The Weekend Intelligence: The Cotton Patch Gospel

周末情报:棉花田福音

The Intelligence from The Economist

2025-11-23

50 分钟
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Seventy years ago, a small Christian community in rural Georgia became an unlikely battleground in America's fight over civil rights. Koinonia was founded on a radical idea: that black and white families should live, work and worship together as equals. For the people of nearby Americus, that belief was heresy. What followed was years of boycotts, gunfire, cross burnings and isolation. Lenny Jordan grew up in the middle of it. As a child he learned to distinguish the sound of a passing car from the sound of one slowing to shoot. His father, Clarence Jordan - farmer, preacher - refused to compromise his principles, even as the Klan targeted his family and the community was boycotted. This autumn, our Southern correspondent Rebecca Jackson travelled with Lenny back to the farm. There he confronts the scars of a childhood spent in the crosshairs - and asks what it means to cling to your convictions when your country feels like it is slipping backwards. Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—Subscribe to Economist Podcasts+ For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account. Music by bluedot and epidemic. This podcast transcript is generated by third-party AI. It has not been reviewed prior to publication. We make no representations or warranties in relation to the transcript, its accuracy or its completeness, and we disclaim all liability regarding its receipt, content and use. If you have any concerns about the transcript, please email us at podcasts@economist.com.
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  • It isn't easy to be an idealist.

  • It isn't easy either, being the child of an idealist.

  • In 1941, a white preacher bought an abandoned farm in Georgia.

  • He founded a community where black people and white people could live,

  • work and worship together, including his own young family.

  • But this was the South, and those were the years of the Klan.

  • Sometimes they came for the black families.

  • They would hold meetings and burn across and then decide where they were going to go.

  • And sometimes to the preacher's own home.

  • And then they burned them here in front of our houses.

  • Lenny, the preacher's son, remembers it as a time of violence, isolation and uncertainty.

  • Decades on, he holds true to his father's vision of a better world,

  • even as he still nurses the scars.

  • I'm Rosie Bloor and today on The Weeknd Intelligence,

  • Rebecca Jackson tells the story of a father who refused to give in and his son who lived with the consequences.

  • It's a tale both sad and inspiring of what it takes to believe and what happens when those in a position of power stand up for those who have none.

  • This is Lenny's story, but it tells a far bigger tale.

  • I've followed Lenny Jordan, my neighbor,

  • to the place where he grew up in southern Georgia, about three hours from Atlanta.

  • In fact, where that building was used to be the KFC.