Transcripts For CSPAN3 History Bookshelf Civil Rights Movement 20240712

Authors discuss then < 1955 mur of emmett till, and the role of these events in the Civil Rights Movement. Cspan recorded the panel at the 2018 festival of books in nashville, tennessee. Greetings. My name is lee williams, jr. Im an associate professor of africanamerican and public history at Tennessee State university, and i will be the moderator for this panel. First id like to welcome you to nashville. If youre not a nashville resident, welcome, welcome. And welcome to the greatest library in america. This session will run precisely 50 minutes i am told. So we will give both our authors 20 minutes to speak, and well allocate ten minutes for question and answer. I was also admonished to remind you if youre really enjoying yourself this southern festival of books depends upon individual donations. So if you really enjoy what youve seen over the past couple of days id encourage you to donate as much as you can. Were in for a treat today. I asked these two gentlemen for bios a couple of days ago. Theyre esteemed scholars but theyre also some of the most modest men that ive met. So ill give you a brief introduction of them and introduction to them, and i encourage you to speak with them after the session ends. Our first presenter this morning is elliot gorn. Professor gorn is the joseph a. Gagliano chair in American History in chicago. Hes the author of five books. These include the manly art, a brief history of american sports. Mother joans the most dangerous woman in america. And dillangers a wild ride. To the right sits professor schmidt. Hes professor and codirector of the institute of the Supreme Court of the United States at Chicago College of law. Hes also faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation and the editor of law and social inquiry. Professor schmidt teaches and writes primarily in areas of constitutional law and legal history. Ladies and gentlemen, i ask you to join me in welcoming both our esteemed scholars. Thank you. Can you hear me . First, lee, thank you very much for the introduction and thanks to the organizers of this amazing festival. Ive never been here before and im not sure why. Its really been wonderful. Talking about the till murder just a little its hard to know exactly how much people know about it, so ill start by telling the story and then maybe tell a few things that are a little less obvious that working on this book for eight years sort of helped alert me to or made me more aware of. Takes me a long time to do a book like this, and you always think this one is going to be easy. Its not going to be hard, its going to be straight and then it just kills you. If you know the story at all forgive me, but let me try a really capsule version. Emmett till was a 14yearold kid who one summer went down to the mississippi delta to visit his uncle and his cousins. Hed bip there before a couple of times, two, thirtytwo times actually. And now hes 14 and hes going with his uncle whod been up in chicago, moses wright, and he goes down to mississippi and spends time with his cousins, works a bit at the harvest. Its cottonpicking time. And after hes there about a week he goes to a local cross roads store with his cousins. They drive over in money and this story is told many, many ways. And thats one thing about the emmett till story. Yes, there are facts we know, important facts but there are also facts we dont know. And people fill in gaps and sometimes its not so much theyre wrong but the way we tell the story. People tell it story for particular meanings, to try to derive particular meanings from them. Im not post modernist, dont worry. There are things you cant know. He goes to briiants Grocery Store in money, mississippi, with his cousins. And they go in one by one, buy a few things. There are a few young men playing checkers on the porch. And emmett till is in for a minute or so and we know he goes in, and the woman comes out and starts going to her car to get something, a gun she later says. And on the way while shes going there emmett till and this is pretty clear, her cousins who were with him whistled at her, a wolf whistle. His cousins attest to this. And everyone who was not a chicagoan which is to say everyone else understood what this meant. Emmett and his cousins and their friends run for their car and take off back to measliest wrights home. At one point they even think someone is trailing them in a car and they dive into the fields. A few days pass by and this seems to have passed, no problem. Even though theres a foretelling these folks are not going to let this pass, the bryant family. A few days pass and on saturday night emmett goes with his uncle, his cousins to greenwood, mississippi, for the annual shopping night, entertainment as people do. They come back about midnight. About 2 00 in the morning theres a knock on the door. Two men come and kid nnap emmet till. It turns out they admit they kidnap him, they say they let him go. And they are the husband and the cousins half brother. They both end up in jail, and theres a trial. The trial takes place just a month later. And theyre both exonerated. In an hour a jury finds them not guilty. Now, as aaron henry, one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement said, they kidnapped till i should say, and his body turns up three days later beaten, shot, and submerged with a 75 gin mill fan around his neck in the talla hatchy river. And thats when these two stand trial for murder. As aaron henry said black men and black boys had been found killed for years and years and years and it was never a big to do, but he said i never understood why this one became such a big event. Well, it was. It was Headline News throughout america. And