Listen to the episode here.

What a strange and wonderful mashup of unhinged history stories we have for you today.

When we think of Tudor England, we often overlook the individuals of African descent who lived and worked there. Today, Angie corrects that. Come learn about the various people historians uncovered.

Theresa takes a different route as she shares the story of Darius McCollum. Darius loves one thing more than anything else in the world: trains. His love of the Metro Transit Authority has led him to get arrested for stealing trains and buses more than 35 times. Come listen to his tale.

This episode pairs well with:
General Harriet Tubman
Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva, the Russian researcher who discovered Autism

Transcript:

Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhanished History Podcast, the podcast where two compulsive nut jobs are going to study history every week, reign or shine, sickness and in health. And then join forces and tell each other the story we’ve only recently heard or learned. I am host one, I’m Teresa and that’s host two.

Angie: I’m host two. I didn’t realize it was my turn.

Angie: I’m Angie.

Angie: That’s my name. It’s actually host two is not actually my name. I’ve called you worse. Yeah, it’s in love though, so I don’t mind.

Theresa: That’s true, and if my voice sounds a little scratchy or gets even worse as the episode progresses, just know that yesterday there was no voice, so I have that going for me.

Angie: Honestly, you sound great for not having a voice yesterday.

Theresa: I mean, I am doing everything I can to mask, so as the episode goes on and on, it is going to get worse and worse, and by the end of the episode, I will be doing Batman impressions.

Angie: Okay, so sidebar in my house, Batman impressions are a very real favorite, and our favorite thing to ask each other with our best Batman voice is what color are your shoes and can you say the word bubbles because you cannot say the word bubbles and be mad at the same time. So, watching my sons use their Batman voice to say bubbles is kind of the best thing on the planet. I really like that. It’s a lot of fun. I suggest trying it with the people near and dear to you.

Theresa: I suggest trying it with greatest enemies as well. Honestly, live your truth. It’s like when you see two boxers square up against each other and they do the chest bump and you hear somebody in the back room yell, kiss, kiss.

Theresa: Okay, so other sidebar. My sons, they play just about every sport they can get their hands on that they have time to play basketball is a big one in our house and my youngest son’s very best friend spends every ounce of his spare time with our family and he was watching my oldest son’s varsity game the other day and the other team got fouled and got to make a shot and my third son, God love him, yelled, oh, that’s my man as he was standing up to make the shot and I was sitting like the boys were sitting up in the group with like all their friends and I was sitting maybe 15 feet away from them and I knew that was mine and I just could not help but laugh and my husband leaned over and was like that one’s ours, isn’t it? Yes, yes, it is. I love that for you. It made me laugh. It made me laugh big. It was a fun night. I also recognize that I get to go first.

Theresa: You recognize because I called it out before I hit record.

Angie: Yeah, well, I guess really what I recognize is that I haven’t started yet.

Theresa: I mean, look, you do you. I’m just going to sit here and do some beadwork. Okay, that’s cool.

Angie: I have a cool new quickie toy, so hopefully you don’t hear it, but I am so excited about having cool new quickie toys for when we record.

Theresa: A whole new quickie toy? Oh, clickies. Clickie. Okay, I was like Angie, we do not do that while recording in case we ever won a political career.

Angie: Okay, well, I’m never going to have a political career, so I’m going to continue doing me. Thank you so much. And if I ever do intend on having a political career, it’ll all be on the open anyway, so they can choose how to vote for me based on all the evidence that’s put forward. You know? There.

Um, thank you. That said, I was, I had a completely different story planned for today, and then I learned about this story, and I immediately switched gears and had to buy a book and the whole bit. Okay, so my sources are Tudor English and Black, and not a slave insight, Black History Month, The Guardians. Author’s name is Beshita.

It was from Sunday, October 29, 2017. The wonderful book by Dr. Miranda Kuffman called The Black Tudors, just simply would have called it, my notes are sideways on that. Two websites from Sealy Manners, Sealy Manners. A KS History and Homework Help, it’s like a BBC bite size, like the cute little kid ones, but like explain everything in the simplest terms.

Theresa: I need more of those in my life, let’s be honest.

Angie: I love them, and I try to find them whenever it’s a little bit of a challenging topic where I like, maybe I don’t understand all the ins and outs, and I actually wasn’t looking for it in this one, but that happened, and I was like, that is so cool. Thank you so much. A article on the EBSCO.com, it’s a research starter website I’ve used before. I’ve mentioned it before. That is all about the 1833 Act of Abolition and Slavery in British Shirts, in the British Empire.

It is by Richard Sheposh, I just think that’s a really fun name to say, so I had to say it out loud. Historic Royal Palaces has a really great article, and another article that is from Miranda Cussins, like personal blog, called Elizabeth I and the Blacker Moors, the deportation that never was. Okay, so in case you’re still stumbling over what the heck I’m talking about, I’m going to talk about the Black Tutors.

Theresa: I am here for all of this because I know none of it.

Angie: Oh, so then when I asked you the question, because I was thinking, hey, when I think of Tutor England, what is the first thing that you think of?

Theresa: A bunch of white humans running around, listening to Shakespeare.

Angie: Nope, right, okay, so Africans do not show up in that picture at all, which is sort of, I think…

Theresa: Well, like, okay, they do and they don’t, right? Like, they don’t, but then I think about a fellow, and I go, okay, so Moors did exist, they were a part of the consciousness, but so were one-breasted Amazon warriors.

Angie: So, funny that you should mention a fellow because I think a fellow was sort of modern academic first inkling that maybe what we understood about Africans in Europe at this time is very different than what we formerly thought. Which I think is really interesting, right, because it’s one of those art imitates life kind of things, but in this case it is 100% accurate.

So, I think super cool that you would mention him. So, most people probably do picture Tutor England as entirely white, but archival records reveal a really diverse population, including hundreds of Black Africans. So, for context, the Tutor period ranges from the years of 18th, excuse me, did it again.

Theresa: I love it in pages because this is something I did all the time, and now you’re just like, yep, following suit.

