Latest / Revisionist History / Hitler’s Olympics, Part 9: A Plague on Both Your Houses.

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Hitler’s Olympics, Part 9: A Plague on Both Your Houses. · Revisionist History

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The thing I'm really really interested in is the kind
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: of way the case was received around the country and
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the world. That's where I want to get to. But
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: starting with So, this train that's going to run right
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: out there, it's coming from Chattanooga right going where at Nashville, Memphis,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: going to Memphis. Yeah, I'm in a little town in
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: northeast Alabama called Scottsborough, sitting in an old African Methodist
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Episcopal church built in eighteen seventy eight by former slaves.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The church is now a museum and Ben, the daph
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Haffrey and I are talking to the director, Tom Reidy
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: about what happened on the Chattanooga to Memphis train at
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: the peak of the Great Depression.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: It's nineteen thirty one. People are hoboing all over the
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: country and on the morning of March twenty fifth, the
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: nine defendants along with two young ladies from Huntsville, along
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: with dozens of others. Never we'll never know who else
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: was on that train between here and Chattanooga. There was
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: an altercation on the train and at Stevenson, which is
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: a town about twenty miles from here, six white guys
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: were thrown off the train by a group of African Americans.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: This is probably one part of the story. Everybody agrees
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: on that the six came off and these other guys
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: stayed on. There's a fight, Yeah, there's a fight over space.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: This is Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: So these the white guys that got off the train
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: went back to the agent at the Stevenson depot and said, hey,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: we just got thrown off this train, which they were
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: illegally on right there on ticketed. But and there's all
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: these black guys. Of course they didn't call them black guys.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: And oh, by the way, two white women.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: We have white women and young black men together on
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: a train. The station master at Stevenson Depot calls ahead
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: to the paint Rock station.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: By the time they get to paint Rock, there's anywhere
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: from one hundred and one hundred and fifty men, horses,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: ropes waiting for the train.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Everyone's pulled off the train. The two women say they've
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: been raped. The nine young men, some of them just
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: kids twelve and thirteen years old, gets shipped directly to Scottsboro,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: which is the county seat. By the time they get there,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: another mob is waiting, and.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: There's this wonderful Atticus Finch moment in the story where
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: the sheriff of Scottsboro, Mattwane, comes out with his shotgun
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: and says, the first one that tries to cross me
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: is going to get their head blown off. And that
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: apparently held the crowd back a little.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Because I guess they believed them, And.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Two weeks later, on April sixth, and three hours after
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: they met their attorney, the trial started.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Him Malcolm Gladwell, Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: things overlooked and misunderstood. This is a ninth episode in
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: our series about Hitler's Olympics, The Games behind the Games.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: We've spent the last eight episodes exploring the many rationalizations,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: self justifications, and delusions triggered by the Berlin Olympics. Berlin
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: kicked off cognitive dissonance on an international scale. Hitler's wave
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: of anti Semitism focused the world's attention on Germany, But
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty one, something happened across the ocean from
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Germany that held the world's attention in the same way
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the Scotsboro Boys trial. In this our series finale, let's
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: turn the clock back to nineteen thirty one. The Scottsborough
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: trial was a farce. There was no evidence of rape,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and one of the women would later retract her accusation.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Neither fact made a difference in nine.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: Negro youths are hurriedly arrested, promptly marched off to Scottsboro
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: for trial. Six days later, they are indicted uncharges of assault.
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: Seven of them are senanced by Justice John C. Anderson
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: to hang by the neck until dead. Subsequent motion for
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: a new trial is overruled as the Alabama Supreme Court
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: affirms the convictions.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: This kind of thing had been happening in the South
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: for years, but something about Scottsboro and the brazenness of
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: all white juries saying guilty, guilty, guilty, really touched a nerve.
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: Thousands of telegrams bore into Alabama from all over the world,
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: asserting that the Negroes had been night a fair trial.
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: The case is finally carried to the highest court in
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: the land, the Supreme Court of the United States.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: There was public pressure, There were appeals, re trials, landlock.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Did you go to jump in chout?
