Host: Quinn McNeill

Quinn: [00:00:02] Welcome to All Together Now, Fridays with The Moth. I'm your host for this week, Quinn McNeill. 

As The Moth's digital media assistant, my work is primarily seen and not heard. I'm so excited to be on mic this week, but if you really want to see what I do, follow The Moth on Instagram, @mothstories, or on Twitter and Facebook, @themoth. 

This month, All Together Now is all about connection. Here at The Moth, we believe empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is a great way to inspire true connection. This past summer, a shared feeling of anger towards systemic injustice connected me to fellow protestors all across the world. Today, August 28th, marks three months of daily protests in New York City. So, we're bringing you two stories about anger, and its power to heal and spark change.

Our first story this week is from Anne Moraa. Anne came to us through The Moth’s Global Community Program, when she told this story at a workshop for women and girls in Nairobi, Kenya. Here's Anne, live at The Moth.

Anne: [00:01:00] Okay. It's two years ago. I'm driving home from work, as you should. [audience laughter] It's Nairobi. So, on a three-lane road, there's about 10 lanes happening, which is fine. It's normal. As I'm driving, a car which is overlapping hits my car. It's a very gentle love tap. It's just a whisper of an accident. I was going to just brush it off. It’s the kind of thing where you know it's not even really going to show a scratch. But the man driving rolls down his window and starts shouting at me like, “Women drivers, why can’t you keep the--” I'm furious. Like, he did that and then he hit me and he's screaming at me. He's driving past me slowly in traffic, still shouting obscenities at me.

I'm so angry my hands start shaking. I'm holding the steering wheel. So, what do I do? Nothing. I just sit. A memory comes to mind. Since I was a kid, I used to be this tantrum-throwing kid. I was the kind of kid who adults were scared of. Something you learn very quickly if you're an angry kid, particularly an angry Black girl, is that you should not grow up to become an angry Black woman. At best, you'll be irritating. At worst, you will get killed. So, right from an early age, I was told how to sit up straight, how to be quiet, how to bury that anger down and keep it within myself. 

I'm nine years old, and my mom brings home sausages, a packet of 12. I need to clarify that I love sausages. [audience laughter] I know you’re laughing. No, no, I loved [audience laughter] sausages. I have two brothers, one older by eight years, one younger by two. Once the sausages were brought home, as growing up to be a lady of decorum, we called a referendum about the sausages. [audience laughter] We had a long discussion, and we decided collectively that of the 12, I would get 2, they would get 10, we would get up at 08:00 AM, the next day on Sunday morning to make them together and eat them while watching cartoons. It was a very clear agreement. 

I go to bed, and I wake up and I smell sausages. [audience laughter] I’m so excited, like my brothers love me so much. They decided to make the sausages for me. I don’t even have to cook. I go downstairs and they’re sitting full, very full, on the table and they’re looking at me with the empty plates in front of them. I feel the rage. My hand is shaking, but I’m a lady of decorum, and I ask, [clears throat] “So, where’s my sausage?” My brothers just look at me. They’re like, “No, it’s over.” Nothing else. [scoffs] 

This is when my memory fades to white. I remember only that I found-- I had a wooden spoon in my hand, and my 6-foot, 17-year-old brother was running away from me and I am screaming. I hear my mother running down the stairs. She comes out and she’s like, “Hey, what are you doing?” She gives the threat she always gave us as siblings when we fought like, “Whoever wins, I’m going to spank. Then I’m going to spank the loser next.”

But I don’t even care. I’m so mad. I look at her, and in fits of rage and being so upset, I’m like, “We agreed and they ate the sausages. It’s not fair and it’s not right.” I’m so furious. 

My mother listens. When I’m finally calm enough for her to understand, she pauses and looks at me and says, “Okay. Haya, do it.” [audience laughter] Yeah. [chuckles] The joy of the Lord granting you the gift of smiting your enemies with righteous anger. I was so happy, I was chasing them around the house. They could do nothing to me, because I knew I was right. My mother said so, so there. 

I’m back in the car, shaking with rage and looking at this guy who’s now driven past after he’d shouted at me. And I hear it again, “Okay. Haya, do it.” [audience chuckle] I get out of the car, I walk down the highway. My door’s open, my bag is hanging out, money, I don’t even care. I go to his car window and I grab it like, “Hey, where you going? Can you just hit me and drive off?” The man is like, “What is happening?” I’m like, “No, you can’t do that. Park there.” I start screaming instructions, telling everybody on the road what to do and how to do it. “Watch him. Watch my car. Get the police.” Da-da-da.

We get off to the side of the road. He tries to shout me down. At that moment, I was not a lady of decorum. I was that angry nine-year-old girl being like, “You will not talk to me that way. I have been doing this since I was born. You want to have a shouting match? [audience laughter] Let’s go.” We shout at each other until he finally pauses and he’s like, “Okay, okay, okay. Fine, fine. Madame, what do you want?” I wanted the same thing then that I wanted when my brothers took those sausages. I wanted an apology. Just like them, he looked at me and said, “Okay, I’m sorry.” Thank you.

