The Preamble

On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon establishes the foundation of another man who played a pivotal role in Brown v. The Board of Education. Today, in 2022, the idea of someone serving as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court with no previous experience working in the Judicial Branch of government, would be unheard of. And it would certainly be unheard of for a gubernatorial candidate to win both the Republican AND Democratic primaries when running for office in California. However, that is exactly what prosecutor, turned Governor, turned Chief Justice did, in what would become a 50-year career of public service for Earl Warren. Justice Warren carried his national prominence to the Supreme Court, and was determined to have all 9 Justices agree on the Brown vs. The Board of Education decision. The makeup of the high court proved to be consequential, as the Justices brought a broad diversity of viewpoints, rather than consisting only of professional judges. While Justice Warren was ultimately successful in leading the court to making a unanimous decision, the President who appointed him – President Dwight D. Eisenhower – would come too deeply regret his decision to appoint him. How did Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall know each other, prior to meeting in the courtroom? And how do wiretaps from the FBI tie into all of this through a secret bureau program? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon continues a riveting conversation with pulitzer-prize winning author, Gilbert King. We pick up with the involvement of J.Edgar Hoover and the case of The Groveland Four, including the political dance Thurgood Marshall did with Hoover to strategically move the Civil Rights movement forward. Often flying under the radar in history, Florida, for some years, was far worse than higher profile areas in the Cotton Belt when it came to violent acts against Civil Rights advocates and the Black community. Florida had the highest per-capita rate of lynching of any state in the country, but as the land of “surf and sun,” it did not fit the narrative of the broader movement of the Civil Rights era that followed Brown vs. the Board of Education. What does “tranquility of the South” have to do with an investigation that was quashed by a U.S. attorney? How did the momentum of a diligent author lead to the exoneration of The Groveland Four 72 years after their arrests? And how did the work of Harry T. Moore and Harriette T. Moore single handedly change the voting demographics, and sacrificed their lives for? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon speaks with pulitzer-prize winning author, Gilbert King. It's Important for people to know that the popular narrative of the 1950s – depicted as a time full of sock hops, poodle skirts, and Rock & Roll – was not the lived experience of many Black Americans. In numerous ways, their experience was often worse than what people commonly think of, particularly in the South, including forms of debt slavery. This leads us to The Groveland Four: A harrowing story of 4 young black men who were targeted, and wrongly accused of the rape of a 17-year old white farm wife in rural Florida. “Mr. Civil Rights” himself, Thurgood Marshall, learned of the capital punishment case and was eventually able to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, though not in time to save them all. How did he appeal this case to the U.S. Supreme Court? And what happens when the town sheriff takes the law into his own hands? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon makes the connection between the desegregation of the United States military to the power or writing a letter. It can be hard to believe sometimes that writing a letter or contacting our representatives can make a difference, but that is exactly what one honorably discharged decorated Veteran did in 1948. The ripples of the letter written by Isaac Woodwards would contribute to a tidal wave in the Civil Rights movement. We can’t talk about these waves of momentum, however, without talking about the Korean War. Often a time glossed over in history classes, the Korean war at its core was a conflict about Communism vs. Democracy. This eventually led to more than 50 arrests of black soldiers in Korea who were arrested on trumped-up charges and court martialed. Who later defended them and cleared most of the charges? You guessed it: Thurgood Marshall. The war was directly related to the court case he had recently argued before the Supreme Court. How does this connect to the warrenless wiretaps? And who later received the more than 20,000 pages of information the FBI had on the Supreme Court? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon guides us to a lawsuit years in the making, that shaped America. While some of the names tied with the milestone have been all but lost to history, you will hear many of those uncredited names mentioned in this episode, including McKinley Bernet, Vivian Marshall, and Lucinda Todd. The year was 1952 when Brown v. The Board of Education was argued before the Supreme Court by our friend, Thurgood Marshall. But did you know that the case was actually heard by the high court twice? You also might not know that J. Edgar Hoover, mentioned in previous episodes, was spying on the Supreme Court Justices for decades. What would Hoover have to gain from these warrantless wiretaps? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon continues the story of young Thurgood Marshall as he travels to rural Tennessee on behalf of the NAACP and finds himself on the wrong side of trumped up charges and an angry mob. We also reconnect with George McLaurin and hear about Ada Fisher, two lifelong students who wanted equal opportunities in education and stood firm until they had a victorious Supreme Court ruling. Sharon also catches listeners up with J. Egar Hoover as he begins to transform the Federal Bureau of Investigation, though not without stirring up controversy over his denial of organized crime. What made Hoover so hesitant to pursue mid-century crime bosses? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the first episode of our new special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s. Today, Sharon introduces us to a few key people who became the driving force behind early Civil Rights activism. We meet a young man named Thuroughgood–a bit of a troublemaker who put his curiosity and sense of justice to work and sought incremental change through the legal system. Joining him in the fight against the longstanding legality of “separate but equal” was the McLaurin family. Together, they sued the University of Oklahoma, which gave George McLaurin admission to the graduate program alongside white students… but the journey to true equal learning had only just begun. Sharon also introduces us to another important person–arguably America’s most powerful man in the mid-20th century–who was both a help and hindrance to the Civil Rights Movement. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Sharon is joined by writer and author Patrick Radden Keefe, whose new book, Rogues, tells twelve stories of people with big personalities–the grifters, the rebels, the crooks, the crime families, and the people who don’t play by the rules. Patrick talks about how he researches his larger-than-life stories, and gives us a few teasers, like what it was like to interview a woman who is in the Witness Protection Program after testifying against her own brother, and how deeply he dove into the world of wine fraud and revenge. Patrick is fascinated by the choices people make, and what it takes to get inside their minds where they justify their actions, and perhaps even consider themselves the hero of their own stories. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Sharon talks to Minnesota State Legislator Jen Schultz. Jen is currently running for Congress, and is also an educator who has taught economics at the University of Minnesota Duluth for about twenty years. Rep Schultz talks about the ins and outs of working in state government: how budgets are set as well as how bills are written, introduced, prioritized, and voted on. She touches topics like model legislation, which is when a state reviews bills that have passed in other states and looks at ways to adapt it to their state, how state legislators work together across the aisle, and what they do when the session has wrapped for the season (there’s a lot of door knocking involved). Shifting gears, Sharon and Rep. Schultz talk about her current run for Congress, how she plans to bring her state expertise to the federal level, and the value women bring to political office. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In today’s episode, Jenna Kutcher sits down to talk with Sharon about the release of her first book, How Are You, Really?: Living Your Truth One Answer at a Time and how she wrote the manuscript in secret, doing it on her own terms. Jenna loved the refining process with her book, which saw it evolve from a business and marketing subject into a book that gets more personal, tackling topics like body image, loneliness, community, and personal intuition. Sharon and Jenna also touch on their shared sense of community living in the same Northern Minnesota city, and how to both tackle life’s challenges one small step at a time and say no when you need to. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices