876: Bigger Than Me

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Speaker 3 A quick warning, there are curse words that are un-beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

Speaker 5 Okay, so I want to tell your you a story. I'm going to start with the part you probably already know about.
In November, six Democrats, all veterans of the U.S.

Speaker 5 military or intelligence communities, came out with a video

Speaker 5 saying to people in uniform, you took an oath like we did.

Speaker 5 Our laws are clear.

Speaker 4 You can refuse illegal orders.

Speaker 6 You can refuse illegal orders.

Speaker 4 You must refuse illegal orders.

Speaker 2 No one has to do that.

Speaker 5 Those are senators Mark Kelly and Alyssa Slotkin and Congressman Chris DeLuzio.

Speaker 5 They did not specify what illegal orders they might be referring to.

Speaker 5 At the time, just like now, the Trump administration was shooting boats of supposed drug runners out of the water off the coast of Venezuela.

Speaker 5 And lots of military experts and veterans were saying this did not seem to be illegal. In the past, if we found boats of drug runners, we arrested them.

Speaker 5 We didn't just kill them on the spot in cold blood with no due process.

Speaker 5 The video also didn't mention the president trying to order the National Guard into American cities, Portland and Chicago, where judges stopped the orders, saying they were illegal.

Speaker 5 Like I say, the video mentioned no specific orders at all.

Speaker 5 And really, the video might have vanished into the daily noise of a million news stories and online videos like almost everything else does these days.

Speaker 5 It really could have come and gone and been forgotten. Except that the president went on Truth Social and called the video seditious behavior, punishable by death.

Speaker 5 Said he wanted the lawmakers to be tried as traitors.

Speaker 5 Stephen Miller, who seems to run so many things in the White House these days, went on TV to declare, It is insurrection, plainly, directly, without question.

Speaker 7 It's a general call for rebellion, saying that those who carry weapons in America's name should defy their chain of command and engage in open acts of insurrection.

Speaker 5 So in other words, we ended up in one of those completely exhausting and very familiar standoffs between Republicans and Democrats. With the Democrats saying we're just telling people to obey the law.

Speaker 5 And Republicans saying the Democrats, as always, are trying to overthrow Trump, this time with a military insurrection.

Speaker 5 And in the middle of all that are the 2 million people serving in the active military or National Guard or reserves right now.

Speaker 5 What are they thinking? Are many of them worried about getting illegal orders or getting legal orders that they're not comfortable with?

Speaker 5 We reached out to the handful of organizations that service people can call if they want confidential legal advice on that kind of thing.

Speaker 5 None of them could put us in touch quickly with any of the service people they talked to, but they all did confirm that they've seen an uptick in calls since the Trump administration came in.

Speaker 5 Most did not see more calls after the Democrats' video.

Speaker 5 And I want to emphasize: the numbers of calls that they get are low compared to the immense size of the armed forces.

Speaker 5 GI Rights Hotline has been getting a little over 200 calls a month, on average, since June. An organization called About Face only gets a few calls a week.

Speaker 5 Brittany Ramas-DeBarros answers all those calls. She's an Army vet, served in Afghanistan.

Speaker 8 Lately, I think we've seen a lot of people who are in the National Guard saying

Speaker 8 orders are being circulated to support ICE or to occupy an American city. I'm really concerned that I'm going to be forced to participate in one of these operations.

Speaker 8 And I don't believe that that's right. And I want to know what my options are if I don't want to participate in that.
Right.

Speaker 8 People signed up thinking, I'm going to help rescue people from floods and, you know, help with the aftermath and cleanup of hurricanes. I didn't sign up to go police American citizens.

Speaker 8 That's not what the military is for.

Speaker 5 The Pentagon wants to create these quick response forces, 500 National Guard in each state to control civil unrest and riots.

Speaker 2 Have you heard about that?

Speaker 8 Yes. I spoke to someone last week who said that their unit has had voluntary orders where they're asking people to volunteer to be part of these QRFs and

Speaker 8 that they so far had been able to decline them.

Speaker 8 But they were calling because they were worried that it was going to not be optional soon because they weren't seeing a lot of people volunteer.

Speaker 8 And that the sentiment within the units that they were in and connected to seemed to be that people thought this is bullshit.

Speaker 8 Like I'm not, I'm not going to be part of an anti-protest force in my own state. That's not what I signed up for the National Guard for.

Speaker 5 Earlier in the year, most of her calls were from the National Guard. Then that changed in June.

Speaker 8 Then we saw the Marines be mobilized to LA.

Speaker 8 And suddenly, I think a much larger swath of people in the active military were like, wait a minute, this is wild. And I might be implicated in this.
And I need to know what my red lines are.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 what are my choices? and what are the consequences I'm willing to take on.

Speaker 8 We have more and more people with the escalations that we're seeing in the Caribbean

Speaker 8 that are saying,

Speaker 8 I am connected in some way to units that are carrying out these boat strikes or these

Speaker 8 preparations for attacks on Venezuela and things like that that are really gravely concerned.

Speaker 5 Have you heard from people who've refused orders already?

Speaker 8 I have heard from people who said, I got orders and I decided not to show up for them. What do I do now?

Speaker 5 And what were the orders? What kind of orders?

Speaker 8 This person I'm thinking of was active duty, and so he just stopped showing up. He was supposed to be supporting the establishment of immigrant detention facilities.

Speaker 8 And he went what's called AWOL, absent without leave. And he just stopped showing showing up.
I think he kind of, the way he described it, he panicked because he, it wasn't this drawn-out process.

Speaker 8 He was just like, this is bad and I don't know what to do. And he didn't know, he didn't have anyone to reach out to about it.
So he just stopped showing up.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 8 He panicked. So we're, you know, we connected him with legal support.
Since he already made that choice, it's just a matter of helping him to navigate the legal consequences.

Speaker 5 Because of her hotline's confidentiality rules, I should say we could not confirm this story or the others that she told us by talking to the service people involved, but we were able to verify many details.

Speaker 5 Brittany says she does not advise anybody on what they should do, but tells them what their options are.

