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Episode: The Family Land, Part 2

Author: Vox Media Podcast Network
Duration: 00:31:47

Episode Shownotes

This week, part two of the Reels family story – how two brothers went to jail in an attempt to save their family land, and were held there for eight years without being charged with a crime. “I’m not going to give up. I don’t think I’m wrong, and I’m

willing to fight for it.” For more on the Reels family’s story, you can read Lizzie Presser’s article, “Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It.” Say hello on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Summary

In Part 2 of the Reels family story, hosted by Phoebe Judge, the episode delves into the harrowing experience of Melvin Davis and Lycurtis Reals, two brothers imprisoned for eight years without formal charges after refusing to abandon their 65-acre family land in North Carolina, an inheritance obtained just after slavery. Their unwavering determination reflects their family's legacy and the systemic injustices faced by Black landowners. The emotional toll on their family, particularly their mother Gertrude, is a focal point, illustrating the struggle against oppressive legal systems. This episode encapsulates themes of justice, resilience, and the fight to preserve family heritage.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (The Family Land, Part 2) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_09
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00:00:33 Speaker_09
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00:00:47 Speaker_09
I also really like their photo books. I've done them to remember special trips, a big house project, and now our first year with a puppy. Reconnect with the people in your life this year with personalized holiday gifts from Shutterfly.

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00:01:15 Speaker_09
Very soon, I get to do my favorite thing. Go on tour and meet so many of you. This month, Criminal is coming to Austin, Tucson, Boulder, Portland, Oregon, Detroit, Madison, Northampton, and Atlanta.

00:01:29 Speaker_09
If you didn't get to come and see our 10-year anniversary show earlier this year, this is your last chance. You'll get to hear seven brand new stories, most of which will probably make you laugh. I'll even try to come and say hi at the merch table.

00:01:41 Speaker_09
Get your tickets while they last at thisiscriminal.com slash live. This episode picks up where last week's episode left off. If you haven't heard that one, you might want to go back and listen to them in order.

00:01:58 Speaker_09
How long have you, how long have you lived on Silver Dollar Road?

00:02:01 Speaker_06
All my life. I never left here until they took me off this land and locked me up.

00:02:12 Speaker_09
In 2011, Melvin Davis and his brother Lycurtis Reals were sent to jail by a judge in Carteret County, North Carolina.

00:02:21 Speaker_09
They were being held in contempt of court because they'd refused to follow orders from a judge to leave their property on Silver Dollar Road.

00:02:31 Speaker_04
They pretty much said they weren't going down without a fight. Kim Duhon, Melvin and Lycurtis' niece. And if it meant them being incarcerated, that was what they were going to do.

00:02:43 Speaker_09
The land Melvin and Ly Curtis lived on had been in the family for over 100 years. It was 65 acres. Their grandfather owned it, but he died in 1970. Melvin and Ly Curtis's sister Mamie remembers what their grandfather said right before he died.

00:03:02 Speaker_05
He told my mother, whatever you do, don't let the white man have my land.

00:03:09 Speaker_09
But her grandfather didn't have a will, which meant the land became heirs' property. With heirs' property, when someone dies without a will, any land they own goes to their descendants, who then jointly own the land.

00:03:24 Speaker_09
But there are loopholes that make heirs' property easy to lose. Today, around a third of Black-owned land in the South is heirs' property, and that includes the Reales family's land.

00:03:38 Speaker_09
In 1978, their grandfather's brother tried to claim 13 acres of their land right on the water. His name was Shedrick, and he eventually sold the 13 acres to a developer.

00:03:50 Speaker_09
Melvin and Lyke Curtis's homes were on the 13 acres, and they were told they were trespassing by continuing to live there.

00:03:59 Speaker_09
The developer who bought the land, Adams Creek Associates, got a court order saying Melvin and Ly Curtis had to vacate their homes and land.

00:04:09 Speaker_09
They were also ordered to clear the land and to do the demolition work of tearing down their houses themselves. But they refused to. So in 2011, a judge ordered them to jail for civil contempt. What did you think when they said you're going to jail?

00:04:29 Speaker_09
Were you surprised? Like Curtis Reels. Here's Melvin.

00:04:37 Speaker_06
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

00:04:54 Speaker_09
Kim Duhon, Melvin and Ly Curtis's niece, says at least 20 family members were there at the Beaufort courthouse when they were handcuffed and sent to jail. Melvin had asked Kim to do whatever she could to help the family save their land.

00:05:10 Speaker_09
She knew she had to find a lawyer.

