Listen to it here.

This week the dynamic duo do what they do best. Angie kicks us off by sharing her greatest love, Egypt, with us and telling us facts about King Tutankhamun. Maybe you’ve heard them all before, but you’ve never heard Angie gush about him. 

Theresa dips into her bag of stories that make you both happy and livid. Come for her telling the tale of how the Black Panther Party created the Free Breakfast Program, which is the reason public schools offer it nationwide in the US. Stay for FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who is depicted as the villain. 

This episode pairs well with: 
Pyramids of Sudan
More reasons to hate Hoover – the Osage Indian’s Reign of Terror

Transcript:

Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast, the podcast where two compulsive co-hosts binge history memes, research the stories behind them, and then regurgitate said stories to their friend. Thank you for joining us. You are our friend as well. I’m host Mary Teresa.

Angie: I’m host too, I’m Angie. Your therapist says hi. You’ll be seeing her Tuesday. I just would like to say that I appreciate that each week we get a different name, co-host, whack jobs, whatever. I have a list.

Theresa: It’s meatheads, knuckleheads, and famous island escapies.

Angie: You know, whatever. One of my very dear friends sent me one of those motivational, like, good morning loser texts the other day, and it said, good morning turkey tits, and I haven’t been able to stop laughing. So now I too have a list.

Theresa: I don’t know how I would respond if somebody called me turkey tits. You know, you had to see the whole thing. I mean, no, but they’ve got fantastic large breasts. If anything, it’s a compliment to me.

Angie: That’s how I took it. I was like, fabulous. Thank you. Or are you referring to like goose bumpy skin? Unclear. I don’t care. It’s funny either way.

Theresa: You know, with the right bra anything can be marvelous. That’s why they make push-ups. But it’s your turn to tell the story first because I looked it up because I kind of like ending on the note I’m going to end you on.

Angie: I’m going to end you. This is the last episode you will be starring on. I hope the life insurance policy is up to date, and I hope Ian didn’t take a sizable policy out because if he has recently, it’s going to look really sus for him. You know what? Let me just put this on pause for a second and go ask. Hey, babe. He didn’t hear me.

Theresa: I know. I figured. I could tell you were just joshing with me.

Angie: My like he’ll come running and thinking that like the house is on fire. Exactly. Okay. Well, I guess I could go first then, huh? Yeah. All right. All right. I’m going to start with my sources. That seems like a great place. You seem to like it when I start there.

Theresa: I mean, I prefer it than when you just go. Well, and somewhere I think I read or heard in passing might have seen it on a bathroom stall. Who knows?

Angie: We don’t know.

Theresa: Yeah, don’t judge. We listen and we don’t judge. Exactly.

Angie: Theresa, take your own advice here. I never said that those were my words. I’ve never repeated them. Well, I’ve repeated them now, but I’ve never repeated them as my own. That’s true.

Angie: I’ll give you that. Okay. Okay. This is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Un Commune’s Tomb, The Thrill of Discovery. Okay. A Mental Floss article by Michelle Debsek of October 22, 20, Surprising Facts about King Tutankhamun, which, surprising or not, none of those facts were surprising.

Theresa: Boy, you really know how to set me up for low expectations. Right?

Angie: Five jaw-dropping facts about King Tut and his team of treasures. Again, nothing was shocking there. I think it’s all facts we know. A delightful live science article by Benjamin Radford from also 22, The Facts and Fables, the Curse of King Tut, and History.com article, How Did King Tut Die? by Eric Neeler. This is updated in 23 because obviously as history moves forward, we get more information and I love that. And quite possibly my two favorite sources here are a Smithsonian article by Joe Marchant of November of 22, Howard Carter Discovered King Tut’s Golden Tomb, and then my very favorite article. Ancient Egypt comes to Utah, the UPI Archives or United Press International. This is a November 1985 newspaper article by Dan Harry. Okay. Okay, right. So it’ll be a couple of… It’ll be my birthday in a couple of days. So that being said, happy Valentine’s Day.

Theresa: Thank you. And to those who celebrate, if you don’t, happy Oregon’s birthday. Is it also Oregon’s birthday? Oregon’s birthday is on Valentine’s Day. And so when I was young and single and new to the region, my roommates were all single and so we would celebrate Oregon’s birthday. So we would watch movies made in Oregon. We would eat foods that were grown and made in Oregon. Oh my gosh, I love that. Yeah. It was better than Gallentine’s Day.

Angie: Yeah, because you got to watch the Goonies.

Theresa: Yep, and we made cakes in the shape of Oregon. Yeah, I love that.

Angie: I didn’t know that and that makes me even happier because as a kid, I thought that Valentine’s Day was my… Like, it was a holiday just for me. But now I know I share it with Oregon.

Theresa: So here we go. Oregon shares it with you because Oregon has been around much longer.

Angie: Yeah, whatever. Thanks, Oregon. So that being said, I thought for my birthday, it would be fun to take you back to my very first historical was. Any guesses what that is?

Theresa: Let me guess. Based on your sources, I’m going to assume we’re not heading to Peru.

Angie: You would be right, which is probably where we should go sometime soon. So when I was almost two years old, my parents and I lived in Utah and traveling the world at the time was Ramsey’s the second during his tour called the Farrow and its time. I would prefer the fella. That would be kind of awesome, huh? The fella and his time. Technically Ramsey wasn’t on tour, but some of his stuff was. The UPI article puts it, although named after Ramsey’s who was Farrow from 1290 BC to 1224 BC, much of the collection reflects the archaeological legacy of others who occupied the same period.

I need you to know that I had to dig up this article from 1985 because I was there. So I needed to know where I was in context, right? Because I’m a toddler. Like, what do I know?

Theresa: Are there childhood pictures of Angie running around in some Utah newspaper archive?

Angie: There might be. My mom said she was going to go through the photos to see if she could find him because she remembered taking photos while she was there.

Theresa: But in a time that I asked her about this, she didn’t. OK.

Angie: Oh, possibly. I don’t know. I wasn’t in this article, but I have been in the paper a thousand times. So maybe and all for good reasons. I’ve never been in the rest column. So like I was about to say Angie.

Theresa: I don’t know. We can edit this out.