when the trial took place and especially the result of the trial it was Headline News actually throughout the world. The United States Information Agency had its hand full trying to control this story and spin it. The trial takes place in one hour. The jury of 12 white men find the two defendants not guilty. This is just an enormous event. All right, so i told just a very, very brief version here of the story. Theres so much thats not right in that story actually, and it matters when you try to piece together exactly what happened. For example, emmett till was, yes, when this happened he did live with his mother on the south side of chicago, but he spent most of life in a town called argot. Argot is in cook county but not in chicago. Its at the very, very western edge of chicago. His mother had come from mississippi as an infant, lived in argot, had a home, went to school there. The school was integrated. She graduated very high in her class. Sports teams were integrated. It was no racial paradise. Far, far from that. But block to block there were white and black families. Predominantly black here, predominantly white there. But if you think about why would emmett not be able to take quite seriously jim crow segregation, not take seriously the prerogatives they thought they had, that he had insulted his wife. Of course in the trial Carolyn Bryant does not just say emmett whistled at her, she says that he grabbed her, that he made threatening gestures and words, that this was an attempt borderline easily interpreted as an attempted rape, so she claimed. All right, so till comes from argot, not from chicago. Its only the last couple of years of his life he lived in chicago and every other week he was back in argot. Its where his friends were. Thats an important detail. There were only two killers. Well, there are only two who stood trial. We know now. We dont know exactly what others did. But we do know there were several other members especially of the family or friends of the f family who were involved. The beating and killing of emmett till took place on the plantation. Several other members of the family are involved. And also seen in the back of the truck as they were driving emmett till to his fate and his death its unclear two or three africanamerican men who as it turned out worked for jw and very much under his sway. So the story gets more and more complicated. Theres an article about this story thats published months afterwards by a man named William Bradford huey, an alabama journalist and he tells what he says is the truth about the till killing. And the truth about the till killing is that it was done just by the two men. He actually knew better. He knew there were other killers. And that the reason they did it was that emmett till was this as he depicts him this militant sexually rapacious black man who was in their faces, milam and bryant about how he was just as good as they were. And thats when he insisted yeah hed had white girls and he would again. Thats when j. W. Milam shot him. As far as we can tell that is completely made up. Where he thinks he got that its hard to say, but hes one of these journalists constantly telling you hes a truth teller. He doesnt care whos hurt hes going to tell the truth. He made it up. Another thing about this that you always get the impression when you read about this is this was a kangaroo court, a completely unfair trial. Actually, theres some interesting detail about that really very important. The judge was a man named curtis from mississippi. And journalists north and south talked about what a fair and dignified and proper trial he conducted in what evidence he allowed, how he treated the witnesses. For example, he would not allow in court in front of the jury Carolyn Bryant begins to tell her story about what emmett till did to her and the jury is ordered out and he insists that not be admitted. Because if you think about it what would that have to do with why the two killed emmett till. They would have to argue that someone was in danger of their life. Theres no place in a proper jury trial for an honor killing which is what was being argued. No, he wouldnt allow that. The prosecutor a man named curtis chatam also say some say at least in part that the character of Atticus Finch was influenced by chatam. Journalists north and south, black and white commented how good a job he did with very little time, how clearly especially when they described his closing arguments how serious he was about this. None of that mattered. It did want matter a bit again because the jury was 12 white men. Why were there only 12 white men on a jury in mississippi, because tal hatchy county which was two thirds black had not a single africanamerican voter. Which makes you think about voting in an era of voter suppression. So many things, again, about the story. The photo of emmett, the very famous photo. The photo of till in his coffin. And theres a way thats often depicted. In the new yorker just a couple of days ago David Remnick was it something i said . Are we good . The editor of the new yorker David Remnick wrote, as many, many people have before him that the famous photo of emmett till in his coffin that people saw that and they were converted, that the Civil Rights Movement begins with that photo. Well, theres an assumption there, and that is that people white and black saw that photo. It never appeared in the mainstream press. It was not in look magazine or life magazine or the newspaper. It was in jet magazine and the chicago defender and a few africanamerican newspaper. Africanamericans literally by the hundreds of thousands saw that photo, and you know that from people who talked about it, representative john lewis, anne moody in her memoir. Mohamed ali talk about emmett