00:05:12 Speaker_04
I knew that I was going to have to put both feet on the ground and start running to get some assistance because I knew that I was going to have to honor the promise that I gave my Uncle Melvin and get out here and find an attorney that could accommodate us.

00:05:29 Speaker_04
Kim started reaching out to lawyers, but it was hard to get anyone to take their case. During that time, my husband had just been diagnosed with colon cancer.

00:05:38 Speaker_04
I was from Atlanta to North Carolina every other week trying to find attorneys that had already heard about our story and didn't want to get involved, but they were taking our monies for consult fees, listening to the story.

00:05:59 Speaker_04
and pretty much charging us exuberant amounts of monies to just talk to us about something they knew they weren't going to do and help us or whatever. And it was almost like, for me, I didn't know what I was going to do.

00:06:13 Speaker_04
How am I going to drive to these cancer treatment centers and still come back by Wednesday to see them in jail? And in my mind, I couldn't let them down.

00:06:25 Speaker_09
Kim says it was especially hard for Melvin and Ly Curtis's mother, Gertrude. But still, Gertrude told a reporter that Melvin and Ly Curtis took care of her and said, and now they're still taking care of me by standing up for their rights.

00:06:41 Speaker_04
Everything about her demeanor changed. She was always been a very joyful person, a very energetic person. When my uncles were remanded to jail, she totally turned into this hermit. She sat by the phone. She cried.

00:06:58 Speaker_04
She listened to her gospel music and old spirituals. She was just that. She changed. I saw her age dramatically with the worry and the concern of ever seeing them again.

00:07:12 Speaker_05
This was emotional, stressful for all of us. Mamie Reels, Melvin and Ly Curtis's sister. But no matter how stressful it was for me, my siblings, it was all about Gertrude.

00:07:33 Speaker_05
We just wanted to take care of her because we knew if anything happened to her, we are going to catch hell. And my mother got where she didn't want to go out the house. She didn't want to go nowhere.

00:07:48 Speaker_05
And if I was carrying her out to town on the 3rd or carrying her to pay her bills, if we met a sheriff car, it didn't only have her paranoid, it had everybody. Because my mother grew up in the days where

00:08:05 Speaker_05
of the Depression and the Jim Crow days, and she know what could happen to black men, you know. She just worried a lot about Melvin and like Curtis. And then she quit doing her gardening. So when she quit doing her gardening, that did get her.

00:08:20 Speaker_05
She didn't want to go out and do the garden no more because Really, she didn't have the means because Melvin kept her garden plowed and tilled and everything.

00:08:31 Speaker_05
And she would go to church, she'd come right back home, and she sat through that winter and would just stare out every day. That was the hardest thing.

00:08:47 Speaker_09
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00:11:16 Speaker_09
Did your family come and visit you in jail?

00:11:18 Speaker_07
Yeah, every week. Like Curtis Reels. It'd just be my sister and my niece and my other sister, they would come, and my brothers, they would come. I hated for them to leave because I couldn't go. You know what I'm saying?

00:11:34 Speaker_07
And that's the only thing that kept me going. It was them and my mother. And my mother, when I would call her on the phone, she'd be crying in here. You don't want to see your mama cry. My daddy, he'd come in here, he'd cuss everybody out.

00:11:50 Speaker_07
But that's just the way it went.

00:11:53 Speaker_06
I didn't want mother and my daddy to come there because every time they'd come and go, they would cry.

00:12:01 Speaker_09
Here's Melvin.

00:12:03 Speaker_06
And I didn't want to see him hurt like that, because I hurt enough when you would leave.

00:12:10 Speaker_05
Me and a lot of other family members, we went every Monday, Tuesday, and then they split them up. We were going Wednesday, or we were going both days. I went every day that they had visiting.

00:12:26 Speaker_04
When I would go to visit them in jail, I literally had to put my game face on because I felt like if they saw distress or worry or fear that that was going to hinder them with being able to stay focused with what their plot was to just

00:12:44 Speaker_04
hang in there. So I had to be in a headspace of, we got this. I'm ripping and running to make sure I find someone that can accommodate us and help you get out of jail. We're fine. We're doing well. We're just hoping that you guys can hang in there.

00:13:03 Speaker_04
And when I would leave, I'd sit in my car and cry because it was like, this is so taxing. This is so emotionally draining. Kim says she had a bad feeling.

00:13:15 Speaker_09
She felt like each time she visited, something bad happened.

00:13:19 Speaker_04
I was having nails put in my tires and the emblems on my car were being removed.

