Melvin McNair hijacked a plane to escape racism. He still can't go home: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: We're bringing you the story of Melvin McNair from USA TODAY's Never Been Told project, which explores the unseen, lost and forgotten stories of America's people of color.

Melvin McNair is an exile and a powerful samaritan. He is a U.S. Army deserter and a social worker, coaching baseball for disadvantaged kids in his adopted home of Caen, France.

Back in 1972, McNair was part of a group that hatched a plan to hijack a plane to Algeria. If you've heard anything of McNair, you'd have likely only heard about the hijacking.

Now, for the first time, McNair is sharing his story with a U.S. media outlet.

McNair and his co-conspirators said they were escaping anti-Black racism here in the U.S. Their plan was to become involved with members of Black Panther party in Algiers. They ended up settling in France, where he still lives.

Melvin McNair became an extraordinary force for good in his Normandy community. Yet today he's still wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice for his role in hijacking Delta flight 841. So, he can never return home to America.

USA TODAY’s race and history editor Nichelle Smith and international correspondent Kim Hjelmgaard sit down with host Claire Thornton to discuss Melvin's story and to ask the question "has Melvin redeemed himself all these years later?"

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Claire Thornton:

Hey there, I'm Claire Thornton, and this is Five Things. It's Sunday, July 25th. These Sunday episodes are special, we're bringing you more from in depth stories you may have already heard. In 1972, a man named Melvin McNair fled the United States for Algeria to escape anti-black racism, and he hijacked a plane to do it. Melvin McNair and his family wanted to join the Black Panthers in Algiers. Later, they settled in France. Today, McNair is still wanted by the US Department of Justice for his role in the hijacking of Delta Flight 841. So he can never return home to America or else he'll be arrested. Little is known about McNair's story, it wasn't taught in school classrooms like other stories of black Americans who fought against racism here, particularly in the Jim Crow South.

Claire Thornton:

For the first time ever, Melvin McNair shared his story with a US media outlet this year. We're giving time to his story today because of what it says about the history of race and racism in America, and it's just a thrilling story too in my opinion. USA Today's Kim Hjelmgaard and Nichelle Smith have been working on the piece for months. It's part of our Never Been Told project which explores the unseen, unheard, lost and forgotten stories of America's people of color. Nichelle, Kim, thank you both so much for being here.

Nichelle Smith:

Thank you.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Thank you. Glad to be here.

Claire Thornton:

So to get started, can you both describe Melvin McNair's story a bit for listeners? Who is he? What did he do?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

So Melvin McNair is a 72 year old, black American man. And he like many others from his era, he was born in 1948 in North Carolina, he went through the typical experiences of growing up in the segregated South, he got a scholarship to play baseball, he was a incredibly talented athlete, he so quickly found himself at Winston-Salem State University, a historically black public college. He didn't quite fit in there for various reasons. He was on a scholarship, he was expected to fit into that role of being an athlete, and listening to your coaches, and all the discipline stuff that comes with it.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And while he was there, he met a woman who becomes his future wife, her name is Jean, and she really had a massive influence on him. And she was a woman with a strong social conscience, also from North Carolina, and they started going to civil rights protests and marches and so on. And gradually anyway, Melvin lost his scholarship, he left the school, he got drafted into the army, various other things, he ended up in Germany where he started really experiencing, as he tells it, more aggressive racism for the first time. Germany, a lot of American troops in Germany at that time during the Cold War, about 25,000 black American soldiers stationed in Germany. And there were periods where he says that him and his black soldiers were chased on the streets, that were demeaned in various ways. He decided to desert essentially.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

He was asked to go to Vietnam, he didn't feel that given what he'd experienced in Germany that, that was something that he was prepared to do. And when he deserted, he ended up going back to the US, surfacing in Detroit, and met a ... You'd asked for a short summary of this story, it's very difficult to give a short summary, I'm getting there.

