live healthier lives. 

A world you might not be able to imagine yet, but one that could exist for the next generation. 

[“Silence in Sikeston” theme music ends.] 

[Upbeat instrumental music plays.] 

Cara Anthony: Thanks for listening to “Silence in Sikeston.” 

Next, go watch the documentary — it’s a joint production from Retro Report and KFF Health News, presented in partnership with WORLD. 

Subscribe to WORLD Channel on YouTube. That’s where you can find the film “Silence in Sikeston,” a Local, USA special. 

If you made it this far, thank you. Let me know how you’re feeling. 

I’d love to hear more about the conversations this podcast has sparked in your life. Leave us a voicemail at (202) 654-1366. 

And thanks to everyone in Sikeston for sharing your stories with us. 

This podcast is a co-production of WORLD Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX. 

It was produced with support from PRX and made possible in part by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 

This audio series was reported and hosted by me, Cara Anthony. 

Audio production by me, Zach Dyer. And me, Taylor Cook. 

Editing by me, Simone Popperl. 

And me, managing editor Taunya English. 

Sound design, mixing, and original music by me, Lonnie Ro. 

Podcast art design by Colin Mahoney and Tania Castro-Daunais. 

Tarena Lofton and Hannah Norman are engagement and social media producers for the show. 

Oona Zenda and Lydia Zuraw are the landing page designers. 

Lynne Shallcross is the photo editor, with photography from Michael B. Thomas. 

Thank you to vocal coach Viki Merrick. 

And thank you to my parents for all their support over the four years of this project. 

Music in this episode is from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. 

Some of the audio you heard across the podcast is also in the film. 

For that, special thanks to Adam Zletz, Matt Gettemeier, Roger Herr, and Philip Geyelin. 

Kyra Darnton is executive producer at Retro Report. 

I was a producer on the film. 

Jill Rosenbaum directed the documentary. 

Kytja Weir is national editor at KFF Health News. 

WORLD Channel’s editor-in-chief and executive producer is Chris Hastings. 

Help us get the word out about “Silence in Sikeston.” Write a review or give us a quick rating wherever you listen to this podcast. 

Thank you! It makes a difference. 

Oh yeah! And tell your friends in real life too!  

[Upbeat instrumental music ends.] 

Credits

Taunya English
Managing editor

@TaunyaEnglish

Taunya is deputy managing editor for broadcast at KFF Health News, where she leads enterprise audio projects.

Simone Popperl
Line editor

@simoneppprl

Simone is broadcast editor at KFF Health News, where she shapes stories that air on Marketplace, NPR, and CBS News Radio, and she co-manages a national reporting collaborative.

Zach Dyer
Senior producer

@zkdyer

Zach is senior producer for audio with KFF Health News, where he supervises all levels of podcast production.

Taylor Cook
Associate producer

@taylormcook7

Taylor is an independent producer who does research, books guests, contributes writing, and fact-checks episodes for several KFF Health News podcasts.

Lonnie Ro
Sound designer

@lonnielibrary

Lonnie Ro is an audio engineer and a composer who brings audio stories to life through original music and expert sound design for platforms like Spotify, Audible, and KFF Health News.

Additional Newsroom Support

Lynne Shallcross, photo editorOona Zenda, illustrator and web producerLydia Zuraw, web producerTarena Lofton, audience engagement producer Hannah Norman, video producer and visual reporter Chaseedaw Giles, audience engagement editor and digital strategistKytja Weir, national editor Mary Agnes Carey, managing editor Alex Wayne, executive editorDavid Rousseau, publisher Terry Byrne, copy chief Gabe Brison-Trezise, deputy copy chief Tammie Smith, communications officer 

The “Silence in Sikeston” podcast is a production of KFF Health News and WORLD. Distributed by PRX. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Watch the accompanying documentary from WORLD, Retro Report, and KFF here.

To hear other KFF Health News podcasts, click here.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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SIKESTON, Mo. — In 1942, Mable Cook was a teenager. She was standing on her front porch when she witnessed the lynching of Cleo Wright.