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: They tell you what's all about.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Everybody's writing about it. Everybody knows the Discosbrow Voice. People
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: were starting to have radios in their house. But it's
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: just remarkable how fast the word did spread on.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: This Reedy was sitting inside the old church as we spoke,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: and behind him there was a poster. It was a
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: list of names linked in some way to the public
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: campaign to get justice for the Scotsboro Boys. There was I. B. Wells,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the great African American activist, Jimmy Cagney, one of the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: biggest names in Hollywood, and then Albert Einstein.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Einstein was in Germany when they arrested, and he in
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: the summer of nineteen thirty one wrote a letter with
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: a bunch of German scientists to the governor Miller, saying, well,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: they were intellectuals, they called them. So German intellectuals demand
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: the release of the Scottsboro Boys because they're innocent.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And Einstein, I sent is like physicists living in Germany. Right,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: who is somehow so moved by the press accounts of this?
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Two years before Hitler became Chancellor, thousands of Germans were
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: out in the streets protesting American white supremacy.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: And they had people throwing rocks through the American embassy
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: with notes taped onto him. That was just say they
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: shall not die.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: And that is why Ben and I were in Scottsborough.
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: I remember when you sent me an email with one
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: line and it was like, We're going to do an
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: episode on Scottsboro. And I was like, why would we
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: talk about Scottsborough? And then I realized what year it
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: was and what happened the year after?
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Oh right, nineteen thirty two an Olympic year as well,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and where were those games held? I think you can
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: guess where this is headed. In April of venteteen twenty three,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: a real estate developer from California named Billy Garland traveled
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: to Rome for the annual meeting of the International Olympic Committee.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Garland was good friends with Avery Brundage. They were cut
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: from the same cloth, men from humble beginnings with outsized ambition,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: dreamers builders. But where Brundage was grim and angry, with
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: a chip on his shoulder the size of Lake Michigan,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Garland was all sunny, optimism and charm. Billy everyone called
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: him Billy had life force. Billy grew up poor and
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: married money. Billy was the embodiment of Los Angeles, a
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: city in the nineteen twenties, half a million strong and
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: growing by the day, a city on the verge of stardom.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Billy watched the sunrise every morning over the San Berardino Mountains,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: but never bothered to look to see if it's said
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: at night.
• 8:23
  Speaker 6: LA was really controlled and run by a coterie of
• 8:28
  Speaker 6: a shadow government comprised of banker's financiers, but really, above
• 8:33
  Speaker 6: all the real estate.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Man Barry Siegel, the author of a wonderful book about
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Billy Garland, Dreamers and Schemers.
• 8:42
  Speaker 6: Of which Billy Garland was premier. The prince of the realtors.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Billy owned huge swaths of downtown Los Angeles. His best
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: friend was the publisher of the La Times, the most
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: powerful man in the city. His brothers in the shadow
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: government kept out of the spotlight.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Billy.
• 9:01
  Speaker 6: Billy was the frontman, a very outgoing personality, making speeches,
• 9:10
  Speaker 6: arriving at the railroad station, press conferences, writing columns of
• 9:14
  Speaker 6: his own for the La Times, always always promoting, promoting
• 9:22
  Speaker 6: the city, promoting the future.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: So in nineteen twenty three, Billy sails to Italy for
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: his biggest pitch yet to the International Olympic Committee. The
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: IOC was meeting that year in the Old Capitol Building
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: across from the Forum, a venue worthy of a group
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: obsessed with antiquity. To start the day, the King of
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Italy said a few words. Then the King is opening things,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: and like, here's this guy from I mean, from what
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: their perspective must have been, the middle of nowhere.
• 9:56
  Speaker 6: Absolutely, they literally were asking him where Los Angeles is?
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: What's his trump card?
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: Hollywood? By that time, Hollywood films were widely popular all
• 10:11
  Speaker 6: around the world, and that's one of the things he
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: was asked at that meeting. Is is La anywhere near Hollywood?
• 10:21
  Speaker 6: And Billy was smart enough to say, yes, La is
• 10:24
  Speaker 6: a suburb of Hollywood.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: He understood that that glamour, the emerging glamour of the region,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: could play to his advantage. Yes, yeah, I'm just thinking
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: back to the IOC though, because the the IOC really
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: is it's like every faded aristocrat in Europe is, Yes,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: every fuddy dotty you can find with their wax mustache
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: is around the table. And then this like this, this
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: this kind of charismatic, wide open, extroverted Californian shows up.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I just I'm just imagining. It's a fantastic scene.
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: I've imagined it too, And I think that's part of
• 11:04
  Speaker 6: how he was effected. I mean, he was a breath
• 11:08
  Speaker 6: of fresh air. He knew how to talk to them,
• 11:11
  Speaker 6: the idea. When he rose to give his talk, his pitch,
• 11:16
  Speaker 6: he's pitching America. He's pitching the culture of America, which
• 11:21
  Speaker 6: is still which is strange and exotic to them.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: They're there amidst all of this sort of eighteenth century grandeur,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: and the American stands up and says, there's this brand
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: new country across the ocean. You guys need to go
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: there next. Kind of this kind of yeah.
