Wes Pratt, a teenager here in the 1960s, and Jaela Burris discuss race-related topics, like the impact of a triple lynching in 1906 on the Springfield square.
Stand Up and Stay Up
The topic was the 1906 lynching of three black men on the Springfield square, and the exodus of the town’s thriving black community that immediately followed. But guest Wes Pratt, Chief Diversity Officer at MSU, and reporter Jaela Burris ended up discussing a wide range of race-related topics, like growing up black in a town that never has completely recovered from that lynching. A source cited in this podcast is “Many Thousand Gone,” about Springfield’s lost black history due to the hangings in 1906, written by the late Dr. Katherine Lederer.