[music]

Antonio Wiley: I just remember when you answered the phone. I just remember you saying hello.

Tanya Mosley: He said, "My name is Antonio, and I am your nephew." Not only was his mother my sister, she was also missing.

Speaker 1: In 1987, Anita Wiley left her home to head to the store. She never returned.

Speaker 2: She was outgoing, and she was a dresser. I'm going to stay sharp there every day.

Speaker 3: In other words, she was just a natural-born hustler. None of us liked her but she loved him.

Speaker 4: You could literally see this man's boot print in her chest.

Tanya Mosley: What were you searching for when you contacted me?

Antonio Wiley: My aunt. You. If we could get to that level of conversation, that we probably would both discover something new.

Tanya Mosley: Ourselves.

Antonio Wiley: Exactly.

[music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show. If you are a regular public radio listener, you are probably deeply familiar with the voice of Tanya Mosley. She's been an award-winning audio journalist for years, has been a host of NPR's midday show Here and Now, and is today co-host of the iconic program Fresh Air. Amid all of her journalism about the wide world we inhabit, Tanya has been on a more personal journey for several years. About 20 years ago, she got a phone call, met a nephew she didn't know existed, and discovered a whole new dimension of her family's story.

That nephew told Tanya she had a sister, someone named Anita. Tanya had always dreamed about having a sister, ever since she was a little girl in Detroit, being raised by her single mom but there was a twist. Tanya's new sister, Anita, had been missing since 1987. Tanya and her nephew began trying to find out what happened to Anita, and they have now made a podcast documenting their effort. It's called She Has A Name, and it's part memoir, part investigative journalism, and really a deep dive into the city and the history that shaped Anita's life. Tanya Mosley joins me this week to talk about her journey and about her broader work as a storyteller and a host. Tanya, welcome to Notes from America.

Tonya Mosley: Thank you so much, Kai. It's such a pleasure to be here.

Kai Wright: It's fun we got you on the other side of the mic now. It's good to turn the tables.

Tonya Mosley: I know, I'm nervous.

[laughter]

Kai Wright: The story, Detroit, the city you grew up in, is a huge part of the story, is a character, almost. Why don't we start our conversation there? It's your hometown, as I said. Tell me about what did or does a good day in Detroit feel like.

Tonya Mosley: Oh my gosh, what a good question, Kai, because Detroit is about the people. When you go to Detroit, oftentimes I'll ask people, I'll meet people, and they'll say, when they find out I'm from Detroit, "Oh, I've been to Detroit." I say, "Okay, what did you do when you were in the city?" Those who tell me they had an amazing time, it's because they were with the people. They were experiencing what is the beautiful thing about Detroit, and that is community. It's harder to say the landmarks and things like that because the truth about Detroit is that so much of it has been raised. It's something new now. Really, it's about the people right now.

Kai Wright: The people, your people.

Tonya Mosley: That's right.

Kai Wright: You do describe, you said so much of it has been raised. You do describe the hardships of growing up in Detroit as well in the show. What was your relationship to the city before beginning this project, and how did its well-known tough history shape that?

Tonya Mosley: Well, if anyone has met a fellow- met a Detroiter, you know that Detroiters rep their city hard. Kai, I don't even know if you have any Detroit friends, but Detroit has been such a big part of my identity. I've lived a lot of places throughout my career, and I wear it as a badge of honor because to be from Detroit signifies something, especially to fellow Detroiters and from those who are not from Detroit. They know about Detroit's hardships, and they're so fascinated by it. Detroit always lives in me. When I was conceptualizing this story and thinking about telling this very personal story, I knew that Detroit had to be a character because you can't really know about me or my family without understanding the city and the history and all that goes into what makes up who we are.

Kai Wright: It is not a spoiler to say that Anita, your sister, was murdered. We learned that right away in the podcast.

Tonya Mosley: Yes.

Kai Wright: We'll get to her story in a moment but sticking with Detroit for a bit, in the show you say that nearly 700 other people were killed the same year that Anita disappeared.

Tonya Mosley: That's right.

Kai Wright: Why is that important context? What was going on in Detroit in the 1980s?

