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Heather Ann Thompson, "Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage" (Pantheon, 2026)
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A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host Michael Stauch and today I'm here with Heather Thompson to talk about her new book, fear and the Reagan 80s, the Bernie Getz Shootings and the Rebirth of White Rage, which is out now from Pantheon Press. Heather Thompson is a historian and the author of Blood in the Water, the Attica prison uprising of 1971 and its legacy, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize. She is also the author of who's Detroit? Politics, labor and Race in a Modern American City. Thompson has written about the criminal justice system for myriad publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Rolling Stone, the Atlantic, and the New Yorker. She served on the National Academy of Sciences Blue Ribbon panel that studied the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in the United States. She co runs the Carceral State Project at the University of Michigan and has been the recipient of numerous honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and a Racial Justice Fellowship from the Carl Ryan center for Human Rights at Harvard University. Thompson has also served as a historical consultant for film and television, including on the Oscar nominated feature documentary Attica. And with all that, it perhaps goes without saying that she is far and away the most distinguished guest I have ever or perhaps will ever have on this podcast. Heather, welcome to the show.
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A
So glad to be here.
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B
Well, I'd like to begin with something I noticed in the acknowledgments of your book where you mentioned that in 2023 you were in the middle of writing a different book when you pivoted to this book. So what happened? What about that moment caused that pivot?
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A
Yeah, well, so I feel like, you know, every one of us in around, well, certainly before 2023, but in 2023 when it really became clear that the world was going to descend even further into the abyss with a second Trump term, a likely second Trump term. I just was, you know, I was knee deep working in a book on the MOVE bombing, the police, Philadelphia police bombing, of the MOVE organization in Philly, which I'm still doing. It's still, you know, it's already pretty much fully researched. I'm halfway through writing it, but I was just feeling like, you know, historians have an obligation, I think, in these moments to weigh in, to kind of make sense of the chaos that we are experiencing in the present. Certainly journalists are doing it, certainly political scientists are doing it, economists are doing it, and historians in our way, are also trying to do it. But we write Long books. And we, you know, and we, you know, we also write articles, but. But it's really difficult for us with our methodology to do something pretty quickly to weigh in on a moment. So I just essentially decided to drop everything and to turn my attention to this really what I was seeing as a resurgence, a re legitimization of just unleashed white rage and a legal sanctioning of it. And you know, I use the word re very carefully. My press actually named it Rebirth. And the subtitle, I think if, if I would have been allowed, I think I would have said re legitimization because of course we know that white rage never goes away. It is ubiquitous and foundational to this country's history. But there is something that starts to happen. And to me, it really became clear. It was during the Reagan 80s, when we get on this out of control train that will lead us to where we are today. So it was kind of a pivot, stop, dig in. And of course, because I cannot write a short book to save my Life, it's still 550 pages.
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B
Right, well, okay. Well, I'm really glad that you mentioned this thing about historians responsibilities because I think that the title really gets at that in a nice way. There's a lot of moving. So the title again, Fear and Fury, the Reagan 80s, the Bernie Getz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage. There's a lot of moving parts there, but it also nicely situates the reader within a very specific moment as well as a particular interpretation of that moment. So can you talk a little bit more about that title, the work that it's doing and what you're hoping to convey?
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A
Sure. I mean, I think it's. I'm trying to do two things. Well, actually three things simultaneously. One of them the most kind of basic is I'm a storyteller. You know, some brilliant historians are really good at writing thematically, you know, taking you into kind of more of a theoretical approach to history. For me, I always gravitate towards a moment, an event, a story, and then from there blossom outward to say, well then what does this reflect? What does this signify? So it, this is a story of a really horrific event that happens in 1984 where a white loner ends up on a New York City subway car with four black teenagers from the South Bronx. And within quite literally like five minutes, and you know, by all accounts unprovoked, this guy unleashes a halo bullets on these teenagers, sending them all to ICUs and permanently paralyzing one of them. And that story has its own life. It leads into this dramatic manhunt. It leads into incredible battles over whether he's going to ever go to trial. It leads into the trial itself. It leads ultimately into a civil trial. And throughout, it is a story of the rise of a media ecosystem that will become Fox News, you know, this. This viral outrage machine. So, at core, it is a story, but it is also I speaking to this moment, which is what I would. What I would call the public takeaways, right? The public takeaways for people who may not, you know, they may not be scholars. They. They just want to, you know, how. What the hell's going on? And for that, I have, you know, an intervention that I hope I make that situates Trump as not something that just comes out of nowhere. And also that matters, right, because it means we can't just get rid of him and then expect to be saved. Right. That there is this deeper history and, you know, to really be much more critical of this moment where we are told one thing, but our eyes are looking straight at video, and we are seeing something completely different. And then I think for the public, also, this. This really important message that once this racialized rage is absolutely sanctioned and unleashed, nobody is safe. And by that, by that, nobody, I mean, it doesn't matter your class background, it doesn't matter whether you're white or not. You're going to. And this is where Minneapolis really comes into, you know, clear relief. And then finally, and I won't, you know, I won't go into that at this point, but then I think, I hope that there's also what we would, you know, call historiographical takeaways. What I think we as historians need to kind of see differently about this period.