till and talk about that photo. But white people didnt see that picture if at all until 1997 with eyes on the prize. And slowly in other documentaries that photo begins to appear. Another just a small piece i think is interesting very recent if you know in another recent book on till by Timothy Tyson about the blood of emmett till Carolyn Bryant confesses that she lied. Shes not very specific in what she confesses, she says Something Like that boy didnt deserve what happened to him. What was not widely reported is about two months ago in the jackson clarion ledger jerry mitchell, an outstanding reporter for the clarion ledger reported that carolyn her name is now Carolyn Dothan recanted, and told them i never told them that. And actually tyson doesnt have her saying that. He has notes but not a recording. All of this adds up to how we think about the till trial. Ill have one more before i stop. The fbi opened the till case in 2004 and they investigated really very thoroughly until 2006. They had avoided the case at all costs in 1955 in every way they could. But they were very thorough in 2004 and 2005. And of course people, Carolyn Bryant, Carolyn Dothan is still alive and her sisterinlaw, j. W. Milams wife is still alive. They spent a couple of hours interviewing them both. Theyre both close now. Carolyn bryant said i dont remember, i dont think about it, i dont really want to talk about it. And Juanita Milam is pretty much the same. Shes there alone because her husband was out trucking shrimp at the gulf for his brother j. W. And hed never left her alone in the store before. This was the first time shed been there. This kidnapping takes place at twilight, and shes then talking about what happened, and she says out of the blue it never made sense to me this whole thing being about a whistle or a wink, and you could almost hear the fbi agents inhale, you know, with what do you mean a whistle or a wink, your sisterinlaw he says, no, no, he he came and laid hands on her. It was a wouldbe rape, and she says no i dont think so. I think it was just about a whistle or a wink. The cousin said he whistled at her. I think she was just afraid to be in the store. I think she told this story because she wanted roy to stop leaving her alone and he would mind the store. Is that true . Is that what happened . Theres no way to know other than what she said. She was there. She was in the store with her kids, but is it really that simple . We really dont know. She said Something Else after that that was really interesting. She started talking about fear. She started talking about how in her life she had been around africanamerican people and was not afraid of them. But carolyn, her sisterinlaw, had never been around black folks and was really afraid of them. And that so resonates with the last words carolyn spoke in the trial and then to the fbi. I was scared to death. It makes us think about race and racism, yes, hatred, of course. But fear also. We dont talk about fear enough, almost the ancestor of hatred. All right, thats i guess enough and you can ask some questions after. Thank you. Hello. So today im going to be talking about my recently published book titled the sit ins, protests and legal change in the civil rights era. Im going to start off my talk by laying the opening scene of the book. It began with a conversation. Four young africanamerican men in the first year at North Carolina agriculture and Technical College in a dormitory room discussing their hopes and frustration. It was late 1959 and then early 1960. And the many topics talked about the one they kept returning to was the challenge of leading a dignified life in the jim crow south. They talked and talked some more and then in the words of the students we got tired of talking about it and we decided to do something. Later in the afternoon on february 1, 1960, the four students entered a store in downtown greensborough. They purchased a few items in the store and sat down to the lunch counter. Im sorry, the waitress, told them we dont serve coloreds in here. With one restriction, theyre not allowed to sit at the lunch counter. The students pointed out theyd just been served at the counter and they asked why they were refused at this one. This is public place. If it isnt, why dont you sell membership cards . But they wouldnt serve us one recounted so we just sat there until the lunch counter closed. They returned the following morning this time with reinforcements, 21 in total. They sat. The next morning they were back again. The students sat in shifts throughout the day, talked quietly among themselves. Some brought schoolbooks and used the time to keep up with their work. By the end of the week an estimated 200 students had taken part in the green borough sit ins. It was not the first time africanamericans protested discrimination in this way but what separated these from those that came before is what followed. These protests inspired others to sit in, to march, to picket, organize boycotts and in some cases go to jail, be abused and be beaten. A week of remarkable events in greensborough turned into an inspiring assault on racial practices in the south. Three different cities in several different states had sit in protests. A month later, after two months 48 cities and 11 states had sitins take place. In all an estimated 50,000 people took part in a sit in movement in the 1960s. The numbers arrested for their courageous actions would eventually reach into the thousands. Thats the scene i setup in the beginning of the book. And the project of the book is to tell a story about why this happened and the significance of what happened. I have two primary goals for the book. One is a quite simple one which is to fill in a gap. There is no book before this one