Angie: I would just like to say never been in the rest column. I was like really happy with myself there. And we thought you had quest side quest. Our local the area where I live, our local like Chit Chat group on Facebook and the incident feed has some of these funniest police calls you will ever experience. And I’m proud to say I’ve never been at the hand of any one of them. But I am delighted to say that I have read multiples and just cackled about where I live, which I’m sure everybody can say. But how often do chickens get arrested in your neighborhood? Because that’s a thing in mind.

Theresa: I feel like I’ve called people chickens who have been arrested.

Angie: I mean, literal chickens in the back of the police car.

Theresa: Yeah, OK. Carry on, carry on, because I’m curious where we’re going.

Angie: OK, so evidently, I was a perfect toddler because my mom and dad saw fit to take me to see it. Clearly, I don’t really remember or if what I do remember might not be a real memory. That sort of thing. I was only two.

What do I know? But my mom said that I was quite taken with game pieces that were featured there. It might have been from a game called Sinet. And she said there was a miniature sink there that I just was absolutely enamored with. There’s also sarcophagus there, which is rather impressive, but it wasn’t Ranzi. It’s rather it belonged to a nobleman in his employ called Sinet Nejem. And evidently, it was quite the treasure to behold. So this must have been pivotal in my life because Egypt was my first great historical love. And despite all the other topics we cover that I love, looking at you, Stuart England, I will always have a soft spot for Egypt. That being said, I thought it would be fun to talk about what we do and don’t know about the day we discovered King Tut’s Tomb.

I’m here for this. Which is a it’s right. It’s a pretty well known topic. But I think the more I learn about things, the more I discover that there’s a lot of nuance we miss, like in the in the grand like sort of scheme of things.

Theresa: Yeah, the more you learn, the more you’re like. Wait, what? The Boston Tea Party wasn’t because of taxes. It was because of smuggling. But sort of taxes. But taxes because of smuggling. Fascinating. They basically told a fifth grade appropriate version of the truth. And I swallowed it this entire time. Yeah.

Angie: And I never thought about it after that. Right. Exactly. So that’s where my my story is grounded in this trip. I took as a toddler and then wanting to know everything you can know about the day they opened King Tut’s Tomb. So without further ado, Pharaoh Tutankhamun ruled in Tennessee 18 from 336 to 327 BC. Much to his great chagrin, his tomb was discovered in 1922. Those responsible for the discovery would be British archeologist. Archeologist Howard Carter and his benefactor Lord Canarvon.

Theresa: Can I just say you say those responsible as in like those who committed this act of arson, those who defaced this national monument, those who like. And I don’t agree with your assertion, but I just want to call out the language used.

Angie: Listen, I’d be pretty pissed if I’d had a good long nap for 3,000 years and somebody decided to open my door, you know. So yeah, those those are responsible.

Theresa: I had a nightmare about somebody just knocking on my door. I don’t see nightmare, but I was I rate so it wasn’t a dream.

Angie: See, so you get it. You get where I’m coming from here. One of the fun facts that I think often gets left out of the story and it makes me so mad is that Lord Canarvon’s daughter was there. Her name is Lady Evelyn Lenora Alamina Bolshamp. And if you’re thinking, wow, that sounds an awful lot like our favorite fictional librarian, Evie Carnahan from The Mummy, you’d be right.

Theresa: And see here, I was more thinking along the lines of Claire Beecham. OK, Outlander series.

Angie: You could think that too. But I will tell you that Evie is Lady Evelyn’s family name and she was the inspiration behind Evie Carnahan in The Mummy movie. I really super wanted to do an episode on her because I think her life must have been so fascinating just to to be alive at this time and to be female and to be doing what she was doing. But unfortunately, there’s not a lot of access to information on her from where we sit. She does have private diaries and journals and letters, but I think you actually need to be in the physical archive to read them.

Or at High Claire Class, where they probably sit. So not to down Naby. There you go. But in another fun side quest, I learned that her mother, Alamina, was the illegitimate daughter of Alfred De Rothschild.

Theresa: Oh, isn’t that wild? We have a Rothschild in the picture. Yeah, didn’t know that.

Angie: I was like, wow, the world is so much more connected than I could ever imagine. And when I read that, I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me.

Theresa: Like really, there’s a handful of Mavericks who are just pivotal in all of these big moments.

Angie: Every year could not agree with you more, could not agree with you more. So that’s essentially where Lord Carnarvon’s fortune comes from. He he marries into the Rothschild family. Obviously, he’s also wealthy because High Claire Castle is their family seat. And this is a very still functioning, very real place today. Now, so we’re going to, I don’t know, rewind, fast forward.

What have you? It’s November of 1922, when they first make the discovery of what they think is King Tut’s tomb. We’re going to, however, due to some legal permits and drama within the government and all of that. The, the story that comes out, I guess you’d say, the official story that comes out is that the seal to King Tut’s tomb is broken on February 16th, 1923, which I was like, pardon me, that’s my birthday. These cannot be a delightful coincidence, but I’m here for it. So here’s where it’s going to be pissed at me. And you’re going to ask if any of my sources are Reddit, but they are not. I can assure you.

There are some believe that the Intrepid Archaeological Team breached the tomb in November of 22, then covered all the holes, reburied everything, reattached the seals, and move on with life until February because of all the legality and drama that happens.

Theresa: I mean, honestly, that sounds like a solution I would have done. Or I’m like, you know what? Just add a shovel full of dirt on the top. We’re just going to walk away. Nobody saw nothing.

Angie: We’re going to call it good. That’s to me, regardless, it either it was either open in November of 22, which seems to be the standard belief, but the official story is February 16th of 23. Now, my understanding of this day is that they first have to drill a hole into this stone and like take a peek to see if they’re in the right place. Like if drilling is worth continuing sort of thing, like are we just going through bedrock or is this just a pile of dirt or whatever, right? But years before this, so basically this is what happens. Years before the discovery of King Tut, they basically have to dig out the valley floor from all the previous digging that had already been done in the Valley of the Kings.

So there’s this American, he’s retired, this retired American lawyer named Theodore Davis and he is one of the most successful excavators who had this huge fortune, but like no patience for scientific procedure.