In the aftermath, Cook received advice from her father that was intended to keep her safe.

“He didn’t want us talking about it,” Cook said. “He told us to forget it.”

More than 80 years later, residents of Sikeston still find it difficult to talk about the lynching.

Conversations with Cook, one of the few remaining witnesses of the lynching, launch a discussion of the health consequences of racism and violence in the United States. Host Cara Anthony speaks with historian Eddie R. Cole and racial equity scholar Keisha Bentley-Edwards about the physical, mental, and emotional burdens on Sikeston residents and Black Americans in general.

“Oftentimes, people who experience racial trauma are forced to not acknowledge it,” Bentley-Edwards said. “They’re forced to question whether or not it happened in the first place.”

Host

Cara Anthony
Midwest correspondent, KFF Health News

@CaraRAnthony

Read Cara's stories

Cara is an Edward R. Murrow and National Association of Black Journalists award-winning reporter from East St. Louis, Illinois. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time magazine, NPR, and other outlets nationwide. Her reporting trip to the Missouri Bootheel in August 2020 launched the “Silence in Sikeston” project. She is a producer on the documentary and the podcast’s host.

In Conversation With …

Eddie R. Cole
Professor of education and history, UCLA

Keisha Bentley-Edwards
Associate professor of medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine at Duke University

Carol Anderson
Professor of African American studies, Emory University

click to open the transcript

Transcript: Racism Can Make You Sick

“Silence in Sikeston,” Episode 1: “Racism Can Make You Sick” Transcript 

Editor’s note: If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio of “Silence in Sikeston,” which includes emotion and emphasis not found in the transcript. This transcript, generated using transcription software, has been edited for style and clarity. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast. 

Cara Anthony: Sikeston sits in the Missouri Bootheel. That’s the lower corner of the state, with the Mississippi River on one side, Arkansas on the other. Lots of people say it’s where the South meets the Midwest. 

Picture cotton, soybeans, rice. It’s hot, green, and flat. If you’ve ever heard of Sikeston before, it’s probably because of this: 

Ryan Skinner: Hot rolls! 

Cara Anthony: Lambert’s Café. Home of the “Throwed Rolls.” 

Server: Yeah, they’ll say, uh, “Hot rolls!” And people will hold their hands up and they’ll toss it to you. 

Cara Anthony: The servers walk around with carts and throw these big dinner rolls at diners. 

Ryan Skinner: Oh, it’s fun. You get to nail people in the head and not get in trouble for it. 

Cara Anthony: There’s the rodeo. The cotton carnival. 

But I came to see Rhonda Council. 

Rhonda Council: My name is Rhonda Council. I was born and raised here in Sikeston. 

Cara Anthony: Rhonda is the town’s first Black city clerk. 

She became my guide. I met her when I came here to make a film about the little-known history of racial violence in Sikeston. 

I’m Cara Anthony. I’m a health reporter. I cover the ways racism — including violence — affects health. 

Rhonda grew up in the shadow of that violence — in a part of town where nearly everyone was Black. It’s called Sunset. 

Rhonda Council: Sunset was a happy place. I remember just being, as a kid, we could walk down to the store, we could just go get candy. 

Cara Anthony: There were churches and a school there. 

Rhonda Council: We knew everybody in the community. If we did something wrong, you can best believe your parents was going to find out about it before you got home. 

Cara Anthony: Back in the day, these were dirt roads. 

Cara Anthony: OK, so we’re getting ready to go on a tour of Sunset, which used to be known as the Sunset Addition, right? 

Rhonda Council: Mm-hmm, yes. Mm-hmm. 

Cara Anthony: We got into her car, along with Rhonda’s mother and her grandmother, Mable Cook. 

Rhonda Council: This street was known as The Bottom. Everything Black-owned. They had clubs, they had stores, they even had houses that people stayed in. I think it was shotgun houses back then? 

Mable Cook: Uh-huh. 