on the student sitin movement. And this is really a striking fact to me when i started this project because this project actually grew out of a law School Seminary paper i was burking on and i came across fascinating cases involving appeals of convictions for sit in protests and i wrote a paper on it. I thought there would be books on the sitin movement and i found to my surprise theres actually no single book on the sitin movement. So quite simply this is book that just needed to be written. This is obviously such an important part of our history and i do have an argument about the sitins something i dont think weve quite appreciated. And the argument is as follows. We cant understand why the sitins happened and what they achieved without paying attention to law and including institutional questions of constitution of doctrine. So my book tells the story of the sitins with a focus on these legal issues from six different perspectives. Each tell about the sitin from a different perspective, each centered on a Different Group and the role they played in this story. Start off with the students doing a protest, what they were looking to do. Then i turned to the civil rights lawyers who came to help them and some of the issues that they had in trying to figure out what they role in the story was going to be. I had a chapter on sympathizers, those people not directly involved in the sitins but supported the general cause and the role they played in advancing this moment. I have a chapter on the opponents of the sitins, whos standing there opposing the students. And then i turn to the u. S. Supreme court. I have a chapter on the justices of the u. S. Supreme court and how they struggled with the issues that came out of the sitins and then my last chapter focuses on the lawmakers, the members of congress who eventually pass a federal law in the 1964 Civil Rights Act which largely dealt with the issue at the core of the students protest. What im going do in my remaining time here most of the focus on the first two chapters, the students and lawyers and their different views, different roles. So my first chapter focuses on the students themselves. Thats where you need obviously to start the story. Centers on their challenge to racial practices in the south. I have three basic questions i try to tease out. One is why do they choose this particular tactic, the sitins. The other is why do they choose this particular target, why lunch counters . And the last one is what were their goals . What did they think they were actually trying to achieve with the protests . Why this form of direct action . Its really important to note that the critique the students were expressing with their actions was not only a critique against jim crow its also a critique against people with a background considered their allies meaning the civil rights establishment, meaning civil rights lawyers. Theres very much a generational critique at play here. A lot of the motivation for these protests emerged from frustration toward the establishment within the Africanamerican Community with what the students saw as a too easy acceptance of jim crow by their parents and their grandparents. According to one of the greensborough four he said many of our adults had become complacent and fearful, and its time for someone to wake up and change the situation and we to start here. Thats not a very Fair Assessment of the situation they parents grew up in and understood but it was motivating to them to think theres something that needs to be done, and our friends out there, our parents are not doing it. Theres also a tactical critique. Theres a lot of frustration among the students with the established modes of reforms with litigation and lobbying. Many people involved saw this direct action technique as an alternative to litigation, and saw the courts as something to be avoided not because they might lose in court but because even if they won they were skeptical real change would follow. And this is where we need to bring in the story of brown vs. Board of education. About six years before the Student Movement took place. Most of the College Students involved in the sitins were old enough to recognize the significance. And also old enough to realize it didnt do a heck of a lot. Most of them went to segregated schools after brown and they admired certainly the lawyers fighting on their behalf but they also thought that wasnt really achieving much for them. And they were looking for alternatives. Thats the tactics. Targets, why lunch counters . Discriminatory treatment at lunch counters did a particularly abrasive there was this exclusion that pulled students into this. But also law and lawyers played a role in this as well. And ill talk a bit more why lawyers are skeptical of this particular issue at least initially. The major civil rights organizations were actually given relatively little attention to Racial Discrimination and public accommodations in 1960. Their focus was largely on the schools. This what the naacp was focused on and on voting drives. This was something of an open target for them. They could get involved. They could say this is our thing, and when people accuse of them being puppets in terms of someone else is pulling the strings they could say, no, like this is our issue. And they were able to identify this as something that was very much their own. So they had a vulnerable target but also one quite inviting for that reason. What were they trying to achieve, what were their goals . If you list toon the worlds of the protesters they did speak about trying to reset basic structures of racial inequality throughout american society, but they also had much more on the ground tangible goals, and these i think are important to recognize the success of