Claire Thornton:

Yes, I know.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

So please bear with me. But when he was in Detroit, him and his wife fell in with a group of other black Americans who also had complicated stories and some of them had run ins with the law, serious and semi-serious. And by hook or by crook, just to give you the short version, eventually, they moved in together and they hatched a plan to hijack a plane, demand a million dollars from the FBI, and have that plane flown to Algeria where they wanted to rendezvous with members of the Black Panther Party.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Now it's important to just state before we move on that Melvin and the others in this group, they weren't card carrying members of the Black Panther Party, but like many others at the time, they affiliated with it through broad ideological association, they believed in its messaging. So they ended up going to Algeria.

Claire Thornton:

Yes. Do you have anything else to add Nichelle?

Nichelle Smith:

Yes, I do have some things to add. In terms of what the story is, is actually about when Kim came to me with the story in February and we were thinking maybe it'll be something that we could do for Black History Month just to let people know, here's a person that you haven't heard of, I was fascinated by what this revealed about black people in this particular time period. And what I can say for myself, I am Generation X, I'm not a millennial, not a boomer, I'm in that middle ground.

Claire Thornton:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nichelle Smith:

So I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and I remember the men, including my father, wearing the black leather jackets, and the berets, and the women, including my mother, wearing the big Angela Davis Afros, and the solidarity that people in Gary, Indiana felt with the struggle.

Claire Thornton:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nichelle Smith:

So everything was about the struggle. And having come off of the riots, the rebellion rather after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. people were saying to be really focused on what is blackness? And who are we? And what have we done in this country? What do we deserve in this country? So Melvin's action, the action that he took, stands in contrast to so many people who went through racism and went to Vietnam, we know that there are many, many people of color, men of color, died in Vietnam, particularly black man or came back with Agent Orange, or PTSD, or worse things had befallen them, it really took a toll on the community.

Nichelle Smith:

So facing all of that, what makes a person who is into the struggle, who is interested in everything that the Black Panthers are saying that we need to do, much in the same way that people are interested in Black Lives Matter now? What is it that finally pushes you to that point where you take a desperate action that you don't know if this is going to work, you don't know what's on the other side of this, but you feel that you have to make a move and make a stand? So I was interested in all of the never told aspects, not just of this particular gentleman's life and his family, but what have we not said really about this particular time period? What is the context? What are the nuances? What do we need to learn as we go forward? Which after all is the intention of the Never Can Tell project.

Claire Thornton:

Why else did you want to tell this story? After reading it, one of my biggest takeaways is that at the time Melvin and his family thought that they were doing the right thing, they were pushing back against systemic injustice, but he's still being punished for it. He could still be arrested if he came back to the US. And people like him who pushed back in the 70s, they're not always necessarily looked upon favorably in history.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And one of the interesting things about Melvin's story is that he, for all intents and purposes, appears to be rehabilitated. I mean, obviously, hijacking a plane is a serious endeavor and there is still an indictment against him. I should point out that there's only one other person who's still alive who was in the group. But he spent time after Algeria when that didn't quite work out for various reasons, the hijackers fled to France. They went to France for partially because they felt they could blend in their, it's got a large black population. They also met social activists in Algeria, strong links between France and Algeria, who offered to help them. But essentially, when they got to France, it wasn't long before they were arrested, it was pressure by the US government, essentially, that led to their arrest.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

But there was a trial, they served time, and France took the view at that moment in time that they were political exiles and that the crime they had committed was essentially a political one. And they took that view because of the association with the Black Panthers. And so the US trying to extradite them is just ... Okay, hijacking is not a petty crime, but criminals, and France took a different interpretation of that same event. So they spent time in prison, Melvin spent almost four years in prison, he came out of prison and quickly went back to school, became a social worker, and spent a few years in Paris and then moved about three hours west of Paris to Normandy. I mean, he's retired now but he spent 40 odd years, essentially, mentoring kids, disadvantaged youth, teaching them baseball, and being a model citizen.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And the story is full, although Nichelle has kindly chopped out a lot of this, we were arguing about this at the minute, is full of people saying, look, if this guy hasn't rehabilitated then show me the meaning of rehabilitation because he served his community, you have politicians, you have humanitarian organizations, you have elderly in his community, you have young kids, you have middle aged kids, you have the full spectrum of the society in which he's just spent the last 40 odd years vouching for him. And so, it raises the question which I think is ... sorry, this is a really long way to address your point. But it raises the question of, you commit a crime when you're younger, you have a reason, right or wrong, what's the process that needs to happen to revisit that crime? And essentially, why can't Melvin go home? A lot of people wonder about that.