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B
Yeah, well, maybe we can return to that in a little bit, but I did want to continue on. The storytelling really shines from the start. It's clear that you have a big emphasis on powerful narratives even in the prologue. You begin as this moment that changed America, which you kind of have drawn some of the threads from just now. Another thing that's really interesting, and this starts also from the beginning, and I think it's indicative of one of the book's major strengths is that you make this stories of the four young people that are involved in this shooting, Barry Allen, James Ramsur, Troy Canty, Daryl, kb You make them central to the story, a story that at the time and sense, has mostly focused on Bernie Goetz and even transformed him, as the book gets at, into a kind of vigilante hero for white Americans. Can you talk a little bit more about centering those stories and what that accomplishes for the reader?
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A
Oh, you know, yes. Thank you for the opportunity to do exactly that. Because, to be really blunt, it was astonishing to me. I don't know why. I don't know why I always remain, you know, kind of stunned and surprised when I get into these stories how utterly and completely the erased the victims of this brutal shooting were both at the time and then subsequently. And I, you know, I am embarrassed to confess that, you know, I knew who Bernard Getz was. I remembered that event, which, of course dates me, but I remember it happening. I was in graduate school, and I would say that most Americans of a certain age certainly know the name Bertie Getz. And he was. You know, his name comes up in a Billy Joel song and so much more. And nobody, you know, to save their life could name the. The. The kids who he shot. So that was critical to me. And, you know, to be honest, that's just also the way that, you know, I'm trained also in African American history, and that's the way that I think about storytelling. Who are all of the people upon whose backs this history has, in fact, both been made, but also been inflicted. And. And that kind of both methodological but also emotional response to telling stories is just what I do. But I have to tell you that even today, as this book has come out, and I'm really grateful that it's had, you know, quite a bit of press, but even now, like, everyone's like, well, you know, what did Bernie say? And then they'll go interview Bernie and tell him, you know, they want his point of view, but notably. Right. Nobody's still asking for the point of view of the victims.
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B
Right. Right. Yeah. And again, you got. You. You focus on that really, really well in bringing out those stories throughout the book. Speaking of the book and the way it's organized, there's these six relatively brief sections made up of kind of, like, short chapters. That feels to me, in keeping with, like, your. Your narrative choices, I wanted to ask what you hope to achieve by organizing it in that way. Like, what's the. Again, what. What. What effect do you hope that that has and that kind of thing?
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A
Well, you know, I think one tends to. One tends to write in a way that we hope we would also read. So that is to say, I think there's always a. There is always sort of a connection between the way we write and, you know, the kind of books we are also, we Also gravitate towards. So for me, I feel like, I think it's incredibly important to have the historical context, to dig into phrases like the Reagan, you know, tax Reform act of 1981. But it's also, you know, that's heavy stuff and it's in it. For me, it can feel like my eyes. I don't want people's eyes to glaze over. I don't want them to skip over the context. So for me, it was always about, you know, telling the story, but then pulling back a little bit. What is the context of that story more generally than digging back into the story. And that framing goes on, I think, throughout part one and at the very end of the book as well. And then in the middle, it's just really storytelling. But even that, right. I mean, I was playing with it like, how much context do we need? How deeply do we need to go to really make sense of this? And then the short chapters are. Because frankly, you know, you need to take a breath after you read some of this stuff. Like, it is so. It is so, you know, outrageous and upsetting and kind of, you just, you just kind of need a. I feel like short chapters allow you to just rest with that a minute and put down your book and go get a cup of coffee and come back and just say, okay, whoa. Okay, let's go back to it. So that's kind of the thinking behind it.
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B
Yeah. And I think it works really well now. Now, speaking of that, that like, relationship, I also wanted to ask a follow up question about all the images that you included so many of. The thing that the big impression that I took away from it was that you read certain things about New York city in the 80s, and like you're saying it, it doesn't quite connect in a way. But then you see the pictures and there's. There's something else that takes place. Can you talk about like choosing those pictures? Was that something you were. That was like an ongoing process as you were doing the research, or was it something that you like, you know, included later as a way of like, it, like amplifying some of the context stuff later, or how did that work?