Tonya Mosley: It's the second deadliest year in the history of Detroit. What was going on that year was the crack cocaine epidemic and the divestment of the automotive companies that had started happening right around 1986, '87. People were losing their jobs. Detroit is an industry town. It's a motor city. I think something like 70% of its workforce had some sort of touchpoint to the automotive industry. When the big three started leaving, things started to get desperate. Right around that time was the height of the crack cocaine epidemic. It was ravaging communities. I saw it firsthand. I think almost every Detroiter saw it firsthand. Even if you lived in the suburbs, you understood what it meant to cross the line and go into the city. It was a really dark time.

Kai Wright: You do tie these two events together, the eruption of the crack trade and the crack epidemic and the collapse of the auto industry there. You think these are related?

Tonya Mosley: 100%. It's a fact that those things really contributed to the city's decline. I will say that nearly 20 years before that, there were the riots. That was the beginning of the end for the city. Why that's important to note is because what that signified and what that showed was that there was a discontent that had been brewing in the city around racial issues and around the divestment of automotive companies to the suburbs before they took that next step outside of the city and into other countries. Yes, all of that together made for a really tough time in the' 80s and into the '90s.

Kai Wright: It's the story of a lot of Black cities.

Tonya Mosley: That's right.

Kai Wright: Every time you look at the crack epidemic, you just return to that marriage of divestment and the explosion of this. Well, that reality shaped a lot about Anita's life. It also shaped your search for information about her life. One of the challenges that you and Antonio faced in telling the story was that a lot of the basic records of life and death in the city had been destroyed. Why is that?

Tonya Mosley: This was a heartbreaking thing, a very surprising thing that the majority of city records and police records have been destroyed over a certain time period. The '80s and '90s and surprisingly the 2000s, you will see big holes. That was during the time of the city's bankruptcy but during the '80s and '90s, there had been a crazy amount of fires and floods. Couple that with the city was losing money, a lack of services. What also happened, not only could I not find records, I also found that there were school records that I couldn't even find.

I couldn't find police records. I couldn't find school records. Many of the schools, including my own high school, the schools that Anita went to, those schools were shut down and records weren't kept. It's almost like, not only Anita represents a city that doesn't have a record of itself, we don't really have-- There's so many people who don't even have records for themselves in the city of Detroit. That was something surprising when we were investigating this case because I've lived in a lot of places, and I've never experienced this issue in trying to find records that were so recent. We're just talking about 30 years ago.

Kai Wright: Right. A city that doesn't have a record of itself.

Tonya Mosley: Yes.

Kai Wright: It's a powerful thought. How did you first meet your nephew Antonio? When was this and what were you doing at the time?

Tonya Mosley: I was a young television reporter in Louisville, Kentucky. I had just landed a job there and I received this phone call out of the blue. On the other line was my nephew Antonio. He told me that he had received my number from my father and that he was my nephew. I wasn't necessarily surprised because as folks will learn in the podcast, I didn't know my father. I knew there would come a day when maybe relatives would find me or I would find them. What was really heartbreaking, and when I think back to that time, I could still feel how I felt when my nephew, Antonio, then told me that his mother was no longer here. I really didn't have a chance to get excited at the prospect of having a sister. That's how we met. From that moment on, we continued a relationship that has only deepened over the decades.

Kai Wright: Introduce us to him. How would you describe Antonio to a stranger? He's someone who's had a challenging life in many ways, and who seems to be remarkable. He's a tenacious human being. That's the main thing I could see, from reporting and tracking you down. Introduced us to Antonio.

Tonya Mosley: I had never met anyone as ambitious as me until I met him.

[laughter]

Kai Wright: It's in the blood.

Tonya Mosley: Yes, I know. I should rephrase that. I've met a lot of ambitious people, but no one that I was related to. It was really, really energizing from our first phone call that he was moving. He was living in Detroit at the time. As I said, I was living in Louisville, Kentucky, and he knew all about the city and city politics. He was into urban planning. He was studying at the University of Michigan. He had this wonderful voice that was just crisp and clear. I say that because for some reason, every time I think back to that time period, I just remember his voice. He talks about how my voice was so familiar to him in a way that he couldn't describe. I would say it's the same for me.