Claire Thornton:

Yes.

Nichelle Smith:

Exactly. And I would add to that, in as much as you and I are haggling over the details in this story, this story offers a rebuttal or a push back against the notions of rehabilitation. I mean, you mentioned clear that this is seen as a push back against the system per se versus the way that US law enforcement would see these as criminal acts. And I want to speak to that for a second and say that the sense I have from Melvin's story and just from that time period in general was that there was definitely an understanding of white right and wrong was in the context, in the sense of what the US system would say is right or wrong.

Nichelle Smith:

If you're going to hijack a plane, that's a wrong act, it's a criminal act in the context of for social justice and rebellion against the system. Here is where you get the nuance and the context, even when we say that Melvin is rehabilitated, again, that is an American Criminal Justice way of phrasing something, I like to look at it in a sense of perhaps he's redeemed, he's achieved some redemption for that. He says himself in the story that he had a bit of a quick temper and he made some decisions that perhaps there could have been another way to do some things, but there was the one quote Kim that we felt we had no choice, there was no question that our backs were against the wall.

Nichelle Smith:

And certainly, when you can envision, this is Detroit in 1972 and you've got the stress unit, this unit of police that is specifically targeting people who are about activism. You have COINTELPRO that is very specifically targeting and intent upon destroying the Black Panther Party. There had been Fred Hampton's assassination, there had been the trial with the Panther 21, there had been many other instances in which Panthers and Stokely Carmichael's SNCC group and other civil rights activists had been targeted. We know that Martin Luther King did not escape being taped by the FBI.

Nichelle Smith:

So there was a sense of legal enforcement calling black people criminals and really behaving in a criminal manner themselves. We've seen that before through history, we know that the police in this country anyway were created for the specific purpose of policing black bodies, that was their intention since 1704. So we have that long legacy of that coming to a hit with the civil rights movement and then even especially coming more to hit with the black power movement. So when we talk of things like redemption and we talk of things like what is criminal and what isn't criminal, here is where the application of the context and nuance that we're giving this story comes into play.

Claire Thornton:

So what did Melvin say that meant for his life back in the 60s, in the years leading up to the hijacking, living in Detroit, feeling targeted in that way, what did that mean for him?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

So just to add a specific layer in terms of Melvin, and his family's, and the other hijackers experiences that goes beyond just their interpretation of the atmosphere they were in, one of the hijackers got shot six times, and as far as we understand, as far as the historical research, in fact, cases thrown out in court, but he was accused by Detroit police of wielding a knife and assaulting a police officer, and it wasn't true. It was simply part of this stress unit that Nichelle referred to and it was that they were roaming around the streets essentially and hunting for black Americans and activists.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And so, there's a very specific moment that for Melvin and the others, and that was in the wake of the shooting of one of the other hijackers named George Brown. And George Brown nearly died, and they felt after that moment ... I mean, everything was an accumulation of moments that led to this hijacking but that was a more direct catalyst, I guess, is the way I put it, that after that, they decided to hatch this plan. And just to come back to your original question, in terms of the relevance and the interest in this story, apart from all the social aspects of it and the redemptive themes that Nichelle was referring to, it is just a crazy story.