00:13:25 Speaker_09
Kim says she was pulled over several times for no reason.

00:13:28 Speaker_04
I literally had someone stop me. And I was about 20 minutes away from meeting the visitation time. And this officer, which was a black officer, stopped me at the Carteret County Community College.

00:13:46 Speaker_04
And he said, I bet you won't make that visitation today.

00:13:51 Speaker_09
Melvin and Ly Curtis thought they were going to spend 90 days in jail. But 90 days came and went. Melvin asked a friend to help him write a letter. It said, I've spent 91 days on a 90-day sentence, and I don't understand why. Please explain this to me.

00:14:11 Speaker_09
He was told that the developer who bought his land had requested 90 days, but that the court had ignored that and chose not to put a limit on their jail time. What was the explanation for you know, why they were being held in jail so long?

00:14:31 Speaker_04
From my understanding, it was a personal vendetta. That's just my personal thought.

00:14:37 Speaker_04
The county, the court system said that my uncles were thumbing their nose up at the judicial system, not willing to abide by the court's order to tear down their homes and leave the property.

00:14:51 Speaker_04
And they were never going to do that because we knew that we owned the property.

00:14:56 Speaker_09
About three months after Melvin and Lai Curtis were sent to jail on July 4th, the family held a birthday party for Lai Curtis on Silver Dollar Road.

00:15:06 Speaker_09
Mamie took a video of all the family members gathered, wishing Lai Curtis a happy birthday and saying hello to Melvin. She showed her brothers the video the next time she visited.

00:15:35 Speaker_09
At Christmas, their mother Gertrude bought presents for Lai Curtis and Melvin and wrapped them. But Christmas passed and the brothers were still in jail. Kim kept trying to find a new lawyer.

00:15:49 Speaker_04
We were told about an attorney that was a real estate attorney who told me at the time that it was going to cost us $45,000 to retain him. just to really see if he could actually accommodate us.

00:16:03 Speaker_04
We actually took him up on that offer, brought him cashier's check for $45,000, and from 2011 until 2015, 16 timeframe, we paid him roughly $90,000, and to no avail.

00:16:25 Speaker_04
He pretty much said he had taken us to the valley but couldn't get us to the mountain. He had gone as far as he could go.

00:16:32 Speaker_09
The partner at Adams Creek Associates who bought the land from Shedrick was named Billy Dean Brown.

00:16:39 Speaker_09
And he knew that the Reals family, no matter how much they tried, would have a hard time proving they owned the land, because Shedrick had walked away with the land at the Torrens hearing.

00:16:50 Speaker_09
The Torrens Act, where all Shedrick had to do was prove he owned the land to a lawyer, has been controversial for decades. A land broker told ProPublica reporter Lizzie Presser, it's a legal way to steal land.

00:17:05 Speaker_09
North Carolina is one of the few states where the Torrens Act still exists. Billy Dean Brown of Adams Creek Associates was called Little Caesar by his co-workers.

00:17:17 Speaker_09
He spoke with the Charlotte Observer about the land on Silver Dollar Road and said, I made up my mind. I will die and burn in hell before I walk away from this thing. Mamie says at one point, the plan was to build multiple waterfront homes on the land.

00:17:36 Speaker_09
In jail, Lycurtis started getting sick and was taken to the hospital. He remembers being shackled to the bed the whole time. He says the doctor told him, you need to get out of jail, that it wasn't good for his health.

00:17:50 Speaker_09
Later, he was diagnosed with diabetes. Sometimes Melvin and Lycurtis would be able to see each other and talk. Sometimes they were moved into different cells and didn't see each other for months.

00:18:02 Speaker_09
Like Curtis told a reporter from jail, I'm not going to give up. I don't think I'm wrong, and I'm willing to fight for it.

00:18:11 Speaker_07
Were you depressed in jail? I was, because, you know, it seemed like it was taking too long for them to clear it up.

00:18:21 Speaker_09
Did you ever say to anyone or to your lawyer, how are you still keeping us here?

00:18:27 Speaker_06
Yeah, I said that, why you keep keeping that? Well, if you wanted to get out, sign this piece of paper, saying you won't go back to that land.

00:18:36 Speaker_09
So if he would sign the paper saying, I promise I won't go back to the land, you would have been let out of jail?

00:18:41 Speaker_06
They say. That's what they say. I don't believe that.

00:18:47 Speaker_05
They were saying if they sign a paper, they could be released.