• 11:38
  Speaker 6: It's and that's exactly that's an exact sort of exactly
• 11:42
  Speaker 6: how he put it too.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: He says, if the Games are to be truly international
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: in character, they must also be held in other parts
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: of the universe. The Olympics should come to Los Angeles.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: The room is silent, No one says a word. Then
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: one delicate stands up and says, so moved, let us
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: take our beloved creation to the shores of the Pacific.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Someone else seconds the motion. It goes to a vote,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: it carries unanimously. The whole group celebrated at the Coronel Palace,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: home to the country's royal family. Billy spotted a bald
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: man speaking passionately to a group of onlookers. It was Mussolini,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: the newly installed fascist leader of Italy. Billy wandered over
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: shook his hand. The next day, Billy had an audience
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: with Pope Pious, the eleventh of the Vatican. Pious said
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: how much he believed in the Olympic tradition, and Billy
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: kissed his ring. Billy convinces the IOC to bring its
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: temple of human idealism to the United States, And just
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: as the whole dazzling spectacle is about to launch, nine
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: black kids in northern Alabama gets swept up in a
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: miscarriage of justice so outrageous that it sparks a wave
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: of protest around the world. March is in Germany, South Africa, Cuba,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: and the world finds itself in the same position as
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: it would four years later on the eve of the
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Berlin Olympics, contemplating a pure competition in an impure place
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: with one difference. No one ever threatened to boycott the
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles Games.
• 13:26
  Speaker 7: That's in the name are the President of the United
• 13:32
  Speaker 7: stirty I have proclaim open the Olympic Games of Los
• 13:39
  Speaker 7: Angeles celebrating that tenth opiod on the modern area.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Well, so if the world is upset about Scottsboro in
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: nineteen thirty one, then why is there not a boycott
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: of the LA Games in thirty two?
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I think you know, Well, the obvious reason is the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: nature of American transgressions in civil rights are on the
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: surface so different from the nature of Nazi transgressions. American
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: transgressions are three hundred years old. They're embedded in the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: kind of culture of the country. And I can't stress
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: this enough. They involve black people, and it's just it
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: is simply the case and continues to be the case
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: in some sense that a transgression against a black person
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: is not considered the same as a transgression against a
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: white person.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: Part of the difference is that Nazism is a new thing,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: whereas what's happening in Alabama is just not new at all.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's important is it's because it wasn't it wasn't
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: a one off. Right, why does America go up and
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the black community particular gets so up in arms about
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: George Floyd because it had happened too many times? Right,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: And Scott's part is kind of like that. There's been
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: a steady drumbeat of this kind of stuff coming out
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: of the South, and there's you know, the world seizes
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: on that because they're like it can't, can't keep doing this.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: It wasn't system malfunction. It was system function. That's a
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: lot more kind of a outrageous I don't think you
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: could make sense of what happened with the Scottsboro Boys
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: unless you take a step back and look at the
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Alabama Constitution. I mean, look at the kind of legal
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: infrastructure that was in place in Alabama at the time.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: So why did the LA Games escape moral scrutiny. It's puzzling.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's as simple as the fact that the world
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: holds America to a different standard than everyone else. If
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: you're a young upstart of a country, you get away
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: with more. Or maybe the world cares less about crimes
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: against black people than it does about crimes against white people.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Or maybe the Nazis were in the Olympics so much
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: about Nazism that it was really easy to see the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: contradiction between the Games and its host in a way
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that didn't seem as obvious with the LA Olympics. Or
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: maybe it's all three, but Scottsborough was not some strange
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: outlying event. It touched a raw nerve because people understood
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: that it was typical. It was how the South worked.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Discrimination was baked right into American law. I called up
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: a law professor at the University of Alabama, Susan Hammill,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: and the first thing she brought up was Alabama's state
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: constitution at the time, which had been rewritten in nineteen
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: oh one, with one thing in mind. There was no.
• 16:44
  Speaker 8: Doubt as to what the intent was.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: As one delegate said, they were driven by quote, the
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: necessity of relieving the black belt of the incubus resting
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: on it. Another delegate was more blunt.
