Transcripts For CSPAN3 Paul 20240703

The book was widely sold and is said to have highly influenced the cause of abolition and we will have a guest to discuss the book watch books that shaped america featuring narrative of the life of frederick douglass, monday, live at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, our free mobile video app, or online at cspan. Org. Scan the qr code to listen to our companion podcast where you can learn more about the authors of the books featured. My name is wayne coleman, the head of archives at the institute and i want to welcome all of you to the event tonight. As we commemorate the 60th anniversary of the 1963 childrens crusade, we do so tonight with a talk between journalist paul kix who is the author of you have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live. Eight Minneapolis Police officer suffocated george floyd, paul was struck by the parallels to the may of 1963 photo of a black teenager in birmingham, alabama being attacked by a white Police Officer in an aggressive German Shepherd. These similarities motivated him to uncover the legacy and history behind the historic Civil Rights Movement. His book sheds light on the strategy in 1963, the 10 week southern leadership Christian Conference to stop segregation. Led by dr. Martin luther king jr. King, with others, joined the efforts of the Alabama Christian Movement for human rights to march in birmingham. Together, they sought to Bring National attention to the efforts to desegregate public facilities in birmingham. As detailed in his book, paul kix is the first to reveal the method of project c, the marches, demonstrations, and sitins that followed, led to arrests of the adults in the movement and the Pivotal Moment in the movement when sclc recruited children to carry the cause. Paul explores what happens and how it influences activism today. Ladies and gentlemen, paul kix. [ applause ] i want to start by acknowledging a few different things. One of them is that i am a white man. I am married to a black woman. We have three kids who identify as black. I grew up in hubbard, iowa, my wife grew up in houston, texas, and you were wondering why do they care about birmingham, alabama tonight. Let me tell you. In the summer of 2020, we all saw the images of the officer suffocating and killing george floyd. That murder felt personal to my family. My wife sonia grew up in inner city houston, one neighborhood away from george floyd. He grew up in the third ward, she grew up in the fifth, they were the same age, george my wife had cousins who went to the same high school as george. Her dear friend and cousin remembered george as the tight end of the yates Football Team that made it to the state championship game. I tell you that to tell you this, the murder of george was the first time my wife and i decided to let our kids see that this was part of the black express. Our twin boys were nine and our daughter was 11, the boys in particular had a lot of questions about what they saw. It started with, are all cops bad, are all cops racist . As the questions became hours and days, they evolved and took a step down towards selfhatred. What does that mean for my life . Am i inferior . It was a tough time in the later half of 2020. They became responded in some way. All three of our kids. They talked about how america was an awful place and they could not wait to move away as soon as they could. When my wife and i told him, it is not quite like that, there would be other things. Jacob lake was shot by cops in wisconsin in the back as he was walking away, and his three children screamed from his car as he was shot. Our twin boys ran from the room that they in tears and said, why do they keep trying to kill us . Out of those moments, i thought back to their birth, the boys birth in particular. I am a journalist and i have read the autobiography of malcolm x, certain civil rights books after my boys were born, i made my attempt to understand black canon in america. I reacquainted myself with the Civil Rights Movement. There was one photo that happened here. Of walter gaston, a 15yearold boy, maybe the most iconic image to come out of this campaign. In that photo, a German Shepherd attacks the right side of walter. Attacking is not the right word , more like feasting on walter. All around him, people are either running in terror or turning their backs around to see how bad it will get. What struck me about it, was the serenity on the face of walter. I am not sure if it was the splitsecond it was captured, but his arms remain at his side. He is peaceful. He is not fighting the dog or even protecting himself. Like he is giving himself over to posterity at this moment. Something horrific in that moment and i saw something that was transcendent in that moment. Horrific that this was indicative of all of the American Experience in one photo. It was the terror that have been visited upon black people, the dignity with which so many black people within the Civil Rights Movement responded. And it was ultimately in that serenity, this sense of transcendence. That we can all come as a nation, move beyond, even this horrific thing, and be more like walter and try to find a new day. That was my entry point into 1963, right after the boys were born. That led me to try to figure out what was this photo that went alongside it. What was this campaign . That led me to the 10 weeks in birmingham, alabama. Pretty soon, it was, the most amazing thing i have ever come across. Because, if you look at it from the perspective of 1863, you have emancipation. 