Speaker 5 People can stay in their units and speak out publicly about things that they object to within certain limits. So even if they follow the rules, they could face all kinds of consequences.

Speaker 5 People who want out can file papers to be conscientious objectors. which can lead to wildly various outcomes.
They could be reassigned to other duties, or they could be discharged.

Speaker 5 Somebody refusing to obey orders can get you court-martialed.

Speaker 5 And of course, people can choose to do nothing.

Speaker 2 I've talked to

Speaker 8 active military members who were really upset about what's happening, but who said,

Speaker 8 my kids are in school. We're struggling to get by as it is.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 unless I'm actively being asked to do something that I believe is wrong, I can't afford to

Speaker 8 do anything about what I believe right now.

Speaker 5 Can you think of somebody like that and tell me about that conversation?

Speaker 8 Well, we've been doing a lot of outreach in D.C. to the National Guard members in D.C.

Speaker 8 And,

Speaker 8 you know, our members will go out and have conversations with people while they're patrolling, give them flyers that share that if they ever want to reach out for resources, they can.

Speaker 8 And when we initially started those conversations and that outreach, we had no idea how that was going to be received, kind of what the disposition of people was.

Speaker 8 And they were really willing to talk to us. And most of them said, yeah, I don't know why we're here.
This is pointless. This is dumb.
I'm away from my family.

Speaker 8 I'm losing pay, even, right, in my regular job because of this.

Speaker 8 And what we heard from many of them was, this is really good information. I believe my orders are legal currently.
But if I ever am given an illegal order, I'll keep this in mind.

Speaker 5 It can be hard to figure out what to do sometimes. I was in Mexico, in Oaxaca, a couple weeks ago.

Speaker 5 And in this church, in Spanish, on one of the walls, it said, here are the remains of people like you and like me, people who knew how to act with faith and charity in the historic moment and the circumstances that God decided to put them in.

Speaker 2 And I read that and I thought,

Speaker 5 Am I doing the best I should be doing? In the historic moment that God decided to put me in?

Speaker 5 Today on our show, history comes knocking and a bunch of people have to figure out what to do. From WBEZ Chicago, this is American Life.

Speaker 2 I'm Ira Glass.

Speaker 2 Stay with us.

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Speaker 5 This is American Life, NAC1.

Speaker 5 Mother Knows Best.

Speaker 5 The Lo Kouti is at a special level of fame where, yes, lots of people have no idea who he is. But for people who do, there could not be a bigger musical star.

Speaker 5 He was a worldwide musical phenomenon by the 1980s, iconic from Nigeria. He ushered in an entire new genre of music, which he called Afrobeat.

Speaker 5 Felo is also a profoundly political political figure.

Speaker 5 Nigeria was still a newly independent country in the 1970s and 80s, still very much trying to answer questions about what kind of nation it was going to be.

Speaker 5 Fela's songs criticized colonialism in all of its forms, openly challenged Nigeria's ruling military government. He took an apartheid South Africa and the United States.

Speaker 5 Fela called for the complete rejection of most things European and Western and tried to live that way.

Speaker 5 Went so far as to found his own commune and declared it to be its own republic, free of government control. His politics were radical, but also messy.

Speaker 5 His version of being an Africanist led him to pretty ugly views about gay people and women, making him a complicated person to explain.

Speaker 5 But recently, Jad Abermrad embarked on a journey to do just that.

Speaker 5 Jad is the creator and longtime co-host of Radiolab, and he did a big series on Dollari Parton that won all kinds of awards, and lots of people heard.

Speaker 5 Now he's put out a whole series about Fela, and a big chunk of it is about how Fagla's music and his politics spoke to each other.

Speaker 5 And one of the stories that Jad tells, the story that we're going to excerpt here today, is about where Fagla's anti-colonial politics came from.

Speaker 5 Jad says that some of those beliefs can be traced back to his mother, Funmuayo Ransom Kuti.

Speaker 5 The story of her political accomplishments is not that well known outside of Nigeria, and it's kind of an amazing story on its own. What she did in her small town helped transform the entire country.

Speaker 5 Here's Jad with the story.

Speaker 4 The story starts in the 1940s, Abiyakuta, Nigeria, a town that is about 50 miles north of Lagos.

Speaker 4 In Yoruba, Abiyakuta means refuge under the rocks, because what you see at the center of town is this massive granite boulder. It's a really beautiful place.

Speaker 4 And the British felt that Abiyakuta was their crown jewel, really proof that the colonial project was working. Everything in Abiyakuta was exactly as they wanted it.

Speaker 4 And our main character, Fumalaya Ransom Kuti, Felakuti's mother, she was kind of part of that system, at least initially. She taught at a very Christian, very British prep school.

Speaker 4 Is this it, you think?

Speaker 4 That is still there today. Abiyakutu Grammar School.

Speaker 4 When we visited, we saw hundreds of small kids in Christian prep uniforms, little boys in yellow shirts and ties, little girls in check skirts.

Speaker 4 And everywhere we went, about 20 young people, ages 12 to about 15, stared at us, very confused why we were there.

Speaker 2 Hello.

Speaker 4 Can I talk to you for a minute?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 14 Do you know Fumalaya Ransom Kuti?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 What do you know about her?

Speaker 6 She's the first woman to drive a car.

Speaker 4 She's the first woman to drive a car?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 This is something you hear a lot. And in fact, her car is on display at a museum in town.
What do they teach you about her at the school?

Speaker 16 She's a teacher and a woman leader.

Speaker 4 She's a teacher and a woman leader.

Speaker 15 Sir. Yes.
She was the first woman to stop the pain of tax of women.

Speaker 4 To stop the pain of tax of women.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 2 Boom.

Speaker 4 That's the story we're going to tell on the radio.

Speaker 2 Yes, I need to.

Speaker 4 Okay, last question. Last question.
Do you have an anthem for Abiyakuta Grammar School? Yes.

Speaker 4 Can you sing it for us? Yes.

Speaker 4 Amodesku set our benzeles. The fear of God is our knowledge.

Speaker 4 A lot of

Speaker 4 Okay, scene set done.

Speaker 4 It's the 1940s. Fumalaya Rensamkuti and her husband are running the grammar school.
If you see pictures of her from this era, she dresses in almost Victorian style clothing.