Cara Anthony: That’s Rhonda’s grandmother, Ms. Mable, right there. She was a teenager here in the 1940s. Her memory of the place seems to get stronger with each uh-huh and mm-hmm. 

Rhonda Council: And this was just the place where people went on the weekend to, you know, have a good time and party. … And this area was kind of known as “the corner” because they used to have a club here. And they would … they would gamble a lot down here. They would throw dice. Everything down here on the corner. 

Mable Cook: That’s right. Sure did. Mm-hmm. 

Rhonda Council: You remember this street, Grandma? 

Mable Cook: Yeah, I’m trying to see where the store used to be. 

Rhonda Council: OK. 

Mable Cook: I think it was close to Smith Chapel. 

Rhonda Council: OK. 

Cara Anthony: Rhonda’s grandmother, Ms. Mable, was 97 then. 

Rhonda Council: She is a petite lady, to me, thin-framed. I describe her eyes as like a grayish-color eyes. And I don’t know if it’s because of old age, but I think they’re so beautiful. And she just has a pretty smile, and she’s just a fantastic lady. 

Cara Anthony: Ms. Mable was born in Indianola, Mississippi. When she was 14, her father moved to Sikeston looking for work. 

Rhonda Council: And so she came up here to, um, to be with her father. But she said when she came to Sikeston, she said it was an unusual experience because they were not allowed to go to stores. They were not allowed to, basically, be with the white people. And that’s not what she knew down in Mississippi. And in her mind, she couldn’t understand why Missouri, why Sikeston was like that in treating Black people that way. 

And not too long after that, the lynching of Cleo Wright occurred. 

[BEAT]  

Cara Anthony: It was 1942. While the United States was at war marching to stop fascism, a white mob here went unchecked and lynched a man named Cleo Wright. 

The lynching of a Black man in America was not uncommon. And often barely documented. 

But in the case of Cleo Wright — perhaps because the death challenged what the nation said it was fighting for — the killing in this small town made national news. 

The case generated enough attention that the FBI conducted the first federal investigation into a lynching. That investigation ultimately amounted to nothing. 

Meanwhile — here in Sikeston — the response to the brutal death was mostly silence. 

Eight decades later, another Black man was killed in Sikeston. This time by police. 

Local media outlets, like KFVS, covered it as a crime story: 

KFVS report: The Missouri State Highway Patrol says troopers must piece together exactly what led to the shooting death of 22-year-old Denzel Marshall Taylor. 

Cara Anthony: I think the killings of Denzel Taylor and Cleo Wright are a public health story. 

Our film “Silence in Sikeston” is grounded in my reporting about Cleo and Denzel. Part of the record of the community’s trauma and silence is captured in the film. This podcast extends that conversation. 

We’re exploring what it means to live with that stress — of racism, of violence. And we’re going to talk about the toll that it takes on our health as Black Americans, especially as we try to stay safe. 

In each episode, we’ll hear a story from my reporting. Then, a guest and I will talk about it. 

The history … 

Carol Anderson: The power of lynching is to terrorize the Black community, and one of the ways the community deals with that terror is the silence of it. […] And when you don’t deal with the wound, it creates all kinds of damage. 

Cara Anthony: And health … 

Aiesha Lee: It’s almost like every time we’re silent, it’s like a little pinprick. […] And after so long, those little pinpricks turn up as heart disease, as cancer, as all these other ailments. 

Cara Anthony: I’m hoping this journalism, and these stories, will spark a conversation that you’ve been meaning to have. 

This is an invitation. 

From WORLD Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX, this is “Silence in Sikeston,” the podcast.  

Episode 1: “Racism Can Make You Sick” 

[BEAT] 

Cara Anthony: Ms. Mable was a witness to the lynching of Cleo Wright. The 25-year-old was about to become a father. 

Rhonda’s uncle says Cleo was … 

Harry Howard: Young, handsome, an athlete, and very well known in the community. 

Cara Anthony: That’s Harry Howard. He didn’t know Cleo. Harry wasn’t even born yet. But his uncle knew Cleo. 

