Recap of Serial’s ‘The Improvement Association’ Chapter Five: ‘White, Black, Green’
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Improvement Association Podcast
“The Improvement Association” is a podcast from the makers of the popular “Serial” podcast and The New York Times. Here are stories that go behind the story told in the podcast.
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This is a recap of the fifth and final episode of the five-episode podcast series “The Improvement Association,” from Serial Productions. In the series, reporter Zoe Chace uses a case in Bladen County, North Carolina, to examine the power of election fraud allegations. This is not a transcript and is not meant to be a substitute for listening to the podcast episodes.
▪ In the first episode of “The Improvement Association” podcast reporter Zoe Chace gave listeners background on the Bladen County absentee voter fraud scandal of 2018, particularly in regard to the relationship between the Bladen County Improvement Association PAC, a Black Democratic voter advocacy group, and McCrae Dowless, who is facing criminal charges for his actions while working for NC Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris.
▪ In Episode 2, Chace explored allegations from critics of the Improvement Association PAC who believe, essentially, that whatever Dowless did, the PAC was doing it first. She interviewed Bladen citizens and looked into their allegations, finding no proof of wrongdoing.
▪ The third episode, released April 20, focused on an allegation that the PAC was involved in its own absentee ballot scandal — an incident involving absentee ballots at a nursing home — long before the Dowless incident of 2018. Chace found no evidence of wrongdoing in that incident. She did learn about another incident of voter fraud in Bladen, but it wasn’t by the PAC.
▪ In the fourth episode, Chace looks at some of the fallout from the Bladen Improvement Association PAC having its name tossed around during the McCrae Dowless investigation and during the special election that followed. That fallout is named Minnie Price.
Chapter 5: ‘Democrat, Republican, White, Black, Green’
The final chapter of “The Improvement Association” opens with the February 2020 Democratic primary, and the big race in Bladen County is the county commissioner’s race.
Michael Cogdell, a sitting commissioner and member of the PAC, is running for reelection, but he has stiff competition.
In addition to a white candidate, this time Cogdell is also challenged by a Black candidate, which goes against the whole system the PAC has worked to establish: to present one Black candidate that all Black voters in Bladen can get behind, vote in a bloc and get more representation. Two Black candidates could split the vote and open the seat to be taken by a white candidate, the PAC believes.
The Black candidate opposing Cogdell “has been launched at him like a grenade,” Chace says, by Minnie Price. Price is the former PAC treasurer who, in Episode 4, expressed her frustration with the way the PAC was being run by Cogdell and Horace Munn, who is the head of the PAC.
Price is no longer associated with the PAC, and she has gotten her nephew, Mark Gillespie, to run against Cogdell.
A win for Gillespie and a loss for Cogdell “would be a very public blow and a signal that the PAC’s power is in decline,” Chace says.
At a polling place, Chace talks to a man named Charles, who worked for the PAC in a previous municipal election, but now he’s helping Gillespie. Charles goes by the name (phonetically spelled) ToJo.
ToJo says of the PAC, “if you ain’t doing nothing, we don’t need you.”
ToJo says a lot of people don’t like Cogdell, but they like Gillespie. And the people ToJo is referring to are white people.
Mark Gillespie is in it to win it
Chace introduces listeners to Gillespie.
He’s young and energetic, and his booth has swag: personalized bags of potato chips with his name on them. Chace says he seems “sweet” and nice. He chuckles a lot, but Chace tells us he’s tense because he doesn’t love conflict.
“I want to win, but it’s crazy, the process is crazy,” Gillespie tells Chace. “The stuff you have to go through, the antics that are pulled.”
Chace is back with Minnie Price now, who is talking about how Cogdell “has to go,” and how she’s working hard to make sure he doesn’t get his seat back.
Price is calculating that her nephew can win with a coalition of white and Black votes in Bladen, which is something the PAC doesn’t believe in at all. Gillespie has a lot of support from white people, Price tells Chace, but also a lot of support from Black people. She says it’s because both white and Black people don’t like Cogdell.
Chace is back with Cogdell now. He wants to beat Gillespie, and wants to beat him by a lot, to prove that you can’t elect a Black candidate with a Black-white coalition — and you can’t do it without the PAC.