I just loved talking to him. We'd talk on the phone. He'd give me a call maybe once a month. I'd call him every few weeks, and we'd always be on the phone for hours with each other. That's how our relationship developed. If I could describe him in current day, it's amazing because this podcast, we've learned so much about each other. In many ways, it is like therapy through storytelling because on the surface, Antonio has it all together. He's a father, he's a spouse, he has a wonderful job, and great friends, and loves to travel and is deeply involved in his children's lives. At the same time, he's dealing with this very real thing, the murder of his mother, that impacts his day to day.

Kai Wright: We'll learn more about him after a break. My guest is Tonya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air and host of the new podcast, She Has a Name. More with Tonya Mosley and your phone calls after a break. Stay with us.

[music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright, and I am joined this week by NPR's Tonya Mosley. She's co-host of the program Fresh Air, but she also has a new project of her own, an investigative audio memoir called She Has a Name. It's a project in which she discovers a long-lost sister who was killed in the 1980s, and then works with her nephew, Antonio, to try and find out what exactly happened to their shared loved one.

We asked you on our Instagram page @noteswithkai, if you have ever had a similar experience. Has uncovering lost family history helped you better understand who you are? You can leave us a comment on Instagram on our page. Again, it's noteswithkai, or give us a call at 844-745-8255. We can also take questions for Tonya. If you've been listening to the podcast, She Has a Name. It is addictive, I can tell you if you haven't yet or if you have a question about her fascinating career as a journalist.

Tonya, there is a moment in the podcast when you have begun to realize some of your sister Anita's story and realize that Antonio has been withholding details about his mother's life from you for many years throughout your relationship. Here's a very quick clip of that moment.

Tonya Mosley: Why do you think you hesitated early on when we first met in telling me the full details about your mother's disappearance?

Antonio Wiley: It's heartbreaking. I didn't want to break your heart.

Kai Wright: What does he mean by that, Tonya? He gave you a sunny portrait of your sister. Why do you think that's the case?

Tonya Mosley: Oh gosh. He gave me a sunny portrait because- and these are things I want to say, Kai, that I've learned through the years that we've been working on this podcast. He gave me this portrait because when you have a murdered parent, a murdered loved one, someone who has gone through something pretty devastating in a way, they've died in a way that is volatile. They were not a person that- folks who maybe-- Anita, she had a drug addiction problem and she was also involved in drugs. Where do you start with that with people when you're wanting to get to know them?

Antonio says that things change when you tell people the full story about yourself. They can never really see you in totality. I will tell you, it really broke my heart that we had had a relationship for 20 years. We, as I mentioned, would be on the phone for hours with each other. Our kids got to know each other. We'd spend slow time together. I felt like I knew him deeply, that he would keep these things from me.

At first, I thought it was because he felt shame for them, and now I realize it's much deeper than that. He was protecting himself by allowing himself to be able to have a pure relationship with someone that didn't involve this very heavy thing hanging over us. Knowing that he has dealt with that for so long in his life alone, it's really powerful for me to be on this journey with him as he lifts himself out of that and faces those things.

Kai Wright: A new relationship, to start fresh with somebody who he got to call auntie.

Tonya Mosley: That's right.

Kai Wright: He called you auntie. You didn't like that at first. You didn't want to be called auntie.

Tonya Mosley: It was weird. I'm not an auntie, especially when I was in my 20s. I'm like, "I'm young. I'm nobody's auntie."

[laughter]

Tonya Mosley: Also, the audience should know we're very close in age. That also was the factor there. More than that, because we weren't raised together, it was just something I needed to get used to and really fill in those shoes as an auntie.

Kai Wright: It's interesting that he was so longing for this fresh new intimacy without any of the past to hang over it. I hadn't really thought about it that way.

Tonya Mosley: That's right.

Kai Wright: It's so relatable. Many of us go through that.

Tonya Mosley: It is, yes.

Kai Wright: Another interesting to me, Tonya, is that as I listened to the podcast, I kept thinking about the Harlem Renaissance, the famous line about the Harlem Renaissance from Langston Hughes when he describes the Black life he wants to embrace as an artist. He writes, "We know we are beautiful and ugly too." It felt almost a thesis statement for you in telling Anita's life story that she is beautiful and ugly too, and that there's not a lot of room in our media for that about Black women or Black people, period.

