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This autumn, fall for Moth Stories as we travel across the globe for our mainstages. We're excited to announce our fall lineup of storytelling shows. From New York City to Iowa City, London, Nairobi, and so many more, The Moth will be performing in a city near you, featuring a curation of true stories. The Moth mainstage shows feature five tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and often powerful true stories on a common theme. Each one told reveals something new about our shared connection.
To buy your tickets or find out more about our calendar, visit themoth.org slash mainstage. We hope to see you soon. Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Suzanne Rust, curator at The Moth and your host for this episode. If you're a longtime Moth listener, you've probably come across the work of Ray Christian. He's told stories on our stages and The Moth Radio Hour. He hosts our Asheville, North Carolina Story Slam and has been a beloved member of the Moth family for a long time.
I'm thrilled to let you know that Ray has a podcast. It's called What's Ray Saying? where he takes you into a world of southern-baked personal narratives interwoven with black American history and stories from his remarkable life, from his time serving as a paratrooper in the army to wrangling goats to becoming a Fulbright scholar. And full disclosure, Ray holds a special place in my heart.
When we were helping produce his show, I discovered that as Ray was finding his own voice in the world, he was inspired by my father, sportscaster Art Russ Jr., and used to listen to him on the radio many years ago. I love that my father's legacy lives on through someone like Ray.
We'll be sharing one of our favorite episodes, Black Medicine, where Ray reflects on his first visit to the doctor, the history of the Tuskegee study, and the reason why so many African Americans don't trust the medical system. And if you like this episode, What's Ray Saying? is available wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll have links in our episode description. We really hope you'll check it out. Without further ado, let's listen to what Ray says.
A few months ago, I got a shot for the flu. And I get flu shots every year. I've been getting them for about 40 years at this point. 40 years. Ever since 1978, my first year in the army when I was 17. We're standing in this line in our white tees and boxers. There were people on both sides of us with automatic injection machines. We were all waiting to get about 10 injections each.
And while we were instructed to remain silent and move along quickly, there were still pauses in the line, created by the sporadic rhythm of sounds made by those who jumped suddenly, shrieked, or otherwise reacted with fear or pain to the injections. The line had a couple hundred people. A lot of black guys in the line were even more hesitant. There were guys who hadn't even seen a doctor or gotten a shot in their whole life. It was a range of experiences that were worse than mine.
They'd pause, make comments. You could feel the reverberation of fear. Enough black guys were hesitating that a white guy in the line was like, "Why are all the black dudes freaked out about getting shots?" Some guys were saying, "Because we don't trust you." It got kind of sketchy until a drill sergeant was like, "Break that shit up." I remember several times throughout the period I was in the Army that black soldiers refused to get shots and would be brought up on charges.
They'd mention a Tuskegee study, say they were scared of AIDS. But this aversion to the shots goes way back. And the question that the white guy asked, I still hear it. It's just gotten more sophisticated as I get older. From why are you so scared to get a shot to what's wrong with getting a vaccine? It's always been some variation of why don't black people trust medicine? And I've got some answers. Who am I?
Well, I'm not defined with a singular salutation. Some might call me a ghetto kid or a Southern black gentleman, a retired army paratrooper or a doctor of education, a teller of stories, a student of the past, or the source of all black knowledge. Ready to explore and talk with you about it. From PRX, I'm Ray Christian, and this is What's Ray Saying?
In today's episode, we talk shots and my personal history with black medicine. If I get a strong need to reminisce, there's one person I call. Usually when I call my sister on the phone, she don't ever answer the damn telephone quick enough.
I told you I'm old and slow. It takes me time to get to the phone. Ain't no damn old and slow. You probably owe money to somebody. We had ways of taking care of ourselves when we were younger. Home remedies, if that's what you want to call them. Cure for ringworm? Tape a copper penny to the rash. Upset stomach? Eat white coal ash. Bleeding nose? Put salt pork in your nostrils. You get the picture.
And no one remembers these sorts of treatments better than my sister Janice, like how her uncle Alvin cured his sore throat. He would pee in a cup and use the pee to gargle his throat with. When he wasn't gargling his throat with the pee, he was using it on his face to make his skin clear. I guess the question would be, did it work?