Cogdell doesn’t trust Gillespie
One big reason why Cogdell and Munn oppose Gillespie is because they consider Gillespie “a front for white people in Bladen who want to get rid of Cogdell.” They are also certain that Gillespie will go along with white county commissioners and “set things back” for Black people in Bladen.
Cogdell doesn’t trust Gillespie because his campaign is financially supported by three of the four main white families that own most of the property in downtown Elizabethtown. Cogdell wonders about the motives of the white supporters, and thinks those supporters will “own” Gillespie.
Cogdell says that’s why white people think Gillespie is such a “good guy” — because they can control him. Plus, Cogdell says, Gillespie manages the town ABC store, so his paycheck comes from the city.
Chace explains what she calls the “world view” of Munn and Cogdell, which is that Black elected officials should not be financially dependent on white people. Ever. Financial independence means political independence, they believe.
The power of ‘No’
Political independence means you can say “no” when you need to. And, Chace tells us, the Bladen Improvement PAC has “the power of ‘No.’”
To illustrate that power, she uses the example of how the PAC has repeatedly blocked the county from raising the sales tax, to the extreme frustration of the rest of the county commissioners.
Bladen is a poor county and they need the revenue, one side says. We don’t know exactly how that revenue will be spent, says the other side. (Chace explains here that in the past, the county has promised that such revenue will be distributed equitably for projects benefiting all parts of the county, but then the county hasn’t followed through on those promises.)
We learn here that Charlotte Smith, a property owner who also owns and runs the news site BladenOnline.com, supports the sales tax as a revenue generator over, say, an increase in property taxes. Smith thinks the PAC is being stubborn and wants it to use its “power” to get the sales tax passed, and we hear her argue for that at a county meeting. It doesn’t work.
A fight over every dollar
Money fights in Bladen often break down along racial lines, Chace says, and there’s a fight over every dollar.
Gillespie says he’ll support the sales tax, and Munn says the board members will use Gillespie as a “shield” to show that they aren’t racist because they have a Black man on their side.
Munn goes further and says that “in Bladen County, when you find Black men that are well-liked by white people, those white people have that Black man in their pocket ... that’s the only explanation.”
Munn says that Gillespie grew up with white friends (because Gillespie’s mom was a maid, and Gillespie was around the kids of the families she worked for), so he’s “one of them.”
Chace talks to Gillespie and he says yes, he “grew up with” some white friends, but that contrary to what Munn is saying, it was Black people who asked him to run. And there’s nothing wrong with having white people support him, Gillespie says.
Gillespie also says the PAC exerts control over the candidates it supports, the same as its leaders are saying Gillespie will be controlled by the other side. He says he doesn’t align with just one group or one party and isn’t beholden to anyone.
This could go back and forth forever.
But here’s an interesting nugget. Remember Ray Britt from the “Nursing Home Ballot” episode? He supports Gillespie and wants him to win. Britt says it’s because he can work with Gillespie, and Cogdell won’t work with them, he tells Chace.
The Willie Lynch thing
In the next section, Chace talks about the Willie Lynch poster in Cogdell’s office.
The poster has an excerpt from a speech supposedly made by a white man named Willie Lynch in the 1700s in Virginia, telling other slave owners how to “control” their slaves. It’s a famous speech, but Chace says scholars believe it’s not from the 1700s, more likely invented long after slavery, in the 1960s.
At any rate, Cogdell says what’s on the poster explains exactly what’s going on between him and Gillespie in the election.
Cogdell reads a part of the speech that explains the best way to keep control of the slaves is to turn them against each other: pit the old vs. young, young vs. old, dark-skinned vs. light-skinned, light-skinned vs. dark-skinned, female vs. male, male vs. female.
Cogdell sees his situation with Gillespie in these oppositions, and he says it’s intentional.
Minnie Price says that Cogdell’s application of Willie Lynch to the current situation is “totally ignorant and out of place.”
She doesn’t believe that taking money from white people makes Gillespie a pawn (she says the PAC takes money from white people all the time). Price says her impression is that Munn and Cogdell want to make everything Black vs. white. She calls it a “slavery mentality,” and thinks it’s an outdated way of thinking.