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A
A little of both, in part, because as I was doing the research, the stories on the victims was so thin, just at least in an obvious way. So anytime I would see, you know, images or anything that would illuminate what, you know, what they looked like, what their experience was, you know, their kind of world scape, I would grab it as I went. But I was also pretty confident that at the end, you know, I could find those photographs that would really animate the 80s. But I also, to your point, I thought it was really critical to do that, those photographs, because the New York City that so many readers now know, particularly those who were born after 1980, is you get to go to Times Square and it's swanky, and you get to pop into the Gucci store even if you can't afford anything in it. And there is a glitz and glamour about New York that has a history. And that history is rooted in, you know, aggressive policing, aggressive incarceration, and a politics of a guy named Rudy Giuliani who comes directly out of this, gets moment. So, frankly, I was not persuaded that a lot of people even knew what did it feel like to be in New York city in the 80s. And I gotta say, it was grim. I mean, you know, you'd get, you'd. You'd get. You'd go on the subways and everyone is a little bit unsettled and walking down the street and seeing so many unhoused families on the street in the middle of Times Square. Right? So not. Or, you know, right out in front of Saks Fifth Avenue on the street. So the imagery was critical, but I have to shout out to all the authors out there, I was really upset trying to pull that together because, you know, that industry has been privatized, the image industry. And in order to really bring images into our books anymore, it's really difficult. They are incredibly expensive and, you know, you're, you know, you have to rely on the press's goodwill and, you know, research budgets. If anyone is, you know, lucky enough to have one to populate one's books anymore with images, which is really terrible.
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C
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B
Experience. Yeah, yeah, I think that's helpful and I think you've done a great job. It's like a work of historical excavation. As a reminder in. In addition to the narrative that you're. You're telling the. The images tell this specific story and really convey some of that stuff in a really great way. Now I wanted to drill down a little bit into the con, a little bit more on context of the, of the incident. And so what made this shooting such a product of its own time? What do we need to know about the 1980s in order to understand what happened on that subway train?
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A
Well, I think that, you know, I started from the premise that this, that the 80s was a gritty, very unsettled, very crisis filled moment. And then this event happens. And it happens in no small part because Bernie Goetz feels that the city is unlivable, that crime is out of control, that trash isn't getting picked up. Something really important was going on, which is that there are twin crises that happen in the, at the close of the 1970s. And the Republican Party and specifically really, really wealthy people who had long, long, long been trying to undo the New Deal, undo the Great Society, see this, understand these dual crises as of extraordinary opportunity. And what those were was a. There is a global fiscal crisis that happens after about 1975. It hits cities like Detroit and New York and Chicago with particular vengeance. It is global. It is steeped in the fact that there are these anti colonial struggles, that capital is freaking out that it's not able to be so extractive. Long story short, it's a global crisis. But, but let me just say one that will repair it is one that will in time self correct in many, many places, but not the United States. And that is because meanwhile there's another, and I put crisis here in quotation marks because there is a really profoundly important struggle to make the existing social safety net, the New Deal, the Great Society, in fact more redistributive, in fact less racist, in fact do what real social safety nets are supposed to do, which is don't just give resources to whites and build up the white middle class, give them to everybody, build up robust economy and social world for everyone. So by the time you get to a city like, you know, New York City in, you know, 1976, 77, everything feels like it's falling apart economically. And if you are a white person who has enjoyed the New Deal just fine, you, you've, you know, lived in your public housing, but now you've taken advantage of FHA loans and, you know, whatever. Now you live in the suburbs, car loans, now you drive a nice, you know, a nice forward. All of these things are happening at the same time. And the Republican Party is just brilliant in so many ways because they understand the opportunity. Here you Stress that the crisis is down to do gooder liberal governance. Right. That they're throwing good money after bad on these social programs and that in turn those social programs are doing nothing but. But encouraging dependency, criminality and greediness, frankly, on the part of civil rights activists, militants, et cetera. And this message, of course, is not just one that resonates just because white people are white people. What I began to discover is it was a message that was being curated from day one via an also rising conservative media ecosystem run by Rupert Murdoch. And you put all of these things together and what is happening is that rich people are doing what they've wanted to do since really the 1930s. When the new Deal gets off the, you know, on start and they get to reform the tax code, the inequality in the society goes up, the austerity creates even more trauma on the ground in the illegal drug trade, homeless crisis, you name it. But they're doubling down on this message that this shows you government doesn't work and you have a right to be angry. And if you're Bernie Getz, you have a right to pull a gun. And guess what? We will defend you in court and we will change the law all the way up to the Supreme Court level and say you have a right to do that. So this moment, I strongly feel, was an underappreciated, changing day in American history. That frankly, it's not that we haven't written about the 80s. I don't think we fully grasp the way in which capital takes advantage of these dual crises in the Reagan 80s.