Angie: Yeah, I’m just hanging on to it for dear lives this time. Ranging from the years of 1485, there we go. I don’t know where it would have gone with 1843, I guess, 1485 to 1603. Now, this also coincides with England’s early global exploration and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade. However, England doesn’t play a part in the slave trade until around 1562, and it’s only in the colonies, which makes for a really complicated understanding of the African view of and in England, right? Because in the British colonies, slavery is very accepted. It’s very much a part of culture and society at the time, but on the English mainland, it is not, and it is very clearly understood that it is not. So, just to make it really simple, Sheposh writing for the EBSCO says, quote, the act on, all of a sudden, I can’t say this word, abolition, the act on the abolition of slavery in the British Empire was a law in 1833 that officially ended the practice of slavery across all British-held colonies in the world.

Safe slavery itself had been declared illegal in Great Britain on a technicality in 1772, and the trade of enslaved people was banned in 1807. So, I think that little bit of context is just super relevant to the topic because of how it plays out in real time to them, right? Right. Just to briefly say, there is a very real understanding that two Africans, during the Tudor period, to set foot on English soil was to be free. There’s this precedent set in 1569, and a 1569 court ruling stating that, quote, England was to pure an air for a slave to breathe in.

And that is what any sort of court ruling would base itself on, was that statement. That is a fascinating one. I know. I was like, hold on. So, at some point, a judge looks back on this previous statement and is like, nope, since 1569, this is how we felt about it.

So, that’s what we’re working with. So, the conclusion that was to come at the time was that in England, you are free. And Dr. Kaufman explains in her book, quote, the Tudors were far more likely to judge a new acquaintance by his or her religion and social class than by where they were born or the color of their skin. So, these categories often do intersect. They were far more interested in what your religion was than what your your religion was. That checks.

Theresa: But I’m curious on how this plays out because I know that when there was an influx of immigrants from Jamaica to Britain in, say, like World War II era or just after that they faced a lot of discrimination. So, I want to hear how that tension plays out.

Angie: At this time, I think you’ll find it differently than it would have been in the 40s. And I’ll just I’ll tell you, you’ll kind of see it play out a little bit in what I’m going to bring to you next. So, we have these historians. I’m going to try really hard not to butcher their names, but a couple of them are a little bit difficult. But there’s historian Imates Habib, another historian called Onyokia Nubia and then Miranda Cuffman, of course, and of the aforementioned book. They have uncovered this evidence showing that many people of African origin lived in England during the Tudor period.

These researchers are discovering this information about these individuals and their lives through things like letters, legal records, receipts, which I find to be super interesting, and church records that are documenting like birth, death, baptism, that sort of thing. And this evidence also reveals that people of African origin serve in the royal court of Henry V VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I. Additionally, they are also involved in the course of Scotland as well, which I think is fun to mention. You will find them in households of the nobility, including the Homes of Elizabeth, the first favorite courtiers like Robert Dudley.

Interesting. Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, he’ll come back later, William Cecil, and also Sir Robert Cecil as well. And as I mentioned, King James Scotland. And you might be wondering then, because at least I was, how did they get to Britain in the first place? Right? Well, we know people of African origin have been present in Britain since at least 8043 when the Romans arrived.

Theresa: You say we know, and I’m like, I had no clue.

Angie: I had a clue, but only for something completely unrelated to this topic, if that makes sense. Um, so basically a group of North African, and I’m going to do really, really, really, really hard to read.

Brain, my excitement when I mention this. A group of North African soldiers are stationed at Hadrian’s Wall in Northern England around the same time. But in the south of England lives a woman of sub-Saharan African heritage. And she had resided there since that leased her early childhood.

She possibly could have been born there. Holy cow. Right. So you have this separation of like place and time and people, right? So you have North Africans and Romans hanging out in Northern England above Hadrian’s Wall, right? And then you also have in the south of England this sub-Saharan Africans who’s living there at the same time as the Romans.

And to me, my brain was just like, wow, that’s crazy. Then there is this beautiful woman called the Ivory Bengal Lady. She is discovered in 1901. She lived in what would be Roman York in the fourth century. She was of North African descent and was buried with really valuable items, including things like jet and elephant ivory bracelets, earrings, pendants, beads.

Also located with her is a blue glass jug as well as a glass mirror. And historians are discovering more and more events of people of African heritage in medieval Britain, though their numbers appear to be smaller during that time than they would have been during the Roman occupation or during the Tudor period and onward.

Theresa: This is giving the same level of craziness and like mind-blowingness as like Yasuke being the first foreign samurai. Right.

Angie: Yeah. When I like, I had this understanding that they were there at least to some degree during the time of the Romans and obviously since they exist there now, but my brain was like, wait, so they never left. Like I’m sure there’s, you know, there’s immigration and things that are happening, but people of African descent stayed in England the whole time. Right. So my brain was just like, wow, that’s insane.

Theresa: So like Chaucer could have included a black man. Easily.

Angie: Yeah. And it wouldn’t have been out of his scope of things to have seen, to have encountered, to have spoken with, to have had community with. Now during the Tudor era, they would come as both diplomats and diplomatic gifts.

And I think it’s fair to say that you are dealing with during the Tudor era, like the Spanish conquest and the Portuguese. So for them to send a human as a gift is normal.

Theresa: Right. Well, and you have those eccentricities that you send crazy animals or just novel things in general. So okay. Right. All right. I don’t like it, but okay.

Angie: But right. Okay. So, so we’re seeing them, we’re seeing them in this light of both a diplomat and a present, which is weird, but it’s very interesting. Some of them at this time would have made their way to England via Southern Europe as maybe they’re traveling with merchants or returning with explorers. Some even just choose to freely immigrate there. Like, oh, I’ve heard this place is lovely. Let’s pack up and go.

Theresa: I hear they have no sunlight. I’m sure this would be great. Let’s go.

Angie: View though at this time came straight from Africa because England was not involved in trade or otherwise within the African continent at this time. Like if it was, it was on a very minor scale compared to how it would be later.

And that also blew my mind. I was like, hold on, you need to say that we white people have not been bothering the Africans the entire time. No, no, no, we have.