Speaker 4 Puffy sleeves, buttons going down the front. She reminds you of the person you knew at school who was president of all the clubs.

Speaker 4 Colonialism had basically created this whole whole new class of Nigerian elite who worked with the British. And she was basically that,

Speaker 4 at least at first.

Speaker 6 The first organization that she creates is actually an organization to teach Christian girls how to be good wives.

Speaker 4 This is historian Judith Byfield. She showed me photocopies of handwritten notes from Fumalaya Ransom Kuti's archives.
Minutes of the Abiakuta Ladies Club.

Speaker 17 It's called the Abiakuta Ladies Club.

Speaker 4 Are these the actual minutes of

Speaker 4 from 1945? Yeah.

Speaker 15 And actually, I have a couple more for envelopes. Make yourself comfortable.

Speaker 6 They were planning picnics.

Speaker 4 Picnic at 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
on the 31st.

Speaker 4 God, we have a whole like dance program here.

Speaker 6 They were planning dances.

Speaker 2 Foxtrot, hokey cokey.

Speaker 6 Wow. They were planning cookery classes.
They were talking about how to recruit.

Speaker 4 It was again suggested that more ladies should be asked to join the club.

Speaker 4 For the next set of girls that's her handwriting right there wow very loopy precise cursive f ransom kuti president it's a weird thing when you see someone's handwriting oh yeah that they're there suddenly

Speaker 4 and it turns out reading and writing would become one of the things one of the catalytic agents that would take fumalaya from cooking classes to coup plotting um

Speaker 10 so this is historian cheryl johnson odom she says it started one day in church she says she was in church one time and there was a market woman friend of hers who was singing

Speaker 10 but holding the hymnal upside down.

Speaker 10 And she said that was when she realized she couldn't read.

Speaker 10 You know, she just learned the words. So she said the market women, because of the little group she had, started coming to her.

Speaker 4 We can imagine after the service, Fumalaya told the woman, hey, I have this club. Why don't you come? We'll teach you.

Speaker 10 How to read.

Speaker 4 This woman was not the kind of person who would have typically gone to the ladies' club.

Speaker 6 So, the ladies' club were all these elite Christian women.

Speaker 4 She worked in the markets.

Speaker 6 Very different class.

Speaker 4 We might guess that she sold dyed cloth.

Speaker 6 A tie dyer.

Speaker 4 Judith says that was a major industry in Abiakuta. The market woman would use indigo dye to create these very particular undulating patterns that look like water.

Speaker 4 Pretty soon, all of the cloth cloth dyers and the rice sellers and the red pepper sellers and the potato sellers were all coming to Fumalaya's ladies' club for reading lessons.

Speaker 10 In fact, Wally Shuyinka even written about how he would sometimes be at her compound.

Speaker 2 Women of every occupation, the cloth dyers, weavers, basket makers, they arrived in ones, twos, groups. They came from near and distant compounds.

Speaker 2 They smelt of the sweat of the journey, of dyes, dried fish, yam flour. In addition to the head tie, their shoulder shawls, neatly folded, were placed lightly on their heads.

Speaker 2 Well, you saw the swirling colours and the women's sashes.

Speaker 4 That's Nobel Prize winning writer Wolo Shroyenka, who is actually Felakuti's cousin. He spent a lot of time around Fumalaya Ransom Kuti and has written about her extensively.

Speaker 2 You saw the movement of the clothing, which meant get out of my way.

Speaker 10 He talked about them being the wrapper wearers.

Speaker 11 He said when the wrapper wearers showed up, boy, something was going down.

Speaker 6 And so the ladies' club then sets up this literacy program and Fela is involved.

Speaker 4 Fela apparently would sit with the cloth makers and the peanut sellers and he would teach them how to write their letters.

Speaker 6 Wole Shayenka is involved.

Speaker 10 They're all helping to teach the market women to write.

Speaker 2 But as I confessed, I was a great eavesdropper as a child.

Speaker 4 Wole Shenka said that inevitably after their reading and writing lessons, the talk would turn to politics and the kids would have to leave the room.

Speaker 4 But he, and we might imagine Fela next to him, they would crouch down and listen just out of sight. And when they did, he says they would hear the same words coming up over and over.

Speaker 15 Taxes. Taxes.
Taxes.

Speaker 9 Taxes. Taxes.
Taxes. Taxes.
Taxes.

Speaker 2 And also.

Speaker 2 The Alake. The Alake.
The Alake of Abel Kuta was a formidable personality in his own right.

Speaker 4 This person, the Alake, is going to come up a lot. So let me explain the situation and who he was.

Speaker 4 Nigeria was a British colony, which we know. But colonialism took many forms.
Unlike, say, South Africa, the Brits in Nigeria didn't have many white people on the ground.

Speaker 4 Instead, what they did was they ruled Nigeria through surrogates, like the Ilake.

Speaker 6 The Ilake, which is the king of this town.

Speaker 4 Technically, the Ilake was a king.

Speaker 4 And he definitely looks like it.

Speaker 4 In one photo of him, he's decked out in flowing robes with gold detailing, big crown studded with jewels, and someone is always holding a fringed umbrella over his head.

Speaker 4 But if you look to the side of the picture, you see a white guy with a mustache and a shiny top hat. In most photos of the Ilake, there is a guy like that standing right at the edge of the picture.

Speaker 10 Basically, the Ilake is being told what to do.

Speaker 11 by the British.

Speaker 10 He's being held in power by the British. And the decision making is British, even if it comes out of the Ilake's mouth.

Speaker 6 This was the basis of indirect rule. And that was what the British said was so important about their system that they left those indigenous political leaders or titles at least in place.

Speaker 4 This is why the British loved Abiyakuta so much because it was the perfect case study for their classic move.

Speaker 4 British government did this all over Asia in what is now Singapore, India, Bangladesh, and of course Africa.

Speaker 4 They would go in, take control of the leaders, and then use a local man dressed ostentatiously to execute their plans.

Speaker 16 Okay, so full confession. I'm not really supposed to be recording in here.
This is his diary from 1912 to 1915.