Tonya Mosley: Yes, Kai. I want to I want to tell you something that ties directly to what you're saying here. I left Detroit at 18 years old to go to college, and I said to myself, and I had told my mother when I was young that I was leaving and never coming back. I had a deep and abiding love for the city, and also a very complicated relationship with it. It took me living in seven states, interviewing thousands and thousands of people, and having them be vulnerable and open to me and in many ways, being an example to me of what it means to be able to face your truth and speak about it.

It took me that time and experience to be at this moment where I'm now able to step into my own story and be able to tell the story through my sister, a complicated thing that I felt such shame about the things about the city of Detroit and the things that I experienced and came from. It really took me that 20-plus years of experience to be able to come back and look at Anita's life and be able to tell her story and be able to articulate the very thing that you're saying from the Harlem Renaissance. It's like you can hold both and see the beauty because that helps us understand our humanity.

Kai Wright: Let's meet Anita Wiley. Who was Anita Wiley? How did people describe her?

Tonya Mosley: Everyone says that she was a leader. Without fail, that's the first thing they say, but they say it more plainly like she was a boss. She knew how to work a room. She knew how to talk to people. She was always the one that her siblings looked up to, and her friends too. She was the one driving. That was something that was innate in her, and it was something that she also had to grow into because she lost her mother at a very young age and took on a lot of responsibility.

She also was sassy. She loved to dress. She loved opulence. She loved to have parties, and these things are great to know because it helps me and it helps those who love her be able to talk about the really bright and beautiful things about her because the other thing that I learned is when you lose someone so tragically, oftentimes everything about them disappears because it's overshadowed by the darkness of how they died.

Those small details about how she loved to put on birthday parties and dress in silk dresses and her hair was always done. It was late. She was from Detroit, okay. [chuckles] Those are the things I know about her and I'm learning about her even more at this moment. Do you know since the podcast has been out, we've heard from friends, people we didn't know-

Kai Wright: Oh, really?

Tonya Mosley: -about. We have. These people are in their 60s and 70s now because she would've been in her 60s by now. They've said, "Oh, yes. I remember her. She loved boxing, and we would always go to boxing matches together. I knew her from school." It's amazing to learn from her these ways too. Every day we're learning more.

Kai Wright: Wow. Let's take a phone call. Maureen in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Maureen, welcome to the show.

Maureen: Hi, how are you?

Kai Wright: We are well. What did you want to share with us, Maureen?

Maureen: I have a sister who's been missing for 43 and a half years. The last time we saw her was the Sunday after Thanksgiving November 30th, 1980, and I was listening to your program. I'm actually at the BJ's Deli counter being told, "I'm sorry, we're closed," so I ran in hoping to get it here on time. What I wanted to share is a few things. One, my sister was 19 when she disappeared, and in 1980, if someone was 19 when they disappeared, they were considered an adult, and the cops really didn't do much of anything. So many missing people just stayed missing because the police turned a blind eye to it.

Second, my sister was a sex worker, and when the Gilgo Beach bodies were discovered, Jacqueline Gluchi wrote a front-page article about my sister and about my search for her. It was amazing. What you were talking about getting to know your mom. Getting to know my sister through her friends that have reached out has been such a meaningful part of the journey, and how many people loved her. How many people wish that they weren't mean to her in grade school and middle school.

She never really graduated from high school, but so many people have reached out about that, and the other part. I became at the age of 14, a unwilling member of the world of the missing. I've carried this torch with me everywhere. The part that I hope--

Kai Wright: I'm going to stop you here, Maureen, just for time, but thank you so much for sharing that. An unwilling member of the world of the missing, Maureen said. Does that resonate with you, Tonya?

Tonya Mosley: Oh gosh. Thank you, Maureen, for stopping at the counter to call us because-- First off, I didn't catch the name of your sister, so I'm so sorry. I want to know more. I'm going to look it up. All the things that you say, Maureen resonate so deeply, and I see in my nephew, Antonio, family members, and even myself. Police during that time period had these rules that if you were an adult and you might've left on your own, and--

There was not a concerted effort like we do now today. You don't have to wait 48 hours for someone to be missing before they go searching for them, but during that time period, that was the case, and with my sister, police told them that maybe she left on her own. They have lived with this for all of these years, and they felt that police turned a blind eye. We've heard from many families that have also told us the same thing.