• 17:00
  Speaker 8: We are here to get rid of the nigger.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: The fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution bars states from
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: denying people the right to vote, So the framers of
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: the Alabama Constitution devised a bunch of workarounds. First, a
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: poll tax. You had to pay a dollar fifty to vote,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: which was a lot of money back then. Right there,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: you've gotten rid of a lot of sharecroppers. But they
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: kept going, adding every obstacle they could think of.
• 17:28
  Speaker 8: They had to own property, there were literacy tests, and
• 17:35
  Speaker 8: there was the overall discretion of the white voting registrars.
• 17:42
  Speaker 8: The voting registrars in terms of who was actually registering folks,
• 17:48
  Speaker 8: had a great deal of discretion. If you had a
• 17:50
  Speaker 8: white person that kind of met the requirements but also
• 17:55
  Speaker 8: maybe didn't, they could get waved through.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: The nineteen oh one Alabama Constitution would end up being
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the longest constitution in the world three hundred and eighty
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty two words, about eight
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty times longer than the US Constitution.
• 18:14
  Speaker 8: When African Americans went to register after the nineteen oh
• 18:18
  Speaker 8: one constitution was ratified, they were just turned away.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: In nineteen hundred, there were one hundred and eighty one thousand,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: four hundred and seventy one African American men of voting age.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: After the constitution, fewer than three thousand of those men
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: could vote.
• 18:35
  Speaker 8: You know, we did not have a black electorate in
• 18:38
  Speaker 8: this state worth speaking of until the nineteen seventies.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: It gets worse. In nineteen oh two, a black janitor
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: named Jackson Giles file suit against the state. Jackson says,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: I meet all the requirements, I can read, I understand
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: the constitution, I paid my pull tax, I own property,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: but they still won't let me vote. The case goes
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: all the way to the Supreme Court in nineteen oh three, where,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: writing for the majority, the legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest legal minds the Supreme Court has
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: ever produced. Rites and I'm not making this up. The defendant,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: mister Jackson, alleges that the state of Alabama has constructed
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: a voting system that is in open violation of the
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: Constitution of the US. But he is asking to be
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: registered to vote under the very same rules that he
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: says are an open violation of the Constitution of the
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: United States. If we rule in his favor, we are
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: complicit in the violation. It's one of the all time
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: great Supreme Court catch twenty twos.
• 19:48
  Speaker 8: Justice Holmes disingenuously said, Oh, if Jackson Giles wants a remedy,
• 19:54
  Speaker 8: he needs to seek his member of Congress to do
• 19:57
  Speaker 8: something about it. But Jackson and Giles had been denied
• 20:01
  Speaker 8: the right to vote for any member of Congress.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Mister Giles, if you don't like the system that keeps
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: you from voting, then vote to change it.
• 20:12
  Speaker 8: The US Supreme Court, like the rest of the country
• 20:16
  Speaker 8: just wanted to wash their hands of If I can
• 20:21
  Speaker 8: put it this way, the dirty South.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Now we can understand what happened in Scottsboro. The jury
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: pool in Alabama is drawn from the voting pool, and
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: since the voters are basically all white, then the juries
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: are all white, which means that when nine black kids
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: are accused of some bogus crime on the Chattanooga to
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Memphis train, those nine kids are out of luck. All told,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the Scottsboro boys would end up serving more than one
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: hundred years behind bars for something that never happened. And
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: in Giles v. Harris, the Supreme Court of the United
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: States signs off on the whole range. And so do
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: you study that case in at law school in Alabama.
• 21:06
  Speaker 8: No, isn't that a shame?