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B
Right. Right. Now that's great. My next question had to do with explaining the, the ri. The resurgence of vigilante violence in the spirit. I think you kind of have through. Through that response also. But is there something. It's a little bit like. The other thing I wanted to mention is that this, this vigilante violence is also a national phenomenon. There's instances in places like Detroit. Maybe it's tied to urban crisis in certain ways. How is, how is the gets framework or the use of get story? How does that work with this specific thing? It's like it's a. Violence coming from below. How would you, how would you make sense of that?
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A
Well, you know, I hope I, I hope I connect those dots. I mean, for example, in my book I, I talk about in Detroit the, The murder of Vincent Chin, you know, who, as a Chinese American auto worker who dies at the hand of white auto workers who are so distraught over the economic dislocations. Right. Of globalization and that they decide he's Japanese, he's the enemy, and, you know, they murder him. So in, you know, each city has a different version of this, a different manifestation of this, both racially and also, you know, who the. Who the offenders are, who the who the, you know, the angry whites are. But it's extremely similar in terms of how it is all getting ginned up and curated. And this idea in Detroit, it was, you know, the pejorative term for Japanese. They're the ones who are, you know, destroying the US Auto industry in New York. It is the, you know, the wilding teens, the. But of course, it's all racially coded and not so racially coded as to where your problems are coming from. And I don't think what I really appreciated is the extent to which it was, as I keep using the word curated, that this was, you know, a media, a determined media opportunity as well to dominate the US Media market. And frankly, to also celebrate, you know, greed is good, capital will save us. Privatization is the way forward. But, you know, on the front pages would be splashed the worst of the worst crimes, the. With zero contacts. And, you know, you know, you and I, as both, you know, scholars of Detroit, you know, this is, you know, we, we, we see, we saw this play out, right? That, that, that it was, you know, this is why you need the police, right? This is why you need all this stuff, because you just can't. The city is going to hell in a handbasket, right? Detroit, the murder capital of the world. New York City. I would never ride a subway kind of thing. Where does this come from? I hope the book takes us into the nitty gritty of Rupert Murdoch's rise to power and how every newspaper is soon competing in that model, including what we would consider the more respectable mainstream media that understands, look, crime is going to sell. Context is not.
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B
Yeah, right. Well, let's, let's, let's dive beyond the, beyond the pages, then, but beyond the headlines. Because I wanted to also ask about. There's, there's a certain way that we know, you know, if you're familiar with Bernie Goetz or you, you do like a cursory read, we kind of have some of the outlines. I wanted to ask you about archival finds. What did you find? Anything that like, really helped kind of shape your own understanding of it while you were doing archival research. Was, was there a. In the archives that really stopped you short to think about things or just a memorable moment while you were conducting that research?
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A
Well, as every historian has one, there were a few where you are just these are you kidding me? Moments. But to be honest, in this story, very similarly to writing Attica, I was just time and again surprised by the structural, unapologetic demonization of the people who had been most harmed. And in this case, I can think of just two specific examples of this. One of which was I happened upon these things, applications to the Crime Victims Board of New York so that the most damaged of these teenagers, Darryl kby, might get some restitution. And this was a program that was, you know, state, but federally, also federally funded, that even predated Reagan. But even. But Reagan really loved this program because it allowed him to talk about the victims of crime. So he also put more money into it. Darryl KB's mother, because he's by this point now experienced brain damage, she files so that she can have help raising him and have funds through crime victims. Troy Canty, one of the other teens, does the same. The paper trail, the acrobatics that that board went through to deny these victims of gun violence, whose lives were permanently damaged from this, to say that they could not, not only could they not get money, but that the reason why was because they were in fact the criminals. They were in fact the villains, not the victims. So that whole journey through that set of documents was just, I mean, that's when it actually really became clear to me the way in which this was down to a rejiggering and re legitimization of this idea that white rage was justified no matter what. And that context really didn't matter. So there was that. And then the final, I would say one, I would just because I think also it invites people to read the story because it's just so mind blowing in the very end when Darryl Cabey's mother, Shirley kby, she's a real heroine to me in this story. She sues Bernie Goetz at the end of the day in civil court on behalf of her son. And obviously her son's a name plaintiff. And Bernie Getz, even though he's already been funded by the National Rifle association in all of his legal proceedings, he decides he's going to defend himself. And because he's going to defend himself in this civil trial, he gets to depose Darrell Cabe, the teenager who he has stood there over cowering on a bench and shot at point blank range, he gets to question him not once but twice in a deposition. And he gets to depose Shirley kb, the woman whose life has been completely altered now because she has to quit her job to take care of her son, one of four of her kids. And you know, he gets to ask them questions. It is the most kind of chilling exchange you will ever read in a deposition.
