0:02 [SPEAKER_00]: as history enthusiasts. 0:04 [SPEAKER_00]: We've all explored folklore at some point or another, and among these stories are some that seem so bizarre, they couldn't possibly be true. 0:16 [SPEAKER_00]: But as we've seen on this podcast, the wildest stories have an uncomfortable amount of truth in them. 0:29 [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back, friend, to hometown history. 0:32 [SPEAKER_00]: In today's episode, we're going to learn about what sounds like a scary bedtime story. 0:38 [SPEAKER_00]: But was a real and true horror in American history. 0:43 [SPEAKER_00]: This is the legend of the night doctors. 0:50 [SPEAKER_00]: So what exactly does legend tell us about the night doctors? 0:59 [SPEAKER_00]: For generations, this warning dominated the lives of African-American communities, who was a technique used to keep these people in line. 1:10 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a blend of old stories and harsh realities from the past. 1:17 [SPEAKER_00]: The night doctors were like the bogeymen of their time, lurking in the shadows and striking fear into the hearts of those who heard their name. 1:27 [SPEAKER_00]: Now there are plenty of versions of the night doctor legend. 1:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Each with its own twist, the basic story goes like this. 1:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine yourself walking alone at night, minding your own business. 1:44 [SPEAKER_00]: When suddenly a group of creepy figures appear out of nowhere, 1:51 [SPEAKER_00]: They're wearing strange masks, probably like ghosts, or witches, or even devils, and monsters. 1:59 [SPEAKER_00]: And before you know it, you're out cold, maybe from a needle prick, or a rag soaked in chloroform. 2:08 [SPEAKER_00]: When you wake up, you're in some cold basement lab that looks like the set of a horror movie, surrounded by faceless onlookers. 2:18 [SPEAKER_00]: And what happens next? 2:20 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're lucky, experiments. 2:23 [SPEAKER_00]: If you're unlucky, die sections, while you're still alive, unconscious. 2:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the United States. 2:40 [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, medical schools were booming, which meant more and more students had to get hands-on training with dissections. 2:50 [SPEAKER_00]: This was important for the practical study of anatomy, a crucial part of medical training as we know it today, as well. 2:58 [SPEAKER_00]: But there was a small problem. 3:01 [SPEAKER_00]: There weren't enough bodies to go around. 3:05 [SPEAKER_00]: So basically, the demand for cadavers was sky high. 3:10 [SPEAKER_00]: But this apply, let's just say it couldn't keep up. 3:14 [SPEAKER_00]: Not enough people were dying fast enough to put it bluntly. 3:20 [SPEAKER_00]: And bodies weren't just something you could produce more of during low supply. 3:25 [SPEAKER_00]: So people had to get innovative. 3:29 [SPEAKER_00]: With a growing need for cadavers, there was a sudden and significant increase in cases of grave robbing. 3:36 [SPEAKER_00]: Body snatchers, better known as Resurrection men, would exume bodies from burial sites, mostly during the night, to sell them to medical schools for dissection and study. 3:49 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a questionable approach, but the university seemed to go for it. 3:55 [SPEAKER_00]: And with that, there was a growth in the professionalism of the body snatching trade. 4:01 [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty soon, it wasn't just a bunch of desperate people dicking up graves. 4:06 [SPEAKER_00]: It became a full blown industry, with organized networks sourcing bodies from funeral homes, morgs, and even cemeteries. 4:17 [SPEAKER_00]: Take, for example, an incident in Richmond, Virginia, back in 1880. 4:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Over 40 bodies were snatched from Oakwood Cemetery, and shipped up north to various medical schools. 4:31 [SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine? 4:32 [SPEAKER_00]: Body's being stuffed in barrels, and transported by train. 4:38 [SPEAKER_00]: At that point, you'd hope these medical universities were turning out the finest doctors. 4:44 [SPEAKER_00]: The world had ever seen. 4:49 [SPEAKER_00]: Now the most common target of these body snatchers were the poor and marginalized, especially African-Americans. 4:58 [SPEAKER_00]: Their cemeteries were easy pickings, with hardly any security to stop these resurrection men. 5:07 [SPEAKER_00]: Seeing that, families of the deceased were forced to make their own security. 