We have in fact been bothering all of the rest of the world for the entire time. But there was a time where England wasn’t the powerhouse. We know them of them today and they weren’t as exploratory as they were more focused on the interior. So they didn’t have a reason to be going to Africa or South America or really anywhere else at the point.

Now, these Africans that were finding at this time in true England would have originally come from both West and North Africa as well as the Iberian Peninsula, which I was like, oh, that’s kind of cool. Because right, we have more. Yeah. And that makes total sense.

Right. There are some records that give us idea of their positions in England. There are documented servants, sailors, dock workers, salvage divers, musicians, sex workers, of course, and laundresses.

And the list goes on and on. I just cannot say enough that it is so important to know that there are no formal slavery laws at this time. So there are times where they were servants, like often, though this could be found more in the home of international merchants. And if you were a servant serving in an English home, you were being paid. At least that’s what our understanding is.

Okay. International merchants work a little different. They could have come as slaves, but as soon as they find out that if you’re on English soil, you’re free, they’re probably going to figure out how to become free. Like, they don’t stay in these international merchant households long without finding out that either I can be paid or I can be freed.

Theresa: They’re like, hey, you know, I’m going to go to this store to pick you up some eggs and I found freedom instead. Goodbye.

Angie: Bye. Hi. Even in English royal households, they are paid and they are paid and treated well, which I think is really cool because that’s not what I expected. Given that I stated earlier that Britons at this time cared more about your religion and social class and the color of your skin, it is worth mentioning that some Africans are christened and they adopt English names. Some do keep their original names, but it seems to be more that English style that they end up going with for records. So it does make it a little bit of an intense archival project and an intense understanding to confirm if a person is of African descent because guess what?

You can have black in your name and more in your name and just be Scottish. That makes sense. Yeah. So there’s definitely some heavy lifting happening when you’re trying to determine the ethnicity of a person based on the records. Sometimes it’s really obvious, other times they’re digging for understanding, which I think is awesome on the researcher’s part to be able to be willing to do that, to just understand this time better.

And I’m here for it. Like, can’t wait to see what we learn as more records are digitized. All that said, you want to hear about some of their stories that the records have uncovered?

Theresa: I’m grateful that you have them.

Angie: Okay. There is arguably the most famous. His name is John Blank. I think it might be a play on words. It’s spelled B-L-A-N-K-E. So anyway, according to historicroyalpalaces.org, he is the only one with which we have a known image of. That is because he is a very talented trumpeter who served in the courts of both Henry VII and VIII. When I say served, I only mean that in the context that the court is his job, so he is serving in this position. He is paid rather handsomely for his work. Unfortunately, the documentation doesn’t tell us where he’s from. We suspect, obviously, North or West Africa. And it’s very likely that he came originally as part of Catherine of Argonne’s entourage in 1501.

Theresa: That would make sense because she was from Spain. Right.

Angie: And we know for sure that he was receiving payments for his work from Henry VII by 1507. It’s possible that when Arthur, Catherine’s first husband, died, she was sort of living off whatever she could sell, whatever she could pawn because she’s not receiving her full dowry.

I’ll mention this later, but she’s having a hard time paying her staff. It’s possible that this is the point with which he joins Henry VII’s court because he’s free to choose his employer. So that’s pretty cool. To say that Henry VIII kept him well-clothed and very busy is an entertainment.

And we know this because we see the receipts from Henry VIII purchasing his trumpeter’s new gear. Wow. Yeah.

And they’re labeled by who the gear belongs to, which I think is super cool. There is one funny, I adore this man, at one point a fellow trumpeter dies. And so our man, or rather, he goes to an advisor who would write the king a letter on his behalf, saying basically, hey, so like Dave’s dead, perhaps I could have a raise given that I’m worth it and you have available funds to pay me more now because like Dave’s dead. It worked.

Theresa: Dude, I would have assumed that wouldn’t have worked because, you know, but I love that it did. Right.

Angie: He is featured on the tournament roll of 1511, which I think is pretty cool. And that’s where you can see his painting. And I should have included that in my notes here.

I do apologize, but I did not. But I think that’s super cool. And then, and I think this job is wild in the Tudor era. So like it’s crazy to me that it’s even the thing I get to talk about today. But there’s Jacques Francis. He is a salvage diver from Guinea.

Theresa: Just I didn’t realize we had salvage divers going back that far.

Angie: Yeah, apparently they’ve probably always existed, but I was shocked. I was like, no, I think I read that wrong. So I got start over. Let’s read it again. Nope. He was a salvage diver and he was very, very good at his job. In fact, he was one of the divers commissioned to bring Henry VIII and Mary Rose back. Are you familiar with Mary Rose? No.

Okay. So the Mary Rose was old Hank babies like pride and joy of his fleet. And it sunk on July 19th, 1545, like 10 to 15 miles offshore, which is insane to me. But the water there is at most like 50 feet deep, probably closer to 40 feet deep. 15 miles offshore, I would have thought it would have been significantly deeper.

Theresa: I mean, I guess it depends on how the layout is, obviously. Right.

Angie: So this ship, it’s super special to Henry VIII. My notes are not about the ship. My notes are about Black Tutors, but I could probably do a whole deep dive on the ship. But this ship is loaded with guns, ammo, and other goods. Like, like this ship is so important to the crown that they, at minimum, they enlist divers to bring it up. And if they can’t bring the whole ship up, bring up at least the munitions. Like this is like his, his baby bring, bring my boat back.

Now, this ship and its cargo, it’s super important because this is like, we’re kind of at war with France. I mean, surprise. I know, right? But here’s the thing. Did you know that very few English people know how to swim at this point? In fact, it’s considered bad luck even for sailors.

Theresa: Okay, that seems like an oversight. I feel like we should have allowed some wives’ tales to just let loose.

Angie: But like, maybe just learn to dog paddle. I mean, if you’re not going to do the whole thing, like figure out how to say quote.

Theresa: Yeah.

Angie: Okay. So they are English and they can’t swim, so they can’t dive. And they’re like, oh, what do we do? Well, there’s a really great quote from Seely Manners saying, swimming was also considered pointless because ships were not in the habit of turning around to rescue sailors who fell overboard better to just drown quickly. Wow.