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B
Yeah, yeah, I really, that was, that was pretty chilling. I want to. Now that, that brings me to another question which, related to that trial. Now, now that's the deposition regarding the lawsuit, the civil suit. But the, the trial itself also had these really dramatic moments and I found it like, really engaging to read through it. So it's the longest section of the book and it's also delves deepest in a way into the four folks that are shot by Bernie Getz and features some of the book's most dramatic moments. One of them is this reenactment that the defense lawyer forgets, pushes for, and somehow gets the judge to agree to. Could you talk us, talk us through that moment and kind of what happened around that?
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A
Oh, yeah, this is another, this is another. This trial is, I have to say, it is theater. And I mean, you know, it's tragedy. It is theater. It is a dramatic show really, from start to finish. And that's in no small part because Bernie Goetz has hired a guy named Barry Slotnick. So Barry Slotnick, if you're also of a certain age, you will remember him because he was this flashy, flashy, expensive zel lawyer who would have three thousand dollar suits. And he was a guy who defended the mob too, like guys like John Gotti. So he was like, you know, I always said, you know, if I ever committed a crime, I would love Barry Slotnick to be my lawyer. Because, because he was, he had this way of making the, the, the, the people who were on the jury feel like they were on a, at a Broadway show. So part of what he would do was completely distort the entire record by, for example, saying that these teens that he never, they were men, they were thugs, they were animals. He constantly was putting them on trial, in effect, right, not, not Bernie Goz. And in the aid of this, at one point, he sort of wrangles the judge into agreeing to not one, but two effectively reenactments of the crime. And of course, you know, the, the, the prosecutor in this case, you know, he's this kind of Clark Kent type. He's, you know, you know, the nerdy guy in the, with the court. He just is just spluttering and blustering, trying to stop it. He can't stop it. And what this will entail is that essentially Slotnik brings in four of the burliest, darkest skinned, largest Members of an organization called the Guardian Angels who would patrol the New York City subways. And they would play the boys, and then a white guy who was a former NYPD detective would play Bernie Goetz. And in this taped off, what was in effect a gladiator arena, they enact this crime in such a way that never happened. Right. So they're lunging at him and they're surrounding him, I mean, you know, defying everything that the eyewitnesses said, defying what Bernie Getz himself has said in a two hour confession. So that's one moment where you're just what is happening here? And another one is he, he, al, he gets the judge to allow the jury to go on a subway car that has been retrofitted to be like that subway car and get them to sit there in this dark subway tunnel amidst the graffiti and, and to kind of think about the case, which in effect was them, you know, thinking about how Bernie Goetz must have felt on that train. Right in those close quarters.
- [33:11]
B
Right, right, right. And I think that's another moment when the images really do a lot of work for you in the book because you have an image that features that reenactment on the subway. But then you also have, and these were, some of my favorite kind of archival finds, is the photographs from Ron Kubi's collection of the sort of like blood spattered train in that specific moment. So that was really incredible. Just to follow up on the sort of like, trial and telling that story. For folks who are interested and curious about how historians go from archives to the page, can you talk a little bit more about where the sources came from for telling the kind of like, dramatic story of the trial?
