“Until the philosophy
Which hold one race superior and another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited
And abandoned
Everywhere is war” — Bob Marley, War, inspired by a speech by Haile Selassie

“Emmett Till is dead and gone… Why can’t people leave the dead alone and quit trying to stir things up?” — Roy Bryant

“I think black peoples' reaction was so visceral. Everybody knew we were under attack and that attack was symbolized by the attack on a 14-year-old boy.” — Rose Jourdain

“The audience fell silent, wondering if Wright would risk his life to accuse a white man in open court. For a moment no one moved. Excruciating tension filled the room while people waited for Wright’s reply. Then, in one of the most dramatic moments in Mississippi trial history, Mose Wright, a poor Black sharecropper, stood up, raised his arm, pointed at Milam, a white man, and said, ‘There he is.’” — Chris Crowe

By 1955, in United States, people liked to say that the worst racial abuses belonged to the past—that the culture that had led to nearly 5,000 people getting lynched between the end of Reconstruction and the mid-1940s no longer existed. But then a 14-year old boy from Chicago jokingly whistled at a white lady in Mississippi, and what followed was a familiar script: the flashing of guns in the middle of the night, kidnapping, torture, African Americans looking for their relatives where bodies were normally dumped, and a justice system that was anything but just. What was not part of the familiar script was Mamie Till’s choice that led to a public funeral attended by tens of thousands, and—many people argued—that lit the spark for the birth of the Civil Rights Movement.

Among other things, in this episode:

The culture of lynching and the gutsy Southern ladies standing up against it
How ‘Brown vs. Board of Education’ set the South on fire
Paranoia over integration and Communist plots
William Faulkner and the fear at the roots of white supremacy
Getting away with murder and boasting about it
How white supremacists won a battle and lost the war

But the craziest thing in this whole story is realising this happened not so long ago…

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“The Puritans feared that which was undomesticated.” — Jeff Hendricks

“Our earliest American heroes were Morton’s oppressors, Endicott, Bradford, Miles Standish. Merry Mount’s been expunged from the official version because it’s the story not of a virtuous utopia but of a utopia of candor. Yet it’s Morton whose face should be carved in Mount Rushmore.” — Philip Roth

“He held out the promise of America as an earthly paradise, a pagan, not a protestant prospect, a zone of pleasure, not salvation through suffering.” — John Seelye

“Drink and be merry, merry, merry boys;
Let all your delight be in the Hymens joys…
Or make green garlands, bring bottles out
And fill sweet nectar freely about.
Uncover thy head and fear no harm;
For here’s good liquor to keep it warm.
Then drink and be merry,
Or yet, lasses in beaver coats come away,
Yee hall be welcome to us night and day.
To drink and be merry.” — Thomas Morton

Today we are going to play with one of the greatest stories you probably have never heard of. Even in U.S. very little known about this story and it’s a crime. If you have even a superficial knowledge of American history, you have almost certainly heard about the settlers who came to Plymouth in 1620. What you may not have heard about is that shortly thereafter a gentleman named Thomas Morton set up a different colony just down the road from Plymouth. At a time when most people arrived to Plymouth in chains, as indentured servants, Morton abolished servitude in his settlement he called Merrymount. At a time when his neighbors in Plymouth were brutally squashing religious dissent, Morton encouraged religious freedom. And on top of it all, he and his friends entertained extremely friendly relations with Native tribes even openly intermarrying. What makes the story even crazier is that Merrymount was well on its way to be more successful than Plymouth. When new settlers arrived on American shores, many took one look at ultra-strict Plymouth, another look at the freedom to be enjoyed at Merrymount and didn’t need to be told twice which way to go. The only reason why Merrymount didn’t make it in the history books you may have read is because the pilgrims turned to violence to destroy a community whose existence was a challenge to all of their beliefs.

From that day forward, the name of Thomas Morton has largely been erased from history. Some people could refer to Morton as a victim of the Puritan brand of cancel culture. The Puritan story became mainstream, and Morton’s name disappeared. This episode fixes this mistake.

If you feel generous and enjoy History on Fire, please consider joining my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/historyonfire to access plenty of bonus content.

Big thank you to Wondery’s ‘This Job Is History’ for supporting the show. You can listen to ‘This Job Is History” on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts or by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app.

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Daniele Bolelli