Well, I ain't never seen him go to the doctor for a sore throat. And his skin was kind of clear. We ingested a lot of things people may consider strange. Eating blocks of magnesium, laundry starch. Some of our neighbors ate charcoal lashes. Sometimes when we got colds, they'd give us a special syrup.
When children had colds, they used to get them alcohol. They would give you a teaspoon of liquor. Silly me and Colin used to pretend like we had a car. That whiskey coffee. I can remember that drink from like elementary school. I'd be really sick and you'd get that whiskey coffee. I'm almost always certain that if I talk to my sister, we're going to talk about how uninformed we were.
how dangerous the world used to be and how different it is now. You went to the doctor then and you tell them whatever was wrong with you. They would give you a prescription, didn't tell you what they thought was wrong with you, and you couldn't ask for so many questions because they would cut you off. The doctors back then made you feel like you were insignificant.
You think that was because we were black? Mostly, yes. Uneducated black folks, they don't understand me if I told them so. The mistrust of medicine didn't come out of a vacuum. It actually goes back generations. During the transatlantic slave trade, peoples of African descent were taken from all parts of the continent, and they came with all kinds of experiences and knowledge.
including the use of plants and medicines for healing, such as herbs. On slave ships and plantations, this medical knowledge from home blended with new practices picked up from some of their white captors. This wasn't out of curiosity. This was a survival mechanism. Many plantation owners simply left it to slaves to take care of themselves.
And why would white captors who treated these human beings as financial capital not want better medical care to maintain their investment? Because from its origins, even until now, peoples of African descent have been viewed as having a very different biology than whites. From immunity to most tropical illnesses and a higher tolerance for pain, slaves were as a whole treated similar to or less than any other livestock.
Slaveholders didn't have to worry about the pain threshold of their property. So self-care practices developed using plants for healing, merging their own knowledge with that acquired from whites and native peoples where possible. Because no matter what the level of pain was or the treatment slaves sought, they damn well better show up and work the next day. Our grandmother was the daughter of slaves. My mother knew her slave grandfather.
Every old person I knew grew up in Jim Crow. Originating from Africa to the Caribbean, we had our own traditions like root medicine, a belief in spirits, and the power of the supernatural. These practices were generally forbidden on plantations and in conflict with Christianity.
The services of root doctors and practitioners were utilized for illness and injury, for good luck, to ward off evil, to find love, and to curse someone or have curses removed. When you don't trust the white man's medicine, you go back to ancient practices. And these traditions continued even for me. The way I grew up, the way many of us grew up, when you were sick, you didn't go to the hospital.
For me, that experience came 50 years ago. Back then we lived in the cold, drafty second floor of this dilapidated row house in Richmond. It was January and I had been sick for I don't know how many days, but too many days to count at this point. There had been times before in the winter when I felt a little sick and had a really bad cold or something and mama would just wrap me up tight in coats and sweaters and scarves and give me handkerchiefs and send me off to school.
But this time was different. This time, she decided I was just too sick to go to school and Mama was going to have to leave me for the day. Mama had to go to work to clean white folks' houses and ironically, care for their children. She knew she had done all she could do for me and she couldn't afford for us to lose a single day's pay of about $15. She could not take care of me if she did not take care of those white families. The first remedy?
Mama wouldn't let it be cold in the house. We had three stoves in the house. One big kerosene stove that didn't work anymore in the living room. Another medium-sized wood and coal burning stove. The third was a portable kerosene stove that could be moved by the wired hanger from room to room. But it had an old wick that had not been changed in years. Mama lit that kerosene wick. She twisted the center part by the handle as it caught fire and
and she put an old coffee can full of water on top to keep the air from being too dry. That was good for your chest, people would say about this. At first, it gave off a puff of city smoke that made me cough and hack out loud and desperate. After that, mama made sure the stove was filled with kerosene. She turned it down and she told me to let this burn all day. But that didn't work. My chest was heavy. My throat hurt. I had trouble swallowing and breathing.