Speaker 4 A producer Ruby Walsh found a diary of one colonial officer who put it pretty plainly.

Speaker 18 The titular ruler is the Ilake, who knows no English and started life as a canoe boy. However, the British commissioner, Mr.
Young, is of course the dominating factor.

Speaker 18 The little state is somewhat in the position of a would-be independent, but really very dependent child.

Speaker 4 Getting back to the story, the market women coming to to those literacy meetings were pissed because around 1938 the British colonial officers, those men in suits at the margins of the photos, they went to the Ilake and told him, we need you to tax the women in the market.

Speaker 4 Because at that time...

Speaker 5 Germany has invaded Poland and has bombed many towns.

Speaker 4 World War II was about to happen. Hitler was rampaging his way through Europe.

Speaker 5 General mobilization has been ordered in Britain and France.

Speaker 4 And this is something that no one teaches you in history class, but

Speaker 4 a lot of the manpower for the war effort came from European colonies in Africa.

Speaker 19 The people of Africa are doing excellent work to help the Allied cause, both by the production of raw materials and by finding men for the armed forces.

Speaker 2 You saw the soldiers being

Speaker 2 moved across Habokuta in lorries and they were going to fight some nasty man called Adolf Hitler.

Speaker 2 The vague ogre overseas, who in some way or the other was involved in our own local politics on the wrong side.

Speaker 4 This was happening all over Africa. You had the Nigeria regiment, you had stations on the shore of Sierra Leone, you had the Gold Coast Regiment.
And so the British government now had this problem.

Speaker 6 They're trying just to make sure they get enough rice to feed the soldiers. And so there are all these conversations about how can we, in a sense, put more of a squeeze on the population.

Speaker 17 It's a really combustible situation for these market women.

Speaker 4 What the British decided to do was create a contingent of tax collectors. These were native tax collectors, so non-white, but like the Ilake, they were directed by the British colonial officers.

Speaker 2 Oh, they were hated. They were hated.
They were considered the slaves of white district officers.

Speaker 4 The tax collectors would march in to the markets, demand that the market sellers unload all their potatoes and their rice for a third of what they were asking.

Speaker 6 And if you don't sell to me, I'll actually just confiscate it and you get nothing.

Speaker 20 So during the war, they had no control over the prices.

Speaker 4 On top of that, the tax collectors would levy all these new fines on the women.

Speaker 6 Not only tax them, but make sure they pay.

Speaker 4 So at those literacy meetings, the market women would tell Fumalaya these stories about how they were being harassed, how they would try to sell at night to avoid the tax collectors, but often get caught.

Speaker 6 Taken to court and tried, and sometimes get hard labor. They were putting them in jail.
At one point, they started

Speaker 6 jailing them outside of Abiyakuta so that their families couldn't see them.

Speaker 4 Wola Shoenko writes about one literacy meeting where an old woman got up to speak.

Speaker 2 She was so old that she had to be assisted up. The meeting was her first, and she had dragged her feeble body to the assembly as a last hope for the menace now hanging over her head.

Speaker 2 She tells her story. Her son died and left 13 children behind, so she took over the farm to provide for them.

Speaker 2 Then tax officers came to her and said, because she has a large farm, she gets a special assessment asking for far more money than she has ever had.

Speaker 10 You know, one of the things that the colonial enterprise did was it made assumptions about the way society was organized and structured. It made assumptions about women.

Speaker 10 For instance, it went into the marketplace and it started telling women where they could locate their markets.

Speaker 10 Well, nobody told women where they could locate their markets, not even African men, because there was a really different status between the public status of women and the private status of women.

Speaker 10 And private, women were, I'd say, generally oppressed by indigenous patriarchy. And public, there was like a whole different thing.

Speaker 10 I mean, I saw a woman, I don't tell this story often, who was telling everybody what to do in the market, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, men too.

Speaker 10 But I went to her house one time and she was serving her husband on her knees.

Speaker 20 And I'm like, this can't be you.

Speaker 20 This cannot be you.

Speaker 10 And so the clone of the enterprise began interfering with what had been the traditional rights of women, where to decide where a market went, how much to charge for something.

Speaker 10 And so the women began to get very agitated.

Speaker 4 All of which is to to say that as the meetings went on, the nature of the relationship between Fumalaya and Samkuti and these market women began to shift.

Speaker 4 At first it was just reading lessons, but then the market women began to approach her and ask her if she would write letters for them. Letters to the Ilake, to the British colonial officials.

Speaker 5 Wow. So where we are right now used to be her study.

Speaker 5 Fumalaya's study.

Speaker 4 We took a tour of her house, a small two-story house with a balcony overlooking a busy street, and our tour guide, my name is Akin Laby.

Speaker 4 I'm the manager at the Kutsi Heritage Museum, showed us her home office, a spare room, tiny rug chair.

Speaker 5 These are our original furnitures that we had to refurbish.

Speaker 4 Is that an original turntable?

Speaker 5 Oh, yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 4 What would she... She probably listened to hymns, would you guess? Yeah.

Speaker 4 There was an old wooden desk facing out the window, and it was very easy to imagine her sitting there typing, just rifling off the hundreds of letters found in her archives.

Speaker 14 The Egbar women's suffering is becoming unbearable. Ekbar women have been summoned, worried, harangued, and ill-treated by tax collectors.

Speaker 14 They said the soup they were given would not be eaten by dogs. They have to spread their blankets out to sleep on.

Speaker 14 Young girls are sometimes stripped naked in the streets by the men officially designated collectors in order to ascertain whether they are mature enough to pay tax or not.

Speaker 14 A woman was jailed with a nine-day-old baby after she had paid her tax to the tax collector.

Speaker 4 Back with Judith. All right, so this is a letter to Fumalai Ransom Kuti from, I guess, an officer.
In one exchange about that jailed woman, an officer replied, My dear Mrs.

Speaker 4 Kuti, what does it matter if a woman is jailed with a day-old baby? What we want to know is that she pays her tax.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 6 They were taking these stories to Ransom Kuti, and then Ransom Kuti would try to talk to the Elake

Speaker 10 on their behalf.