this social movement. This is critical ingredient. These sort of the ground small successes was critical for empowering the movement and organization. What could they achieve by doing these protests . In some ways the response they could get could be an achievement in and of itself. Oftentimes they would walk into these lunch counters and the lunch counter would shutdown. And they declared that a victory in many instances. They basically shutdown a business for an entire day simply by walking in there and demanding service. That could be an achievement that could get them out the next day. And then in some instances they had entire communities changing policies. And the break through came in nashville where in may 1960 the city was able to organize and Business Leaders were able to decide on a desegregation policy here in nashville, so you have these sort of Small Victories that kept motivating and fueling the Movement Even has a theyre moving towards deep aspirational goals. So thats a perspective of the students engaged in these protests. And really focusing on the civil rights lawyers involved in the n naacp led by the legal team of thurgood marshal. They held sharply different views about litigation and about the reliance on formal legal institutions and their relationship was always somewhat uneasy between the lawyers and student protesters. When the protests began the naacp lawyers were very much involved in a struggle to implement brown, and quite frankly it wasnt going particularly well in early 1960. This was actually one of the low points where there was various bog down and endless litigation without a lot to show for it. Initially the civil rights lawyers actually saw the sitins as a problem, as something to be managed. The lawyers and especially Thurgood Marshall was skeptical in general and also skeptical whether the students picked a good issue to tackle because they were skeptical whether the students had a strong constitutional claim in what they were doing. Theres a complex area in constitutional law that explains why Racial Discrimination at lunch counters is very different than Racial Discrimination in a Public School or even Racial Discrimination if that lunch counter were located in the town hall. If its clearly run by the gump as a school would be, as cafeteria and town hall would be then the constitution applies fully and the constoogz itution. But if the business is a private business and not run by the government then its much less clear whether the Constitutional Rights actually apply to that. So whether its unconstitutional for a private business to discriminate based on race is a very difficult question and mostly naacp lawyers thought the answer is likely no, and theyre reading the law as likely no. So therefore when the students did this protest Thurgood Marshall said this is not the right thing to be doing here. Theyre messing around with white peoples property. Theres so many other issues in which we have a stronger case. They were looking at it as a potential Litigation Campaign and he didnt think it was going to be a very strong campaign. It is worth noting eventually Thurgood Marshall and the naacp came around. Eventually they were able to form an argument they would take to court why there should actually be constitutional limitations put on private businesses when those private businesses actually sell themselves to the public like these public accommodations like a lunch counter or a restaurant would do. But it wasnt clear to the lawyers and the students in some ways nudged the lawyers in this direction. The tensions always remain between the students and lawyers. Theres a lot of tension around the whole idea the students oftentimes would refuse bail when arrested and then to stay in jail and the lawyers perspective is you get out of jail as quickly as possible. And sometimes the students didnt want to appeal their conviction. And the lawyer said, no, you appeal. They thought when they came around to believe they had a strong argument they said we will appeal this. But some of the students said no. Im going to go to jail. Or if theres an option between going to jail and paying a fine im going to go to jail. And why because i can elevate my protest action through the example of taking a jail sentence, right . So their whole goal was to use the apparatus of the law as a platform to make a protest. The lawyers thought, no, the apparatus of the law was a way to get correct legal outcomes. Very different views with the sort of shared vision of the world theyre trying to create. Eventually they were able to develop into what a call a functional but tense relationship. They were able to work in the same World Without coming to conflict with each other because the lawyers did have enough of these cases to get their appeals. And Thurgood Marshall and others took these cases all the way to the Supreme Court. They had their litigation and the students continued to protest and they kind of ran into separate parallel paths. The next chapter turns into what i call the sympathizers people who expressed support for the students but were not directly involved in the protest. And here looking at an eclectic cast of characters from the president of the United States, John F Kennedy campaigned and eventually won during the aftermath all the way to ordinary citizens and how they viewed the protest. And this allows me to chart how a claim on the constitution which is very much aspirational on the outset did develop into Something Like a common sense among a lot of people. They thought obviously this has to be unconstitutional to which the lawyers said its a little more complicated than that. The next chapter then turns to the opponents. I look at lunch counter operators, the police involved, southern