One Town's Blueprint for Resegregating America

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A real estate investor’s pursuit of cheap land has prompted a lawsuit against a compound in Arkansas that will test whether civil rights laws can stop a whites-only town from existing in America. Today, Debra Kamin, a New York Times investigative reporter, discusses the community and why its members are convinced that in this political climate, no one is going to stop them.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Did you understand who these people were and what they believed in?
0:05.7	Not as well as I thought I did.
0:10.3	Who did you think they were?
0:12.4	They call it return to the land.
0:14.5	So I thought they were, you know, a community of people wanting to return to the land.
0:19.3	You know, gardening and communal type of living and things
0:25.4	like that. And if you would become a member of their club, you were able to purchase land for
0:30.8	$1,000 an acre, which as a real estate investor is extraordinarily appealing because that's way
0:36.4	under market.
0:39.6	And your husband's black, correct?
0:40.6	Yes.
0:43.6	They wanted to have a whites only community.
0:47.4	So initially, I wasn't really thinking about applying.
0:57.4	But then as time went on, the appeal of the investment opportunity, I just couldn't shake it. Okay, so I'm going to love it with you. Yeah. I mean, you're clearly a very smart person. So I just want to make
1:01.5	sure we understand what the motivation was here. And that's fine. The motivation was the investment.
1:06.2	Maybe there's other white supremacists that want to vacation there and on my land.
1:11.6	It's like the ultimate experience in capitalism.
1:13.6	For me, a good investment is a good investment.
1:16.6	It doesn't matter to me who I'm buying it from or who's in that area.
1:23.6	This is America.
1:25.6	There are people that are white supremacists every place in this country.
1:33.3	From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

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

Generated transcripts are the property of The New York Times and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.