A different world view
Chace explains the differences that molded Price and Horace Munn and helped develop their world views.
They’re both from Bladen, but both left the area for many years before returning. Their experiences while away influenced their beliefs on when, how and if you can trust and work with white people.
Munn served in the Army and says he experienced a lot of racism from white officers, even though they were all supposed to be “on the same side.”
Price lived and worked in New York City for 18 years. She made friends with white coworkers at work and socialized with them after work, and built a life on the idea that she could work with white people and be the boss of white people, and still get what she wanted.
Price returned to Bladen with that mindset intact, Chace says.
She works with white people in the community, to get things done, she says; but Munn and Cogdell see that as her being controlled by white people, or beholden to them.
Price looks at Gillespie’s willingness to work with white people as an advantage, and says Munn and Cogdell need to shed their animosity and learn to work together.
It’s Election Night
Chace is at the election watch party — held inside a gymnasium for social distancing — and it’s mostly reporters in attendance.
There are three commissioner spots open and five people running, Chace reminds us. Anything could happen. Cogdell and Gillespie could both lose, or they could both win.
It’s a very tight night for Cogdell, but when all of the precincts are in, Cogdell wins by 15 votes. It’s that close.
Gillespie also wins, by a lot more votes — almost 400 more than Cogdell.
The day after the election
The day after the election, Price tells Chace she is thrilled that her nephew won, and that he did so well. She says she’s “fine” with Cogdell’s win, as long as her nephew also won, and happy that the board has two Black representatives. (Chace reminds us that earlier, Price said Cogdell had to “go.”)
Price believes Gillespie won because of a Black-white coalition, and that he got a lot of younger people’s votes.
Chace talks to Munn and he says Gillespie definitely took a lot of Black votes from Cogdell. All of this is due to Minnie Price, Munn says, adding that she has been “very destructive to our organization.”
Munn tells Chace, “we have a mess right now,” referring to the PAC, and says they will go back to the drawing board and regroup. He calls the events “a step back for Black people,” but says he will keep fighting.
How did we get here?
Winding toward a summary, Chace says she can draw a direct line from the cheating allegations that have dogged the PAC for years (allegations both Chace and election officials have been unable to prove) to the hearing in Raleigh about the 2018 congressional race to Democratic candidate Dan McCready distancing himself from the PAC to the break within the PAC and to a deliberate splitting of the Black vote in Bladen.
Chace questions whether the PAC is still necessary in Bladen, and tries to find out if voting in Bladen County is still as racially polarized as before. She finds the person who did the 1987 study which found severe racial polarization in Bladen County (that’s all in Episode 2), and asks him to look at recent data and see how much voting patterns may have changed in Bladen.
His answer, Chace says, is: “not a lot.”
Based on the election results the expert looked at, “voters are approximately as polarized today as they were 40 years ago.”
If that’s the case, Chace says, the PAC and its voting bloc are still important, still necessary.
But she also points out that the voting bloc is made of people, and people are fickle and unpredictable, and the suspicion that somebody is always cheating in Bladen is not going away.
‘That’s the end of that’
Chace leaves us with one final story, which she calls her epilogue.
After all of this is over, she goes to the Bladen County Board of Elections and looks over some of the recent complaints filed. She sees one by a man named Bobby Ludlum.
Ludlum’s complaint accused Cogdell of “improper voter assistance.” Chace was told that “nothing ever happened, nothing was done” regarding Ludlum’s complaint.
So Chace called the Bladen County Board of Elections and talked to the current director, Chris Williams.
Williams said he investigated the complaint himself.
He went to the polling place and talked to the poll judge, who said she had not seen Cogdell there. He drew a diagram of of the polling place and determined “this was very unlikely to have happened” the way Ludlum described it.
Williams wrote it all up, the Board of Election members considered it, and decided not to hold a hearing.
Chace ends the podcast this way, with what we detect as a nice bit of sarcasm:
“So, this being Bladen County, I’m sure that’s the end of that.”
How to listen to ‘The Improvement Association’
There are five episodes of “The Improvement Association.”
You can listen from “The Improvement Association” landing page on The New York Times website, or download through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you normally listen to podcasts.
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 12:54 PM.