Angie: Yeah. So I was like, with that in mind, sailors should also carry like pockets full of rocks so that they’re just weighed down quicker.

Angie: Yeah. So that said, Francis and his crew, they show up to do the dirty work. Francis being born on the West African island, at the time it’s called Guinea. I’m not sure. I meant to look up if it’s still Guinea today because that feels right to me, but I apologize.

I didn’t actually Google if it’s called something different today. But this is where he’s born. He learns how to fruit dive from like early childhood. He is learning the skills from his parents, from his friends, from his family.

This is a part of their daily life. And he develops these exceptional skills that require years and years of training. So he comes to England to lead the dive team for a Venetian named Peter Paolo Corsi. He’s working alongside other men called John Eco and George Black, who are also likely African, just based on their names and their diving abilities.

That sort of makes sense. What’s really interesting about him though is that his testimony is used in court, further showing his status as free and his status in England at the prime. But this is incredibly special because he’s a foreigner testifying in court. And they’re like, they will take his word for it because that’s, he saw the thing, he knows what’s up, this is what’s going on. Yes, his word is law like that. What was he testifying?

He’s so cool. Or basically in 1547 Francis, I’m glad you asked I have that. Francis testifies in court when Corsi is accused of stealing salvaged items from another shipwreck in Southampton. From what I understand, I’m at butcher this a little bit, I didn’t include this in my notes. So the basic gist is he takes like some tin and his excuse is that we’re not being paid well.

So I’m just going to salvage this anyway and get like be able to pay my rent. There was probably more to it than that. And Francis sort of sets the like he sets the record with what he says. But the problem is today we don’t know what the court case outcome was. We just know that Corsi was accused of stealing salvaged items.

Gotcha. Yeah, hopefully those records will come to light and we’ll find out one day because I’m really curious to see. However, with his testimony, it showcases his expertise in freediving that is obviously diving without breathing equipment to very significant depth.

And this skill would have been highly, highly valued by Europeans seeking to recover valuables that had gone underwater because we don’t swim. Shocking. And I have one last one. She’s probably my favorite. I want to say that I learned of her from a TikTok from the historic historic royal palaces.

A woman called Candace Scarborough, who is both a researcher and a dancer has a film called We Have Always Been Here, a Black Tudor Story. So I give you Catalina of Montrell. She was a servant who initially served with Catherine of Argonne. She might have just held the key to one of Tudor history’s biggest secrets, if not the biggest secret, and she kept it for life. Go on.

So let’s rewind real quick. Catalina is born in Montrell, Granada. It’s this really beautiful spot on the southern coast of Spain. Now this area had been a territory belonging to the Muslim Amir or prince, like that’s equivalent of their prince, since roughly the 1200s. But in 1492, the Christian forces of Isabella of Castile and Fernand of Argonne, Catherine’s re-took it during the Reconquista of Granada. Now this would result in thousands of Muslim Moors relocating from their homes in Granada to North Africa.

Those that did not leave or escaped were considered the spoils of war and then they were of course enslaved. It’s thought that that’s the case for Catalina and that she may have even been named after Catherine of Argonne, who was to become her royal mistress. Oh. No.

Right. As I mentioned earlier, Catherine goes to England in 1501. It’s now 1531 and both England and Spain are waiting with bated breath for those in power who are debating Henry and Catherine’s annulment, right? Because he wants Anne Boleyn.

Anyway, they are looking for any help that can expedite, like the English are looking for any help that connects to that Henry’s case, which is basically that Henry is saying their marriage was invalid due to the fact that the marriage between Catherine and his older brother had in fact been consummated. Right. Just to rage bait you, this is like 30 years ago. A little late to the show.

Theresa: Look, I mean, you’ll look for a loophole when you need a loophole. She is going to find that loophole.

Angie: So the queen, she is questioned with some intense simulation and the results, they prove not conclusive. Now, when Catherine had arrived in England, she arrived with two unnamed enslaved women. Aside from them, she has this huge entourage that only arrives with her, but it’s believed that Catalina was one of the two enslaved in her number.

So here’s the deal. Two days after she arrived in London, her and Arthur are married. Catalina was a servant of the royal bed chamber and would have prepared Catherine’s marriage bed that night and cared for it the next day as well. According to historic royal palaces who cite Spanish sources among like citing Spanish sources among Catalina’s other tasks, making the bed and attending to other secret services of her highness’s chamber.

Angie: So basically, Argonne Catalina changed the

Angie: sheets, but not only that, she is in this position of great trust that is super important. She would have been pretty to everything that Catherine of Argon had gone through. And so like for example, historic royal palaces says quote Catherine must have thought highly of Catalina’s discretion and loyalty because she was like she attended to everything that Catherine endured in the royal bed chamber. Now, the Spanish also want to talk with Catalina as well, since Catalina would have cared for Catherine through her wedding ceremony and coordination to Henry the eighth as well. So she would have quote been present the first time the Queen and Henry year were united as one. So she would have seen both.

Theresa: I mean, it’s not a role I’d want, but I get it.

Angie: Yeah, right. Okay. So we don’t know a ton about Catalina, including what status she had for your slave and Catherine’s service. In theory, she was free the moment she stepped on English soil. What we do know is that between Catherine’s marriages to Arthur and Henry, she was not given her full dowry. So she’s resorted to asking for charity from Henry seven and it’s like sporadic at best. And so she pawned off a ton of her jewels to pay her staff. So there is some potential that by this point, Catalina is a free woman.

When both the English and the Spanish want to talk to Catalina, they refer to her as quote once the Queen’s slave, which I think is a really important identifier for her because that implies she is no longer. Right. Right. So at some point, she has left the Queen’s service, slave or otherwise paid or otherwise. We don’t know when or why she leaves the Queen’s service, but we do know that she marries a crossbow maker called Oviode.

Oh, oh, Vito. And they think that he traveled to the English court to show Henry his wares. Like he was really good at his crossbows and Henry loved to purchase a new weapon. And that’s possibly how the two met. They would eventually settle in Malinga and have two daughters.