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Scottsboro was an embarrassment, an outrage, exposing the very dark
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: heart of the country that was about to host the
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: purest of athletic spectacles. If the world shouldn't have gone
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: to Berlin in nineteen thirty six for moral reasons, then
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: the world shouldn't have gone to Los Angeles in nineteen
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: thirty two either. Where can you go in the lead
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: up to the Berlin Games, a group known as the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Jewish Labor Committee set out to solve the problem of
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: what to do about impure places and peer competitions. The
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: organizers were the same people who had been up in
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: arms over the Scottsboro Boys four years earlier, who helped
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: fund their legal defense, who were fighting for the rights
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of working Americans. Their hands were clean. They called their
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: games the World Labor Athletic Carnival. It was held in
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: New York City on Randall's Island in August of nineteen
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: thirty six, overlapping with the last two days of the
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Berlin Olympics. Invitations went out. The carnival will function as
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: a show of protest against the iron heel of Nazism.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: New York Mayor Fiorlo LaGuardia signed up to be co chair.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: The Governor of New York agreed to hand out prizes.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Proceeds from the event will go to supporting the anti
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Nazi movement end eventually to helping Jews escape from Eastern Europe.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: The Labour Games represent the first solution to the dilemma
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: of the Olympics. Carve out a little corner of ideological purity,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: don't compromise align your political values with the ethic of
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: amateur sport. Be an absolutist. Ed Gordon was there. He
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: was the winner of the long jump in the night
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two Olympics. George Veroff, the so called jumping Janitor,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: was there too. His gold medal jump beat the winning
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: mark in Berlin by a full inch and a half.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: The women's forty yard dash was won by a member
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: of the dressmakers Union, Wanda Oldzuska. Another Oldzuska Mitzi, competed
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: with her on the winning relay team. When reporter asked
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Mitzi how she trained, she responded, oh, picketing and throwing
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: stones through windows, and nobody came to watch. The stands
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: were half empty. Why well. The Games were supposed to
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: draw their support from the labor movement, but the Jewish
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Labor Committee was an anti communist socialist group, so some
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: communists felt left out and stayed home. Then came a
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: second disagreement, this time between the American Socialist Party, the
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Old Guard, and some upstart progressives led by Norman Thomas.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Let me just read to you from a History of
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: the Labor Games by Edward Shapiro. The struggle came to
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: a head at the party's annual convention in nineteen thirty
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: six in Cleveland. When the Olguard left, the party took
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: the magazine The New Leader with them and created the
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Social Democratic Federation. The New Leader viewed Randall's Island as
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: virtually a New York Social Democratic Federation, event copiously discussing
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: its progress from its inception in May through the Games
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: themselves in August. The pro Norman Thomas Socialist Call, in contrast,
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: merely printed a pro forma announcement of the Games. More
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: to its liking, was a track in gymnastic demonstration on
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: July fourth, nineteen thirty six, in Taberville, Ohio, near Cleveland,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: sponsored by the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America, the Czechoslovak
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Labor Gymnastic Union, the American Workingmen's Socle of New York,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the Workingmen's Gymnastic Association, and the Workers Sports League of America.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: This is the problem with the pursuit of purity. At
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: a certain point, it starts to get absurd because the
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Communists get upset of the Socialists, and then the Socialists
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: get upset at each other, and sooner or later, your
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: athletic spectacle that was intended to showcase the greatest talent
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: in the world is in Taberville, Ohio, under the aegis
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America. I mean, with
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: all due respect to the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: Who wants to watch that? So what's the solution? Option two?
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Take that absolutism down a notch. Be willing to compromise.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Remember Charles Cheryl, the American delegate who fought so hard
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: for America to stay in the Berlin Olympics. Just before
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the games, someone sent him a news clipping about the
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: killing of a Jewish footballer who had apparently been dragged
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: off the field by Nazis in the middle of a match.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Cheryl wrote back your September twenty three letter about the
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Prague press story of a Jewish football player killed at
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Ratisports Silesia arrived today. If true, it is as bad
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: as Negro lynchings in our South. Cheryl had ideals. He
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: was perfectly willing to compromise around the edges. Yes, the
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: American South is a nasty place, but so what show
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: me a country without nasty places. You have to hold
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: a pure competition in an impure place, because there aren't
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: any pure places. Here's how Cheryl finishes the letter, answering
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: your clipping. Let me ask you what you would have
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: said if any foreign team had boycotted our Los Angeles
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two games because of our negro lynchings in
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: the South. Oh, right, the endless boycott bet And I
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: thought about this.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: I think you're right that that probably if you boycott
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: thirty six, you also have to boycott thirty two. And
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: then you're looking at there is no Olympics in nineteen
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: forty because it was planned for Tokyo, and then obviously
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: World War II cancels that, and not in forty four either,
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: So then that's a huge stretch of time. It's what
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: is that it's twenty years, twenty years.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: With the Olympics, twenty eight to forty eight.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: So could the Olympic movement have survived twenty years of
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: no Olympics? Probably not.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it starts to seem like you can only
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: keep the Olympics alive at a cost. After the Berlin Games,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the Germans put out a report and there's a quote
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: on the title page goes like this, sporting and chivalrous
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: competition awakens the best human qualities. It does not sever,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: but on the contrary, unites the opponents in mutual understanding
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and reciprocal respect. It also helps to strengthen the bonds
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: of peace between the nations. May the Olympic flame therefore
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: never be extinguished, Signed Adolf Hitler. That's where you end
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: up when you casually mix the purer and impure your
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: ideals in the mouth of a monster. Idealism does not
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: survive the journey to an impure place. So where does
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: all this confusion leave you? Option three? Billy Garland in
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the fall of nineteen eighteen, Los Angeles was in a
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: rough patch. The war in Europe was taking its toll
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: on the economy. The nineteen eighteen flew, which it claimed
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: millions of lives around the world, had shut down the
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: city streets. Tourism, the great life blood of Los Angeles,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: was at a standstill. Billy Garland and his friends needed
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: a plan to get the city back on track. So
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Billy calls a meeting in his office gathers together the
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: power brokers.