00:18:55 Speaker_04
something saying they won't go back onto the property and they will tear their homes down and leave the property for good. That wasn't going to happen.

00:19:06 Speaker_09
So you thought to yourself, I can't sign this because there's no way in the world if I'm out of jail that I'm not going to go back to that land.

00:19:12 Speaker_06
That's right. So while I'm a liar on myself, sign a piece of paper that I will never go back to this land and I'm not going to stay away from this land.

00:19:24 Speaker_09
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00:19:51 Speaker_09
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00:20:43 Speaker_00
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00:21:17 Speaker_09
In 2015, a lawyer named James Hairston got a call from a friend who was a judge. She told him about a story she'd heard about two brothers serving time in jail for refusing to leave their land.

00:21:29 Speaker_02
And she says that, Jay, you have to help these guys. And at this time, it was close to five years. This is 2015, latter part of 2015, five years for civil contempt. It's like, I never heard anything like that. That's crazy.

00:21:47 Speaker_02
And my only, you know, content knowledge outside of, you know, going through law school was, okay, you're going to lock a reporter up because they failed to give a source or something, but you know, stay in jail overnight, a week, you know, but you're not committed to crime.

00:22:01 Speaker_02
So. So I turn around, I'm in my office when I'm talking to her, and I do a little bit of research, and I'm like, it's crazy. Nothing like this anywhere around, no case precedent, nothing. So I end up eventually meeting Kim.

00:22:19 Speaker_02
I came down to the jail, I met Melvin and Curtis, and I think I did that the latter part of 15 or the early part of 2016.

00:22:27 Speaker_09
Do you understand why Melvin and Lycurtis were willing to go to jail for this? Of course.

00:22:35 Speaker_02
I mean, they tried the legal route. They kept trying the legal route. They went through numerous attorneys, protest at the bar, all types of stuff.

00:22:47 Speaker_09
James Hairston got to work on trying to get Melvin and Lycurtis out of jail. He focused on the judge's order that the brothers tear down their own homes before vacating the land.

00:22:59 Speaker_02
But they can't. They've been in jail for, by this time, five plus years. They had no income, you know, nothing. So you can't keep somebody in jail. if they can't purge themselves of the contempt. They're looking at an effective life sentence.

00:23:15 Speaker_02
They stay in jail for the rest of their lives. I mean, I don't think they even had a traffic ticket. Never committed a crime in their lives. This was their life, down in their water.

00:23:26 Speaker_09
James argued Melvin and Lye Curtis' case in front of the North Carolina Supreme Court.

00:23:32 Speaker_09
He remembers that a lawyer for Adams Creek Associates argued that even if Melvin and Lye Curtis couldn't clear their land from jail, they could sign something saying they acknowledged that Adams Creek Associates owned the land, that they wouldn't go back on the land, and that would get them out of jail.

00:23:50 Speaker_09
But James Hairston argued that wasn't reasonable.

00:23:54 Speaker_02
You can't, none of you have the power nor the authority. to force somebody to say something that they're otherwise inclined not to say, to sign something that they're otherwise inclined not to do.

00:24:05 Speaker_02
I mean, that's the reason that they're in there right now. I mean, you can't take their convictions and, you know, make them do something that they don't want to do.

00:24:13 Speaker_02
Whether or not you agree with it or not, I mean, that's a rank and egregious violation of the First Amendment.

00:24:20 Speaker_09
After the Supreme Court heard their case, they sent it back down to the Carteret County Court. This time, the judge ruled on the Reals' family side. Melvin and Leigh Curtis would finally be able to return to Silver Dollar Road.

00:24:36 Speaker_09
They'd been in jail for seven years and 11 months.

00:24:42 Speaker_04
And I think at that point was where this judge said, I'm not going to get involved in this. I'm not holding these men here. They should have been released a long time ago. I'm not going to be a part of the good old boy network.

00:24:54 Speaker_04
I'm going to do what's right and release these gentlemen.

00:24:58 Speaker_09
What was it like driving down Silver Dollar, the fur for the first time after eight years?

00:25:02 Speaker_07
Oh boy, I'm tell you, when I drove in, Mamie come pick me up, I felt like a brand new person. You know what I'm saying? Be back home.

00:25:13 Speaker_06
Oh man, that was amazing. I really, I had to shed a tear. It was a good, it was a great day.

00:25:22 Speaker_05
That was better than Christmas. Because my father, I was, helped take care of him and looked out for him. And every month he would say, Mammy, he called me Mammy, he said, I don't know if I can hold on till them boys get out of jail.