Kai Wright: Anita's life was challenging before she went missing. She had Antonio at 14 and her own mother disappeared from her life, right?

Tonya Mosley: Yes. Coincidentally, her mother also had her at 14 years old, and her mother died when she was 32, and Anita was a teenager, and Anita was forced to be an adult on the spot. It's a pretty devastating story, but when her mother died, it was just her stepfather and her stepfather left, and so Anita as a teenager, 17 years old, was in charge of her younger siblings in a home, the head of the household in an instant, along with a toddler herself, that being Antonio.

Kai Wright: It's that kind of thing. There's so much obvious horror to that, but the flip side is that she was a 14-year-old who managed to pull it together to some degree. That's remarkable.

Tonya Mosley: It shows the resilience, the resiliency of the human condition and also of her and so many who are in that predicament. That is definitely true. It's true. That's a positive way to look at it, Kai.

Kai Wright: [chuckles] I came to really respect her. She disappears at 18 though, right? She was 18 years old when she--

Tonya Mosley: She was 28.

Kai Wright: I'm sorry, 28. Antonio was 18 at the time. How did Antonio before-- We're going to go to a break in a couple of minutes, but how did Antonio first discover where she was, that she had been killed?

Tonya Mosley: Antonio was 14 when his mother went missing, and she was 28, but he discovered that she went-- He had been looking for her for all of his adult life, and in 2020 thanks to this program that the Detroit Police has where they ask you to give your DNA, they wanted to solve some old cases that they did not have any traction on, and there's a cemetery in Detroit for unclaimed bodies of the unknown. They were excavating those and gathering DNA and Antonio gave his DNA and Anita was the first match as part of that program.

Kai Wright: Which is remarkable thinking about what you were just saying about the fact that it's been difficult for police to find people, but here was your sister was the first match in this new program. That's pretty cool.

Tonya Mosley: It is wonderful, and there's a tenacious detective Sergeant Jones, Shannon Jones with the Detroit Police. She came up with this idea because once she became-- She in 2012 became a homicide and missing persons detective, and she immediately wanted to wipe out all of the cases. She had all of these old cases from the '80s and '70s and even all the way into the '60s, and she just wanted to be able to solve them. This was one of the novel ways she thought that they could do that, and so far, there have been 62 matches.

Kai Wright: Okay. That's 62 families reunited.

Tonya Mosley: That's right.

Kai Wright: Also, what is really quite interesting is that you fantasized as a kid about having a sister, and you named that person-- You came up with a fake sister and named her Anita. I assume after Anita Baker, right? Is that [unintelligible 00:28:42]

Tonya Mosley: [chuckles] I know. Anita was the woman back then. She was the bomb. She was the biggest R&B star at the time-

Kai Wright: Yes, she was.

Tonya Mosley: -and I loved Anita. Isn't that something, Kai?

Kai Wright: Why was the fake sister so important to you emotionally? What did she represent?

Tonya Mosley: What she represented for me at the time, when I think about it, was this longing to be connected to someone that saw me, and in that moment when I was a young girl, I was awkward. I was nerdy, I was chubby, and I was alone. I was the only one within my family who didn't know the other part of myself, and so I felt othered in a way. I just had this fantasy that a big sister who was all the things that I wish to be and loved me, was somehow something that I wanted to project, and so, when I was in the third grade, I made up this story that I had a big sister and her name was Anita and she was in college and she was all of these wonderful things.

What is crazy about that, Kai, is that it was true, that I did have a big sister who was beautiful, and tenacious, and smart, and savvy. This podcast is just about learning about her.

Kai Wright: My guest is Tonya Mosley. She's the co-host of Fresh Air, and she's talking with us about her new project, the podcast, She Has a Name. It's an investigation into the disappearance and murder of her sister, one she never knew she had until adulthood. Discovering her sister and figuring out what happened to her was life-changing for Tonya. We asked you on our Instagram page @noteswithkai if you've ever had a similar experience. Has uncovering lost family history helped you better understand who you are?

You can leave us a comment on Instagram, or you can give us a call now at 844-745-8255 and leave a voice message. We can also take questions for Tonya. You can ask her about her new podcast or anything about her fascinating career as a journalist and dare I say, a famous voice on public radio. 844-745-8255 or check us out on Instagram @noteswithkai. More in a moment.