Harry Howard: They were friends. They would shoot pool together and were known to be at the little corner store, the Scott’s Grocery. 

Cara Anthony: Harry’s family passed down the story of what happened. 

Harry Howard: So everything I’m reporting is the way it was told by people I trust. 

Cara Anthony: Black families mostly talked about it in whispers. 

Eddie R. Cole: And that sounds like this is one of those situations where that community would rather just leave this alone and try to move on with the life that you do have instead of losing more life. 

Cara Anthony: That’s my friend Eddie Cole. He’s a professor of history and education at UCLA. 

We were in college together at Tennessee State and worked on the school newspaper.  

I called up Eddie because I wanted to get his take as a historian. What happens when we keep quiet about a story like Cleo’s? 

Eddie R. Cole: Yeah, I’m Eddie Cole. … So here we go. 

Cara Anthony: Thousands of Black people were lynched before Cleo Wright was. But this was the first time the feds said, “Hey, we should go to Sikeston and investigate lynching as a federal crime.” 

This story though, seriously, like it just disappeared off the face of the map. Like, it’s, it’s scary to me. So many of the witnesses that I interviewed, they’ve passed away, Eddie, since we started this journey. And it’s frightening to me to think that their stories … that these stories can literally just go away. 

[BEAT]  

Eddie R. Cole: Lynching stories disappear but don’t disappear, right? So, the people who committed the crime, they committed it and went on with their day, which is twisted within itself, even to think about that. 

But on the other side, when you think about Black Americans, there was no need to talk a lot about it, right? Because you talk too much about some things and that same sort of militia justice might come to your front door in the middle of the night, right? Stories like this are known but not recorded. 

Cara Anthony: The hush that surrounded Cleo’s story back then was for Black people’s safety. But I’m conflicted. Should Cleo’s story be off the table? Or … could we be missing an opportunity for healing? 

On the phone with Eddie, I could feel this anxiety building up in me. I was almost afraid to bring it up, even though it was the reason why I called. 

[BEAT]  

Cara Anthony: And I will be honest with you, I think of you the same way I think of my brother, my father, like, I’ve almost wanted to protect the Black men in my life from that story because I know how hard it is to hear. 

Cara Anthony: It was January 1942. Cleo was accused of assaulting a white woman. A police officer arrested him; there was a fight. Cleo was beaten and shot. Covered in blood, he was eventually taken to jail. White residents of Sikeston mobbed the jail to get to Cleo. 

Cara Anthony: I do want to play a clip for you, just so you can hear a little bit, if you are up for that, because it’s a lot. How are you feeling about that today? 

Eddie R. Cole: No, I want to hear. I mean, I gotta know more now. You just told me there’s a story that just disappeared, but now you’re bringing it back to life. So let’s play the clip. 

Cara Anthony: All right. Let’s do it. 

Harry Howard: They took him out of the jail and drug him from downtown on Center Street through the Black area of Sunset. 

Obviously, it was a big commotion, and they were saying, “What’s going on?” And the man driving the station wagon told them, “Get out of the street,” and, of course, used the N-word. “There’s a lynching coming.” 

Cara Anthony: Historian Carol Anderson is a professor of African American studies at Emory University. She takes it from there. 

Carol Anderson: They hook him to the bumper of the car and decide to make an example of him in the Black community. 

The mob douses his body with five gallons of gasoline and set it on fire. People are going, “Oh my God, they are burning a Black man. They are burning a Black man. They have lynched a Black man.” 

Cara Anthony: I always need to take a deep breath after hearing that story. So, I check in with Eddie. 

Cara Anthony: OK. How you doing? You OK? 

Eddie R. Cole: Yeah, yeah, um, that was tough. 

Cara Anthony: I’ve grappled a lot with the question of why, like, why now? Why this story? Am I crazy for doing this? 