Speaker 17 He would basically say, there's nothing I can do.

Speaker 4 He'd say, you have to talk to the British.

Speaker 11 This is their policy.

Speaker 10 And she was like, we have exhausted all these channels.

Speaker 6 We go to the colonial officials. They tell us it's the a lake.
They go to him and he says, it's not me. It's the colonial officials who you have to talk to.

Speaker 2 They have had it.

Speaker 6 They're like, this runaround has to stop.

Speaker 4 Wolle Shanka remembers the moment when the vibe irrevocably shifted. It happened at the grammar school.

Speaker 2 A tumult overspilled the courtyard.

Speaker 4 Market women had come from all over.

Speaker 2 There was no question of my going home that night. I sensed the beginning of an unusual event and was gripped by the excitement.
The women's group met till late.

Speaker 2 I had long fallen asleep on the bench in the dining room and woke up the following morning in the bed in the dormitory of Mrs. Kuti's class.

Speaker 2 On the following morning at breakfast, I heard for the first time the expression, Abeokuta, women's union.

Speaker 6 The Abeokuta Women's Union.

Speaker 4 Wow. This is a

Speaker 4 at this point in the archives you see a switch flip. No more ladies' club.
This is a union and no more Western clothes.

Speaker 4 From this point forward she would dress in the same wraps and headscarves as the market women.

Speaker 10 She started only wearing Nigerian clothing. She never wore Western clothing again.

Speaker 4 Okay, this is Constitution, Rules and Regulations, Aims and Objectives of the Unions. To establish and maintain unity and cooperation among all women in Egbaland.

Speaker 4 Egbaland, by the way, is a reference to one of the dominant ethnic groups in Nigeria.

Speaker 4 To cooperate with all organizations seeking and fighting genuinely and selflessly for the economic and political freedom and independence of the people. Dang.

Speaker 4 Number five, to raise and maintain necessary and adequate talent. It's like I read this stuff and I'm like, we gotta get our shit together.
These people were organized.

Speaker 6 And, you know, she had a car, so she used to drive to different communities and hold meetings with them.

Speaker 4 And we know, because Fellat told it to his biographer, Carlos Moore, that when she got in a car to go to a meeting, she would often take him with her.

Speaker 10 So she and her husband owned this school.

Speaker 10 And so the school had huge grounds.

Speaker 17 And that's where the rapper wearers would meet.

Speaker 4 While we were at the school, I kept looking into the fields behind where the kids were doing the Bible study.

Speaker 4 I mean, it it wasn't the same field but i kept trying to imagine what it would have looked like filled with thousands of women you know there were the estimates are between 10 and 20 000 members according to wolishenka the first protest happened almost spontaneously they poured out of the grammar school compound filled the streets and marched towards the palace of the alake it was a bust

Speaker 4 The authorities quickly shut it down and jailed Fumalayo, saying she didn't have a permit to march. When she was released, she thought, okay,

Speaker 4 fine. If you're not going to let us have a protest.

Speaker 10 They said they were going to have a picnic.

Speaker 10 So they gathered 10,000 women to go have a picnic, you know, when they were carrying little packets of food.

Speaker 4 A week before, Fumalaya had held a massive meeting in her courtyard.

Speaker 10 And she said it at her compound. And she came out and she said to them, And she said she was screaming because there were so many.

Speaker 10 Because she started talking, they were like, I can't hear you. So she was screaming through her her hands.

Speaker 6 And she was saying, look, this is the time.

Speaker 10 I'm going to turn my back to you. And anybody who wants to can scurry away.

Speaker 2 I won't know who you are.

Speaker 11 I won't see you.

Speaker 10 But when I turn back around, everybody I see better be on board. And so she turned her back.
And according to everybody, nobody left.

Speaker 4 Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 And then, as Wolishenka describes it, all at once, all 10,000 women took off their head wraps.

Speaker 2 This is always a dramatic moment. Normally, there's a head tie nestling peacefully on the head.
The moment there's going to be conflict, off would come the head tie to the waist.

Speaker 4 They would tie it around their waist like a belt.

Speaker 2 It's like throwing down the gauntlet when a woman takes off her head tie, ties it like a sash around her waist. Men scatter.

Speaker 4 Oh my god, you can see her addressing the crowd. What?

Speaker 4 Wow, you can see the crowd. After three and a half hours of digging through the archives that Judith Byfield had laid out for me,

Speaker 4 I found these black and white pictures. There's like, there's literally like 10,000 people.

Speaker 4 10,000 heads.

Speaker 4 In one picture, shot from above, you see thousands of heads covered in white scarves, white circles filling every millimeter of the picture. And to the side, on a platform,

Speaker 4 one woman addresses them. And next to her, maybe a young boy.
Probably I'm just imagining it. I'm getting a little too excited.
Oh my God, these pictures.

Speaker 4 This rally is perhaps the moment right before they march to the Ilakes Palace, which is when things really go down.

Speaker 6 My sense of it is you would see this sea of women approaching the palace.

Speaker 10 What you would see is you would see men getting out of the way. And they would often tell the British.
The British would come to them and say, get these women to stop it.

Speaker 10 And they would say, we don't tell the market women what to do. We cannot stop it.

Speaker 6 And there's a wonderful passage in Ake where Shoyinka talks about one of the chiefs running into his mother's shop and hiding there because the women had stripped him off his clothes and just reduced him to his underwear.

Speaker 4 Speaking of Oli Shoyinka, he snuck ahead of the women to the palace, which we visited. Picture a gated mansion painted canary yellow.

Speaker 4 He snakes through the gate, under the stone archway, and into the spacious square. Okay, we're in the...
This must have been the courtyard where they were.

Speaker 4 It's a big open space with peacocks milling about.

Speaker 4 As you walk into the courtyard, you see a building in front of you, yellow building.

Speaker 15 There's an image of him talking to them, them talking to the aleke. The alake coming down from a balcony.

Speaker 2 That might have been the balcony.

Speaker 4 That's probably the balcony. Up high, there was a single balcony with glass doors, the alake's bedroom.
He initially stayed inside as the women flooded the courtyard. So they were probably right here.