Claire Thornton:

Yes. Totally.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

I mean, there is a lot of drama, and there's a lot of people disguising themselves to get on the plane, there's a lot of-

Claire Thornton:

Forging passports to make it to France.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Exactly, yes. So there's a lot of high jinks. I mean, you don't want to be too captivated by that because there's also real people here, and there's real issues, and there's real families, and there's real impacts, but just want to point that out. The other thing I'll just add briefly is that the story is also complicated by the fact that some of the other hijackers, particularly George Wright, who's the other still living member of that hijacking group, he's in Portugal, he escaped from prison and was in prison for a murder conviction.

Claire Thornton:

Yes.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And so when he met the McNair's, they didn't know this at the time, but he was on the run for a very serious crime. One of the other hijackers, George Brown, he had also escaped from prison with George Wright. In fact, they escaped from this prison together by hot wiring a warden's car, and they both-

Claire Thornton:

A prison in New Jersey, right?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

A prison in New Jersey, yes. And they both surfaced in Detroit where they met the McNair's. But my point is that, in and amongst this group, they all have different stories and they all have different shades of gray in terms of their connection to criminality, and then there's yet another layer which is of course that they studiously deny all of the allegations. Wright says he never killed anyone, George Brown said he didn't do an armed assault, and in fact that they were, to come back to what Nichelle was talking about, that they were set up by the system that had all white juries, that jailed him on little evidence. And so it's complicated. It's complicated to know what's true and maybe several things are true at the same time.

Nichelle Smith:

That's the complexity of this particular time here, it was so much was murky and so much was very highly emotional. And last night, Kim, after I got finished with what I hope is the final edit [crosstalk 00:20:14] as we go through and just sat back and absorb this story, I was struck aback by how unfortunate that you start out with ideology, you want to do right, you want to do better, you want your country to do better. And you are idealistic and you come with that among people who you think are also idealistic in the same way, and how unfortunate that this couple with their ideals, nice family by all accounts by what we can. Sure he's a hothead and she's very determined social activists, but there's no crime in either of those things.

Nichelle Smith:

And I see them as being in a way caught up in emotion, and in the cause, and in the struggle, "the struggle", and ending up in a place where they may never have imagined themselves to be. These are not people who started life saying, I'm going to find something criminal to do, I'm going to rock the system. There was a catalyst that was that one defining moment, life is along this path, here is this one moment, and then life suddenly takes a different turn, and how unfortunate that they got to Algeria. And in the words of George Brown I believe in this story, they went there looking for the struggle and the struggle wasn't there, because there were other agendas both by the FBI, both by the Panthers themselves. And again, going back to that Black Lives Matter analogy, as we see with Black Lives Matter, a decentralized organization in which there is leadership but it's decentralized to the point where anybody can claim the ideology, anybody can claim and perhaps some dupe and mislead people into believing that they are the ones who are leading and controlling.

Nichelle Smith:

And it seemed that the Panthers suffered from a number of the same things, a number of the same conflicts and decisions that every civil rights group has had to struggle with. I mean, SNCC struggled with that in terms of after Bloody Sunday, who are we going to be? Where are we going to go? Other iterations of the civil rights movement, there was always a point at which there needed to be a choice made, and the differences of opinion, and differences of ideology meant things and people were splintered, Nation of Islam as well with Malcolm X.

Claire Thornton:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Nichelle Smith:

So this was no different. And I see this couple trying to achieve their best with their ideology and it's getting ensnared into this situation, and they vary drastically, and I'm sadly, in many ways changed the arc of their lives.

Claire Thornton:

Yes, I want to give listeners more about the story as well. Lots of different things coalesced, focusing on his story, one man's story, let's talk about what happened to the young Melvin McNair when he joined the US Army.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Yes. So Melvin was drafted into the army, so that's the first thing to remember. And he wanted to become a professional baseball player and it appears he had the talent, he was a youth state champion, as I said earlier, he had a scholarship. When he got to the army, I think he faced a lot of the trials and tribulations that many black American men of his age did, and frankly, some still do. He felt that he was given menial tasks, he was shown to have or he demonstrated some leadership qualities, and he was bright, and he never felt that he ... He wasn't in the army for very long but even in the early stages, he never felt he was given the equal access to some of those opportunities to some of his white colleagues.

