EP123: The Needle In The Hand, The Bigger the Bureaucracy, the Smaller the Customer and "Separate, but Equal": The Story of Supreme Injustice (Plessy v. Ferguson)
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2021
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Joy Neal Kidney tells the story of her grandmother's needle incident during the Depression years; Mike Leven shares his story as past President and Chief Operating Officer of Las Vegas Sands Corp. One of the great hoteliers of all time—a legend in his business; and Homer Plessy's descendant, Keith Plessy, tells us the story of the Plessy v. Ferguson case, as well as what he and Judge Ferguson's descendant are doing about it now.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - The Needle In The Hand
10:00 - The Bigger the Bureaucracy, the Smaller the Customer
23:00 - "Separate, but Equal": The Story of Supreme Injustice (Plessy v. Ferguson)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your story. |
| 0:18.0 | Send them to Our American Stories.com. That's our American Stories.com. They're some of our favorites. |
| 0:23.8 | Speaking of which, up next Joy Neal Kidney, a listener and storyteller who hails from our great |
| 0:30.2 | I-Heart station, W.HO. 1040 in Des Moines, Iowa. |
| 0:35.0 | Joy is the author of Leara's Lettersters and Liora's Dexter Stories, |
| 0:39.5 | The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression. Here's a story about a needle incident |
| 0:44.1 | Joy's grandmother went through during those years. |
| 0:51.5 | My grandparents were all dressed up to go out, to a wedding maybe, or a funeral. |
| 0:58.2 | In the January 1935 black and white photo, Clay Wilson has on a three-piece suit and a tweed, |
| 1:05.6 | newsboy type, or Gatsby cap. Leora is in a dark two-piece outfit, wearing pumps, silk stockings, and a hat with a little feather. |
| 1:16.7 | Mom, do you know where your folks might have been going in this old picture, I asked? |
| 1:21.8 | Yes, they were waiting for a ride to the clinic so she could have the needle removed from her hand. |
| 1:31.3 | Thank you. to the clinic so she could have the needle removed from her hand. Oh, I knew that needle story. |
| 1:34.3 | Grandma was visiting us once at the farm when I was a girl. |
| 1:38.3 | She caught me parking a sewing needle in the arm of the couch. |
| 1:42.3 | Never leave a needle like that. You could end up with an ordeal like I once had. |
| 1:48.0 | She showed me how she couldn't flatten her right hand. |
| 1:52.0 | Grandma Leora told how she'd lodged a quilting needle in the bib of an apron worn over her house dress. |
| 2:00.0 | Her tub washer was broken, so she scrubbed the laundry, |
| 2:05.1 | for nine people, mind you, on a corrugated metal washboard. |
| 2:10.0 | She felt the stab in the palm of her hand. |
| 2:13.4 | It happened so fast, she said, it had broken off with the larger end in her palm. |
... |
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