5:12 [SPEAKER_00]: They took turns guarding the cemeteries to protect them, 5:16 [SPEAKER_00]: but still, the robbers managed to steal the body's away. 5:22 [SPEAKER_00]: Soon it just became an open secret, so much so that these robbers weren't even being discreet anymore. 5:29 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was common knowledge that medical colleges and universities were facilitating this evil. 5:37 [SPEAKER_00]: Even the pattern of going after African American communities was obvious to the public, 5:45 [SPEAKER_00]: It was no coincidence that medical schools across the country have blocked bodies on their tables. 5:53 [SPEAKER_00]: For example, in 1989, workers were excavating the old medical college of Georgia and they found over 9,000 bones, 80% of which belonged to African Americans. 6:08 [SPEAKER_00]: The night doctor's stories originated from the Johns Hopkins Hospital and New Orleans Charity Hospital because these institutions had the most disproportionate numbers. 6:20 [SPEAKER_00]: Johns Hopkins was in a mostly white community, but two-thirds of their corpses were African-American. 6:34 [SPEAKER_00]: So naturally, mistrust among the community grew against medical professionals, and this was the start of the legend of the night doctors. 6:48 [SPEAKER_00]: After the grave robbing, the legend now talked about mysterious and sinister figures that looked like doctors or nurses. 6:58 [SPEAKER_00]: People believed these figures were on the street at night, kidnapping individuals for nefarious purposes, including medical experimentation or dissection. 7:10 [SPEAKER_00]: So basically doctors, medical students, or their agents, proud the streets at night, praying on African Americans, and once they had decided their targets, it would kidnap their victims. 7:24 [SPEAKER_00]: often incapacitating them before draining their blood and using their bodies for dissection and experimentation. 7:33 [SPEAKER_00]: Now there are no recorded cases of actual murders by night doctors for medical dissection that the belief persisted in African-American communities for decades. 7:45 [SPEAKER_00]: And it was at its peak during the Great Migration. 7:49 [SPEAKER_00]: This was a significant movement during the 20th century, around 6 million African Americans migrated from the rural southern United States to the urban northeast, Midwest and west between 1910 and 1970. 8:07 [SPEAKER_00]: The migration was driven by poor economic and social conditions that had become increasingly difficult because of racial segregation, discrimination, under Jim Crow laws and the Southern States. 8:22 [SPEAKER_00]: One of the major factors that motivated this migration was the increase in lynching and ongoing racial violence in the South, which forced these people to find safety and opportunities elsewhere. 8:35 [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, this period saw a mass migration from rural areas, moving to cities where they hoped for economic advancement and freedom from racial violence. 8:45 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, getting that freedom would be far more complicated. 8:53 [SPEAKER_00]: Plantation owners who enjoyed the low cost of employing African Americans were now faced 9:03 [SPEAKER_00]: and this was reason enough for them to resort to various tactics, to discourage them from leaving. 9:10 [SPEAKER_00]: Now violence and intimidation were common, but psychological warfare was often more effective. 9:17 [SPEAKER_00]: With the increase in paranoia among the communities in association with medical professionals, rumors spread that large cities were hunting grounds for these night doctors, 9:28 [SPEAKER_00]: They were being told that sinister figures, lurked in the shadows of the cities they were planning to move to, and were ready to kidnap unsuspecting people, particularly African Americans. 9:45 [SPEAKER_00]: As you can imagine, someone who has already been subject to harsh physical and psychological living conditions would be vulnerable. 9:54 [SPEAKER_00]: So these rumors instilled fear in the hearts of rural black communities. 9:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And soon, they began warning their own members to avoid going out after dark, for fear of falling prey to the night doctors. 10:08 [SPEAKER_00]: Parents passed down these cautionary tales to their children, and they are attempt to protect them, but it only out of the fear of the night doctors 10:23 [SPEAKER_00]: With that, it became a potent tool of social control, reinforcing the power dynamics of racial oppression, and exploitation, and achieving what the plantation owners had wanted, discouraging mobility, and maintaining economic control over former slave labor. 