SIKESTON, Mo. — At age 79, Nannetta Forrest, whose father, Cleo Wright, was lynched in Sikeston, Missouri, before she was born, wonders how the decades-long silence that surrounded his death in 1942 influenced her life.
In 2020, Sikeston police killed another young Black man, 23-year-old Denzel Taylor. Taylor’s shooting death immediately made local headlines, but then the cycle of silence in Sikeston repeated itself.
Host Cara Anthony and pediatrician Rhea Boyd draw health parallels between the loss experienced by two families nearly 80 years apart. In both cases, young daughters were left behind to grapple with unanswered questions and devastating loss.
“Regardless of the age, children experience longing,” Boyd said. “They miss people when they don’t see them again; even babies can experience that.”
[Editor’s note: A swear word is bleeped out in this episode. The time stamp is 12:03.]
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In Conversation With …
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Transcript: Trauma Lives in the Body
Editor’s note: If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio of “Silence in Sikeston,” which includes emotion and emphasis not found in the transcript. This transcript, generated using transcription software, has been edited for style and clarity. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
[Solemn instrumental music begins playing softly.]
Cara Anthony: When Nannetta Forrest was growing up, a lot went unsaid in her family.
Nannetta Forrest: You know, people didn’t do a lot of talking back then. And it was almost like trying to pull teeth out of a hen.
Cara Anthony: She lived nearly her whole life in Indiana, but Nannetta’s story — the secrets and the silence — all started in Sikeston, Missouri.
Nannetta was born there in 1942. Several months earlier, while her mother was pregnant, Nannetta’s father was lynched.
His name … was Cleo Wright.
Nannetta Forrest: He was taken away before I got here!
Cara Anthony: Taken from a jail cell. Taken and dragged through the streets by a white mob. Taken to Sunset Addition, the center of Black life in Sikeston, and lynched. Taken from his family.
Nannetta’s mother kept quiet. She never wanted her daughter to know what happened to her father.
But one day, Nannetta was with her grandfather. A game show that aired on CBS in the 1950s was on TV. It was called “Strike it Rich.”
[Clip from “Strike it Rich” begins playing.]
“Strike It Rich” clip: Mr. “Strike It Rich” himself, Warren Hull. [Applause]
Nannetta Forrest: Celebrities would go on, and they’d try to win money for, like, underprivileged people.
“Strike It Rich” clip: Thanks a lot!
Nannetta Forrest: And that’s when Grandpa told me, he said, “You can go on there, Nan.” And I said, “Go on there with what?” And that’s when he went in his wallet and pulled out this yellow piece of paper.
[Solemn instrumental music plays.]
Cara Anthony: It was a newspaper clipping about the lynching of her father.
Nannetta Forrest: And that was my first time ever becoming aware of it.
Cara Anthony: It was around 1955. Nannetta was 13 or 14 at the time.
Nannetta Forrest: I did wanna know the story behind it, what happened, but nobody seemed to wanna talk about it.
Cara Anthony: Over the years …