And I had a fever. I started to see things on the wall from my imagination and the flickering lights from the burning stove. And I spoke to God about bologna. And I asked Him, "God, why am I so sick? Why do I feel so bad?" And God said, "It's probably because you ate that green bologna instead of feeding it to the dog." I felt extremely hot. But Mama insisted that I stay wrapped in the covers. She gave me two teaspoons full of kerosene and sugar.
But this helped nothing. Having seen many times what happens when you throw kerosene on a fire, I imagined at the time that if I messed with that wood and coal fire stove, I might have blown my head off. This was the sickest I'd ever been. I'd missed maybe a day or two of school before, but not multiple days. Some kids got terrible injuries from falling and breaking bones, to others who got their arms caught up in the wringer, which was a set of rollers that squeezed the water out of clothes.
And for those kids that got their arms mangled up by it, well, I never once saw one of them come to school with a cast on. Over time, some white peers would ask me, "Hey, did your mama ever take you to the hospital after you broke your arm when you were young?" And my answer would always be, "No, you just had a broken arm." You go to school with your injury and then you get a nickname like "Stiff" for the rest of your school days. But the hospital? We weren't going to any hospital.
We had our own remedies. That's what black folks did, and that's what mama did. When the special medicine mama gave me didn't work, she called on the pastor, the grand bishop of our small storefront holiness Pentecostal church, the Reverend Moore. She called on him to seek God's intervention. And he came over with his waters and oils that had been blessed by God, rubbed them on my head and chest, and he prayed aloud over my body. But this helped nothing.
And when my mama's appeal to Heavenly God seemed to have failed through Reverend Moore, she went to the dark side. She called on the root lady with her charms and things. See, being a Christian meant if you went to the dark side, you had a lack of faith. And that's why she kept it a secret. And right away, the root lady insisted I be naked. But up to this point in my life, I don't know if I ever had anybody see me naked other than my mama. But she let me know right away this is how it was going to work.
And I got naked and I prepared myself. And she slapped me several times with a broom, made me drink from a cup, and had mama wrap a cloth bag around my belly filled with rotten fish heads, herbs, rocks, and sticks and things. And that thick odor made it hard to breathe or even for me to stay still. And I jumped and twisted violently against the salt to my nose. I mean, I could taste the sickening, sticky fumes coming from this poultice.
Thinking about it now brings back memories that I can taste and smell with the accompanying feelings of nausea and disgust. I swung back and forth while Mama, my stepdad, and one of her friends held me down. But the rude lady yelled that it was working. The dark energy and the devil's energy was being expelled from my body. But this helped nothing. And the hospital? We still weren't going to the hospital. When these remedies failed, my Mama lost hope and faith that I would get better.
She cried every time she asked me how I was feeling. The following morning, she got me dressed. And to my surprise, we were going to see a doctor, a white doctor. Now in all of our area of Richmond, there were only two white doctors that were willing to see black people. And at the age of 11, this would be my first time at the doctor's office. After we come back, I'll take you there. ♪ What's Ray saying ♪ ♪ What's Ray saying ♪
This is Ray, and I've got a quick message. If you want to be a voice in an upcoming episode, I'd like to hear from you. Literally, hear your voice. What do you think is the significance of Black Americans in military service? Are you a Black veteran or is someone in your family?
Record a voice note and email us at rayistalking at gmail.com. It can be a voice note from your phone. Doesn't need to be fancy. Just something that lets me hear your voice and your story. Record a voice note and tell me your story about Black Americans in military service and email it to rayistalking at gmail.com. Thanks. What's Ray saying?
How often do you ever see an ambulance? Ambulance? When I was growing up, I never seen an ambulance. That's my sister Janice again. Somebody gets sick, if it was serious, like somebody laying on the sidewalk, dying, got shot or stabbed, but what they used to call the paddy wagon would take them to the hospital or somebody put them in their car and take them. I never saw an ambulance. Sometimes when I think about it, it's like I have to have saw one
But you know what it was? I saw him on TV. You know? You know on TV they would come pick up white people? But I never saw one until I left home. Never saw an ambulance. And it wasn't just ambulances. Doctors and doctors' offices, too. I'd only ever seen him on TV. Like Marcus Welby, M.D. You have plenty of qualified doctors in Orange County. Why come to me? They don't have the faith in them I have in you, Dr. Welby.