100 years past, numerous efforts made to have real and lasting equality, nothing happens. Nothing. Birmingham happens. Then everything happens. Sponsorship in the summer of 1963 by jack and Bobby Kennedy who have been strongly against civil rights until then. That sponsorships becomes the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That Civil Rights Act of 19 seats for gives us the Voting Rights act of 19 seats five and kings martyrdom in 1960, a new life for the country. Out of that, the rise of the black middle and upper class, the presidency of barack obama, and in my life, my ability to marry somebody in a jim crow state like texas and raise our three children on a shaded street where nobody harasses us for who we are. That is the embodiment of kings dream. What i told my kids after they saw jacob blake and wanted to move away from here as soon as they cant. I said, there is a story that you should hear, about birmingham, alabama, even though i am a white man from rural iowa and your mother is a black woman from innercity houston, we would not be here today if it wasnt for the 10 weeks in spring of 1963 right here that made all of this possible. I began to research more and more. When i say i am thrilled to be here at the birmingham Civil Rights Institute, those are not empty words. As i researched more and more, i came across the massive oral history project that the birmingham Civil Rights Institute, alongside the birmingham Public Library, has carried out for the better part of 30 years. I do not think it is too much to say that basically every person of consequence in 1963 was interviewed by one of these two institutions, often both of them, and that record today is what made a book like this possible. Just as much as we say, as you say, thank you for coming, thank you, i would not be here today, i would not have the life i have if not for birmingham and would not have this book if not for this institute. You made all of this possible and i am unbelievably indebted to you. Thank you. One thing i found, as i was researching more and more, when i first got in touch with wayne, and with jim at the birmingham Public Library, something strange struck me. This was still in the summer of 2020 i didnt know actually, i will tell you and cspan2 , a secret, i have not shared with anybody. [ laughter ] my first book was called the saboteur. My agent and i have presented another book to publishers, which means , lets see if we can do something. It had nothing to do with civil rights but had to do with a politician. After george floyd happened and i read more of the birmingham, birmingham in particular, i called my agent and said, can we tell the editors to put the project on hold . Meaning, i dont want anybody to bid on this as a book proposal. I dont want to do this but there is another book. He asked, what is it . I said, have you heard of project confrontation . He said, what . I said, exactly. This is meant as most like to is lawrence but almost every historian or journalist before me has decided to do an exhaustive campaign of the Civil Rights Movement. This was work in the 1980s, diane wrote an amazing book on birmingham, it covers the Birmingham Campaign and her own life, it goes through the fall of 1963 with the bombing of the baptist church. My point is a narrative one. I wanted a book that captured i wanted a story that captured what happened in that spring. Again, 100 years and nothing. 10 weeks, then everything. What is the story of those 10 weeks . I looked and i looked and i looked, it doesnt exist. The reason i called mike agent and said, cancel it, i am writing something else, project confrontation, the fire hoses . It is so much more than that. I saw it, as a writer, an opportunity, in the richest and deepest of all american tenants , the Civil Rights Movement, there may be more written about it then perhaps the civil war. For some reason, notebook had ever just covered those 10 weeks. What happened in those 10 weeks . Who were the Major Players . Day by day, what went down . That became my obsession. The more i researched, the summer of 2020, it became the fall of 2020, even into the spring of 2021, i saw something that was not just an incredibly rich area and nuanced, we often today, lets talk about that nuance, we think about people like dr. King, like james bevel, wyatt walker, we think of them as angelic characters. The truth is, in birmingham, they had huge egos. They were at each other. A line i paraphrased from another Civil Rights Movement, each of these men could double for god but they could stand mighty tall in front of each other. That is what happened in the spring of 1963 and i wanted to capture the dynamic into what was going on. In the spring of 1963, in birmingham but in case you dont fully understand it it was the most violent, the most racist, the most dangerous place in america. The clan castrated black men. The cops raped black women in their patrol cars. You have some of those documents here. Edward r murrow, the famed cbs anchor and reporter, came to birmingham just prior to project confrontation. He said to his producer as he left, i have never seen any place like this since nazi germany. It was an incredibly awful more like the site of domestic terror than a city. The Albany Campaign one year prior had been an abysmal failure. King was marked not only by the southern press, not only by the Northern Press and other civil rights group. John lewis and his Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee had many members that openly sneered at the middle aged king and called him a phony. They said it is our time now. Your time has passed. They basically have not had there was a reason why not necessarily john lewis per se but others in the group that reached that conclusion, the sclc had not had any victory in seven years. Some may take offense to that and say what about the montgomery bus boycott. If you go back and look at the records as i did, in montgomery in 1963, black people had gone back to the buses like it was 1943. It was as if 1955 in 1956 did not even matter just like brown versus board of education never reached birmingham, so they are broke. They have had nothing but failure for seven years and they want to go to the most dangerous place in america. White walker, then the executive director, a man that i call brilliant in the book but also a moral. He said in the secret Planning Session that they had, this was two months prior to birmingham. They did not even invite the rest of the executive board. King did not invite his own father because they were going to discuss the most dangerous idea in the whole Civil Rights Movement. Thats the language that they used. Should we go to birmingham, alabama . Walker