This film was made in partnership with and . It can be . explores what it means to live with racism and violence, told from a Missouri community where two Black men were killed nearly 80 years apart.
is a multimedia collaboration with and GBH’s that includes a limited-series about the public health consequences of systemic bias and a diving into how this rural community addresses the trauma from these killings. In 1942, a young Black man named Cleo Wright was removed from a Sikeston, Missouri, jail and lynched by a white mob. Nearly 80 years later, another young Black man, Denzel Taylor, was shot at least 18 times by police in the same small community.
In the hourlong “Silence in Sikeston” documentary film broadcast on KFF Health News and explore how the impact of these men’s killings tells a story about trauma and racism, but also resilience and healing. Stemming from a reporting trip by KFF Health News Midwest correspondent in 2020, this film takes the audience to Indiana, Alabama, and where it all began in the southeastern corner of Missouri known as the Bootheel. Wright’s lynching put this rural community on a world stage and led to the first federal attempt to prosecute a lynching.
But no one was held accountable. The killing was quickly hushed among locals, and his name was largely forgotten. When Taylor was shot by police in 2020 —a year when protests about police brutality rocked the nation — his killing drew little attention.
The film breaks the silence.