- [33:56]
A
Well, as always, the case was, was also the case in the Attica book. I mean, I, I, you should see what my workspace looks like anytime I'm trying to do this because it's, it's like the, it's like the film, you know, A Beautiful Mind, when the guy has the, the, the pins and the, the strings and the, for me, it's the, you know, the markers. It's trying to get a timeline what happened when, you know, trying to figure this out from all of the archival pieces. There was a pretty extraordinary collection of the judge, which had the full trial transcript, not the civil trial transcript, but the criminal trial transcript. I was able to get all the New York Posts and all the New York Daily News. But the lawyer for Darrell Cabey, and lawyers will save your life if you're a historian. Right. In terms of archival collections had an extraordinary collection of materials I was able to go through in his law office day after day after, including videotape, including photographs. And then you're just trying to piece it together. But also, you know, we are historians, so we have to be really judicious. If witness A says one thing and witness B says something else, you almost, you know, at times you have to actually diagram it out, like, what was even possible and where were they actually sitting? And, you know, you kind of have your own diagram of the train. And this is sometimes, I have to say, as a writer, and I know you'll identify with this, it is. It is hard to know what to tell when. Right. Like, so. So, like, you know what happened, but the reader doesn't yet know what happened, and frankly, the jury didn't quite know everything that had happened. So how you actually tell a story is its own challenge. The what did we know, when we know it kind of thing, and when do you reveal certain things so that it is not all over in the first paragraph, number one. But also, it's not relentless. You mentioned the photographs of the blood spattered train. You'll notice that there are no there. The. The. The boys are not in those photographs. I. This is. I will just little, if you'll bear with me, just like, flag this moment, because I think it's important. When I was working on Attica, some of the images in there are really graphic and brutal. And, you know, younger scholars have been really taken aback by that, in part because they feel that, you know, ugh, we don't need to see this. It's sort of a re. Traumatization. And, you know, it's important, I think, to realize that the writing of history has its own history. And for those of us doing carceral history in that moment, and particularly talking to the people for whom this story was right, so in this case, the Attica brothers and, you know, the people who for, you know, 50 years had been trying to tell the truth of what had happened to them at the hands of the state, they were unequivocal. Tell the story, show the brutality. Because nobody has believed us. Nobody actually can grasp how gross this was, how brutal this was. And so, like, for those of us of that particular moment, it was actually, it felt like an imperative on the part also of the survivors, in fact, primarily of the survivors, to not turn away the gaze, to not mute the gaze. But then, you know, history itself unfolds and changes, and we have a lot more of those images that start coming to us from body cam footage, from video cameras that people themselves are wielding on the streets. And, you know, we get the point now, right? Like, like, like the public now understands what it is we're talking about when we're talking about an assassination in the middle of the street, right. Or when we're talking about that level of brutal violence. So in this book, I had to really think about it differently. So the. I did not want to bring the images of their trauma, but I wanted to evoke it by showing the wreckage left over in the train. There's another moment you may remember in the book when the National Enquirer pays these kids a measly $300 to, quote, unquote, tell their story in this tabloid. But what they do is they actually want these boys to pose, basically unclothed, with their band. They're still healing with their wounds, with their bandages. And I had these photographs in front of me, and I'm just like, no, we're not doing that. You know, we are not. We're not putting these in the book to. Because they were kind of horrific. Re. Exploitative. But we also don't need them in, you know, because the literature has now laid bare, I think, in a way that it just had. Not even in 2009, 2010, what exactly we're talking about.
- [39:08]
B
Yeah, I think that makes sense. In terms of, like, it, though, there's a certain way in which the images for the newspaper were already, like, intended to be exploitative. And then on the other hand, the images from the archives of Attica, there's in some ways a service that's being rendered by taking them out of the archive and into the public through their publication. In a way, I think that there is, like, a nuance there that I think is really.
- [39:32]
A
Well, and in this case, I will tell you, these were not in the Attica. These were not photographs that ended up in newspapers. These were photographs that state troopers had taken that they denied ever existed. They were their own personal collection, in effect, of lynching photography. And so it to. To me, it was like, no, we are going to lay bare what you all denied existed, happened, have collected. But you're right that in this case, this is. This was selling papers. And, and, you know, we're. We're not going to do that again. But, you know, for those of us who teach, who teach this stuff, I do think that that's an important. I mean, I'm not, you know, not to defend Attic or not to defend, but rather this. This broader point about what are the images, what are the work the images are trying to do in the moment, but also the. The moment in which things are explored as scholars also have their own history and change and their own politics.
- [40:31]
B
Right, yeah, of course. And again, I just love the. It's like, oh, a private conversation in the way that you've described the photos from Attica. It's a private conversation that's meant to stay private for specific reasons that you're. That you're bringing out and making. It's like laying bare, showing the public in a way what people were talking about privately. That was very problematic, if that makes sense.
- [40:53]
A
Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right.
- [40:55]
B
I wanted to follow up then with what you're describing, with your mention of the timeline, because I think there's so much work and maybe you could talk a little bit more. You've just gone on at length. But like, I. When I'm trying to teach writing of history to students also, I'm. I'm frequently. That's like, the first thing that I start with is like, start with a timeline, but you also have to. The. The sources are all over the place, and there's like a. It's such an accomplishment to wrestle all the different sources into a chronology in some ways. So, and, and, and by doing so, you're able to start kind of understanding the story differently in a way that's not, you know, that's not like, scattered. But now we have all this stuff in one place and it reveals new things. Right?