Theresa: So like I’m getting an idea. You’re being super redundant. You could have just said he’s American. We could move on.

Angie: Yeah, that’s true. I’m imagining like bulldozer marks. Like we’re not being very, we’re not being very gracious in our work here, right?

Theresa: Is that a specific human that I just don’t get the reference to?

Angie: No, like, you know, okay, instead of like a proper archaeological dig with the proper tools and like the gentleness it takes to excavate a tomb or a valley without causing drastic harm to what you’re trying to excavate, I’m imagining he just takes like a bulldozer through everything. Gotcha.

Theresa: Okay, I’m with you now. I thought, right? Different spelling of marks is in like last name as in and I’m like, who’s this person? I don’t know. Oh, no, no, I’m sorry.

Angie: So you’ve got the valley floor is a mess, but Carter is like convinced there is something down here. So he takes the several years leading up to this to clean out and dig out the valley. And when I say that, I don’t mean specifically him. I mean the Egyptian worker men that are doing like hours and hours and hours and days and weeks and months and years of backbreaking labor to clear all the rubble out. Right. Here we go. So the problem with Davis is he is not going to relinquish any of the space or like tools or rights or anything to the valley until like very close to his death.

Once he’s pretty sure he’s like going to kick the bucket, he says to Carter, okay, you know what? I’m I cleared the whole valley, but like do your thing. It’s all yours now. You ought to clean it up though. So good luck.

He’s like the worst neighbor ever, I imagine. But it’s worth noting that some of Davis’s finds consist of quoting the Smithsonian here. He uncovered several intact tombs from the later period of Egypt’s great 18th dynasty, dating to 3300 years ago. These included the pristine chambers of the parents of Queen Tihai who lived right around 390 BCE and a mysterious tomb known as KV 55, which held a cache of treasure and a nameless mummy suspected to be Tihai’s son, the rebellious Pharaoh Akhenaten, who throughout Egypt, who throughout Egypt’s traditional religion and built a new capital in the city desert of Amarna. Now Akhenaten for those playing at home that don’t have a family tree in front of them is King Teth’s father.

Theresa: Yeah. And so he’s what he was erased from the royal like his name was scrubbed off every wall. Right.

Angie: Because he was according to them a heretic, right?

Theresa: So the phrase dead to me reaches epic proportions with Akhenaten. Yep.

Angie: So these are the finds that Davis is involved in. So he came across some pretty fabulous things in his rather unorthodox method. But there you have it, right? So fast forward, it’s opening day.

Whether or not it was on my birthday is irrelevant here. But basically once they get to the lower part of the door, they’ve got to clear all the rubble and the rock and the debris off, right? Mm hmm. They uncover the lower part of the door and on the door are seal impressions showing a basket, a scare beetle and the sun disk. This happens to be the cartouche of none other than Tutankhamun, which I think is pretty stinking cool. So they make it through this door after, you know, properly taking all the rubble and clearing the door off and taking it off piece by piece. They clear a path 30 feet, a pathway that’s 30 feet long, and then they make it to the second door. At this point, Carter pokes like an iron testing rod, like after they’ve drilled the hole, they poke an iron testing rod into the darkness. They light a candle to check to see if the air is safe to breathe because I don’t know how the science works. But apparently if the candle doesn’t go out, if the candle goes out, then the air is poisonous.

Theresa: Or it could be that there’s not enough oxygen in it. Maybe like super heavy gases, but I feel like I’m I said something that sounds plausible in my head, but probably has people at home screaming, calling me an idiot, which you’re not wrong.

Angie: Hey, listen, it’s not science, I understand. But according to them, that’s how you check to see if the air is safe to breathe.

Theresa: Throw a canary in there, cover the hole, the canary sings, and now you’re fine. Yep.

Angie: That’s that was exactly what I thought to myself. Where are their birds? Right? So once they are feeling comfortable that the air is not poisonous, they open a little, the hole a little bigger and Carter shines the light through.

Carter says, quote, this is in his journal later. It was sometime before one could see the hot air escaping caused the candle to flicker. But as soon as one’s eyes became accustomed to the glimmer of light, the interior of the chamber gradually loomed before one with its strange and wonderful medley of extraordinary and beautiful objects heaped upon one another.

Now. At first, Carter’s, you know, he’s peeking through the people and he’s thinking he’s looking at wall paintings. It was a while before he realizes he’s actually looking at three dimensional objects.

Oh, canarvines standing behind him is losing his patience and he is demanding. Can you see anything? Can you see anything? And there are several responses from Carter, but the most favorite response to this question was Carter’s. Yes. Wonderful things. The Smithsonian goes on to say, widening the hole in the door, the others crowded together and shine the light into the darkness. What they saw arguably still stands as the most amazing archaeological discovery of all time. Looming out of the darkness of the chamber, this is from the Smithsonian, were two ebony black statues of a king with gold staff, kilts and sandals, gilded couches with the heads of strange beasts, exquisitely painted ornamental caskets, dried flowers, alabaster vases, strange black shrines, a dorn with a gilded monster snake, white chests, finely carved chairs, a golden throne, a heap of curious white egg shaped boxes, stools of all shapes and designs, and a scramble of overturned chariot parts, glittering with gold. And least we forget the nesting sarcophagus, the outer three, the outer and the three smaller ones until you get to the solid gold one that he’ll have to come in himself. So, you know, Carter, for his part, said that it was, quote, akin to the property room of an opera of a vanished civilization, and I just love that image because we’ve all been in a prop room at some point.

Theresa: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, maybe not all, but those who are fortunate enough to have been theater kids, yes. Yes.

Angie: And that made me laugh so hard. I was like, wait, what? There were over 5,000 items and Carter would spend the next eight years meticulously cataloging everything. His collection of writings and journals are housed at the Griffith Institute in a library at Oxford, which is or rather was considered the best Egyptology library in the world. But I’d like to think that that’s changed since the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum that opened late last year.

Theresa: Which looks incredible. Right? Like so freaking excited. The fact that you’re so like there was a, sorry, I’m going to go up on a tangent. I’m hijacking. There was a TikTok I saw where they had like a small tour and they showed like one of the large statues right when you walk in and surrounded by this little water. They have to keep staff in front of that because people are so fixated on the statue. They just walk off like lemmings into the pond.