Later when her husband died, she takes her daughters back home to her birthplace in Montrall, which I think super cool. Now we have no record of how Catalina responded to the Spanish delegation who came a calling. There are those that believe that the lack of reports suggest she refused to speak on the matter for former mistress’s personal moments. It’s also possible that her testimony was destroyed or that she died before they ever found her. Either way, she appears to have taken her role in Catherine’s Coffinance very seriously and she never told anybody what happened in the bed chamber. Dang. Oh, like get it, girlfriend.

I like you. And then for funsies, there is Diego, who is listed as a crew member on Sir Francis Drake’s Circumnavigation of the World. Queen Lizzie One has a blackmate and then there’s Catalina and Mary Fills. These are women who appear in parish and court records in London. There’s the story of a reasonable black man who was a silk weaver in London at the time, which I think is super cool.

And as these records are being digitized and scoured, we’re learning more and more. At present, there are at least 250 confirmed Africans who lived in the Tudor, England, places like London, Bristol, Plymouth, South Hampton, like I said, they would work as domestic service, skilled tradesmen. They would even be married to English partners and they would hold property and were integral members of their community. Now, for years, there was this belief that Elizabeth I during her reign, there was this thing called the 1596 deportation proclamation.

And basically it’s claiming that black residents are causing problems like unemployment, some scapegoat. Yeah, I know. This sounds familiar.

Right. But Dr. Kaufman states rather that in the simplest form, it’s basically a scheme from an unsuccessful businessman who is just annoyed the crown until he got what he wanted, not the country as a whole. And he didn’t ever get what he wanted. So that’s the story of the black tutors and how Elizabeth I, in fact, did not deport them. So I love that. It made my whole week’s learn that I like inhaled her book. Like it took me two days. I loved it.

Theresa: Well, I’m going to shift gears dramatically. And I am going to tell you the story of Darius McCollum and he is a recent figure. Okay, let’s go. Okay, my sources, the documentary off the rails, an article from the mighty off the rails documentary tells the story of Darius McCollum, an autistic man who’s been arrested 32 times by Jordan Davison. The magazine EP, they have a article, Autism Schmatism by Michael John Carly. The thinking person’s guide to autism off the rails, a documentary about Darius McCollum, a review by Maxfield Sparrow and neurodiversity press.

For those who know his story, a Darius McCollum update by John Michael Carly. I love all of this already. So we have our hero here. I’ll say, I’m going to say hero. I’m a fan, but this is I’m already a fan. Darius McCollum, he’s born in Brooklyn and he’s raised by his mom who would take him on train trips and she would notice his fascination with traveling on New York City trains.

Okay. And growing up, Darius McCollum, he says he enjoys school, but if you dig deeper, you realize that he struggles with interpersonal relationships. That feels very neurodivergent. Yep.

I mean, I did mention the word autism in many articles, so you’re going to kind of hear that theme popping up here because after school, he would go to the subway and the staff there were super kind and they would have him make announcements. They would say, can you go sweep that area over there? You basically hang out with them. Yeah. And it really enjoyed it. And so this is where he starts to feel loved and he starts to feel safe and the staff feel like his friends.

I love that. Now, as an adult, he’s reflecting on his relationship with the transit authority and he says that he’s married to the MTA and other people. I mean, like he’s got one love in his life and this is going to become abundantly apparent.

Angie: If you can marry the Eiffel Tower, he can marry the transit authority.

Theresa: It’s fine. Right. And so people who know him, they describe his dedication for providing quality service for passengers as something that is benevolent and he’s committed to this whole process. People from all walks of life are going to speak about Darius McCollum as being very likable, affable, gregarious.

He’s just a nice guy and he has this entire lifetime of being mistreated, misunderstood that I’m going to get into. Okay. Now we’re going to zoom back. Second grade, there is a massive snow storm that hits or a storm that hits, I assumed snow. And when he gets to school, he’s only one of two kids in his class that day. Oh, wow.

Okay. Massive snow. Everybody stayed home. He didn’t get the memo. The teacher.

Yeah. Like I’ve never been in a situation, but I can, I can understand it sort of. The teacher gives him and another student separate puzzles and says, work on this puzzle and she starts organizing this cabinet. So her back is turned while her back is turned. The other kid gets up from his desk, grabs a pair of scissors, walks behind Darius and stabs him in the back. Oh my gosh. He Darius wails like you would. And the teacher turns around to see the kid poise to go again.

Absolutely not. And so the teacher stops it, gets Darius to the emergency room. The blades had narrowly missed his heart. Holy crap. So he’s in surgery. He spends time in the hospital like this is, this is, this is, but no one, this profoundly changes his thoughts on enjoying school. Shocking. Right. So our boy Darius, he starts acting up and in the documentary, he would talk about how he would pull the fire alarm just to escape school.

Angie: I mean, I think we’ve all thought about it. He’s just doing it. Right.

Theresa: He’s like, you know what, I’m overwhelmed. I’m going to run. So I’m going to pull the alarm and I’m going to go decompress somewhere. This is. Yep. Now, when McCollum is 12 or 13, his parents have him committed for nine months. And this is following the, the scissor attack.

Angie: But what year was he born? But did I hear that part? Um, one sec.

Theresa: Let me see if I, he was born in 65. Okay.

Angie: That’s sort of the, I was picturing the 80s. And so I was like, I think that I’ve got the wrong year. I should ask.

Theresa: I mean, so you’re talking late seventies at this point. Right.

Angie: So we, we still don’t have any clear understanding of. Right. Okay.

Theresa: And it’s, I should mention. That. Autistics have a tough time getting diagnosed. If you are a minority or a girl, if you’re a white boy, you get diagnosed fairly quickly and easily. But if you are outside of who Hans Osburger did his study on, then you struggle with diagnosis or understanding. Right. So either way, this is not good because despite Darius being so young, he’s given electroshock therapy while at the hospital.

Angie: And mom’s cool with this because I’m not caught this.

Theresa: I mean, I unclear. Okay. When, when you see mom interviewed in the documentary, you, you, she is a sympathetic character. You appreciate her. She is doing the best she can.