- [41:39]
A
Yeah. No, I mean, I. This. We're now talking tools of the trade, but I highly, highly recommend to anyone writing a dissertation or a book or really to any author to do what in fact, like documentary filmmakers do. It's a slightly different version, but what documentary filmmakers do is they have storyboards, have sticky notes. And the reason why they're sticky notes is because they can be moved and they can. You know, you're rethinking what the timeline is, you're rethinking what the story is, and it's literally on a line, you know, and the stickies move all over it. My version of that, I think historians version of that, if embraced, is. I cannot. I can't say enough good about a huge whiteboard. And the reason why whiteboard is because. And multiple colored, you know, dry erase pens because, you know, you just start with that line across the whole board. And as you learn critical dates or as you learn critical pieces of information, you can put it on there, but then their importance changes color depending on, you know, what you else you've learned or their position on the line moves, depending on what else you learn. Incredibly helpful. Even if it makes you look a bit unhinged in. Should anybody come into your workspace?
- [43:04]
B
Oh, no, tell me about it. When I was putting mine together, I was. I even went back to index cards, and I was, like, moving. Moving things around, moving the index cards around to make outlines and all that kind of stuff. And I. I do think that that's actually a really helpful. It's. It's really helpful to get off of the screen and back into, like, some. Some, like, physical stuff to. To.
- [43:23]
A
To.
- [43:24]
B
To do that thing. And it's like you're trying to teach people who have never written something that long how to do something like that. And I think we don't. There's no specific tools of the trade. And frequently historians don't talk about the writing part where somehow we're supposed to do it, but we never talk about it. It's.
- [43:39]
A
Yeah, yeah. And outlining, outlining, outlining, outlining. You know, I think sometimes even our undergraduates, understandably, they're busy, they're working. They're.
- [43:47]
B
They're.
- [43:47]
A
You know, they got so much going, going, and they're kind of allergic to the outline. And, you know, what I always say is, like, it would be impossible for me to write a chapter, let alone a book, even a section of a chapter, without pausing and saying, first, you got to do this. Second, you got to do this. Third, you got to do this. And then you write it, and you're like, whoa, no, no. What I was doing. Third, actually doesn't work. It actually needs to be the first thing I do. But your ability to do that is you've kind of made a priori decisions first about what you. You think the story is, and you got to do that. You got to start somewhere.
- [44:24]
B
Yeah. And well, well. And alongside that, all of this kind of like, getting the details right. There's also, like, the emphasis that you place on certain figures and characters, and I wanted to kind of draw back on that. You've mentioned Darryl Cabey's mother, Shirley kb So could you talk or just. Just give us a little bit more of a sense of the. Her attempts to get justice for her son, but also what her life was like after Daryl's shooting, which, again, it's like. Like that was an unexpected moment for me. I didn't necessarily think that there. So, first of all, we're pivoting from gets to his victims and then also from his victims to the family. That's involved that's also impacted in such a dramatic way. So could you talk a little bit more about that?
- [45:05]
A
Sure. You know, the, the, the story that I write begins in the childhood of both the, the teenagers and also gets, and don't be alarmed, we don't spend of time lot a too much time there. It's not going to, you know, we're not going to start, you know, in the olden days forever and then move forward. But, but it was important to me to kind of get, you know, where are these, where are these people coming from? And one of the most extraordinary things you realize reading it is that they both had really difficult childhoods. And even though, you know, Bernie Goetz comes from a very, you know, elite family, but a very troubled childhood. I mean, a really authoritarian father, one charged with, with, you know, molesting teenage boys. You know, somebody who just clearly felt like he was a loner, unheard, you know, picked on. So that's his story. But what I didn't realize until I dug into it was that Darryl Cabey, who will become, you know, again, the most injured of these teenagers, he starts off his childhood living in a house with his mom and dad in Far Rockaway, Queens. And he has a dog named Flocko. He has four brothers. And his, his father is making enough of an income to actually support the family so that the mother is staying home, surely. And he is at a diner and someone tries to steal his truck, which he desperately, this is how he makes his living is being able to drive this truck. And so he rushes out of this diner to try to save his vehicle, and he is crushed. So he is killed in this, effectively a carjacking. And, and from that episode, Shirley KB I believe at the, you get, don't get me quote me on this because I don't really remember at this moment in time, but she's like 27 years old. She's very young, and she's now a widow. And this is how she ends up in public housing, right. And this is how she ends up by herself raising four teenage or no, four young kids at this point. And then the good news happens. She gets a state job. And it's really important to know that, you know, especially for in the