Angie: I have not seen that. Please say that to me.

Theresa: I mean, I embellished it a little bit by calling them lemmings, but I mean, yeah.

Angie: I mean, to be fair, for those that don’t know, the Grand Egyptian Museum is the first Egypt built Egypt owned Egyptian owned museum and it’s phenomenal. It took years and years to build and they just opened in October last year. It covers 500,000 square meters or about 70 soccer fields for those of you that like different measurements. But how many cost goes?

Like six. This is also the world’s largest archaeological museum complex that is solely dedicated to a single civilization. And I think that is phenomenal and I know that it is the pride of Egypt and it makes me so happy that they have it. So sorry for my beaming about the gem.

Theresa: Do not. You are good. You are among friends.

Angie: I’m so delighted by it. I’m so happy. I’ve been waiting for years. Okay. Anyway, so now that I briefly told you about the day, let’s talk a little about the young man himself because he was only like 19 or 20 when he died. Tutankhamun ascends the throne at nine years old. He is the youngest fair to ever rule over the ancient Egyptian empire. Did you know that?

Theresa: I think I did. Did I have told you that or gotten a multiple choice? Maybe.

Angie: I mentioned his parents earlier, Akhenaten, and they believe the mummy known as the younger lady. She might be his mother. She is the full biological sister of Akhenaten. So we’re not entirely positive because the other belief is that he could be Nefertiti’s son.

Theresa: I thought I would work that out. Okay. Yeah. Now that you say that, I think I’ve heard both. Yeah.

Angie: I think the younger lady is or has been for some time the suggested like this has got to be the right option. But they have recently in the last couple of years discovered what they think might be Nefertiti’s mummy and are still working out the logistics of the DNA testing of that.

Either way, I think it’s pretty cool that they have it. His sister wife was a Naxuna moon. Super grossed out, but incest is there.

So what are you going to do? Because all of that delightful incest leads to the CT scans of Tutankhamun finding a cleft palate, a fairly long head, but not abnormally shaped like we have believed, as well as a curved spine, fusion of the upper vertebrae, and conditions that are associated with Marfan syndrome.

Theresa: I remember seeing a documentary about it where they used like CDI to illustrate what Tutankhamun would have looked like. And he is not the strapping Egyptian God of my dreams. Yeah, it’s really unfortunate, isn’t it? It’s more along the lines. And this is why we don’t marry our cousin.

Angie: Or our sister. I mean, yeah. One of the really fun things in found in his tomb, he had really fabulous footwear that I am sure we would have loved, some of which depicted paintings of his enemies on the souls so that everywhere the king went, he trampled over his toes.

Theresa: You have the note about the ducks. I think it was him who had the little ducks in his tomb.

Angie: He had ivory ducks in his tomb. I believe they’re ivory little tiny baby duckies. I didn’t put that in my notes, but I do have it right here. They are… He had an ivory monkey, excuse me, and little toy ducks. Yep. And I think that’s so cute. And it kind of takes us into like the fact that at one point he was a child, right? Like he became the pharaoh as a child.

He was only nine. I don’t know about you, but at 40 years old, I am still racing rubber ducks in the pond. So I hope he never gave up his rubber duckies. He didn’t. He took them with us.

Right. Like I hope he played with them always. So another fun thing that he did, or I don’t know if you want to call it fun, but as we know, Akhenaten was known for his sort of disastrous role and erased from history for it mostly because he’s considered a heretic for changing the religion. King Tut like immediately reverses all of his reform. And so this is this kind of a favorite outlook for his people. I love this, this fun little fact. There were DIY repairs to the burial mask. Like, you know the mask, the most famous mask in the world.

Theresa: DIY, do you like he did it to his own mask? Is this what you’re kidding?

Angie: No, no, no. After 3000 years in the tomb, his mask was damaged around 2014. The braided beard part broke off. Oh, and I don’t know why I have no idea why, but the curators thought epoxy glue would work to reattach it.

Theresa: You know, we’ve all had those panic moments of, oh, no, I just did the thing. I mean, look, who among us.

Angie: Now for a weird bit of fun, do you know what they think his actual cause of death was? No idea.

Theresa: Please say something that I’ve had as a potential in my medical chart.

Angie: Please, just skip over the death. No, just say it.

Theresa: Just say it. I mean, I’m braced.

Angie: So there’s one rather interesting belief that he was assassinated because obviously we have scheming advisors and whatnot that want his position. There is even a bit of a rumor suggesting that anoxynomoon herself may have been involved in an assassination. Yeah, never been on a medical record. Yes, that’s not on your medical record. A chariot accident is one of the more likely causes. The funnest one I heard, and this has sort of been disproved, but his remains, he’s missing several ribs. His torso and chest cavity are severely damaged and his heart was missing. That’s a suggestion that perhaps he got bit by a hippo while hunting one.

Theresa: However, the way I want to go.

Angie: That is not the way I want to go either. However, there are photos that show his ribs intact in the 20s. So it’s more likely that they were damaged sometime in that decade and we have just kind of surmised that without looking at the photos. They know for sure he had a broken leg. The most likely causes is death and the broken leg could have come from a chariot accident or hunting accident or a chariot hunting accident. But the most likely causes death is a broken leg and a malaria infection at the same time because we’re piling this on top of all the other genetic disorders that he may have had and most likely not the strongest immune system. So way less fun than an assassination attempt, but malaria got him. So not, nobody didn’t know Alexander the Great yet?

Theresa: No, you didn’t. You didn’t. It was malaria on my bingo card and it. Have survived every assassination attempt that I’m aware of.

Angie: Good morning. I see the assassins have failed again. Yeah. And for my last fun fact, because you know I couldn’t pass it up. There is a curse on his

Theresa: name that has this going to be the curse that you mentioned in episode two? Probably.

Angie: Probably. I had to talk about King Tess Ters, didn’t I? Yeah. The tomb has inspired many legends, many people that were associated with the site did meet rather unfortunate deaths. But what I will say to that now, there are a handful of victims like Lord Kinarvan died not too long afterwards due to blood poisoning.