Claire Thornton:

And he said he was passed up for promotion.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Yes. For example, I mean, it's a little difficult to know exactly, but generally speaking, he felt that he was denied access. But it's important to point out that really it wasn't until he got to Germany that it really started to move up a couple of gears, and-

Claire Thornton:

The racism.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

With the racism and some of the things he experienced just while he was in the army, he was considered a top athlete, he was continuing to play baseball, football, basketball, and he had very clear racist experiences in those contexts in the army, and that coupled with being sent by your country to fight a war that you didn't believe in where you were facing almost a certain death, and at the same time tipped it over. I know this is a little bit off point but I do want to say, just so I don't forget, I think it's really important, it's one of the regrets I have about this story is that we weren't able to speak to Melvin's wife, Jean, because she seems to have been such a massive influence on him. And frankly, all of the work that he did in this little town in Normandy or city, small city, where he lives, she is equally as praised and lauded for all her efforts and they're going to name a street after her, there's a baseball field named after her and Melvin.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And so, we're putting a lot of focus on Melvin but it's a shame we weren't able to speak to Jean.

Claire Thornton:

Yes, she passed away in recent years.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

2014.

Claire Thornton:

You just touched on what is my final question about Melvin's story. It's clear to me that you're both making the case that post hijacking, his life in France, he has, in all sense of the word, redeemed himself. Tell us about the decades that he has spent in France devoting his life to public service. What are some stories that people told you as you reported this piece?

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Yes. It's interesting, one of the things that comes out, I think, I hope in the story is that when I spent ... because everything is caveated by the pandemic, because of the pandemic I spent the first several months on this story just talking to Melvin on the phone, we spent hours on the phone. He's a really digressive talker is how I think I've been characterizing it. So you start somewhere and you end up somewhere completely different, but we spent a lot of time on the phone. And I was worried, frankly, that we were going to have to do the story without being able to visit him and see what it looked like where he lived and see how he walked, texture of the place, meet his friends, and go to his hangouts, and listen to the tenor of his voice, and all that good stuff that you want to do when you're writing a profile. And luckily, we got there.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And the thing that really stands out for me is it was a bit like walking around with a rock star, because Melvin really, wherever we went people were just would come up to him, they'd share a little anecdote, a little story, and I don't speak French, but it was very clear that they were fond of each other. And Melvin was translating for me. And this fondness extends not just to his friends, but literally anyone we'd meet, it was like we couldn't walk for more than 100 yards, there'd be some other new face, person around the dry cleaner, someone who like a former colleague, I mentioned in the story, there was a group of guys pulling weeds from an underpass and they all seemed to stop and want to have a word with him, or share a joke, or what have you. And it was quite interesting to see.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And the other thing that really struck me about Melvin, he's become very French. I know that sounds a little bit strange. He doesn't have a French passport, he was offered citizenship and he turned it down on a point of principal. I think we're going to have some videos, you might say everyone who's listened to this might get to hear how he speaks, but he punctuates some of his talk with this, like a French intonation and French phrasing at times. He's completely bought into the bureaucratic state that France is in terms of its social welfare system, something that just blew his mind coming from what the US where these things are far more in the Background and France has 10,000 rules for everything, and Melvin seems to really enjoy that and I think a lot of his social work has been in that context.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And he took me around to four or five different offices and I had these, it was almost like lectures in a nice way from his former colleagues explaining in extreme detail just about how the meetings they had, how they got together on this and that, and all the different layers of French bureaucracy that led to a new playground.