Eddie R. Cole: Yeah, I mean, this story is really an entry point to talk about society at large. Imagine the people who like the world that we’re in. A world where Black people are oppressed. Right? And so not telling stories like what happens in Sikeston is an easier way to just keep the status quo. And what you’re doing is pushing back on it and saying, ah, we must remember, because the remnants of this period still shape this town today. 

[BEAT]  

Cara Anthony: On the tour of Sikeston with Rhonda, I see that. 

Rhonda Council: We’re going to go in front of the church where Cleo Wright was burned. 

When we get down here to the right, you’ll see Smith Chapel Church. And wasn’t it over here in this way where he got burnt, Grandma? 

Mable Cook: Uh-huh, yep. 

Rhonda Council: OK. From what I hear, it happened right along in this area right here. 

Cara Anthony: It’s a small brick church with a steeple on top. The road is paved now, not gravel as before. It all looks so … normal. 

You’d think that kind of violence, so much hate, would leave a mark on the Earth. But on the day we visited, there was nothing to see. Just the church and the road. 

Ms. Mable is quiet. I wonder what she’s thinking. 

Mable Cook: I just remember them dragging him. They drove him from, uh, the police station out to Sunset Addition. But they took him around all the streets so everybody could see. 

Cara Anthony: Back at Rhonda’s home, we talked more about what Ms. Mable remembered. 

Rhonda Council: Did that affect you in any way when you saw that happening? 

Mable Cook: Yeah, it hurt because I never had seen anything like that. Mm-hmm. And it kind of got me. I was just surprised or something. I don’t know. Mm-hmm. 

Cara Anthony: Remember Ms. Mable had been a child in Mississippi in the ’30s — and it wasn’t until she moved north to Sikeston that she came face to face with a lynching. 

Rhonda Council: Did it stick in your mind after that for a long time? 

Mable Cook: Yeah, it did. It did stick because I just wondered why they wanted to do that to him. You know, they could have just taken him and put him in jail or something and not do all that to him. 

I just never had seen anything like it. I had heard people talking about it, but I had never seen anything like that. 

Cara Anthony: When it happened, a lot of Black families in Sikeston scattered, fled town to places that felt safer. Mable’s family returned to Mississippi for a week. 

But when they got back, she says, Sikeston went on like nothing had ever happened.  

Here’s Rhonda with Ms. Mable again. 

Rhonda Council: After you all saw the lynching that happened, did you and your friends talk about that? 

Mable Cook: No, we didn’t have none … we didn’t talk about it. My daddy told us not to have nothing be said about it, uh-uh. 

Rhonda Council: Oh, because your dad said that. 

Mable Cook: That’s right. He told us not to worry about it, not talk about it. Uh-huh. And he said it’ll go away if you not talk about it, you know, uh-huh. 

Rhonda Council: So over the years, did you ever want to get it out? Did you ever want to talk about it? 

Mable Cook: Yeah, I did want to. Uh-huh. I wanted to. Uh-huh. 

Rhonda Council: But you just couldn’t do it. 

Mable Cook: No. No. Uh-uh. No, he didn’t want us talking about it. He told us to forget it. 

Cara Anthony: Forget it. Don’t talk about it. It’ll go away. 

And, in a way, it did. 

No one was charged. No one went to prison. Cleo’s name faded from the news. 

[BEAT]   

Cara Anthony: But decades later, Ms. Mable, the witness; Rhonda, her granddaughter; and me, the journalist, we talked about it a lot. 

We turned the story over and over, and as I listened to Ms. Mable, there was a distance between the almost matter-of-fact way she described the lynching and what I expected her feelings would be. 

I asked her if she was ever depressed … or if she had sleepless nights, anxiety. As a health reporter, I was on the lookout for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. 

But Ms. Mable said no. 

That surprised me. And Rhonda, too. 

Cara Anthony: If we were to roll back the clock, go in a time machine, it’s 1942. All of a sudden, you see Cleo Wright’s body on the back of a car. How do you, can you even imagine that? 

Rhonda Council: I could not imagine. And even when talking to her about it, and she had such a vivid memory of it. And you ask her, did it haunt her, and she said no, she, it didn’t bother her, but I know deep down inside it had to because there’s no way that you could see something like that — someone dragged through the streets, basically naked going over rocks and the body just being dragged. 