One of the other financiers got sick right after visiting the tomb. So there’s some reason to kind of sort of have that belief in there. But my statement will be on the fact that there, Lord Kinarvan’s daughter who was there, who was in the tomb lived to the 80s. Yeah.

Theresa: So I don’t think there’s a curse. No, there isn’t because you mean a bunch of explorers that live maybe more risque lives and take chances that the rest of us don’t take, died in mysterious ways related to the chances that they take?

Angie: And maybe don’t have access to penicillin. I feel like. Yeah. I don’t. So this is what, this is the hill I’ll choose to stand on with this story. I don’t think that there was a curse. But what I do think is that Egyptians were exceptionally I think that the Egyptians were, they had a clear understanding of, I don’t know if you want to call it germology or whatever, but if I wanted to say that my tomb was cursed and I’m going to have it sealed shut for 3000 years, it’s possible some germs and mold might grow in that doorway. Ergo occurs.

Theresa: That’s all I’m saying. I mean, yeah.

Angie: So I do have a couple of cool pictures that I thought were really fun if you want to see them. Please. So this first one I thought was a really cool 3D image of how his tomb looks.

Theresa: Yeah, so it is to say, okay, I’m going to use the proper word. The, it shows a sarcophagus and a sarcophagus has been exploded, meaning that you see all of the insides. You see sarcophagus fully opened. You see the interior covering. You see the death mask, all the wrappings and all of the pieces. And it just, the term is to be exploded out, but it just, it invites a different visual.

Angie: It’s pretty stunning. I was like, yep, I’m going to show this. It’s pretty cool. And then I think this is phenomenal. That is to Kamoon on the left and his wife Anoxinamoon on the right.

Theresa: But he does not look like how he looked in life, I’m sure, because that is the comment that was like, oh, so this man was in a doness of a creature.

Angie: Yeah, well, I’m sure that your gentlemen carving your gravestones are going to make you look like a God King. That’s their job.

Theresa: But yeah, but I don’t know how you, like, if you look at your like, you know what, that doesn’t look like me. It looks so much better. You know what, keep going, keep going. You failed at it, but tasks failed successfully.

Angie: Could you make my, could you make my eyeliner a little more on point? Yeah, seriously. Yeah, I can just, I can just see him sitting for the portrait.

Theresa: And being like, you know, you drew somebody else, but I’m not mad.

Angie: My captain of the guard, can you draw him? Yeah, he’s stacked. I like him. So that is the story of my, or parts of the story of my first great love. I am here for it.

Theresa: Now I get to transition to my story, which is dramatically different. How exciting. Uh-huh. I’m, can I take your headphones off? Okay, so my source is history.com how the Black Panthers Breakfast Program both inspired and threatened the government by Aaron Blakemore, blackpass.com, the Black Panthers Breakfast Program, 1969 to 1980 by Diane Penn, Global Center for Climate Justice, feeding our young how the Black Panthers brought school breakfast to America by Marie Sinekall. Dude, what were you saying? What wasn’t I saying? I don’t know.

Exactly. You’ll have to wait. Okay, so I am going to take you to 1966 when the Black Panther Party founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded it.

Their goal was to end police brutality in Oakland. Okay. Okay. But the faction of the civil rights movement led by the SNCC or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member Stokely Carmichael began calling for what they called an uplift and self-determination of African Americans.

Soon Black Power becomes part of their platform. Okay. Okay. So because you have community members that are turning to the Panthers for help with both economic and social problems, like, you know, things like job discrimination and evictions, the Black Panthers started community services in 1969 to build this community-based self-determination. Okay. The Panthers first and most successful community program was the Free Breakfast for Children Program.

Angie: I love the image that you’re giving me.

Theresa: Uh-huh. And basically all of my sources have said this, but I wanted to make you get all the way to here before I blew it. Yeah, thanks. Okay. At the time, the militant Black Nationalist Party is vilified, right? Like they had, when I think of the Black Panthers, I don’t think of their social programs.

I think of this next paragraph. They’re vilified in the news and they’re feared by everyone who’s intimidated by this message of Black Power. The concept that they’re trying to end police brutality and subjugation of Black Americans shakes Americans to the core. Oh my gosh. It’s shocking. But for students, it’s eating breakfast that the Black Panthers’ politics are less interesting than the meals they’re providing. Okay.

Angie: Yeah, I mean, that seems fair. When you’re hungry, you’re hungry. Uh-huh.

Theresa: There’s a son reporter who wrote The Children, many of whom had never eaten breakfast before the Panthers started their program, think the Panthers are groovy and very nice for doing this for them.

Angie: Thanks for including the word groovy.

Theresa: It was the reporter. I am simply reading the quote. I did not write the quote, but I love it. I’m here for the entire thing. There’s one source that says that the Panthers started the free breakfast program because hunger and poverty made it difficult for many poor Black children to learn. Yeah.

Angie: Can confirm that being fed a good breakfast or fed in general makes a learning environment far better. Yeah.

Theresa: Another source says that the purpose was not that. It’s to fuel revolution by encouraging Black people to survive. I’m like, why not both? Yeah, you would think both. But I mean, I feel like depending on the story you’re telling depends upon the reason you choose. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now, it’s 1968. Most poor children are going to school hungry and they’re staying hungry.

Angie: Because we don’t have standardized lunches yet?

Theresa: Nope. The National School Lunch Program provided a reduced price, but not a free lunch for poor children. And the National School Breakfast Program was limited to just a few rural schools.

Angie: Really rural? I would have thought it would have been the other way around.

Theresa: Okay. Well, think about it this way. I think that there’s just systemic racism involved because who lives in the rural areas? Yeah. Okay. Who lives in the cities? Okay. I got you. Now, we’re not saying that. I mean, I want to be super clear here because I’ve been reading several books, including one on anti-racism. I don’t necessarily believe that the people, let me say, people in power view themselves as racist. I believe they, without inviting other voices to the table, perpetuate systems that benefit people who look like them. And so accidentally, we have a habit of building systems of inequity. You’ve worded that beautifully. You can tell I’ve been listening to many other smarter people about the topic. Well done. Yeah.