Claire Thornton:

Yes, all the way he's been a mentor to kids and athletes.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Yes, exactly. Yes. I will tell you one anecdote. So we were in the main, it's a cultural center where he spent a lot of his time, he's retired, he retired in 2014, but he's still extremely active, I spoke to him the other day and he was about to go visit an elderly woman who he worked with in some ways over the years, and she wasn't very well. He's got his hand and he still goes to meetings, local officials still call on him and ask him for advice about this or that. But anyway, we were in the foyer of this little cultural center and these two kids, young teenagers I guess, I would say, walk in and Melvin turns to me and says, "They were really difficult when they were younger." And I was like, "Oh, yes, how?" So he's like, "Well, they were tearing around, they didn't have a lot of guidance at home, and they're just difficult", he didn't want to go into too much detail.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

And so I went up to them and I said, "Can you tell me a little bit about your experiences with Melvin?" And they didn't speak in English but the receptionists are there and we got through, and we got by, and the receptionist turned to me and said, "They said that he had a big baseball bat and that's why they listened to him." But it was very clear that these kids respected him, that they were fond of him, and some of the other people I then spoke to later at this place said that these kids are doing well in school, and that Melvin was a big part of that.

Nichelle Smith:

And that's all Melvin ever wanted any anyway, was basic respect.

Claire Thornton:

Yes.

Nichelle Smith:

And life taking the turn that it did, he got that but it was in France and not in the US, and isn't isn't that ironic? He said at one point that he had met James Baldwin as well, and that's why Baldwin and that's why Josephine Baker and a host of other black artists went to France to begin with, to get the respect that they were not able to get here. And I just find it interesting that the kids would come right out and say that.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Yes, it is. It's a really good point. I mean, unfortunately, we have a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor related to the French stuff and we're going to tweet it out, so I'm going [crosstalk 00:33:18] to get it out there in some way, even if it's not in the story.

Nichelle Smith:

Write the book, just go ahead and write the book. If we had infinite chapter because it is very nuanced and fascinating material that Kim has gathered, I give him all the credit in the world for that. And I told you once you met Melvin, once you went over and got face to face, that everything was going to come together from that point, because it's one thing to tell your story on the phone. The aggressive manner of conversation, that's just how elder black folks speak.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Is it?

Nichelle Smith:

Some of our elders just go wandering around in directions and you have to bring them back around to the point, that's black folks for you. But yes, it's one thing to do all this on the phone but then Kim finally gets this opportunity and we can go to France, and it's like, well, we could publish right now or we can just leave room for that. And just he got so much that was rich and people now I think in the story can see who Melvin is now, and it's not just about what he did 50 years ago as a very young and impulsive man. And in terms even of the planning, I want to go back to that point for a minute because I don't know that it was necessarily ... we're positioning a lot around Melvin and putting an awful lot on his shoulders and in terms of the hijacking organization.

Nichelle Smith:

I did want to point out, this was a group effort that everybody contributed and coordinated with this plan and you even have the detail in your story, Kim, that they were shocked to find that their friends, these people who they were living with in Detroit, had their children around, were people who were wanted by law enforcement, one for armed robbery, one for possibly murdering someone.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

Yes, that's a really good point to show. And I would also point out that Melvin himself was on the run, desertion is a crime so he would have been arrested too. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, of course, it pales in comparison to a murder conviction, but nevertheless, yes. But yes, I mean, the interesting thing about Melvin or one of the interesting things about Melvin is he didn't want to overly share about the others, and of course, with the exception of George Wright, the others are no longer around so that's even another reason why he didn't want to do that.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

But to your point, I mean, yes, George Wright in particular is a complicated figure. We weren't really able to go into him in too much detail in the story, but like Melvin, he's essentially marooned in Portugal and the US tried to extradite him and failed. George Wright has become a Portuguese citizen, George Wright, according to the Portuguese, has also rehabilitated/redeemed himself. He also ended up working with kids, teaching them basketball and other things.

Claire Thornton:

Nichelle, what else do you want listeners to know about the Never Been Told project? And again, the Never Been Told project is exploring the unseen, unheard, lost and forgotten stories of America's people of color. What else can USA Today readers expect from the project later this year?