said we will either break segregation or be broken by a. There was real concern that not only were they going to die, and king delivered a walking eulogy to everybody that day in preparation. He even told them that in his estimation they were not all going to come back. There was the still larger concern that if they lose in birmingham the southern christian Leadership Conference did not have any more money. They were going to dissolve. If king is no longer the leader, what happens to the Civil Rights Movement as a whole . The governor and the 50s at least alluded to civil rights in the 1950s. George wallace comes in three months prior. Segregation now, segregation forever. Kings concern is going into birmingham not only may we lose our lives, not only may the sclc disband, but what will happen to the movement as a whole if we dont win here . Will more people become even more emboldened . Are more Public Safety commissioners going to surface . Will more people run the cities by fear . This was the biggest gamble of their lives. When they went to new york, and the quote comes from mr. Shuttleworth that was there that night, trying to get money from these rich new york donors. This is the biggest gamble of their lives and we want you all to put your money on it. Nobody wanted to do it. The man of the hour that i wish will be as known as dr. King. Man of unbelievable courage. He started to tell stories from his life just before the campaign started to these rich, new york donors. Harry belafonte is there. Sydney poirier, austin davis. Hollywood producers and newspaper publishers. So let me tell you what happened in birmingham. Not long after dr. King and abernathy did it in montgomery, i told them that i will do it. ,s clan bombed his home with 16 sticks of dynamite. I was standing one room away from where the dynamite hit. It blasted all the way through my house. I landed, in ruins, the house was a complete smoking mess. I emerged from those ruins and i told the people who came around. A lot of the congregants from the church. He said, i told them put those guns up because people were tired of bull Connors Birmingham. We believe in nonviolence. Then he told the crowd, do you know what i did the next day . I integrated the bus line. It stunned everyone. Not just the members of the church. Not just the birmingham cops that were amazed that he had lived and had the temerity to try to actually do what he said he was going to do. Bull connor put 50 more cops on patrol. Are there any members of Law Enforcement here tonight . [laughter] these are not cops. Fred did not care. Somebody asked him that night in new york, how do you do this . He looked at him and said, you have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live. This was now a cause that was romantic. Of course you have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live. That is the only way to live down there. Thats the only way the campaign can work. They gave 475,000 that night. That is 4 million today. It was the single biggest hall in their history. The campaign was an abysmal failure when it started. Wyatt walker had all these plans. He would start from the 16th Street Baptist Church and time down to the second how long it took to walk downtown and how long it took a young man to do the same. He had it timed to the second. None of it mattered. A couple reasons. Number one, black birmingham adults did not like this interloper from atlanta coming in and saying, we have been living here all our lives. Who are you . They had heard all of the stories about king, the phony, coming with his platform. Fred did not know his real name and have those same concerns. That was one concern. There was another. The other concern was far more economic. Over 50 of black birmingham at that time was domestic workers. Every single white employee said, if you march with king you are fired. The rest of the middle to professional class of teachers, lawyers, lets deal with the teachers first. There was a white superintendent. Do you think the white superintendent would have allowed any of those teachers to march without losing their jobs . There were black lawyers who could not even argue cases in birmingham and now king is telling these black lawyers we want you to march. They would get disbarred if they marched. Even gaston from the famed gaston motel, on his way to becoming the richest black man in all of america and the richest people in all of america. He said, you guys have got to leave. You do not understand how this city works. It did not work. We talked a little bit about wyatt walker and the bravery of Fred Shuttlesworth. I want to talk for a second about the righteousness and ingenuity of the third deputy and other major protagonist of the book, james. I dont know if you know much about james bevel. Everybody else is sort of middleaged and the conservative suit with the black tie. I dont know if you guys have seen any photos of him. He were yarmulke on his head because he said he was half jewish. He loved the old testament. He loved the righteousness. People in the movement called him the prophet himself. Than the prophet said one day to Martin Luther king, if we cant get the adults, weve got to get the kids. Martin luther king says, are you out of your mind . In bull Connors Birmingham you want to use kids . I do. He had gone around and talked to a lot of the kids. They understood what their parents were dealing with. They understood not only economic ramifications but they understood as well, this would be their life also. In 100 years nothing had changed. Its about to be 120 unless we can do something to stop it. James bevel tried to tell king this. They are ready. King wanted nothing to do with it. Bit by bit james bevel kept working with these kids. He will take them to after School Training at the 16th Street Baptist Church and other places around town. One time he walked into a cemetery. There were 50 or 60 kids at this point that he was a weird dude with a lot to say. He walked into the cemetery and said look around. In 50 to 60 years you are all going to be here. What are you going to do while you are alive . Kids love that. Soon