I, I don’t know how I could have handled it because that’s just very, you just can’t treat a human being like that. 

Cara Anthony: That’s what’s so hard about these stories. And the research shows that seeing that kind of brutal, racial violence has health effects. But how do we recognize them? And what happens if we don’t? 

Those are some of the questions I asked Keisha Bentley-Edwards. 

Keisha Bentley-Edwards: Oftentimes, people who experience racial trauma are forced to not acknowledge it as such, or they’re forced to question whether or not it happened in the first place. 

Cara Anthony: Keisha is an associate professor in medicine at Duke University. She studies structural racism and chronic health conditions and knows a lot about what happens after a lynching. 

Keisha Bentley-Edwards: It’s difficult to talk about racism. And part of it is that you’re talking about power, who has it, who doesn’t have it. 

It’s not fun to talk about constantly being in a state where someone else can control your life with little recourse. 

Cara Anthony: That’s even more complicated in a place like Sikeston. 

Keisha Bentley-Edwards: When you’re in a smaller city, there is no way to turn away from the people who were the perpetrators of a race-based crime. And that, in and of itself, is a trauma. To know that someone has victimized your family member and you still have to say hello, you still have to say, “Good morning, ma’am.” And you have to just swallow your trauma in order to make the person who committed that trauma comfortable so that you don’t put your own family members at risk. 

Cara Anthony: Keisha says part of the stress comes from being Black and always being aware — alert — that the everyday ways you move through the world can be perceived as a threat to other people. 

Keisha Bentley-Edwards: Your life as a Black person is precarious. And I think that is what’s so hard about lynchings and these types of racist incidents is that so much of it is about, “I turned left when I could have turned right.” 

You know, “If I had just turned right or if I had stayed at home for another 10 minutes, this wouldn’t have happened.” 

Cara Anthony: That’s as true today as it was when Cleo Wright was alive. 

Keisha Bentley-Edwards: So, you don’t have to know the history of lynching to be affected by it. And so if you want to dismantle the legacy of the histories, you actually have to know it. So that you can address it and actually have some type of reconciliation and to move forward. 

Cara Anthony: I don’t know how you move on from something like the lynching of Cleo Wright. But breaking the silence is a step. 

And at 97, Ms. Mable did just that. 

She spoke to me. She trusted me enough to talk about it. Afterward, she said she felt lighter. 

Mable Cook: That’s right. Mm-hmm. So, it makes me feel much better after getting it out. 

[BEAT]  

Cara Anthony: A couple of years after we took the tour of Sikeston together, Ms. Mable died. 

When they lowered her casket into the ground, Ms. Mable’s family played a hymn she loved. 

It was a song she had sung for me … the day she invited me to visit her church. We sat in the pews. It was the middle of the week, but she was in her Sunday best. 

As we talked about Cleo Wright and Ms. Mable’s life in Sikeston, she told me she came back to that hymn over and over. 

Mable Cook: “Glory, Glory.” That’s what it was. [SINGING] Glory, glory, hallelujah. Since I laid my burden down. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Since I laid my burdens down […] 

Cara Anthony: I grew up singing that song. But before that moment, it was just another hymn in church. When Ms. Mable sang, it became something else. It sounded more like … an anthem. A call to acknowledge what we’ve been carrying with us in our bodies and minds. And to know it’s possible to talk about it … and maybe feel lighter. 

Mable Cook: [SINGING] … Every route go high and higher since I laid my burden down. Every route go high and higher since I laid my burden down […] 

Cara Anthony: Racism is heavy and it’s making Black people sick. Hives, high blood pressure, heart disease, inflammation, and struggles with mental health. 

To lay those burdens down, we have to name them first. 

That’s what I want this series to be: a podcast about finding the words to say the things that go unsaid. 

Across four episodes, we’re exploring the silence around violence and racism. And, maybe, we’ll get some redemption, too. 