[music]

Katerina Barton: Hey, it's Katerina Barton from the show team at Notes from America with Kai Wright. Something happens to me when I listen to this show. No matter the topic or the guest, I can always think of someone I want to tell about what I just heard, and I do. If you're thinking about who in your life would enjoy this episode or another episode you've heard, please share it with them now. The folks in your life trust your good taste, and we would appreciate you spreading the word. If you really want to go above and beyond, please leave us a review. It helps more people, the ones you know and the ones you don't, find the show. I'll let you get back to listening now. Thanks.

[music]

Kai Wright: Welcome back. It's Notes from America, I'm Kai Wright. We'll talk more with my guest, Tonya Mosley, in a moment but before we get back to that conversation, I want to tell you about another one we're going to have on the show soon. We'll be talking about protests on college campuses. Students at schools across the country are demonstrating right now, occupying spaces and setting up encampments as statements of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and to demand a ceasefire there, among other things.

In some ways, what we're seeing now is a familiar scene. There is a legacy of student protests throughout US history that has been part of just remarkable change. We're going to look at some of those moments alongside this one, and we'd love to hear from you. Were you part of any big protest movements as a student? Did you join protests against, say, the Vietnam War or against apartheid in South Africa? Or maybe for more local change, like university policies on your campus? Send us an email or a voice memo to notes@wnyc.org. That's notes@wnyc.org, and we will add your voice to this future conversation on Notes from America. Thanks in advance.

Okay, so now back to Tonya Mosley, who is co-host of the iconic public radio program Fresh Air and now also the host and co-executive producer of the podcast She Has a Name. It's a memoir and an investigation into the life of her sister, Anita. Tonya was an adult when she found out she even had a sister and then discovered she'd been murdered back in the mid-1980s.

Tonya, your life turned out very different than Anita's. That is something that I imagine is also something for you to wrestle with. I just wonder how much that has come up as you've made this podcast. It's frankly quite common for Black people who have made it to the middle class, however we define that term, by education or income or professional status or whatever, to have close relatives with very different experiences in American capitalism.

I know this is true for people of all kinds of backgrounds, but the data is clear that it is uniquely common amongst Black American families. That can be a fraught experience. I just wonder if Anita's story had made you think about that at all in relationship to your own story.

Tonya Mosley: Oh, absolutely. It's at the forefront of my mind with Anita's story, and it's a driver in my life. We've talked a lot. You've heard a lot about survivor's guilt. I suffer from survivor's guilt. I have all of my life but doing this podcast, producing this podcast, and learning about Anita through this podcast, which in turn, has helped me learn about myself, what this project has allowed me to do is to face that guilt and to really wrestle with it and pick it apart and understand it.

Understand what happened in Anita's life and what happened in my life and what were the circumstances that made her life very different from mine. I will say that it's also something I've just been grappling with, as I said, all of my life, but never in this way where I've truly sat down to try to figure it out so that I could get over it because it's been crippling, too.

Kai Wright: It really has. What have you learned about yourself? You said it's been a process in which you've been able to learn about yourself, too. What have you learned about yourself?

Tonya Mosley: Well, I mentioned how I left Detroit at 18 and I knew that I had been running. I know that my wanderlust has to do with my insatiable curiosity and, of course, love for journalism and being a reporter but there's something deep in me that's also driving that. While I knew that, I never really faced it. It's something that I didn't face because I'm running. When you're running, you're not stopping to think.

The ways that I've been able to understand myself is by facing those truths, but also by learning about Anita and Antonio and through them, also learning about my father and other relatives. By learning about them, I'm learning about myself. I learned so much history about my father that I didn't know through researching Anita. That's been gratifying because it allows me to understand the parts of myself that I did not grow up knowing.

Kai Wright: I think we have a listener with a question related to this. Todd in Cleveland, Ohio. Todd, welcome to the show.

Todd: Tonya, can you hear me?

Tonya Mosley: I can. Hello. Welcome.

Todd: Okay, cool. I noted that when you said your nephew got your number from your father, his grandfather, did you have the opportunity to get to know him and his parents, your grandparents, as living people as a result of this conversation? Did you get some understanding early on if Anita had a relationship with your father that you thought might be significant to talk about on the radio? Then one last question. What's your earliest piece of history that you have on your sister that you find highly significant? For example, do you know something about her life as a kindergartener? I'm just using that as an example.

