meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Notes from America with Kai Wright

A Secret Meeting in South Bend

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.41.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mike Jackson, like many descendants of the Great Migration, has a family home that was built from protest, resilience and ingenuity. In the spring of 1950, his parents met in secret with 25 other families to create Better Homes of South Bend. Their efforts would later become a collection of homes on the 1700 and 1800 blocks of N. Elmer St. But today, the value of those houses doesn’t match the work it took to put them there. This week: what these family stories of housing in the “heartland” say about inequity in home ownership today. - Gabrielle Robinson is the author of Better Homes of South Bend: An American Story of Courage. Robinson is currently working with a Washington D.C. based playwright to adapt the Better Homes story into a play. - Andre Perry is a Fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and the author of The Devaluation of Assets in Black Neighborhoods and the forthcoming book Know Your Price. - The full interview with Leroy and Margaret Cobb, as well as other interviews about South Bend life during the time Better Homes organizing, can be heard through the Oral History Collection of the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center. Hosted by Kai Wright. Reported by Jenny Casas. The United States of Anxiety’s health coverage is supported in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Working to build a Culture of Health that ensures everyone in America has a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. More at RWJF.org. CORRECTION: In this episode, we say that Andre Perry's study was published "last year." It actually came out in November 2018.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey everybody. We've been asking you about your anxieties because we know they shape your politics.

0:05.6

What are you carrying into the polls that surprises you in 2020?

0:09.4

Here's what Olivia from New Jersey told us.

0:11.9

I never thought my generation

0:13.7

millennials would have to adapt to a childless, marriageless, and apartment

0:18.4

lifestyles because of the economy and get ridiculed by previous generations for it.

0:24.0

Keep your anxieties coming.

0:25.0

We may not be able to solve them for you,

0:28.0

but we may make an episode to help understand them at least.

0:31.0

And the more personal to you, the better. Just record a voice memo and

0:35.2

email it to me at anxiety at WNYc.org. Thanks.

0:42.6

I'm Kywright and this is the United States of Anxiety,

0:46.0

the show about the unfinished business of our history

0:48.6

and its grip on our future. 1. That we can't.

1:03.0

Yeah.

1:05.0

I'm.

1:10.0

I grew up.

1:11.0

I grew up in Indiana, but raised by Southerners. My dad's people came up from Alabama through

1:16.8

Ohio and the hills of Kentucky before they landed in the Midwest. They were chasing

1:21.2

manufacturing jobs. These new opportunities open to black workers because of World War II.

1:27.0

So I'm a proud child of what's known as the Great Migration, an estimated 6 million black people who left the South when it became

1:35.8

painfully obvious that the promises of the Civil War and equal rights for all, that none of that

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.