Julia with Diane Carroll. She was a nurse, but the black folks that showed up in her show weren't like me. If they were black, they weren't like any black people I ever knew. Mrs. Baker washed my clothes and fixed my dress. Well, thank you, Mrs. Baker. Julia. But on TV and in the movies, black folks didn't go to the hospital or doctors either. Even in the movie Shaft.
After the famous private detective got shot up, even he didn't go to the hospital. He went to his girlfriend and she nursed him up. John Schaaf just got right back up the next day and did his thing. And that personified us. There are reasons we didn't go to the hospital. There are reasons many black folks didn't go to the hospital. There's nothing the hospital would or could do. This sort of thing might be difficult to understand. And again, it goes way back.
Following the end of slavery, some private institutions that were poorly funded did emerge. But following the end of Reconstruction, blacks had to depend on private organizations to provide care and build hospitals. In most of the nation and the entirety of the Old South, no medical care or support was provided for blacks. And blacks were specifically refused care and support.
It was seen as a waste of limited resources. With limited training and support for Black medical professionals, the Black American community increasingly depended on private donations throughout the 20th century. There were some signs of improvement, like how Black soldiers stationed in the South during the 1940s created another benefit that required the federal government to build hospitals and medical resources in and around the bases.
With integration came the closing of all black hospitals, many in much need of repair and lacking adequate facilities. Now it may be obvious, but doing this created an absence of care in many of these communities. You take all that and you add stories that have been with the black community for generations, like the Tuskegee experiments, where black men were infected with syphilis and were not infected.
given treatment, so they could be studied during the entire course of the disease until they died and could be autopsied. But the story that never seems to go away is about Dr. Charles Drew, a black surgeon and the scientist who invented the process for storing blood. In 1950, Dr. Drew was in a car accident, and the story for generations had said that he was denied blood when he was taken to a white hospital.
This part of the story isn't true. Dr. Drew died even despite the doctor's efforts. But it didn't matter. Not to us. Because the moral of this story was, if you're Black and you go to the hospital, you're going to die. The hospital was a place for desperate people. And Mama was desperate. So here I was at age 11, sick as a dog. Sicker than a dog. Going to the doctor for the first time.
I was only about seven blocks away, but in the crisp, cool air, struggling to breathe, the walk to the doctor's office nearly killed me. This doctor's office was small, but large enough to contain five or six rows of wooden chairs. At each of the chairs sat about 30 black women like my mama, all dressed like they were going to church. The floors were dark, polished wood. The walls were white with various large panes of flowers.
and portraits of white men I didn't know, but it smelled like white people's houses, which meant it had a lack of certain smells. Our house smelled like grease, coal, and wood, and had the smell of mold, while white people's houses smelled like bleach, brick, and plaster. Between the smells and the vibe, I was super nervous. I worried about what kind of shameful shit this was gonna be. Then arrived Dr. Martin.
a huge white man with a thick neck that reminded me of a roll of bologna meat from the store before they sliced it. He had on a brown tie and he wore a white shirt that looked really tight. I could see that the white doctor's jacket was a struggle for him to put on as he sat down and took off his outer jacket. He greeted everyone by saying, "How are y'all doing this morning?"
Ain't it good that God has allowed you to live and be here? And the women, including my mama, all nodded in unison and said variations of, Yes, that's right. Uh-huh. Yes, sir. Then he lit up the first of many cigarettes and coughed and said, You know, a lot of colored people would have better health if they had a better spirit about things.
He went on to talk about how colored women should treat their children, their husbands, the vile nature of TV and music. I mean, it was almost like a chapel. His ruminations on life in the black community. His lectures went on for more than 30 minutes. And through the haze of pain, fever, and discomfort, it seemed like days. A nurse finally called my name. The doctor met me inside his adjacent office, still smoking a cigarette. And he motioned to my mama to sit back down.
She didn't need to come in. And he started asking questions, something that became a pattern in my life and in the lives of many Black Americans. Doctors and authority figures having this deep interest in our personal life, especially when you went to the health department. From as long as I remember, white adults would pepper Black children with questions like that all the time. Like when people from the school board would come and we had to put on shows for them. I was not unaccustomed to that.