Kai Wright: Thank you for those questions, Todd. Those are great questions.

Tonya Mosley: They are.

Kai Wright: Let's talk about this stuff about your father. Do you want to start there?

Tonya Mosley: Todd, yes. Thank you so much for those questions. At the time that Antonio contacted me, I had also been in contact with my father around that time, which is why my father likely gave Antonio my information. We were getting to know each other. I was a young adult, and as I mentioned, I did not grow up with him. Antonio and I reflect a lot about that time period and the gift that my father gave me by sending Antonio my way. In many ways, we feel like he knew that we needed each other. At least that's what we tell each other.

I learned about my father, the history behind why he was in Detroit. He had fled from Mississippi. He had a friend, his best friend who had been hung by a tree. He was so devastated and so traumatized by that that he fled to Detroit with the clothes on his back. He got into the automotive industry, and he was able to open a series of tire shops in Detroit but he was a deeply wounded man. He knew my sister was one of his other daughters by someone else, but he didn't have a relationship with him or any of his children in the ways that we needed and we yearned for. What I understood was the complexities of his own trauma through this podcast. Through researching and talking to people, I was able to understand some of the things that he was dealing with.

Kai Wright: Did you get a sense that he was fleeing racial violence himself as well? You describe him escaping in the trunk of a car from Mississippi. This is a very common part of what we call, we know as the great migration of Black folks from the south to the north. Did you get a sense that he was also facing violence?

Tonya Mosley: I'm not sure. I believe that he was afraid, he was deeply afraid that this would be his fate. It was such a deep wound in him that he only talked about it a handful of times to people. They got just a little bit of the story, not the whole story, which is also understandable. Which I also found through the research and interviewing family members and friends, is that we hold onto this stuff and we repress it and we don't talk about it or share it or pass it down to our children.

I also want to say that this podcast for Antonio is him also learning about his mother and piecing together her because when she disappeared, he was 14 years old. His version of her is forever frozen in time without understanding, it comes with wisdom and time and growth and age when you are able to see your parents as whole and complete people, the complexities of them. He never had that experience and so he's having a slice of that, a version of that through this podcast.

Kai Wright: Well, that brings us to Todd's other question of what you've learned about Anita in her early life. Sorry. His question was, what's the earliest thing you've learned about her that is relevant or informative to you?

Tonya Mosley: Yes. I learned from her sister Val, they were just a few years apart, that from a very young age, Anita was a nurturer. Her memories of her sister was always her sister playing with her, caring for her, loving music, loving to dance, loving to get the kids together and play house and those kinds of things. Which I thought were beautiful memories. It takes me back to the old days when kids would just be outside making up games.

Kai Wright: Yes. To go back to your father for a second, there's this scene that was very compelling to me in the podcast after you have met one of your siblings who he raised, one of the daughters he had who he did raise. As someone in the podcast said, "Papa was a rolling stone."

Tonya Mosley: Right. Right. Exactly.

Kai Wright: He had some kids.

Tonya Mosley: Yes.

Kai Wright: You met one of them and she described this wonderful relationship. Your producer asked you whether you regretted not having that relationship with him, and you say, no, you don't. Tell me about that moment for you and what you were reflecting on.

Tonya Mosley: Sure. Yes, my father was a rolling stone for sure. He had a lot of children and from different people. My mother was amazing. She was an amazing single mother who really sacrificed so much for me and tried her best to make sure I had the best in everything that she could give me, which was education and learning and just an insatiable desire to make sure that I was educated.

The love from my family on my mother's side really fortifies me and makes me who I am today. Learning about my father, while it was really gratifying and I regret that we didn't have a relationship, I also am okay with it because I hate this saying I'm about to say to you, Kai, "It is what it is." Some things, you just can't explain it. Some things, they just are, and I can't change the past, and so I can't be broken by that because there's nothing that I could have ever done.

Kai Wright: As you say, you're able to think about what you have instead of what you don't have in your mother.

Tonya Mosley: That's right. That's right. That's right.

Kai Wright: How has she processed this? I imagine this is an experience for her as well.