[cheers and applause] 

Quinn: [00:07:20] That was Anne Moraa. Anne is a Kenyan feminist cultural worker who writes, edits and performs. She’s the M in LAM Sisterhood, an award-winning story company that fills the world with stories for African women to feel seen, heard and loved. She’s at work on her debut novel, all while eating copious amounts of chili lemon crisps.

Anne told this story with us a few years ago. When we asked her how she feels about it now, she said, “I’m seeing more and more that rage is a lighthouse. It guides me in knowing, this cannot do, and then revealing what must be done. By allowing myself to feel it as a child, I am now better at harnessing my anger and speaking it into the world with empathy and firmness. Young me was always right.” 

Our last story today is from Caroline Hunter. Caroline told this story at a Mainstage show on Martha’s Vineyard, where the theme of the night was Occasional Magic. Here’s Caroline, live at The Moth.

[cheers and applause] 

Caroline: [00:08:27] I was born in 1946, the fourth of six children born to Marion and Stephen Hunter in segregated New Orleans. The six of us walked five blocks to Corpus Christi Elementary School for our formative education. We were kept busy, very, very busy. When Corpus Christi’s summer camp let out, we had to go to the local public library to sign up for the summer reading club, and soon developed an acute love of books and reading. I think I read every book in the Nora Navra Public Library, by the time I left New Orleans. 

For high school, I went on to Xavier Prep. We had to travel across town on segregated public buses. I’ve sat behind the colored sign. I’ve drank a lot of colored water. I even shopped at the Woolworth’s Five and Dime, where you could not try on clothes nor sit at the counter and eat. In high school, I had Mr. Valder, who we called Mr. V. He taught us about the Civil Rights Movement and chided us to get involved. But we lived in the protective bubble of segregation. We had Black everything we needed. Teachers, lawyers, doctors, retail businesses of every kind, seamstresses, auto shops. 

So, while the Civil Rights Movement was going on around us, we were not involved. But there was one thing Mr. Valder did that reached me. He introduced us to Cry, the Beloved Country, the story of the lives of Blacks in South Africa under apartheid. There were many things in that book that resonated with my segregated life. I was so deeply moved by the suffering and the pain of the Africans in that story that I recited passages of the book to my family and friends. Little did I know that book, Cry, the Beloved Country, would change my life. 

I went on to Xavier University and graduated in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. In my junior year, Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Months after I graduated, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. I was hired by the Polaroid Corporation after filling out a recruiting brochure sent to the historically Black colleges. I arrived in Cambridge, fulfilling the dream of a young girl. I was a working professional at the Polaroid Corporation. I integrated the color labs where I was hired. There were other Black workers, but I was the first professional research scientist hired there.

While at Polaroid, I joined the Boston Youth Motivation Program. It was a corporate effort to donate workers to go into the Boston Public Schools to motivate the children. But I was troubled by some things when I entered the classroom. When I mentioned this in the group’s follow-up, group leaders said, “Oh, no, we can’t deal with that. We just have to go in and do the best job we can.” There was one other person who was equally troubled as I was. That was Ken Williams. He was a Polaroid photographer. We developed a friendship, and eventually, a relationship. 

On the day of the historic moment, when I went to pick Ken up for lunch, he was in the back lab and so, we had to walk through the rooms. And for some reason, on the way out, we noticed an ID badge. Maybe it was the picture of the other Black worker, the only other Black guy in the shop that was on the ID badge that caught our attention. Below his name was the phrase, Department of the Mines, Union of South Africa. 

I’m sure we froze for a while looking at the card. Ken took it off the board. We examined it to see if it was real. And then, he said, “I didn’t know Polaroid was in South Africa.” And I said, “I know, it’s a bad place for Black people.” All the memories of Mr. Valder and Cry, the Beloved Country, and all the memories, the stories that I read of the pain and suffering of the African masses came rushing back to me. That evening, we went to the library, looked up South African Encyclopedia and checked out tons of books on South Africa. We researched and read. The more we read, the more we wanted to know. The more we knew, the more horrified we were.

We learned of the rules and laws of the system of apartheid, the legal separation of people by race and skin color, the denial of the right to vote and the repression often caused by not having a passbook, a 60-page document that every African had to carry on their person at all times. And Polaroid was making the photos for those passbooks. We decided that as Black workers at Polaroid, we had to do something. Ken made a leaflet using Polaroid’s favorite slogan, An Instant Picture in a minute. The leaflet said, Polaroid imprisons Black people in 60 seconds. They sold their system to South Africa. They’ll sell it to Rhodesia, Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia to seize the times.