Speaker 4 You just see a sea of white head scarves.

Speaker 4 At first, some of the Ilake's junior chiefs come outside, try and hold the women back to keep them from entering. They comply, but only in exchange for a conversation with the Ilake.

Speaker 4 So the juniors go inside.

Speaker 4 Then the glass doors on that balcony opened and the Ilake stepped out, dressed in his gold robes.

Speaker 2 When the Alake appeared, they cut seed, going down on their knees, but no more. The Alake had obviously resolved to receive the emissaries courteously.

Speaker 4 A protester, one of Mrs. Kutsi's lieutenants, stepped forward and called up to the Alake.

Speaker 14 The message which I bring you today is the message of all women who have left their stalls, their homes and children, their farms and petty affairs to come and visit you today.

Speaker 14 They are the suffering crowds who are gathered on your front lawn.

Speaker 11 You can see them yourself, Kabiesi.

Speaker 2 They are all the womanhood of Egba.

Speaker 14 The voice with which I speak is the voice of Abear Re Mrs. Kutsi.
The words which you hear from me are the words of Mrs. Kutsi.

Speaker 14 She asked me to tell you on behalf of those women you see outside that the women of Egba have had enough.

Speaker 2 In hindsight, it was rather like protagonists and the chorus.

Speaker 4 Wolo Shenka describes the scene almost like it had a kind of mythic choreography.

Speaker 2 You had the masked women. You had the moment when the white district officer came in through the gates and was booed roundly.

Speaker 4 A policeman ordered a district officer to clear his way through the crowd towards Mrs. Kuti.
As he moved through, the women threw insults at him from all directions, getting in his face. Mrs.

Speaker 4 Kuti stayed rooted.

Speaker 2 Officer, look here, Mrs. Kuti.
We are trying to hold a serious meeting here. Would you kindly keep your women in order?

Speaker 14 Mrs. Kuti, so are we holding a serious meeting? Or do you think we're here to play?

Speaker 2 Officer, we'll tell them to shut up. Shut up, your women.

Speaker 4 Mrs. Kuti apparently squinted her eyes.

Speaker 2 I think her exact words were, you may have been born, but you were not bred.

Speaker 4 Those words would fly around Abiyakuti for weeks.

Speaker 2 I think that's the one which then became translated that you lack bread in your house

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 all kinds of other versions. Anyway, she gave it to him back with interest.

Speaker 6 And it was at that point that the women began to sing.

Speaker 4 This is one of the most interesting parts of the story to me. Oh, look at this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, this is the same thing.

Speaker 4 All songs sung during the women's union demonstrations from Fort.

Speaker 2 Oh, hello.

Speaker 2 This is what?

Speaker 4 In the archives that Judah showed me, Fumalaya has documented all of the songs, the protest songs, that the women sang when they occupied the palace.

Speaker 4 First of all, there's a lot of these songs.

Speaker 4 There's 200 different songs they were singing.

Speaker 4 Every protest movement is defined by its music to some degree, and there are pages and pages of these songs in the archives.

Speaker 4 All the songs are in Yoruba, so we hired a language expert to help us translate them and then a choir in Legos to sing them. And these songs are wild.

Speaker 10 Because they would sing insulting songs.

Speaker 4 And a quick warning, they get kind of graphic.

Speaker 11 They would say things like.

Speaker 10 you know, white man is not going to get back to his country alive. I'm going to cut off Delake's head.
I like genitals are small. I mean,

Speaker 10 all these are just mean, mean, you know, things to just insult.

Speaker 2 My favorite by far.

Speaker 2 olocoe shi, o boa supaloma dijale.

Speaker 4 The chorus that we got to sing these songs were gasping when they read the lyrics.

Speaker 2 English translation.

Speaker 21 English translation.

Speaker 21 Translation. Alake

Speaker 21 has the penis, his penis is as big as a horse.

Speaker 4 The olake has a penis as big as a horse.

Speaker 14 However, it's vagina.

Speaker 21 It's not to cause the fat.

Speaker 4 We will cut it off, basically. The literal translation is, as best as we can tell,

Speaker 4 we will emit fire from our vaginas that will wound his penis.

Speaker 2 You can't translate them literally.

Speaker 4 This is one of the reasons why the protest movement became known as Vengeance of the Vagina Head.

Speaker 10 There is an African tradition called sitting on a man.

Speaker 10 Sitting on a man means gathering outside of a man's house

Speaker 10 and singing insulting derisive songs and daring him to come out. And men were scared to death of it.
Now, no one woman

Speaker 10 could talk to her husband like that.

Speaker 10 So like if a man beat a woman, she might run to her market women's group and then they would descend in the hundreds on her house, telling her husband, if you ever beat her again, they're going to deal with them.

Speaker 10 Wow. So they would start singing those songs to the Ilaki.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they weren't mincing their words.

Speaker 10 And then they would say, and we're not leaving either.

Speaker 5 Coming up after the break, the women make the British experience something they have absolutely no answer for. That's in a minute, Chicago Public Radio, when our program continues.

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Speaker 5 Just American Life. I'm Ira Glass.
Today's program, Bigger Than Me. Stories of people trying to rise to the historic moment that they find themselves in.

Speaker 5 If you're just tuning in, we're in the middle of an excerpt from Jad Abamrab's new podcast about Fela Kuti. This particular story is about Fela's mother, Funmalaya Ransom Kuti.

Speaker 5 Jad picks up where he left off. The women are trying to convince the Ilake to stop taxing them unfairly.

Speaker 4 The market women camped out in the courtyard of the Ilake's palace, and then they began round-the-clock shifts. Wolishenka remembers that those encampments became like a city.

Speaker 2 There were moments of absolute stillness.

Speaker 2 For instance, when they started started cooking, because they laid siege, they were there all night.

Speaker 2 And they took turns, sometimes go home, look after the children, come back to their position. So there was cooking also.

Speaker 2 And the activity, especially at night, when they lit their lamps, oil lamps, to stay on the siege.

Speaker 4 At some point you described yourself as a courier.

Speaker 2 Yes, it's true. I was a courier.