Tonya Mosley: It is, yes. Episode 4, I'll just say, she has an appearance in it and she talks about meeting my father and their relationship. I just recently saw her. I was in Detroit and I rang the doorbell. She opened the door and she said, "I just listened to episode 4, my story." I said, "You're right. It is your story." She had a few other details she wished I had put in there, which I may later.

It's been wonderful to have this conversation with my mother because one of the things that my mother did as a way of self-preservation for her, and because she didn't have the language for me as a child, is that she never talked about my father growing up. I didn't know anything about him. She didn't tell me anything bad, but she also didn't tell me anything good. I'm learning things through conversations that we're having woman to woman. You're always a child in your mother's eyes.

Kai Wright: Adult woman to adult woman. Yes.

Tonya Mosley: Yes. This is a gift to be able to have this type of conversation with your mother.

Kai Wright: It's changed your relationship as well. A lot of relationships have changed in the course of this.

Tonya Mosley: Which is the beautiful thing about talking. It's the beautiful thing about being vulnerable and open with people close to you. Telling them the things that occupy your heart and mind that you keep closed allows you to gain deeper understanding. These have been really hard conversations to have, but needed.

Kai Wright: You made the choice to tell a deeply personal story that actively centers people's lived experiences. How different was this approach to how you tell other stories as a journalist? As an interviewer on a daily conversation show, just how different was this for you?

Tonya Mosley: It involved my family. That was what made it different.

Kai Wright: That's the first and foremost.

Tonya Mosley: Yes. At the core of it to allow expansiveness for people, all different types of people with different lived experiences, that's what drives me. I want to hear from everyone. I want to hear from the world. It's why we love stories. It's why we love to hear each other, to see each other. It's why we watch movies and television and listen to the news. We are trying to understand ourselves. We can't do that unless we understand others. We have to be relational. That's why it's so fortifying.

I'm getting so many letters from people that are really beautiful to me because I understand when you see yourself, when you hear yourself, when you hear an accent that sounds like one that's familiar to you, if a person that is from where you're from or a similar place, a background that sounds familiar. People who have loved ones who were involved in drugs or sex work, these people never get to hear their stories, their loved ones' stories in a way that shows the totality of who they are. That is what drives me, is to be able to open up that expansiveness and in any way that I do it, whether it's through Fresh Air and having conversation with people or storytelling in a narrative way. It's so fulfilling to be able to do that because I'm trying to understand the human condition too.

Kai Wright: It's participatory journalism. You're really involving people in telling their own stories in this podcast, which is something different than we hear a lot as well. You're going to be holding a listening session for the podcast in Detroit, I understand. Why and what do you hope comes out of that?

Tonya Mosley: Yes. We're holding a live event in May on May 13th. I want to hear from the community. There's nothing like being in a room full of people and having conversation and relating with each other. I love opening up space and I'm honored to be able to do it and be able to do it through this podcast where I want to hear people. I want to hear their curiosities, but I also want to hear their stories. I know we're going to hear a lot of them. Like Maureen, I can't wait to look up more about her sister, and I want to hear other people's experiences too.

Kai Wright: Tonya Mosley, thank you so much for the work that you are doing, and thank you so much for joining us to talk about it.

Tonya Mosley: Kai, this has been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you so much.

Kai Wright: Tonya Mosley is co-host of Fresh Air and host and co-executive producer, along with her nephew, Antonio Wiley, of the podcast She Has A Name. We want to keep hearing from you. Thanks to everyone who called. You can leave us a message about what you heard in my conversation with Tonya just by calling 844-745-TALK and leaving a voicemail right there.

We also are asking you to add your voice to a future conversation we're going to have about student protests now and throughout history. If you've joined the student demonstrations currently sweeping the country in opposition to Israel's bombardment of Gaza, we'd like to hear from you. Also, if you're no longer a student, I want to hear if you were part of a past campus demonstration, tell us about it. Leave a voicemail or send us a text message at 844-745-8255 and share what social change your actions and student protestor created. Thanks in advance.

Notes from America is a production of WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Siona Peterous. Theme music and sound design by Jared Paul. Matthew Marando is our live engineer. Our team also includes Katerina Barton, Regina de Heer, Suzanne Gaber, and Lindsay Foster Thomas. I am Kai Wright, and I thank you so much for spending this time with us. Talk to you next week.

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