Okay. Understand that this is New York. They are black.

In the sense they are impoverished. Right. Okay.

Okay. So there is a lot of things stacked against Darius. So again, he doesn’t feel he can trust anybody at school.

And so he goes to where he can feel safe and valued the subway. Right. That makes sense. Now transit workers, they love Darius. They have him running errands. He does chores and he is just happy. Go lucky. This subway is his Disneyland. So he’s going to do everything he can to please them. Right.

Angie: Now you can tell me to come back. I will sweep every day. Right.

Theresa: You know, you want me to make the announcements. Fantastic. You got it. What do you need? You know, I’m here for you. Now in the film, the column says, because I’ve asked for a syndrome, I have trouble making friends. I didn’t want to be bullied. I didn’t want to be picked on. I didn’t want to have to be beaten up. Which is… Oh, they’re heartbreaking. Yes. Now instead of doing all those things like bullied and beat up, he escapes to the subway. He memorizes the entire New York City subway system by age eight.

Angie: Holy beans. There are adults that still don’t know how to get to the office.

Theresa: Yeah, exactly. Now while he’s there interacting with staff, he’s asking them, what does this button do? What does that button do? And he would just watch and he would listen. Like the person at the booth, you know, he listened to everything they did, watched everything they did. By age 12, they go and issue him a full uniform because he’s their little helper. Yeah, and he deserves a uniform. All the workers, they think he’s the most interesting kid they’d ever met.

Why? Because he’s interested in them. He’s interested in their job.

Mm-hmm. And so they feed into this. Now eventually staff end up fighting over him and trying to use him for his help.

I love this. April of 1978, they teach him how to operate a train. That’s so cool. Which, I mean, when I was a wee one, I got to go to the cockpit of an airplane several times while in flight, which my kid will never know. And I can only imagine how neat that would be for somebody so interested in trains. Mm-hmm.

100%. Age 15, things escalate a little bit. One employee asks him to drive the train unsupervised to the World Trade Center and come back. Okay. The guy he replaced goes to see his own girlfriend. Of course. And a passenger ends up seeing what they presume is a kid driving the train and they go and tattle. Of course.

Angie: And then the dispatcher comes down. And the dispatcher comes and goes, where’s Carl? Where is Carl? Carl should be the guy driving the train. So next thing you know, transit cops come down, they detain Darius and his mom is so pissed that the word train not allowed to be mentioned at the house. Oh, I mean, that’s his life.

Theresa: I get it. I get both sides of this because she’s afraid that something could have happened while he was on the train and he could have injured people.

Angie: Or himself or any number of things, right?

Theresa: Now, poor Darius, he feels the call of the train. So he goes back down to the subway. As you do. By age 17 and 18, he applies to work for the transit system. Both times they deny him because of the reputation that he’s got.

Angie: That one time I drove a train unsupervised to the World Trade Center and back by the way. Because Carl’s an idiot.

Theresa: Making stops at each day, you know, doing all the right announcements. So instead, he just sneaks past security, walks up to offices, asks for uniforms, signs for them and then walks off. Good for him.

Over his time in doing this, he amassed over 130 keys to various things. Okay, rooms, offices, wheelchair ramps, lockers, bro just has his way. Like he knows the train system.

Yeah. He starts driving buses and trains nearly every day. Like stopping, knowing all the routes, stopping, taking money, make sure the money gets where it needs to go. He wasn’t stealing.

Well, stealing trains, stealing buses. But not. And he’s not actually employed, is he? Not negative.

He has no job. I love this. Love this. So he would do this daily, but every few months or so, that’s when he’d get caught, sit back to jail again. I’m sorry.

Angie: If I could you imagine having to be the one to write that story? Caught Dave again.

Theresa: Darius, Darius caught Darius again. Yeah.

Angie: I just, can you imagine like that’s, yeah. So it’s Tuesday, got to go down and check on the subway. Yep. Yep.

Theresa: Darius never stops pursuing his dream of working in transit, whether he had a actual job from them or not. I love him. This is 30 years of devotion that he has. And every fiber of his being yearns to serve the public as a transit driver.

Angie: He should be teaching like, motivational how to get what you want classes and serve your community classes.

Theresa: You know, yeah, yeah, like watching this documentary. Hubs was like, they should just give him a job. They should just give him a job. He’s not going to really should. Yeah. He’s not your best employee. Like you want somebody who fixates on how to make the role better. Yeah. And he can’t not do it.

Angie: Yeah, they’re really failing him by not just finding them up or looking the other way. Yeah, I put him on payroll personally pay the kid. Yeah.

Theresa: By 20 or 2004, Darius ends up having racked up an incredible media portfolio. There is a play written about him, the documentary that I cited, and there’s interpretations of his life made by people that are not out there to this exploit him. There’s just good people that always follow him or on his side.

As he deserves. There’s talk of a movie starring Julia Roberts, which I mean, I’m here for. But it’s difficult enough for any ex-inmate to get excited about starting a new life. And when you’re a convicted felon, very few people are going to hire.

Angie: And is this felon train theft?

Theresa: Yeah, it’s impersonating. And it’s MTA official. It is like, right. Okay. Yeah, like grand larceny. Like it’s grand larceny because he’s stealing expensive machines. Like he’s going on back. From your lips to God’s ears. But strangely, that’s not how it’s written up in the police report. Weird. Now he’s really struggling because he’s got no technical job training, no money or education.

Angie: And so he’s got an education in trains, damn it. Self taught. Listen, I’m going to trust Darius to get me around New York faster than I can trust somebody else. Oh, 100 percent.

Theresa: Because you think about it, he’s going to be perfect for the MTA. At one point, he was volunteering at the MTA. They have their own transit museum. And that’s awesome. The director there realized that he, because he knows the system inside out, he loved the museum, that he would give tours, volunteering. And he was great at giving tours because he’s impassioned about it. Yeah. So the powers that bear, like, you know what, he’s, he gives us a bad name, get him gone.

And so she comes up to him reluctantly and it’s just like, I hate to do this. I love you. Everybody here loves you. But you got to go. Absolutely not. Yep. I know.