00:25:37 Speaker_05
I said, Pop, you gotta hold on. And he did. When they got out of jail, he told me, he says, Mammy, he said, I'm ready to go now. I'm ready to go. My boys is out of jail. He says, and I'm ready to go. I'm tired. I'm sick. I'm ready to go. And he did.

00:25:55 Speaker_05
But that was a happy time because my mother was beginning to get herself together. My dad had lived to see them get out.

00:26:09 Speaker_09
What's next? I mean, where is the process now?

00:26:13 Speaker_05
Right now, I really, we really don't know because we've been told so much, hoped for so much.

00:26:26 Speaker_09
Adams Creek Associates eventually sold the land to another developer. If the developer builds on the land, Mamie is worried about property taxes going up. Are you worried about the rest of the land, about losing it all?

00:26:40 Speaker_05
Yes, because You have family who can't afford the rent nowadays, and they wanting to move back home. But it's nowhere for them to come.

00:26:57 Speaker_09
Mimi also worries about what happens when her mother, Gertrude, dies. She's 97 now. She is one of two of Mitchell's children still alive.

00:27:08 Speaker_09
As her siblings have died, their stake in the property transfers to all of their children, expanding the number of people who own stakes of the land, potentially making the land even more vulnerable.

00:27:22 Speaker_09
With Ayers' property, a single stakeholder could choose to sell and trigger the sale of the entire land.

00:27:29 Speaker_09
As reporter Lizzie Presser puts it, if one heir decides to sell, quote, the whole property would likely go to auction at a price that none of them could pay.

00:27:40 Speaker_09
Mamie says she doesn't know if the next generations will continue fighting for Silver Dollar Road, but she hopes they will. Her niece Kim still brings her grandchildren to the land.

00:27:55 Speaker_04
Now, my grandchildren who don't live in the area, their father's military. But when they come here, it's like we rip and run. They walk. We walk to the water, but we don't let them go on.

00:28:05 Speaker_04
We kind of stay on the sandy beach area where the road kind of connects.

00:28:12 Speaker_09
They don't go on the beach because they don't own the waterfront anymore. But they still own the rest of the land.

00:28:18 Speaker_04
But they're in awe when they say, we own this? We own this? I don't know. It's our land. It's our heritage. It's our everything.

00:28:36 Speaker_09
What do you hope for the future of this land? What do you hope happens here?

00:28:39 Speaker_07
That I'll be able to go back to my house and never go back to the club.

00:28:46 Speaker_09
Do you have a favorite part of this land?

00:28:48 Speaker_07
Yeah, right there where my house at.

00:28:51 Speaker_09
So your house is right there?

00:28:52 Speaker_07
Yeah, that's my house over there.

00:28:55 Speaker_09
Can you go in it?

00:28:56 Speaker_07
Well, my lawyer told me don't go in it right now until we get this clear. And then you can go on back over there.

00:29:03 Speaker_09
So you can look at your house right now, we can see your house, but you can't go in it?

00:29:06 Speaker_07
No, he told me don't go in it. Not right now.

00:29:09 Speaker_09
That must be hard.

00:29:11 Speaker_07
I mean, you know, I come by there some days and I sit out there to the driveway And I cry.

00:29:20 Speaker_09
Do you plan to die on this land?

00:29:22 Speaker_06
Yes. That I be buried on this land. Yeah, they got three cemeteries. I can pick out what one I want to go to and they'll put me there.

00:29:52 Speaker_09
Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane.

00:30:06 Speaker_09
Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Special thanks to Ruth Robertson. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.

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For more on the Reales family story, you can read Lizzie Presser's article. Their family bought land one generation after slavery. The Reales brothers spent eight years in jail for refusing to leave it. We'll have a link in the show notes.

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And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter. We hope you'll join our new membership program, Criminal Plus.

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Once you sign up, you can listen to criminal episodes without any ads, and you'll get bonus episodes with me and criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr, too. To learn more, go to thisiscriminal.com slash plus.

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We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show, and Instagram and TikTok at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average US company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it.

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So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future?

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In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

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artificial intelligence, smart houses, electric vehicles. We are living in the future. So why not make 2024 the year you go fully electric with Chevy? The all-electric 2025 Equinox EV LT starts around $34,995.

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Equinox EV, a vehicle you know, value you'd expect, and a dealer right down the street. Go EV without changing a thing. Learn more at chevy.com slash Equinox EV.

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The manufacturer's suggested retail price excludes tax title, license, dealer fees, and optional equipment. Dealer sets final price.