political leaders as well as committed segregationists or libertarian idelogs who spoke about against the protests. The important point to take away the opposition was quite divided on the issue of lunch counter discrimination. And if you contrast that with the way the School Desegregation decision really brought the white south together. The white south is quite diverse in many ways and at certain moments they come together and at certain moments theyre pulled apart. Racial disimination criminatio counters helped make some of these differences, the fractures more visible and more important and more salient. And ultimately the students were able to take advantage of that. The fact the white south was not of one mind in standing against the cause of the sitins meant they were able to achieve these victories along the way. From then i turn to the u. S. Justices of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court got appeals of these cases every year from 1961 through 1964 and they really struggled with these cases. For the reason i alluded to before which is as a matter of constitutional law the constitutional status is just a difficult issue and just taps into all these big issues where you draw a line when applying these constitutional constraints. In the end i think the sitin cases which there were a number of them were multily oultimatel the great aberrations. This was a time when justices were boldly reworking entire areas of constitutional law often in moral response to the challenge of the civil rights, but in the situation of the sitin cases they broke pattern. They found ways to side with the students. They overturned convictions but always on very narrow fact based grounds and never gave them the sweeping constitutional victory like in the School Desegregation context. Finally in my last chapter and turn to the law makes and people who advocated for the Civil Rights Act 1964. Congress prohibited Racial Discrimination in public accommodations across the nation. Its interesting to note that the ultimate success of the claim that emerged the sitins didnt work as well in the courts as it did in the form of legislation. The mode of social protest as a challenge to the system really pushed back some of the justices. There are a number of justices in the Supreme Court who normally were allies of the movement who just felt uncomfortable with the form of which this protest took place, meaning the protest. Whereas a protest made a lot of politicians nervous in such a way they were just trying to find ways to stop this, to cut off protests. So in some ways the concession by granting the claim that the students really protto tbrought forefront in 1960 served the politicians interests more readily than the courts interest. And this is an interest of mine how different institutions or society are more responsive or less responsive to these kind of strong moral claims. The public accommodations provision of the Civil Rights Act not only became law but the surprise it soon became a broadly accepted norm of conduct for the nation, and it stands in stark contrast to the ideals marked struggles with desegregation or education. Let me just wrap up with a brief excerpt from that conclusion. The resolution of this issue first given prominence in 1960 was one of the greatest achievements of the civil rights era. My book in part is an effort to celebrate the Civil Rights Movement and the legal battles over discrimination. An effort to draw attention to this struggle for racial just sq and to better understand why this campaign for social and legal change worked when so many others did not. The sitin movement shows it can be done. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much for those excellent presentations. Okay, now its time for q a. If you have a question we ask that you step to the mike, introduce yourself and present your questions. My name is robert pickered. I teach at Tennessee State university and take Community College history. Im assuming you read david halverstons the 60s. He goes through the trial and said the briiants did not although they got away with murder they did not have total impunity, that the black boycott shut their business, and white people basically would have they were shunned by the white people. And then eventually the grandson of the sheriff there who was quoted seen on television making rather vulgar comments, his grandson who was later himself sheriff endorsed mike espy in his first house race in 1986, first black congressman from mississippi, and i wondered what you had to say about that. Its a long time ago. Thats true that the bryants ended up closing their Grocery Store. They were de facto boycott, it was mostly africanamerican clientele, folks stopped showing up. The thing that really sparked the shunning of the families was the William Bradford huey article because they confessed to the murder. Well, here are all these folks that had gone out on a limb saying, well, theyre not guilty or it was deserved, and next thing you know theyre taking 3,000 from William Bradford huey, checkbook journalism as they call it to confess and they can no longer be held accountable because the rules of laws of double jeopardy and that was certainly part of it. I dont remember that about sheriff striders grandson, Clarence Strider who basically becomes a witness for the defense rather than the prosecution strangely in the trial is very problematic, really terrible, just terrible character in many ways in this. And as an ironny down in mississippi i should say theres a highway whats the number 49 down there that passes through and so on. Its an honorary emmett till highway for a few miles where it joins to become an honorary Clarence Strider highway, one of those ironies. One excuse