• 29:03
  Speaker 6: They were meeting there basically to try to figure out
• 29:06
  Speaker 6: ways to uh uh promote Los Angeles above all, to
• 29:11
  Speaker 6: uh avoid future lulsome business.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Barry Siegel again.
• 29:16
  Speaker 6: And somewhere in that meeting came up the idea of
• 29:20
  Speaker 6: bidding for and staging the Olympics as a way to
• 29:24
  Speaker 6: put La on the map uh and draw investors.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: The third way to resolve the dilemma of the Olympic
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Games is just to be a realist. You say, whatever,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: let's not complicate things. The games are really useful, and
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: if you play our cards right, we can all get rich.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: So Billy got his games here he is announcing.
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: Them on the ship. That one happened to arm O
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: Faulki be the limit game without a day, the one
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: living heritage from those different times.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Billy didn't write those lines. Believe me, someone at IOC
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: headquarters in Switzerland did. But I'm guessing this is the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: part Billy did write.
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: Many thousands of visitors to these games will come to
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: Los Angeles and California from our thoughts to the globe
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: and from every portion of our country. Let me add
• 30:22
  Speaker 5: that California recognized her responsibility as hosts. The stranger within
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: her gates will be treated to.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: That cordial hospitality and welcome.
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: So tradigal of our wonderful state, bring.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: The kids stay at one of my hotels.
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: To California, hosts of the world for the sixteen day
• 30:42
  Speaker 5: period beginning on July. Period the Witness for Yourself, the
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: aldermate and highest manifestations of modern sportsmanship known to mankind.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Billy builds a magnificent stadium, the Coliseum, just south of downtown.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: He builds the first true athletes village up in Baldwin Hills.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Billy recruits the two biggest movie stars of the day,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, to be his spokespeople. Billy
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: creates a spectacle. Billy even makes a profit on the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Games a million dollars. A few years later, Billy would
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: be all in favor of the Olympics in Berlin, but
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: not because he'd performed some elaborate political analysis. Please more
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: like love the kaiser Af hotel? Can we have one
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: in Hollywood? How much do the Nazis look to thirty
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: two for kind of inspiration on I mean they take
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: that kind of that notion of the Games as a
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: spectacle and run with it.
• 31:44
  Speaker 6: They were inspired by the thirty two Olympics very much.
• 31:47
  Speaker 6: So it was my thirty two Olympics for a model
• 31:51
  Speaker 6: model for them. In that way. Billy Garland and his
• 31:55
  Speaker 6: game showed them the way.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: There was a point deep into this series where I
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: found myself more and more sympathetic to Billy Garland, to
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the guy who just made things work. Ben never went
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: that far. We argued about it. I started this whole
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: investigation way back when believing that we should have brought
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: boycott it in thirty six. Now I'm not sure. I'm
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: not sure I agree, And now I think I'm glad
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: we went. Everyone involved in this debate back then and
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: everyone involved in debate like this today. The core of
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: all of it is everyone takes sports really really really
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: really really really seriously. And I kind of realized halfway
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: through that I'm one of those people.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: You're a person who thinks sports really matter.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't think I was. I was like, I
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: thought I was the guy who said, why are we
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: spending all this time and attention arguing about, you know,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: running a race against each other? And then I'm like,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, I am that person who cares passionately
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: about the people running out to race each other.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: With your foil me as a person who is just
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: sort of like unable to recognize even an Olympic level runner.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: And so, like you know, the question we have to
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: ask ourselves is if we want a boycott in thirty six,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: do we really want an Olympics Because the only way
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: to have in Olympics is to is to hold your
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: nose from time to time. And I realized, oh, actually,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: I think I'm I think I would be willing to
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: hold my nose.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: I think though I feel in some ways like the
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: less intellectually curious member of this team, because I started
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: feeling like we should boycott the nineteen thirty six games,
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: and I used to feel like we shouldn't have gone
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: thirty six games. So I don't know what I was
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: really investigating then having not I guess maybe just like
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: to confirm my position. I think if you think sports
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: and the Olympics really matter, which admittedly I do love
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: the Olympics, but I'm not that person. I think if
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: you think sports really, really really matter, then it's even
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: more incumbent on you to boycott the nineteen thirty six
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: Olympics because the myth that everyone buys into is that
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: this is a festival celebrating the best of what makes
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: us human. Everybody's going to come together and try their
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: hardest and have a defining moment of their life in