10:44 [SPEAKER_00]: So even after slavery was abolished, most workers remained purely out of fear, 10:54 [SPEAKER_00]: When it was still legal, slave owners employed several methods to maintain control over their slaves, including restricting their access to education and movement. 11:07 [SPEAKER_00]: They also used superstition and fear of the supernatural to prevent slaves from traveling at night, where they might gather and plan revolts. 11:18 [SPEAKER_00]: So this and all honesty wasn't even a new tactic, just a slightly more real one. 11:26 [SPEAKER_00]: stories of ghosts, witches, and curses were purposely spread among the slave communities instilling a deep fear that went beyond the reach of human masters. 11:39 [SPEAKER_00]: These fears were intensified by the actions of groups, like the night patrols, who would patrol at night to enforce obedience among slaves. 11:50 [SPEAKER_00]: To add some credibility to the rumors, they would disguise themselves as ghosts or devils, using psychological intimidation to maintain control. 12:04 [SPEAKER_00]: Even after the Civil War, in the formal end of slavery, these tactics didn't disappear. 12:12 [SPEAKER_00]: Instead they evolved, and were adopted by covert vigilante groups, like the clue 12:20 [SPEAKER_00]: But the clan initially formed as a social club by ex-confederate soldiers used fear to terrorize African-American communities. 12:31 [SPEAKER_00]: They dressed in white sheets or ghoulish masks and paraded through towns at night to present themselves as ghosts of confederate soldiers were turned from the dead and it worked. 12:47 [SPEAKER_00]: The few African Americans who dared to gather and organize against their masters were subject to violence in sabotage by the Klan. 12:58 [SPEAKER_00]: And the others were told it was the supernatural forces that got them. 13:05 [SPEAKER_00]: This made the story even more believable, and the Klan retained the use of psychological tactics. 13:12 [SPEAKER_00]: including supernatural pageantry, to instill fear and maintain control. 13:18 [SPEAKER_00]: So the night doctor legend did not end with this migration. 13:26 [SPEAKER_00]: It carried on as the symbol of racial terror and oppression in a mistrust of the medical profession as well. 13:34 [SPEAKER_00]: One significant event that contributed to the contribution of this fear was the Tuskegee Siffyllis Experiment, which ran from 1932 to 1972. 13:46 [SPEAKER_00]: During this pretty unethical study, hundreds of low-income African-American men were 13:55 [SPEAKER_00]: without their knowledge or consent. 13:58 [SPEAKER_00]: The distrust and betrayal resulting from this only deep into the suspicions harbored by many in the African American community toward the medical establishment. 14:09 [SPEAKER_00]: Another example was the investigation of the Atlanta child murders in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when rumors circulated that some victims have been subjected to strange mutilations in injections before their deaths. 14:27 [SPEAKER_00]: A suspect was eventually convicted in this case, but doubts remained among some who believed the killings were the work, 14:41 [SPEAKER_00]: and you'd be surprised at how long this apprehension of medical professionals has lasted. 14:47 [SPEAKER_00]: In 2017, protests started over a statue honoring Dr. J. Maryen Sims, who is a controversial figure in American medical history. 15:00 [SPEAKER_00]: Sims is the father of modern gynecology, but he was also involved in a very unsettling case 15:08 [SPEAKER_00]: He conducted gruesome medical experiments on enslaved African women without anesthesia, which again added to the enduring legacy of medical racism and exploitation among their community. 15:24 [SPEAKER_00]: So it's no wonder that African Americans viewed this medical establishment with fear and suspicion. 15:31 [SPEAKER_00]: They have historically been treated as guinea pigs and commodities, not real people. 15:38 [SPEAKER_00]: Even today, we hear stories of black people being misdiagnosed by doctors, or outright dismissed. 15:46 [SPEAKER_00]: The apprehension lingers, because the discrimination lingers. 15:57 [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a wrap on today's episode. 16:00 [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds like a scary story you tell children at bedtime. 16:09 [SPEAKER_00]: This was not a mere legend, but an actual thing people had to worry about. 16:15 [SPEAKER_00]: So the question is, what other mythical legends might be hiding unsettling truths? 16:23 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, friend, for listening to hometown history. 16:26 [SPEAKER_00]: Be sure to follow along for more interesting stories from the past.
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