Now, there are some people who just go for broke and do it for giggles. I think all of us have the capacity to be racist. We contribute to racism. And the only way to dismantle it is through being intentional.

Angie: I think that’s, for a lot of things, you’re absolutely right. Yeah.

Theresa: We all have a hundred different biases. And it’s figuring out where our biases are, how they affect us, and what we can do to slowly tear them apart. To be better human. So zipping back, it’s now January 1969.

We’re at an Episcopal Church in Oakland. Within weeks, it goes from feeding 11 kids to hundreds. Okay.

The program’s simple. Party members and volunteers go to local grocery stores to solicit donations. They consulted with nutritionists on healthy breakfast options for children and prepared and served food free of charge.

Angie: I would like to read, like, the diary entry of what it must have been like to be soliciting for donations for such a good cause.

Theresa: You know, yes. And here’s a great paragraph for you. The party even lists stores that refuse to participate in the program in their newspaper to put pressure on the community to support its food program. Yes. Okay. And here’s their best thing. They’re stating that even those that contribute little, so if you refuse at all, or you give very miserly, they’re saying this is not enough, especially from those that thrive off the black community like leeches.

Angie: Okay. Call it like it is.

Theresa: Bobby seal planned the program with Father Earl Neil and parishioner Ruth Beckford Smith, who coordinated the program and recruited neighborhood mothers. That’s so cute. Okay. I love all of this. And it was so great to be able to go through a huge amount of sources to pull together. Here are the people who did it. Here’s how they did it.

Here are their names. Yeah, I love that. School officials are immediately reporting results in kids who had been fed this free breakfast before school. Here’s a good quote. It was in several sources. The school principal came down and told us how different the children were. Ruth, Ruth Beckford, a parishioner who helped with the program said later, they weren’t falling asleep in class. They weren’t crying with stomach cramps. And it’s just like such a basic easy thing.

Angie: Yeah, like step one, consider empathy. That seems difficult.

Angie: Like, yeah.

Theresa: So the BPP or Black Panther Party knew that the ability to develop math and reading skills would provide the next generation of black Americans with the tools for political and social economic mobility. With it? Yeah, like, so something as small as providing a nourishing meal in the morning throughout the school years could change an entire generation.

And they’re not wrong. No. The breakfast program spread quickly to chapters in 23 different cities by the end of the year.

That’s awesome. Local businesses, churches and community-based organizations, sometimes with that community pressure because they were getting called out in newspapers, made space for the program and nutritious food. They’re getting eggs, grits, toast, milk. The Panthers feed more than 20,000 children nationally in 1969. Wow. 20,000.

Angie: That is 20,000 too many hungry kids.

Theresa: Yeah, you’re not wrong. By 1971, there’s 36 cities that have a breakfast program. That’s awesome. In 1969, in a U.S. Senate hearing, the National School Lunch Program administrator admitted that the Panthers fed more school children than did the entire state of California. This feels accurate. Uh-huh. But the Panthers are the bad guys. Remember, we need to hold that storyline. We need to stick to the history we’ve been fed, even though one party’s feeding children.

Angie: Yeah, okay. I’m going to say that I, this is going to sound so, I don’t know, I don’t know what the right word is. My knowledge of the Black Panther Party is simply like delightful black and white photos we see from the 70s with the fist in the air. Yeah. Because I grew up and was educated in rural white America, that’s pretty much all you learn. You learn very little. You learn that they were militant. At best.

Theresa: Like, you see photos of them with rifles, you see all of that. Right. But we’re missing the fact of like the programs they were doing, their motivations, how effective they were. Like, those are the stories that aren’t told.

Theresa: Well, of course, at least not in our circles.

Angie: Well, right. Why would we, because you make such a good point with like whether the leadership is intentional in their systemic actions, they’re there. Yeah. Right. So, if we’re not taught, how do we change if we don’t, if we’re never told these things, how do we be better people like Ian and I were just having a conversation the other day about someone that we know. And my statement is always I wish they could hang out with people that don’t look like them. Yeah. I think that is such, that is the only way you’re ever going to learn empathy and compassion is by being with people outside of your, I mean, you’re obviously going to learn it from your own circle, but you’re going to be a far better human the minute you step out of your regular.

Theresa: I mean, the times I’ve hung out with friends or coworkers that are black and said something, I’m like, well, why don’t you just do this and then realize they grew up being taught that that kind of action was dangerous parking next to a police car. Dangerous. Like they will circle the block. And it’s just like, oh, I, man, I’ve lambed off. We don’t live in the same country. Parking incorrectly. Yeah.

Angie: Yep. We don’t live in the same country. That’s, that’s more and more apparent like every day to me. Yeah.

Theresa: And that’s a, that’s a great way to put it that we don’t live in the same country. It is a very different dimension of the country we live in. Okay.

So back to this. Soon the program is embraced by party outposts nationwide at its peak. There’s the Black Panther Party is feeding thousands of children per day and 45 programs.

That’s awesome. Now food isn’t the only thing they’re doing. There other other social programs are including transportation assistance, education, free healthcare clinics, tuberculosis, sickle cell anemia testing, which hugely affects their community, legal aid and free shoes for the homeless in low income and black communities.

Angie: I think legal aid was the only thing that I knew of all of those things.

Theresa: It is insane that it is at this point late 60s early 70s and they’re testing, you know, for tubercula for a Victorian illness. Yeah. That’s wild because it’s still relevant.

Angie: Like again, we don’t live in the same country.

Theresa: Now the party, this was for them, they’re doing it for a couple reasons, right? One is it’s an opportunity to counter its increasingly negative image in the public consciousness. And this is the image of the intimidating Afro black man holding a gun. And it’s also addressing a critical community need.

Several critical community need. Right. A man who’s he’s a filmmaker named Roger Goovenver.

Goon beer. I butchered that Smith in an AP Newton story, which is a 2001 film in which he portrays Newton. He says, I mean, nobody can argue with free grits.

Angie: I mean, he’s not wrong. No, he’s not wrong.

Theresa: And if you’ve never tried grits, have you had polenta because same, same, my friend.

Angie: I’ve never had polenta, but I’m a big fan of grits.