Nichelle Smith:

Well, I'll say that the story of Melvin McNair is a fine follow up to what we presented the first time around in May, we presented the story of Jimmy Lee Jackson a forgotten story, his story was basically hidden in plain sight. Anybody who can get to Marion, Alabama can see very easily what his impact was on the civil rights movement, particularly voting rights and Bloody Sunday. Had he not died in February of 1965, there would not have been a Bloody Sunday march, there would not have been the larger march that Dr. King participated in, and there may not have been a Voting Rights Act or it may have been a very different or diluted one.

Nichelle Smith:

So part of what the series intends to do through looking at these untold stories is talk about the past in such a way that you can understand that ripple effect on what's going on now. Definitely, with that particular story with George Floyd and Derek Chauvin, and everything that was going on in Minneapolis in St. Paul at that time, it gave you a window to look back 60 years, into 55 years, and into to what was going on at that time period and begin to make that connection of how when we bring things forward, we have to get that nugget of truth, that lesson that we learn to apply that to what's going on now. So that's at least part of what these stories do.

Nichelle Smith:

When we look now at telling Melvin's story, every bit is as compelling Jimmy Lee Jackson, also gives us a window back into now the 1970s rather than the mid 60s, and a reason to go back and look at what lessons there were that perhaps were not carried forward. And as we go forward, post George Floyd, post Derek Chauvin, and at least we hope so, we know that case is going to be appealed and appealed forever in a day. But as we go forward, what can we take from that time period? What can we take from the lessons, from the life, from the regrets of Melvin McNair? What can we take from the martyrdom of Jimmy Lee Jackson?

Nichelle Smith:

So as we go forward, there will always be something that we're leaving you with. We're going to take you back in time, we're going to bring you to the present. Some of these stories you've never even heard of these folks, some people you think you know all their is to know about them because you've seen a little bit of something on the internet or somebody tweeted their name out, but we're just going to flip that for you and say, okay, here is a person, here is a place, here is an event, you think it means one thing, here's what it means in the context of history, here's why it's relevant today, here's why you need to dig and understand more. And I want everybody to walk away, as they will do with this Melvin McNair story and say, boy, that's fascinating, boy, that's complex. I never knew that.

Kim Hjelmgaard:

So I don't want to interrupt on Nichelle's mic drop there, but can I just add from a reporting perspective, one of the things that's been so amazing about working on the Nichelle's series is it just reinforced a really important thing to me anyway, which is our understanding of history never ends and our understanding of people and events never ends, and the meanings, and the allegations, and the rights and the wrongs and all that, it constantly evolves and I think this series that she's come up with really reflects that, and I think that's a really important, bigger point more generally about how we understand the world and information, especially information gathering. It's really easy to take snapshots of time and you think you have all this information, and you almost always have partial information and partially understanding of people, places, allegations, motives, feelings and all the rest of it. So bravo Michelle.

Nichelle Smith:

[french 00:41:21]. That's a better mic drop. That definitely is a mic drop, I'm incorporating that going forward. But yes, we are coming away from, particularly with people of color, because in some cases those stories have been deliberately obscured. Think about just something as simple as cooking, we know about all the old cookbooks that the Virginia housewives and whomever had, they were black women in the kitchen cooking who never credited, there were all sorts of other people who built the country never credited. So that's at least part of what this series is designed to do, to go back and credit, exonerate, examine, in this case, perhaps make a case for another look or an exoneration. There's all sorts of nuances and subtleties that are coming from this.

Claire Thornton:

Yes, let's leave it at that. Nichelle, Kim, thank you so much for being here today.

Nichelle Smith:

Thank you for having us today, this was a great conversation.

Claire Thornton:

The full profile of Melvin McNair is out later this month. You can find it at usatoday.com, and you may be asked to subscribe before reading. If you want more from our Never Been Told project look for the links I've included in the episode notes. Thanks for listening. If you liked this episode of Five Things, write us a review on Apple podcasts and let us know what your favorite part was, then we'll give your review a shout out on the show. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with Five Things you need to know for Monday. And I'm Claire Thornton. I'll see you next week.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Here's the story of Melvin McNair you've never been told