One Year: 1990: Mandrake the Magician
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2024
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s a holiday weekend, so the What Next team is taking a little break from the news, and dropping you one of our favorite other Slate podcasts. This time around, we’re listening to One Year: 1990. We'll be back in your feed tomorrow.
A middle-aged single dad in Chicago was outraged by all the cigarette billboards popping up in Black communities. In 1990, he picked up a paint roller and became an anti-tobacco vigilante. And he did it all under a secret identity.
This episode was written by Josh Levin, One Year’s editorial director. One Year’s senior producer is Evan Chung.
This episode was produced by Kelly Jones, Olivia Briley, and Evan Chung. It was edited by Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slate’s executive producer of narrative podcasts.
Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis.
Join Slate Plus to get a special behind-the-scenes conversation at the end of our season about how we put together our 1990 stories. Slate Plus members also get to listen to all Slate podcasts without any ads.
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Transcript
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| 0:21.0 | Hey everyone, it's Mary Harris. It's a holiday weekend, so we're taking a little break from the news and dropping one of our favorite other Slate podcasts in your feed. This time around, we are listening to One Year 1990. Each episode of this show is an in-depth lookback, all about a single news story from a given year, |
| 0:27.4 | featuring the actual people involved. This one is called Mandrake the Magician. It follows a single dad, Henry Brown, who recognized the threat of cigarette billboards. These advertisements |
| 0:33.3 | were disproportionately targeting his and so many other black communities all across the U.S. |
| 0:39.0 | When his complaints fell on deaf ears, Brown took matters into his own hands with a secret identity |
| 0:45.3 | and a paintbrush. I'm a schoolteacher. I taught elementary school for 34 and a half years. |
| 0:56.3 | I've been living in Chicago all my life. |
| 1:01.4 | Gwen Jones grew up in Woodlawn, a black community on Chicago's South Side. |
| 1:06.0 | In the 1980s, she met a man who'd been raised in the same part of town, |
| 1:08.4 | but they didn't find each other in Chicago. |
| 1:11.3 | It was on a skiing trip. |
| 1:12.9 | Can I tell you about that? |
| 1:13.6 | Sure. |
| 1:14.2 | Okay. |
| 1:16.3 | I went on a skiing trip. |
| 1:20.1 | Gwen had signed up for a vacation for black skiers. |
| 1:21.8 | And when she got to the mountain, |
| 1:24.8 | she caught sight of something that commanded her attention. |
| 1:33.7 | I was down at the bottom, and I looked up at the top, and I saw this handsome man going down the slopes. |
| 1:34.3 | He had on a wide-brim hat, a double-breasted suit, and a duster. |
| 1:41.3 | When it was long duster coats, it was flying all, you know, in the wind. And I would never |
| 1:47.3 | see anybody ski down the slopes like that. I mean, it was just, it was awesome to me. You were like, |
| 1:53.7 | this is a guy I want to get to know. Yes, totally. And plus, like I said, he was a good-looking man. |
... |
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