And asking about personal life? My mama cautioned us not to talk about these subjects. Playing ignorant was a survival mechanism. As he dropped cigarette ashes on my shoulder, Dr. Martin asked, "What's wrong with you? Open your mouth, boy." Then, "You having sex?" he asked. "No, sir." "You drink?" "No, sir." Then he asked whether I worked and if my daddy worked and what my daddy did for a living and on and on.
Then he stopped asking questions and told me to do something. Bend over and pull down your pants. And faster than I could react, he gave me a painful injection in the ass. Now from exam to treatment, it only took a few moments. I got better over the next few days. This treatment did seem to work. The doctor told mom I had strep throat and probably pneumonia.
And in the following weeks, various people who took part in my healing protocols took credit for what was a miracle. Healing prayer, faith in water oils, the root lady inspired with the fish head poultice, or the piercing thick penicillin. I survived the illness, the medicines, and the healers. And yet from the healing I received from the shot,
From all my shots over the years, for all the things I know about science, about medicines, about health now, I still understand why we do these remedies. But I think about my mom when I think about my kids. My parents were illiterate. They had to ask the drugstore guy what the label said and either trust that information or try some home remedies. Now, we don't waste any time getting our kids what they need, whether it's shots or medical care,
Like the one time my daughter had this really bad stomach ache. And at a certain point my wife just said, "Let's take her to the doctor and see what the doctor says." And as it turned out, she had appendicitis and an obstructed bowel. And they had to perform emergency surgery. Now she recovered swiftly, but using my mama's healthcare matrix, my daughter would have died. Now I can't blame my mama. She was doing what she thought was right. I'm still here. And I know a lot more now. A lot of us black folks do.
I've gotten shot since that day nearly 50 years ago, and I've been to see many doctors. What's changed? Sure, I got more education on how things work, but the cynicism did grow over time. If the army gave me 100 shots before I was 20 years old, what's 100 more gonna do? I went from absolute fear to "I don't care." I still get why other brave black soldiers were freaking out about getting a shot.
And I still get why other black folks freak out today about getting a shot. When people ask about why we're so scared of shots and why we don't trust medicine, I just have to say, it's not that we don't trust medicine. We just don't trust people. Next time on What's Ray Saying? How black fashion influenced American culture, impacted the black community, and almost changed the course of my life. Do you remember Bobo's?
Bobos, man. Explain what Bobos are. Bobos is a cheap tennis shoes that you get from the supermarket. Yes. You walk in, you go to the meat counter, you get your milk and all that. Oh, by the way, come on. You need some tennis shoes, you know. Dressing Black. You have just finished another episode of What's Ray Saying? This podcast was created, hosted, and written by Ray Christian and was recorded in the great state of North Carolina.
Mark Pagan is the senior producer. Jonathan Cabral is the associate producer. Story editing by Mark Pagan with development support from The Moth. Sound design by Rebecca Seidel. Photos for the show come from Samantha J. Massey. Original music comes from our son, R.J. Christian, with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions.
What's Ray Saying is derived from Ray's personal life, thoughts, and research. His views, opinions, and perceptions of the world and history are completely his own. But hey, get in touch if you want to debate. To find out more about What's Ray Saying, head to Facebook and Twitter at What's Ray Saying or our website, whatsraysaying.com. Ray builds this podcast with Mountain Spring Water, Deep Fried Fatback, Sunshine, and Cracklin' Bread.
In turn, he enjoys the love and appreciation you give in the form of comments and five-star reviews in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To find out more about What's Ray Saying, head to Facebook and Twitter at What's Ray Saying or our website, whatsraysaying.com. This series is supported by PRX, The Moth, and listeners just like you.
If you would like to translate your enjoyment and support into dollars, go to whatsraysaying.com and click on donate. I'm Tiffany Christian, the woman who had his babies and finds his keys, saying goodbye to you from our magical home in Boone, North Carolina. Y'all take care, and we'll be saying hey again soon in the next episode of What's Ray Saying.
That's all I got. See, you know sisters know all the secrets. I'd probably be counseling for that now, right? What the hell was my problem?