Theresa: I have had both. And really it’s just, do you subscribe to the French way? Do you subscribe? You know, it is just different flavor profiles. Same basic ingredient. It’s like you’ve had multiple types of tacos.

But now as great as it is, tacos, tacos, tacos, you’re not wrong. This is amazing. Everybody loves it. The breakfast program is drawing enormous success across the country. There’s somebody who isn’t enamored with the project. Any guesses? White senators.

Angie: FBI director J Edgar Hoover. Oh, it’s so close and still so far away. Yep.

Theresa: He stated that all of the black radical groups that the Panthers were the greatest threat to international security in the country because of the free breakfast program. I’m sorry? The free breakfast program. That is the biggest threat that the Panthers offer.

Angie: Feeding children seems threatening.

Theresa: Yeah. Oh, it’s appalling. Angie, I thought you would recognize this. Me and Hoover are going to have a sit down. Hoover recognizes that the program is capturing loyalty of many black children by giving them free breakfast.

Angie: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And teaching me, helping me with my math lesson after school.

Theresa: Yeah, just appalling. He’s also livid that the breakfast program won liberal whites and moderate black supports for the Panthers. Of course he is. He perversely justifies FBI attempts to destroy the program because it is quote, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to destroy what the black Panther Party stands for. I’m sorry. Say that again. He does a lot of really awful things to destroy the program.

I’m going to get into that in a little bit. But because of the awful things he’s doing, he says, we have to. We have to destroy this because free breakfast for black people that they’re doing themselves.

It’s atrocious. If we do this, then it’s undermining all. They can read. Yeah. And then imagine the threat it’s going to be. When they have thoughts. They’ve always had thoughts, but when they articulate them. That’s what I mean. I hear you.

Angie: It’s giving guests on. Like it doesn’t even have pictures. Yeah.

Theresa: I mean, honestly, I now need to see somebody needs to create a J. Edgar Hoover. No one blanks like the Hoover. No one destroys like a Hoover. You’re welcome. Yeah. FBI agents are going door to door in cities like Richmond, Virginia, telling parents that the BPP members would teach their children racism. No, no, I feel like we’ve covered that already. We’re quite proficient in passing down that old chestnut.

Angie: If that was my job detail for the day, I would just not go to work that day.

Theresa: Or I’d be like, let’s go catch a double feature and we’ll just tell people we did it.

Angie: I feel like no one’s watching at this time. Yeah.

Theresa: Like if this is my work ticket for the day, how about I go mow the lawn instead?

Angie: I’ll go mow my neighbor’s lawns. Yeah.

Theresa: Yeah. In San Francisco? Francisco Meiser writes, he’s a historian or their historian that writes, parents were told that the food’s infected with venereal diseases. I don’t think that’s how it happened.

Angie: There’s more work that needs to be done here. Yeah.

Theresa: In sites like Oakland and Baltimore, they get raided by officers who harass the Black Panther Party members in front of terrified children.

Angie: Because nothing will make you dislike the group that’s feeding you breakfast every day more than watching them be harassed.

Theresa: They’re doing great work. You’re making them bigger martyrs. If your goal is to shut them down, don’t do that. Don’t do that. Do almost anything but that. Right. Do a bigger breakfast. Mm-hmm.

Yep. Hand out bikes while you’re there. In Chicago, there’s a couple of fun things. The children that are participating are getting photographed by the police. I’d be so mad. The night before the first breakfast program in Chicago is supposed to open, a female Panther tells historian Nick Hainan, the Chicago police broke into the church, smashed up all the food and urinated on it.

Angie: That’s going to be given to children tomorrow morning. I mean, what would have been? What would have been? Yeah. So you’re going to break into a church.

Theresa: I don’t know how to do that. I’m making that okay. You’re going to destroy the food and urinate on it and we’re supposed to give you the key to the city. I’m sorry. The site of the car says protect and serve. Yes, it sure does.

Angie: That means everybody, not just the ones you like.

Theresa: FBI and local police raid, arrest and murder Panther leaders as well as, you know, there’s that happening. There’s also some party inciting. It’s no wonder they’re militant. There was a quote. I can’t remember where it was.

I’m going to butcher it, but it was rioting is the language of people who’ve lost all other ability to communicate. There you go. Yeah. It’s like, look, we tried other things. You will get the pebble before you get the stone before you get the boulder.

Angie: Like we made breakfast and you peed on it. Yeah.

Theresa: You peed in my Cheerios. I’m going to have some big feelings too. It’s fair.

Angie: Yeah. Good Lord. I’m so mad.

Theresa: Okay. Now there’s this happening. There’s party infighting because a lot of stress. So of course you’re going to have disagreements about how to deal with this pressure from the outside. That ends up closing most of the Black Panther chapters and ends the free breakfast program in the early 70s.

Angie: So they didn’t even get like five solid years. Yeah, no.

Theresa: That’s infuriating. Seattle, Washington, their chapter lasted longer than most and Seattle’s free breakfast program closed in 1977. Okay. Which is phenomenal that, hey, Seattle, good job. Fantastic. Great to be in your state loving this. The Black Panthers free breakfast program focuses this national attention on the urgent need to give poor children nutritious meals so they can be successful in school. Because maybe I won’t disrupt my classmates.

Maybe I won’t get sent to the principal’s office if we take care of the bottom tier of Maslow’s hierarchy. Yeah. Yeah. In 1973, this attention led to Congress’s dramatic increase in funding of the national school lunch program so poor children can get not reduced price but free lunches. Okay. And it also spotlighted the limited scope of the national breakfast program and helped Congress, well, help pressure Congress to authorize the expansion of the program to all public schools in 75.

Good. As opposed to just those rural outlying communities. Now, ultimately, these and other efforts destroy the Black Panthers broke up the program, like I mentioned, in the end, though, it’s the public visibility of the Panthers breakfast programs that put political pressure on leaders to feed children before school. And it was the result of thousands of American children becoming accustomed to free breakfast that former party member Norma Amir Mutine told Eater that was the government that was the government expanded on its own free lunch program. So basically the Panthers is what made it happen. Thanks guys.