It’s, it’s awful. He goes on to try even other transit authorities in other cities. He tries Amtrak, but his career, quote unquote, always comes back to vitamin E as because his reputation precedes him. Because basically he has this habit. But remember the 130 keys that he’s hijacked as well as everything else. He shows how bad their security procedures are. This pisses off Homeland Security and apparently drives their insurance rates. Oh, that makes sense. I mean, I get that part later. MTA rebuffs criticisms and escalates the divide further by demanding a repayment if there’s any possible movie deals.

Angie: So, all of this made your customers happy every day for 30 years. Leave them alone for free.

Theresa: Yeah, like you just had to do a couple of caveats and get all this. Now, basically the transit authority, they did their heels in, they’re upset with everything. But while he’s in prison at one point, Homeland Security comes and visits him and Darius being so giving such a lover. He welcomed them and he doesn’t ask for anything in return. And he ends up telling them, like, here’s how I got through security. Here’s how I made through this. Here’s how you should improve things. Like I have broken in hundreds and hundreds of times.

Here’s how what you can do to get things set up proper. They gave him nothing in return. And I hate that.

I mean, can you think about it? He is so sweet and so kind that he doesn’t even think that he’s going to be taken advantage of. Yeah, I hate that. Take care of him. Over the years, what ends up happening is he gets out and then nearly instantly. So over the years, it ends up that he basically, as soon as he gets out, he takes another car or a bus for a joy ride and then boom, he gets locked up again. And one, if there’s a clip in the documentary where he has two layers and the good lawyer talks, I’ll talk about the bad one first and then I’ll talk about the good one. The good lawyers just like, yes, he’s been arrested again.

It appears that he would have been homeless as of tonight, which caused a bit of panic, which seems to be what triggers him getting back on the bus. Okay. And so like, she sees the pattern, she’s clearly tried to help, but this is the cycle, right? Right. But either way, we’re talking to Callum is just always in the news or like New York Post or other news outlets. And at some point, his Asperger’s diagnosis is brought into the courtroom. They’re trying to get him treatment that he needs as a disabled human.

And he just has this impulse to drive these buses and trains. The media explodes all over again. And this ends up backfiring because this is the bad lawyer. He gets this deadbeat lawyer that he’s not able to fire. The lawyer’s awful. Like the lawyer ends up being the celebrity lawyer who kind of takes him on so that he can get some street cred and representing somebody with huge notoriety. But then the lawyer has to show up to the courtroom. Okay.

And the column can’t fire him because, quote, he’s not a sound judgment to fire his lawyer and get one who actually fight for him. And I don’t know, show up. I hate that. Not only is this bad.

The judge did a Google search on Asperger and decided in her own opinion off of a Google search that Darius McCollum couldn’t possibly have Asperger’s or any compulsion out of his control and she rules against him. And what year is this? Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Good question. I didn’t have the year down for that. He gets arrested like 30 over 30 times. So it’s very difficult to keep track of which one was which. Got it. Okay. I see.

Angie: This is like 2004 and she is not making these connections. We have bigger issues.

Theresa: I want to say it’s 2008 or so. Okay. Later than it should be. Right. Yes. But all of this, like, so the lawyer himself is this guy named Steven C. Jackson and he gained a ton of notoriety with Tawanna Barley and her case. It was bad.

It was like, it’s even mentioned like Kale sees first album. Okay. Okay. It’s bad, but I don’t want to get sidetracked here.

Yeah, let’s don’t. Now, Jackson, who’s who’s now passed on. He basically signs with Darius because he wants fame because who wouldn’t. And that’s when Darius gets in trouble because now Darius can’t represent himself. Darius can’t fire the lawyer and he stuck. But then we get a woman named Sally Butler and she becomes Darius’s pro bono lawyer. She’s the one that I mentioned in the documentary who is here for him.

Okay. So she is his champion. Now, before I get too much further, I will say that there, like in one of the articles written by Michael Carly, I didn’t put his name in here, but he wrote about how there was another author named Shane Bauer and Shane Bauer went under cover as a $9 an hour Louisiana prison guard. And he was looking at, he ends up getting a ton of information about the prison system. And in an interview, Bauer goes on to say that when he was being trained, he’s instructed the proper procedure when prisoners are stabbing each other was to just yell, stop fighting.

That’s it. He was said that we shouldn’t get in between them. We’re not going to pay you that guard that much. If these fools cut each other than happy cutting. And this is the system that we’re shoving Darius the column in.

Angie: The child who was stabbed in the back by her scissors. Yeah. While trying to do his own puzzle. Yeah. Yeah.

Theresa: Who just wants to drive trains? He just wants to drive trains. So Darius has been in and out of jail for at least 38 years. And throughout this time, his health is just beginning to drop.

He’s gained a ton of weight and he’s experiencing wrapping here at loss. Hair loss is that he said hearing loss. Sorry. Hearing loss.

Okay. And I heard your according according to one article, even his brilliance has become less accessible with his having slowly drained in or drowned and accumulated trauma. Surprise, surprise that the prison system would do that. But at one point, the new lawyer Sally scores him a major victory and she gets Brooklyn’s district attorney’s office to finally admit that Darius is not a criminal.

Good. But because of how the court still contextualizes his non visible disability, Darius in order to become relatively free would have to plead not responsible by mental defect. And here’s a huge ask risk because Sally writes if Darius is determined to be dangerous, he would be confined in a criminally or in a truly horrific locked facility for the criminally insane, perhaps for life.

But if the judge were determined that he was not dangerous, he would be civilly reformed for intense treatment with the goal of returning to society with services available to him. Okay. So they have to roll the dice and on some pretty scary things. Yeah. Okay. Now, the final nail comes tragically from a black judge who justified in one article says justified ending his life because of Asperger’s syndrome in her final or closing remarks. She says to her the Asperger’s is quote a dangerous mental disorder.

Angie: Unquote. I have never in my life met a person or seen a person who has any form of Asperger’s be dangerous. Yeah. I’m so mad right now.

Theresa: Okay. She’s never apologized for saying something along those lines. She said something along the lines of maybe I could have chosen better words, but that’s about it. That’s not an apology.