black community in many American cities, state jobs, city jobs, civic jobs were one of the biggest employer that people could count on. And so she gets a job. She's working as a food handler in a mental health hospital. So even with this tragedy, right, you know, things feel like they're a bit rebounding. So it is into this moment that steps not just the Reagan austerity that's going to strip all these jobs away, but the Getz shooting of her son. And so her life, she has to quit that. She's one of the few people employed. She has to quit her job to take care of her son 24 7, you know, all of his physical and emotional needs. And she is determined that this rhetoric that her son is an animal, that, mind you, let's just be really clear, he never spoke to guests. He is a. He was down at the end of the train, never said a word to him, and he lives paralyzed for the rest of his life. So she's determined that this is not going to be the story people know about her son. So she. This is why she lands on Bill Kunstler, one of the most famous, you know, you know, rabble rousing radical lawyers. And she kind of hears that he's one of these social justice lawyers who might take her kid's case. And she approaches him and he agrees to take on a civil case, even though he is mostly a criminal lawyer with his partner, Ron Kuby. And she doesn't give up. It's going to take decades for this thing to go to trial. And then, of course, the sad part of this is she will spend the rest of her life taking care of her son and eventually her greatest fear will come true, which is she gets old and she dies. And by then, of course, it is his family and other states, state institutions that will have to help take care of him. He's still alive. And I just. The end of the book is you. You only remember the last images of she and Daryl. Because to me, it's like when it all is said and done, we are left with that wreckage that we have to think about.
- [49:24]
B
Yeah. And I thought that was another really great decision to kind of conclude with their story. And that image was really, really kind of like, made it. Made it so effective. What was. What was at stake in this, in this thing? The last thing I wanted to mention was the book. It's kind of unusual you do this. You've mentioned this before, kind of earlier when we started, but the book is unusual for a history. It takes us right up to the present. I thought it was. I was like, chuckling because I think it's in, like, I wrote my notes, page 443, but very close to the end of the book, you're like, you start referencing things that took place in autumn of 2025. So could you. Can you just draw the line from the, from the get shooting in 1984 that begins the book to our contemporary world and the lessons that it has. So, so that's kind of like, who do you hope reads this book? What lessons do you hope they take away from it?
- [50:14]
A
Well, this was always the challenge of the book, right. Because I feel that I hope and, you know, hope and pray that historians will take the book seriously and read it carefully because I do think that it has a lot to say as scholars. But I also really was hoping that we could get this into the more present day conversations of where in the world we are, why something like Minneapolis can happen. You know, how it can be that Trump can, can, you know, can be everything that he is, including today, having that image, such vile, disgusting image of the Obamas as apes in his, his social media post yesterday. And, and have, you know, this many citizens not just defend him, but celebrate him. I think we have got to understand that. And sure, we can say because whites are racist, you know, duh. It doesn't do anything for us to just say that because that again, is ubiquitous. It is foundational. The question is, what is it that animates it and on whose behalf is it so powerfully rendered in this particular moment? And I hope that that's where we end up. But, you know, there too, it's hard to know when to stop the book. I stopped the book because it had to go to press. And then bom Donny wins in New York. And, you know, I end, I think, I hope, on a hopeful note in the book of what the possibilities are for coalition building on class lines. But I would have loved to have been able to end with him, his victory. Because here's the thing, I was like, oh, it's New York, you know, Mamdani wins because it's blue liberal New York. It's like, what? This is the same New York that had Howard Beach. This is the same New York that had Bernie Goetz. This is the same New York that had Rudy Giuliani stop and frisk Compton, stab and broken windows, like, huh. So I actually think his victory is really important to. And, and the headlines today in the New York poster. Actually, no, it was actually in the New York magazine was Rich people gear up to battle Mamdani. That was the headline today. And I was just like, yes, because that's, that's the ground zero of this story, that this is a class story and that this is about out for rich people. Do not keep your eye on this. Keep your eye on the shiny ball over here. Which is your rage, your fury and your racism. But over here, meanwhile, we're going to reinherit the earth, and that's what they're doing.
- [53:09]
B
Well, that's amazing. Great note to end on, Heather. It's been a pleasure doing history with you. For our listeners, Heather Thompson's book, fear and the Reagan eighties, the Bernie Getz Shootings and the Rebirth of White Race is available now from Pantheon Press, and you can find it wherever the finest books are sold. Heather, I thank you again for being on the show. Congratulations on the book.
- [53:28]
A
Thank you. So, so.