Angie: I’m just thinking about how even today, like how wonky the lunch program is in the public school system, like. Yeah. And think, I mean, yeah, whatever it is what it is.

Theresa: So to give you an idea today that national program feeds 14.57 million children before school. Mm hmm. But without the Panthers, it never would have happened. Yeah.

Angie: And honestly, it’s still not. Still not what it could be. I think they were doing a far better job. Yeah.

Theresa: Like when when COVID hit. My kids school district. Just did free lunches for free breakfast and lunches. Regardless of income. Mm hmm. And then you ask, you know, like once the school slowly opened back up, like the kids, if you came to school, where I’m going to ask, just get it. You’re hungry.

We don’t care. Just eat. And it has been incredible because you know, the kids that are on the reduced ledge or the free lunch are ridiculed by their classmates.

There is the sense of shame. Mm hmm. And by just making it free across the board, it’s like you’re hungry. Eat. You slept in and you woke up late for whatever reason. Eat. Eat.

Angie: The amount of times. So I’m sure that this is similar in most cases, but the way that the my youngest program works is school starts at eight. But like the first 15 minutes of school is breakfast time regardless.

Wow. So they feed everybody and you can say, no, thank you, you know, if you don’t want to do whatever. The amount of times that we’ve run out of time or we ran out of, you know, you ran out of milk with cream cheese or didn’t realize we’re out of milk until that morning. Like, and he’s been like, no, I’ll just have all have yogurt and muffin at school. What? That’s the thing you can do. Yeah, every day. What? And every time he says that I’m surprised. Like, and that tells you what our generation look like. Right.

Theresa: It was, well, I have no money on my card. I met them. Yep. I’m just, I’m just without.

Angie: Well, like you might score your friend has an extra whatever, right? Right. Like, and I just, on the one hand, I think it’s so cool because they, like you said, there’s no ridicule anymore. And the kids, the kids in his school have always been pretty good about it, but there’s this sort of piece across the board. Like everybody’s going to get lunch regardless. Yeah.

And you can kind of see how that works, especially for the kids, you know, are in a, in a situation where they can’t. Yes. Right. So it’s, it’s fun to see the benefit of that.

And every time I think about it, I’m like, wow, COVID did this. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like it took a national emergency for someone to be like, do you think perhaps we should feed them all?

Theresa: You know, okay. So there is a nonprofit attached or that was attached to kiddos elementary school. I’m sure there’s got to be one attached to her middle school. The nonprofit provided more of the physical needs of a family that is struggling laundry. So toilet paper, you know, you could donate anything. And they would just put it in their thing. My kid relied on that so much. You have an accident.

You rip your pants open because you fall in the playground. She had the capacity to go to the office. They just opened the door.

The nonprofit got a new pair of leggings. Call it good. And it was like, we don’t need to call your mom. We don’t need to pull her out of work.

We don’t need, you know, we don’t need to make this a big thing. We can just give you a pair of leggings. And so then it was, hey, the nonprofit needs dish soap. The nonprofit needs shampoo. The nonprofit, you know what? You guys have given my kid $30 in leggings this year because that kid is accident prone. I think I can donate $50 in toilet paper or whatever you need. Like I will go to Costco and I don’t think this happened. Yeah.

Angie: I mean, one of the cool things there’s a, it’s a nonprofit. I forget what it’s called. This, maybe it’s the community center that’s attached to their school, but they, and I think this is so cool. They put backpacks together every year for anybody that wants one that includes all your school supplies for the year.

And like, that’s just something they do. And the, one of the fun side effects, because we live so close to the school, we get to see a little bit more, I think, than your average people do. But the after school program works with them. And so since both the boys were involved in the after school program, we always got to see more. Yeah.

And they would, they would literally call me up. Does he need a new backpack? How’s he on pencils? Because we got all this extra supply and we’re just trying to figure out what we’re going to do till next year. We need space. Okay.

Let me check, see where he’s at on pencils because I, right, we’re good. And I just think like, it’s such a resource to have for parents that don’t have the ability to go out and buy the new thing every time, but they do it in a way that’s not shaming. Yeah, by, and by it’s like, oh, you tore your leggings.

Theresa: Yeah, exactly. Now it’s like you see somebody switch leggings, you’re like, oh, you probably fell on the thing. Or I have the same leggings. Oh, that means that you had, you know, you don’t, there’s no, oh, your family is one of those. It’s, oh, hey, same, same. Yeah, I got the same pair on today.

Angie: Exactly. I’ve heard about schools where the principal was like, you know, I’m noticing a problem with kids not having access to laundry service. So he has entire laundry rooms put in and he then, he then goes and teaches the kids how to function the laundry. And it’s, it’s the little like everyday things that we don’t think about as society that make being functional at school work.

Theresa: Well, I mean, the article where the kids never had breakfast.

Angie: It wasn’t a thing. I can’t let my mind around that.

Theresa: You’re going to look at a nine year old and be like, or smaller, a six year old. They’re basically a baby and then go, well, you just need to sit still and stop it. Can’t know. Not okay. It’s like they’re hungry. I wouldn’t do that to a puppy. I wouldn’t do that to a child.

Angie: I, I couldn’t do it to an adult. Like you can take care of yourself. Here’s breakfast. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Theresa: I love it. That was a story. And honestly, I’m kind of excited that you didn’t know about it because this has been on my to be done list for like, I saw it like literally like a meme about it two years ago. And I was like, ooh, ooh, but I really want to touch on Alfini Shakur being with the Panthers that are being, you know, being a Panther and being arrested or incarcerated and being at Stonewall sort of kind of like, and I was like, okay, all right, hold on, hold on. I got to slowly pace myself because I can’t do all at once.

Angie: Again, how connected is the world? You’re not wrong.

Theresa: But if you’ve enjoyed this incredible romp through history that has a very wild romp. Yeah, it’s spanned from Tutankhamen, which we all know, the Black Panthers, which we all know and told a story that maybe you didn’t know, or maybe you didn’t know it’s full depth and breadth. Then honestly, help us out. Help some girls out.

Rate us, review us, subscribe so that our podcast automatically downloads every week. It’s a lame thing to you, but it makes a big difference to us. And on that note, goodbye. Bye.