Speaker 2 Since I was so small and there were police lots of police around and uh the alake's own guards since i was so tiny people didn't take much notice of me and so mrs kuti in particular he says she would entrust him with these notes little notes to her forces who were scattered in front of the palace these protests happened on and off as the year went on i mean they they literally made the town ungovernable they shut down the market and they stayed camped out just outside the alake's window the sea of women is in the palace and he can't get out after several months of this he starts to crack yes yes

Speaker 4 and is he is he amassing soldiers to try and drive a wedge through the protesters like

Speaker 6 so that's a really interesting story

Speaker 6 i learned from the memoir of the main colonial officials that they did have soldiers on the edge of town

Speaker 6 and they were contemplating bringing the soldiers into town. In fact, the elake was trying to beg him to bring the soldiers in.

Speaker 4 This is not theoretical.

Speaker 4 Almost 20 years earlier, in a different part of Nigeria, there had been a different revolt, also led by women.

Speaker 6 Also, a struggle around taxation. And in the 29 protests, they did call out the army and women were killed.

Speaker 4 Army opened fire on a crowd and killed over 50 women.

Speaker 4 A few years before that, in 1918, a similar rebellion ended up with 600 people dead.

Speaker 4 Fella would actually sing a song about this.

Speaker 4 He would adapt a folk song that was used in the protest and set it to music.

Speaker 4 But that's many years later. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Speaker 4 At that moment, if anything, Fela is in the encampment with his mom as the tension mounted because it looked like this protest with the market women was going to end the same way as the others.

Speaker 4 Because what the Alake was saying essentially to his British masters was, what you did last time, do it again, please.

Speaker 6 They were very conscious of that earlier era. And so in the 47 now,

Speaker 6 they have the army closed, basically on the edge of town.

Speaker 4 The market women are camped out, well aware of the violence that might be about to go down.

Speaker 4 But both Judas and Cheryl say that somewhere around this point in the standoff, the women begin to protest in an entirely new way.

Speaker 4 A few of them step forward.

Speaker 6 And they take their clothes off.

Speaker 10 They actually stripped naked.

Speaker 4 Apparently, right there in the plaza, some number of women, we don't have accurate details on how many, maybe a dozen, maybe a hundred, they got together and while facing the alake's window, all at once, they disrobed.

Speaker 6 And the idea is that if you see an older woman naked, that that's an abomination.

Speaker 4 Judith explained that in many West African cultures, and in fact in many other cultures around the world, women disrobing, particularly older women, was thought of as a kind of weapon, a summoning of a spiritual power.

Speaker 6 Partly because of their ability to procreate, women are thought to be in touch with the spiritual powers around them and thought to be able to really sort of weaponize that.

Speaker 4 That when they disrobed, any man who looked on them was now a target.

Speaker 4 I find this moment so interesting. You have these women shoulder to shoulder putting out a kind of spiritual power, almost like a force field.

Speaker 4 And then just outside of town, you have an army. It's like two different epistemologies in a way of power.
Yes. You have military power and then you have this no less

Speaker 4 potent symbolic power. Yeah.
And they're lined up against each other.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 6 And so they have the army closed, basically on the edge of town.

Speaker 4 And Judah says,

Speaker 4 if you read the correspondence that was flying back and forth between the Ilak and the generals and between the various British officers, they were like, fuck.

Speaker 4 What do we do with this? We could march in, kill them all as we've done before.

Speaker 6 But they're saying, do we want to create martyrs?

Speaker 4 The British understood on some level.

Speaker 4 That women hold the culture of a place.

Speaker 4 They are traditionally the child-rearers, the relationship tenders. So if you attack them, if they go in and attack these women, that might unleash an energy that they can't contain.

Speaker 6 That could then bring young men and the ones you usually fear out into the streets as well.

Speaker 4 Don't forget the British were outnumbered. They didn't actually have a lot of soldiers on the ground.

Speaker 6 And so on one hand, the state is

Speaker 6 a little hamstrung about how you deal with women.

Speaker 4 I think in general, it's fair to say that a lot of politics is driven by the fact that men are afraid of women. In this case, the British definitely were.

Speaker 18 We lived in a constant strain, for we never knew when the pot would boil over.

Speaker 4 That is how John Blair, the main colonial officer stationed at Abiokuta, put it in his diary.

Speaker 18 When the tension was at its worst, I got quite ill. and the doctor sent me to hospital in Lagos.
I was sure I was suffering from nervous exhaustion.

Speaker 4 On July 29th, 1948, in the dead of night, as protesters were camped all around the palace, the British sent a car to the palace to take the Ilake, his wives, and his family away.

Speaker 20 They snuck him out of town.

Speaker 2 He didn't want to leave.

Speaker 4 They snuck him past all the people? Yeah.

Speaker 11 put him in a car.

Speaker 6 So one of the colonial officials I interviewed had been involved with getting him out of town.

Speaker 6 And he said they put him in the car and had him lie down on the back seat so they were sneaking him out without the women being aware that he was leaving town.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 20 He went into exile.

Speaker 4 Okay, so this is a speech that the Alake

Speaker 4 made a few months after they took him away.

Speaker 2 After more than a half century of service, after more than half a century of service to my country,

Speaker 4 28 of which I have given in the capacity of native authority, I cannot bear any longer the sight of turmoil, strife, and discontent.

Speaker 2 I have therefore decided, after mature consideration and in order to avoid bloodshed, to leave the environment of my territory in the hope that after a time, frayed tempers will subside and an atmosphere of calm

Speaker 2 will prevail. Wow, quite a speech.

Speaker 4 In other words, he abdicated the throne.

Speaker 11 That was

Speaker 2 huge.

Speaker 6 No other woman is ever credited with unseating a sitting king.

Speaker 14 Drumming began in the Olubumi houses at 5 p.m. on August 21st, 1948, followed by firing of guns by hunters and dance by all at Alake Square.
50 different forms of African dances were in attendance.

Speaker 14 They were dancing at the dawn of a new day.

Speaker 6 They talked about Ape Akuta being liberated and they have this Thanksgiving ceremony. There's this minister who speaks on behalf of the women.