Angie: That’s not even acknowledging that you’ve done something wrong.

Theresa: Now that was October 5th, 2018. And that was when he was sentenced to life inside New York State psychiatric facility.

Angie: Where they’re taught to just say stop.

Theresa: No, that was so this was even worse because to get out of this horrific facility, you have to be quote rehabilitated, but they don’t have the services to rehabilitate so nobody ever gets out. Hmm.

Okay. So in theory, they had sentenced him to life in prison. And this is the kind of person who has just spent a majority of his adult life in institutions where he’s been underserved the entire time. Now that that was pretty rough, but I will say a positive update is as of October 20, 25, he was a miraculously moved facility in Orangeburg, North or New York. Now they have pretty much the same lockdown and life rules, but now he’s sharing space with nonviolent offenders.

Angie: So he might have a chance of having some sort of decent, well, a more decent opportunity than he would have had in any other institution. It doesn’t make it better. He should be out living his life. Right. I hate that poor guy. Okay. But it was still an eye-opening documentary, right?

Theresa: Because I think the big issues are autistic struggle in this world, not because we are disabled, but we are disabled by our environments. And this environment was clearly not set up for Darius and the column. The system is not designed to deal with them and they don’t know what to do. And so they refer it back to their only recourse, which is just lock him up. I hate that.

Angie: I did like Darius and he got to a better spot. No, it’s not what he needs. He could get to a better spot. I just, I think about like, it makes me so mad to know that historically, like people that are differently abled are in the western world not treated well. I know that there are times in our history where that’s not always the case, but I feel like humans have been humaning this whole time and you’re trying to tell me that this is new.

Theresa: Yeah. It’s, we’ve had, I mean, autism has just maybe been poorly understood, but I think that there have been historical context forever.

Angie: Right. I’m just, I just, it makes me sad because if you give a person the tools they need to express themselves, if you give a person the tools they need to just succeed, how much more could they give back to society as a whole?

Theresa: Well, and one author of the articles I was reading identifies as autistic and he was saying the only, there’s, there’s just several differences between Darius and him. He’s white. Darius is black. He came from more means than Darius did.

And so he was afforded an Ivy League education. Yeah. But if you pull that privilege away, now you have somebody who has very different or very similar abilities to you and you can see how easily you could have ended up there. Yeah.

Angie: And I’m sure that’s exactly what that author was thinking. Like, oh yeah, no, there were, our stories aren’t that different. Like, okay, maybe our special interest topic is different. Right. Like, yeah.

Theresa: But in a separate timeline, this could be me. Yeah.

Angie: Oh, that breaks my heart. But I love that he loved trains and I would have loved to write the train that he was writing.

Theresa: Like, there’s a clip of him in the documentary listening to a train announcer and he goes, no, that’s not how you do it. You don’t just be like, next stop this. He goes, no, ladies and gentlemen, we’re so grateful to have you here. This next stop is that the da da da da da. Because he loves his job.

Angie: Right.

Theresa: So. Oh, I’m hoping that stories like this get told, get shared and help reshape society so that we’re able to create a path for people like him.

Angie: I’m going to say that I am lucky enough to see it a lot in this younger generation. Both of my sons have played on teams or have had, I don’t know the right word is, but community with differently abled individuals. And the way that their community brings them in, uplifts them and cares for them is unparalleled. Like this, I have so much faith in this next generation to be, to make it a better world even like you don’t want to put that on anybody’s shoulders.

You know what I mean? But just right in the way they treat each other and the way that they don’t. They don’t see it like to me, at least with my kids as friends, they don’t see inabilities. They see different abilities. And so like, okay, for example, my oldest son has a team manager who basketball is his thing.

Right. Like he, he lives for basketball, eats drinks, breathes it, knows all the plays, knows all the things that he can’t play the game. His team takes care of him because he takes care of them. He will never be made fun of. He will never be excluded. Like they see him as one of them.

It’s just that he does something different for the team than they do. And I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. But unfortunately, the last several decades of humanity kind of missed the mark. Right. Right.

Theresa: And I mean, I’m just hopeful, you know, I think we need to celebrate those wins and speak the world that we want into existence.

Angie: 100%. And read all the time and continue to show both your children and yourself different people. Like you’re never going to be a better person if you stick in your own realm. Yeah. Yeah.

Theresa: And then approach things with curiosity. 100%. 100%.

Angie: I loved your story. I’m sad that he’s otherwise incarcerated. He deserves to be driving trains.

Theresa: Right. I didn’t put this in my notes, but at one point he gets married and they interview the woman that he’d married. And you can tell that she really loved him.

But at one point he started coming home late. And she thinks he’s cheating on me. And so she calls him out and he’s like, no, I’m on the trains. She didn’t know any of the trains.

Sorry. And so that’s when she goes like, well, okay, fine. If you had to pick one, would you pick me or the trains? And he goes, easy, the trains. I can’t expect that. Yeah. And so like you can tell that that broke her heart because they ended up separating. But like to know that he loves trains that much. Good.

Angie: And he’s honest about it. He’s not sneaking around. Yeah.

Theresa: You know, it’s just like, oh, let me guess you’re on the E line, aren’t you?

Angie: You turn your butt around, get back on the D line and come home. Yeah. I think that’s actually really cute. Good for him. Good for him sticking to his truth there, you know.

Theresa: Yeah, but that’s the story of Darius McCollum.

Angie: Thank you for telling me that very wildly different story than the story I brought you.

Theresa: I mean, it’s typically wild from the stuff I normally bring because it happened recently and I had an update as of a couple months ago. So I was like, all right, let’s do it. That is super cool. If you’re like, oh my gosh, this was completely not where I thought it was going. I laughed. I got angry.

I cured up a little bit. And if you want to join us again, we’re going to do this every week because that’s what we do. And next week I won’t sound like Batman or a poor imposter thereup. So rate, review, subscribe and send me a favorite Batman impersonator.

Theresa: What color are your shoes? Bubbles. See?

Theresa: You know you’re right. I know. Goodbye.

Theresa: Bye.