We went to the office of The Old Mole, a radical newspaper and a site for many organizing groups in Cambridge, and used their mimeograph machine to reproduce our leaflets. And then, we headed to my workshop, the color labs, signed into the building with our own Polaroid ID work cards and proceeded to put our leaflet neatly up on every bulletin board on the back of restroom stalls, and where the carpet people parked. We signed out and left the building. 

On Monday, when we reported to work at our respective places, the Polaroid police and the Cambridge police were looking for us. They let us go to work while they tried to figure out what to do. When we arrived at our job sites, our coworkers were very angry at us. Polaroid couldn’t be in South Africa, it’s a liberal corporation. It has good policies. So, we asked our unbelieving coworkers to call Human Relations to see if we were telling the truth. When the phones were taken off the hook and no one got a response, their anger shifted away from us. 

That evening, our little group gathered and we decided we would have a rally to let the rest of the workers know what was going on. We went back to The Old Mole office to look for a South African speaker. They found Chris Nteta for us, a young Black South African divinity student who had just arrived to be educated in Cambridge with his young family. 

On the day of the rally, we had planned to have it outdoors in the open green. Ken found out that the cab drivers had been replaced by FBI agents and police officers. And there were snipers on the roof. So, we moved our rally under the trees. Ken spoke about the laws and history of South Africa, and then Chris Nteta spoke. Here was our young Black South African to say from his own person, “I had my passbook photo taken by a Polaroid.” He talked about the lives and details of Blacks under South Africa’s repressive regime, and he talked about the role of Polaroid and corporations in supporting South Africa. 

We had prepared three demands. We wrote them on Polaroid stationery as an internal memo and called ourselves the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement. Those demands said that Polaroid should withdraw immediately from South Africa, that they should denounce apartheid in the U.S. and in South Africa and that they should turn over their profits to the recognized liberation movement. Our rally drew a lot of attention, and it made news. 

Following the rally, we had a contentious meeting with Polaroid executives, where we presented our three demands amid their denials. The following day, Ken was fired. But he was vigilant and vowed to continue by any means. I continued to work, leafleting before and after work, with many speaking engagements around the area, building a coalition of students, civil rights organizations, church groups, work and labor groups to continue the fight to get Polaroid out of South Africa. When they decided they would not, we called for an international boycott. And that coalition, local coalition, grew nationally and internationally.

In 1971, in February, months after our beginning, we testified before the United Nations Special Committee on Apartheid. Shortly after that, I was fired for misconduct detrimental to the best interests of a corporation, organizing a boycott. Although I had many regrets about losing my first professional job, it gave me 24/7 to work on the boycott. 

For seven years, despite many trials and tribulations, the boycott campaign led by the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement continued. And in 1977, Polaroid withdrew from South Africa. [audience cheers and applause] 

It was the beginning of the end of apartheid, and the beginning of many US corporations leaving South Africa, but the first to leave due to international public pressure and a boycott. The real moment of triumph came many years later in 1990, when, in a broadcast studio on Channel 7 TV in Boston, I sat making commentary with my husband, Ken Williams and the Reverend Chris Nteta as we watched Nelson Mandela walk out of jail. [audience cheers and applause] 

It was the culmination of a story, the end and the beginning of a chapter of a book, and a connection to the heartfelt messages and lessons from Mr. Valder. And it really was about that book. Thank you.

[cheers and applause]

Quinn: [00:21:41] That was Caroline Hunter. Caroline was born and raised in New Orleans. Since her anti-apartheid work began, she’s received numerous awards for her longstanding commitment to the fight. Now, Caroline lives on Martha’s Vineyard and leads the Polar Bears, the historic African-American swim and water aerobics club. 

I think a lot about the stereotype of the angry Black woman and the way it’s used to dismiss and shame Black women who challenge societal inequalities. This week’s stories remind me of my favorite speech by Audre Lorde, about the use of Black women’s anger. She says, “When we turn from anger, we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely familiar.” I love the way Anne and Caroline don’t shy away from their anger. But instead, use it as fuel to make their lives and the lives of others better.

I’ve seen a lot of people choosing to use their anger for positive change these last few months. I’ve marched, chanted and even meditated alongside some of them in my favorite weekly protest, Meditating for Black Lives. I love those quiet moments where we check in with ourselves and sit with our heavier, more difficult feelings. As protests continue, I hope we stand firm in our anger. It means there’s something worth fighting for. 

If you’re inspired to think more deeply about our stories this week, here are a few questions to get you started. What is your relationship to anger like? When was a time you stood up for yourself or others? You can also find these prompts in the Extras for this episode on our website, themoth.org/extras. And remember, you can always pitch us a story of your own right on our website. 

That’s all for this week. Until next time, from all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.

Julia: [00:23:26] Quinn McNeill is The Moth’s Digital Media Assistant. When she’s not making graphics for The Moth, she likes to spend her time in her local ceramic studio making plates, bowls and platters for the extravagant, well-attended dinner party of her dreams.

Quinn: [00:23:41] Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth Podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.