after they admitted murdering murdering emmett till what excuse did the fbi have for not getting them for murder and kidnapping . It was not a federal case. They simply stood behind the notion it was not a federal case. No one crossed state lines. A very strict interpretation, which of course there were cases where the fbi did stretch those limits, but hoover and others just didnt want to in this case. Thank you. I was interested in the importance of the photograph and i wondered if you could speculate on if this photograph didnt exist or, you know, wasnt so important if this would have been such an important event. It was an important photograph and a very important event for the emmett till generation as africanamerican activists called many of them. It was a terribly important photograph to them. I actually have a friend in chicago whos in his early 70s and he says he remembers seeing the photograph. And then i talked to him and no he doesnt remember it. He remembers seeing it years and years later. Hes not a reader of jet magazine. We restructure our memories, and i think part of that is about trying to give ourselves, trying to make ourselves feel a little better for a historical crime ill call it and our sympathies would plot have been certainly not in any sense with the killers, and they werent for many, many people. And yet it becomes a way to not think about how hard it is to change things. Exactly what chris was talking about that, that change comes so hard. No, there was not a photograph published and scales fell from peoples eyes and suddenly they were converted to brother hood. It didnt happen that way. So much blood had to be spilled before then and so difficult to change peoples minds. Can you discuss the differences and similarities between the law, desegregating the lunch counters and then the law later on allowing Business Owners to discriminate against gays . So the big difference we need to keep in mind between these two situations is in a situation where there are lunch counter sitins theres no state or local law at issue commanding desegregation or nondiscriminatory policy. We have laws on the books, for example the recent Supreme Court case dealing with that cake shop in colorado. Colorado actually had a law saying no discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and then people subject to that law, the owners of these businesses are trying to say they have some sort of constitutional right either based in their right to free exercise religion or right through freedom of expression to basically have an exemption from this particular law, this same discrimination law. So just as a legal matter what was missing back then to serve people yonl i should serve. They threw legal arlg umts in this claim. Theres religions, expressions. Even some claims that it would be a form of involuntary servitude, the 13th amendment to serve someone you dont want to serve to which all the courts kbif the back of their hand and said no. This is a constitutional piece of legislation. More recently, these claims have been repackaged and its because of relij us basis of the claims are the courts are more willing to look at that. This is the basic issue. This wasnt as much of an issue during the period im looking at. The courts today as weve seen unless youre more willing to take the claims seriously. Any other questions . I think i got a civil rights question and maybe a i was really struck where you had a tense but functional relationship. I understand that. Nashville, we had two legendary attorneys there. In the bombing of louis house rallied the community. Looking at it, i never really noticed any sort of tension. Maybe i wasnt looking in the right place. Was it more severe in other areas than different from place to place . Thats what im asking. Its a great question. One ing think didnt have time to do in my talk, the category of Racial Justice or civil rights lawyers is a broad category with lots of different people in it. I was focusing on the National Brand to the naacp under thor o thur good march shl. The stress they were under when it took place. This great opportunity, this movement, they were like oh, no. What are we going to do with it. Having said that, there are also local civil rights lawyers and many local civil rights lawyers were fully in support of the students actions. I will say that in general, when students sat down and talked to lawyers particularly in the early moments of the protests, the lawyers often said go slow. It didnt take place two weeks after the greensboro one got started, they talked to adults and lawyers in the community and said you should get money together and make sure you have legal representation ready. We dont know whats going to happen. Which the greensboro students didnt do. Atlanta, a hotbed of student activism, they didnt get involved in the sitin movement until a month or two after greensboro. They talked to lawyers and said we should make a statement about what youre committed to and make sure you have everything lined up. Lawyers sometimes could sort of urging more caution on the students. That could sometimes cause friction. After the murder and the trial, bradley became an activist. For several months, spoke to tens of thousands of people. Mostly in black neighborhoods, integrated pictures of him, pictures of 10,000 people in new york city. Just a few months. They were ways of raising money. Certainly he helped organize. But was always suspicious of this kind of emotional, deeply movi moving the emmitt till rallies. Lets give our panel another hand. Ush pu ush push thank you for attending this session. I hope you enjoy the rest of the festival. We take you live to the u. S. Capitol for a briefing from House Speaker nancy pelosi. Live coverage on cspan 3