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: a place with the government that can then caj all
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: of that moral authority and beauty and excellence and put
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: it in the service of their own project, which is
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: the defilement of what it is to be a person,
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: like one of the most inhumane things in the twentieth century.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: So if you really think that sports matters that much,
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: then I think it's incumbent on you to not lend
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: it to that project. And not all in a way,
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: this is just a false question, because the IOC one
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: hundred percent could have moved the Olympics.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I am incredibly skeptical of the idea that
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: a boycott of Berlin would have in any way have
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: our opposition to Nazism. My guess is the opposite would
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: have happened. That we would have said, Okay, we've said,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: we've set our piece, we don't like the man, and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: we're not going to go and participate in these little games.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: And like some strikes me, you could make a completely
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: alternate scenario that this allows the Germans to feel like, Okay,
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world is like, that's you guys,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: don't like what we're doing, We're just going to go
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: off on, you know, be even worse. I don't know,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: I'm just not I don't buy that premise about I
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: never have bought that premise about symbolic acts of protest.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: But don't you think that the record shows that having
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: the Olympics in Berlin in thirty six is helpful to
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: the Nazis? Like Gerbel says, this is a really big
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: breakthrough for US and foreign currency floods into the country.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: They're happy that they got away with it. Yeah, but Ben,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: on the scale of things that were happening in the
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: nineteen thirties that had an effect on the progress of Nazism,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: this is so far down the list.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, But I still feel like the boycott
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: makes sense. And I agree it's incredibly low down on
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: the list of things that you should do in the
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: nineteen thirties to combat Nazism, But like, why wouldn't you
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: do all the things like it makes sense to do.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: We're not doing any of the other thing. This is
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: we're not doing the other things. This is why I
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: get so I lose patience with this kind of precious
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: view of our moral responsibilities because it misses the point.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: If you spend more than five minutes taking a look
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: at the way that Dorothy Thompson does and examining what's
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: going on there, you realize this is a deeply evil
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: man who we need to do something about, right, something
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: real about My point is, what kind of the games
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: is not real? It's just I'm sorry. It's a substitute
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: for actual behavior.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: But it doesn't need to be a substitute. It's a
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: substitute if you take that action in bad faith.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: But I think, I think any kind of useful reading
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: of human nature suggests that nine times out of ten,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: symbolic actions discharge our responsibility, they don't turbo charge them.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: I one hundred percent agree with that. However, what is
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: the connection between the daily reality that most of us
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: live and the systems level action? And the answer can't
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: be that there is no connection. That one of these
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: things happens in like the ether, and the other one
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: happens on the ground, and we can do whatever we
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: want on the ground because the thing is in the
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: ether is going to take care of itself, like there
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: is some obscure bridge between those two levels of existence.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: And it might be that you yourself run for office
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: and then try and change things. But like, that isn't
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: the only way you can affect these issues, and one
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: of the ways, plausibly many boycotts absolute nonsense. A boycott
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: of the thirty six games based on what the Olympics
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: do for the nazis like that one probably would have
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: meant something. There are two sets of morally disingenuous actions,
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: one that actually happened and one that were just describing
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: that could have happened. And I would just prefer that
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: one the one in not going, maybe for like complicated reasons,
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: and then hope that it puts the right kind of
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: pressure on this sort of ethereal systems level realm which
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: is not taking the action it needs to do.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Ben and I do not agree three options absolutism, soft idealism, realism.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Are you going to fight, compromise or shrug? Is your
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: true north? Dorothy Thompson, Every Brandage or Billy Garland. The
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: absolutists end up in Taberville, playing to an empty stadium,
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: The quasi idealists end up with Hitler stealing their thunder,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: and the realists give us the games, but with so
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: much Coca Cola and memorial t shirts and mixed use
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: urban construction that we forget why we wanted the Olympics
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: into first place. The last interview Ben and I did