Speaker 6 He said it took the women to do what the men couldn't do for 28 years.

Speaker 15 This just gives you a sense of

Speaker 2 this story.

Speaker 4 And in the archives, what you see from this point forward are hundreds of letters from other women.

Speaker 6 She had letters in her paper from women all over the continent saying, Mother,

Speaker 10 you have so inspired us.

Speaker 14 1948. Dear Mrs.
Kutsi, I am penning you this day under the respect I owe to women.

Speaker 4 Women from unions all over start to reach out.

Speaker 14 We, the Alawa Aribe Women's Union, send this letter to ask for your assistance.

Speaker 4 Copycat women's unions start to appear everywhere.

Speaker 10 South Africa, the anti-apartheid movement, Ghana.

Speaker 4 Arab Women's Society, Union of Albanian Women, Union of Australian Women, Union of Korean Women.

Speaker 11 So you can look everywhere.

Speaker 4 Democratic League of Finnish Women, Democratic Union of German Women, Federation of Cuban Women, League for Lebanese Women's Rights,

Speaker 4 Union of Luxembourg Women. And I'm only at the M's.
And you see women everywhere.

Speaker 4 We in the West tend to emphasize the legacies of Africa's male leaders. The Kwame Nkrumahs, the Nelson Mandelas.

Speaker 4 But if you look across the continent from this point forward, you see women leading revolts in Senegal, Cameroon, South Africa, Gold Coast, Algeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Ivory Coast, Togo, Mali, Somalia, Egypt.

Speaker 4 It's a story we've largely missed.

Speaker 4 And the erasure of it all kind of landed on us when we went off in search of Fumalaya Ransom Kuti's grave.

Speaker 4 Aki, our tour guide from earlier, pointed us toward the Anglican church that was 300 feet from the house.

Speaker 4 We went there, asked around.

Speaker 4 A guy walked us to the back side of the church.

Speaker 5 This is...

Speaker 2 Here we are.

Speaker 4 There was a grave set in concrete.

Speaker 4 Mrs. Kuti is buried with her husband.
There's a headstone and then above the headstone is a bust of Reverend Kuti. And there on the tombstone is his bust and on the epitaph.

Speaker 2 Reverend Israel Odun Ransom Kuti.

Speaker 4 All the details of his life. President Nigerian Union of Teachers Association, 1930 to 1954.

Speaker 4 He was a very impressive man.

Speaker 4 He did a lot to revolutionize the educational system in Nigeria.

Speaker 4 But his wife, who is buried with him and who led a revolt to depose the king, she's hardly mentioned. It's crazy they don't say anything about her.
Barely a word.

Speaker 4 All there is is this one line that says, R.I.P., my love, Fumalaya.

Speaker 9 Are you surprised?

Speaker 10 I was expecting her to have a thing.

Speaker 9 Yeah, that says a lot.

Speaker 4 Even people who do remember her, says Judith, tend to think of her as a footnote in Fella's story rather than the hero of her own.

Speaker 6 I so appreciate that you're doing this though, because that's the thing that drove me crazy.

Speaker 22 She became reduced to Fella's mother.

Speaker 17 And so even when I would give talks in Nigeria,

Speaker 17 people would be surprised at all the stuff that I bring out because her activism

Speaker 6 has just really been forgotten.

Speaker 4 Felakuti himself would eventually take up positions about the role of women in society that were very controversial and in many ways flew in the face of what his mother was fighting for.

Speaker 4 And yet he did honor her. He referred to her as the mother of Nigeria.

Speaker 4 And in 1978, when she died, after the government raided his compound and literally threw her out of a window, he records a song called Unknown Soldier,

Speaker 4 where he sings about the incident and you can hear his voice break.

Speaker 2 Political,

Speaker 2 ideological mama, them throw my mama.

Speaker 2 Them kill my mama, them kill my mama, them kill my mama, them kill my mamas, them kill my mamas, them carry everybody go.

Speaker 4 So he never forgot what she'd accomplished.

Speaker 4 And neither did those market women who marched with her.

Speaker 22 So let me tell you,

Speaker 22 my grandmother.

Speaker 4 This is Yeni Kuti, Fela's oldest daughter, Fumalaya Ransom Kuti's granddaughter.

Speaker 2 My grandmother, when we were burying her,

Speaker 22 we went in a convoy to Abekuta. Abekuta is her town.

Speaker 22 When we got to the border of Abekuta, there was this mammoth crowd of women.

Speaker 22 Mammoth crowd of women.

Speaker 2 We had to stop.

Speaker 22 They took her body from us and they walked with with her and they honored her as the voice of the women.

Speaker 22 It was a people's funeral.

Speaker 22 It was a people's funeral.

Speaker 5 Jedi Bermuda's podcast about Fega is called Fego Kuti, If you're No Man. You can get it wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 5 She's the only mother of Nigeria.

Speaker 5 Well, today's program is produced by Valerie Pitnes and Emmanuel Jochi.

Speaker 5 The people who helped put the show together today include Michael Kamite, Susan Gabber, Sophie Gill, Cassie Howley, Seth Flynn, Stone Nelson, Catherine Raymondo, Nadia Raymond, Alyssa Shipp, Christopher Sotala, and Marisa Robertson Texter.

Speaker 5 Our managing editor is Sarah Abduraman, our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emmanuel Berry.

Speaker 5 Jed's collaborators in making his favorite series were Ian Wheeler, Ango fan Mutu Puele, Ruby Heron Walsh, Fefe Odudu, and Olo Wakimi Ulado Sowi. The series was edited by Ben Adair.

Speaker 5 Special thanks as well to VTech, Funmia Rewa, Debbie O'Hiri, who put together the choir singing protest songs throughout this episode. Ade Ron Kay helped translate those songs.

Speaker 5 The episode was fact-checked by Robin Reed and Jamail Wilkinson.

Speaker 5 Just a quick reminder that if you like our show and you want us to, you know, keep making it, please become a This American Life Partner.

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Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tori Malatilla.

Speaker 5 All his exes live in

Speaker 9 taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes.

Speaker 2 I'm Eric Glass.

Speaker 5 Back next week with more stories of this American life.

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