I’m glad you’re here. There’s a lot more to talk about. 

Next time on “Silence in Sikeston,” the podcast … 

Meet my Aunt B and hear about our family’s hidden history. 

Cara Anthony: I told you what the three R’s of history are, right? 

Aunt B: No, tell me. 

Cara Anthony: So the three R’s of history are, you have to recognize something in order to repair it, in order to have days of redemption. So, Recognize, Repair, Redeem. And that’s what we’re doing. 

Aunt B: Man, how deep is that? 

Cara Anthony: That’s what we’re doing. 

Aunt B: Wow. 

CREDITS 

Cara Anthony: Thanks for listening to “Silence in Sikeston.” 

Next, go watch the documentary — it’s a joint production from Retro Report and KFF Health News, presented in partnership with WORLD. 

Subscribe to WORLD Channel on YouTube. That’s where you can find the film “Silence in Sikeston,” a Local, USA special. 

This podcast is a co-production of WORLD Channel and KFF Health News and distributed by PRX. 

It was produced with support from PRX and made possible in part by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 

The audio series was reported and hosted by me, Cara Anthony. 

Zach Dyer and Taylor Cook are the producers. 

Editing by Simone Popperl. 

Taunya English is managing editor of the podcast. 

Sound design, mixing, and original music by Lonnie Ro. 

Podcast art design by Colin Mahoney and Tania Castro-Daunais. 

Oona Zenda was the lead on the landing page design. 

Julio Ricardo Varela consulted on the script. 

Sending a shoutout to my vocal coach, Viki Merrick, for helping me tap into my voice. 

Music in this episode is from BlueDot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. 

Additional audio from KFVS News in Sikeston, Missouri. 

Some of the audio you’ll hear across the podcast is also in the film. 

For that, special thanks to Adam Zletz, Matt Gettemeier, Roger Herr, and Philip Geyelin, who worked with us and colleagues from Retro Report. 

Kyra Darnton is executive producer at Retro Report. 

I was a producer on the film. 

Jill Rosenbaum directed the documentary. 

Kytja Weir is national editor at KFF Health News. 

WORLD Channel’s editor-in-chief and executive producer is Chris Hastings. 

If “Silence in Sikeston” has been meaningful to you, help us get the word out! 

Write a review or give us a quick rating on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, or wherever you listen to this podcast. It shows the powers that be that this is the kind of journalism you want. 

Thank you. It makes a difference. 

Oh yeah … and tell your friends in real life, too! 

Credits

Taunya English
Managing editor

@TaunyaEnglish

Taunya is deputy managing editor for broadcast at KFF Health News, where she leads enterprise audio projects.

Simone Popperl
Line editor

@simoneppprl

Simone is broadcast editor at KFF Health News, where she shapes and edits stories that air on Marketplace and NPR, manages a reporting collaborative with local NPR member stations across the country, and edits the KFF Health News Minute.

Zach Dyer
Senior producer

@zkdyer

Zach is senior producer for audio with KFF Health News, where he supervises all levels of podcast production.

Taylor Cook
Associate producer

@taylormcook7

Taylor is an independent producer who does research, books guests, contributes writing, and fact-checks episodes for several KFF Health News podcasts.

Additional Newsroom Support

Lynne Shallcross, photo editorOona Zenda, illustrator and web producerLydia Zuraw, web producerTarena Lofton, audience engagement producer Hannah Norman, visual producer and visual reporter Chaseedaw Giles, audience engagement editor and digital strategistKytja Weir, national editor Mary Agnes Carey, managing editor Alex Wayne, executive editorDavid Rousseau, publisher Terry Byrne, copy chief Gabe Brison-Trezise, deputy copy chief Tammie Smith, communications officer 

The “Silence in Sikeston” podcast is a production of KFF Health News and WORLD. Distributed by PRX. Subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Watch the accompanying documentary from WORLD, Retro Report, and KFF starting Sept. 16, here.

To hear other KFF Health News podcasts, click here.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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