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: for this series was in Los Angeles at UCLA with
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Millan Tiff, that wonderful triple jumper who knew Jesse Owens.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: It was hot, one of those hazy Los Angeles mornings.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: A helicopter was hovering somewhere overhead. We were standing on
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: the track at Drake Stadium, right by the long jump pit.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: They were a handful of athletes milling about, and then
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: a young woman came running past us. She was doing
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: two hundred meter intervals halfway around the track, hard with
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: a jog recovery, around and around and around, and she
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: was magical. Ben's not a track and field obsessive like
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I am. I wanted Ben to see what I was seeing.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: I want to see where how beautiful runners are. I
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: don't know see she's gonna run for us, but you
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: see her sprinting, it's just like it's just like unlike
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: any running you. I don't know who she is, but
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: she's a real runner. If she washed, her run just
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: a gorgeous and she was flying. Most people have seen
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: runners at high school track meets, or maybe world class
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: athletes on television. But to really appreciate this kind of performance,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: you have to witness it in real life up close,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: like we were at eye level five feet away. Then
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: you can see the full beauty of what a human
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: being can do, propelling themselves with such elegance and effortlessness.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Just the tap tap tap of their shoes landing lightly
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: on the track, you can just tell what someone's I
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: don't know who she is. Then Milan Tiff said, that's
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Sidney MacLaughlin. Sidney McLaughlin, Sydney McLaughlin, Lavroney, two time Olympic
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: gold medalists in the forumder Beater hurdles, the world record holder,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: one of the greatest sprinters in history. We walked towards her.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: I felt the way an art student would feel if
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: they randomly ran into Picasso on the street. No, that's
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: not quite right. I felt the way an art student
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: would feel if they stumbled across some amazing painting at
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: a garage sale, stared at it in awe and then
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: realized it's a Picasso. We were standing right next to her,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: so I started to whisper, to try and play a
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: cool as soon as I thought she was much taller.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: She's one of the greatest female athletes. I was like,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can't believe I didn't.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: I didn't.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: It didn't ever occurred to me that it was full.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: Ben and I had spent months trying to solve the
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: moral puzzle presented by the Berlin Olympics, trying to see
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: clearly through the fog of nineteen thirty six, first should
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: we go? And then, more importantly, if you have ideals,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: how do you hold onto them in an ugly, messy world?
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: And that day at the UCLA track, by some miraculous
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: twist of fate, we got a glimpse of the Sublime
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: gliding past us, clear as day, close enough to touch,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: showing us the way. We will have many more arguments
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: in the future, just as we had in nineteen thirty six.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: We continued to live in a very impure place, and
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: we should have those arguments. That's our job to engage
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: with what is difficult, to try and pick a safe
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: path through the minefield. But the epiphany I had as
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Sidney McLaughlin swept past us is that we need to
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: be clear about what we're arguing. For Charles Cheryl was
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: protecting some archaic notion of amateurism. Avery Brundage was furthering
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: his own ambitions. Jesse Owens was navigating the impossible complexity
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: of life as a black man. Billy Garland just wanted
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: to build stuff. Altogether, they loaded up the Olympic movement
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: and with so much excess baggage that it's a miracle
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: that didn't sing and we don't need any of it.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: It's just getting in the way. The pure place that
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: everyone was looking for is not a country or a city.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: It's a feeling. It's the awe that comes from watching
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: someone perform an athletic feat better and faster than anyone else.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: What's the right to the line? Sidney MacLaughlin is bringing
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: it to the La La. Muhammed Mohammad's trying to hold
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: on McLoughlin on the inside to the line. That's gonna
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: be Sidney's time again. That's a long record again.
• 43:36
  Speaker 8: My Cloughlin.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Orisionist History is produced by Benda daf Haffrey, Tolly Emmlin
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: and Nina Bird Lawrence. Our editor is Sarah Nix. Fact
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: checking by Arthur Gomberts and Jail Goldfine. Original scoring by
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Luis Kara, Mastering by Sarah Bruger and Jake Krsky, Engineering
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: by Nina Bird Lawrence. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Special thanks to Karen Schakerji. Additional thanks to Michael Yushinsky,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Meredith Rawlins, Michael Specter and Michael Linton at Pushkin. Special
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: thanks to Jake Flanagan, Owen Miller, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Jordan McMillan, Nicole opten Bosch and Brian Schrebnick, Christina Sullivan,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Kerry Brody and Greta Come. I'm Malcolm Glapnow