the dozen kids became scores of kids and hundreds of kids. By late april 1963 it was thousands of kids. By then king had nobody left. The campaign was anemic. He never actually said, king never actually said, lets use the kids. James bevel instead just said we are going to launch something called dday and double dday. Guess what . That happened 60 years ago this week. Dday and double dday. We all know about the fire hoses , as i said. Fire hoses dont really capture what happened on double dday. In fact, nothing that i have read before captured what exactly happened until i was able to piece together thanks to these oral histories at the birmingham Civil Rights Institute. I want to read to you what actually happened during double dday. To set it up, the Childrens Campaign starts on may 2, 1963. On that day national and International Media is there. That day is peaceful. Connor is wiley. He knows that the cameras are here. Not going to play into the game. All of these kids, 800 or 900 kids arrested and thrown into jail which is what king wanted. The more we fill the jails, the more optical illusion we have. Pretty soon if we fill all the jails he will have to make a choice. If all the jails are full where will he put the next days protesters . Or will he finally be as violent as we know he can . What was the game . What are they after . Was it the integration of the city of birmingham . Yes it was. To integrate the most racist and segregated city in the nation was a huge part of it. There was a much bigger game. For 100 years they had been trying to get some form of civil rights legislation. Numerous people in this country. Martin luther king had even gone in late november 1962 to ask jack and Bobby Kennedy. 100 years after emancipation lets write a second emancipation. Jack and bobby wanted nothing to do with it. They wanted nothing to do with it because a civil rights bill could harm an election bid. Heres what birmingham is really about. It was really about, lets turn our bodies into metaphors of the black experience. If we can do that and if a New York Times reporter is scribbling notes as that happens or if Walter Cronkites camera crews are filming, then perhaps just maybe we can get the audience that we really want. Two men sitting at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. If we can convince them that this is america, maybe just maybe they will say now is the time change america. That was the real game in birmingham. What role did the kids play . Lets be honest. What is better copy . What is better footage than children going up against bull connor . The sclc knew that this would be huge if it took place. They had to come to grips with that. That is what double dday was also about. Friday, may 3, and 1500 kids not even bothering with the veneer of heading to school. 1500 kids who skipped it entirely and did not give a dam about the decree of permanent expulsion or their parents finger wagging to stay away from the park. Today was double dday. This is what they were calling it. 1500 kids walked to 16th street baptist. A move that may have helped their teachers. The governor had threatened overnight to have any educator, charged with criminal collaboration for aiding in truancy today. They poured into the church. One report stated that only 887 of the 7386 black High School Students attended school that friday. Of the thousands who appeared at 16th street baptist were children who had come yesterday on dday but had not made it to the front of the church to be arrested. There were kids who had seen the arrest on the news and wanted to play their part on double dday. A lot of children were brandnew to nonviolence. They had never even showed up. James bevel pulled all of them aside and started training. He passed a trashcan through the ranks. Soon the trashcan was half full with knives and brass knuckles that the kids had discarded. He said we are going to start on nonviolence today. It has to happen today. Not so much as a peachpit shall be on you when you march. Meanwhile, around 10 00 a. M. Martin luther king and Fred Shuttlesworth had a press conference. We want to negotiate from strength he told the reporters. Local columnist, national outlets, camera crews. If the white power structure will consider meeting some of our minimum demands we will consider calling off the demonstrations. They had talked about this last night into the morning. The jails were close to bursting. With even more kids primed for incarceration this afternoon, where with the mayor and bull connor put them all . He on a argued it was in the city best interest to negotiate the terms of desegregation. We want promises and action, he told the reporters. What he did not say was what he knew and had known all along. What wyatt walker even hoped for in that initial planning memo in january. The goal was to leave bull connor no good option then the result would be him lashing out and turning his vengeance on the protesters, in this case children. The sclc had to be prepared for that which meant king had to make his peace with it. He did not say this to the news because he did not know what sort of pain could be inflicted today. As the morning wore on and became clear. Across the street were not only the cops and tanks and k9 units on display. Also something new. Firefighters unfurled water hoses and trained the nozzles on the church. Since april, the Birmingham Fire chief had heard bull connor bello about his fear. A massive black protesters marching into the white owned downtown. He had amended that the hoses be turned on any black that try to march downtown. This suggestion appalled him. He argued that the firemens National Union strongly disapproved of fire hoses being used as crowd control. With the delusion protesters yesterday, bull had ordered him to unfurl the hoses today. He again argued just that morning that they were tied to the hydrants and protesters could just walked away. So he was ordered to put even more fire engines in the park. He said that nobody was walking or marching anywhere that day. The jails were dam near full. The message was clear. He would be back the crowds because he could not afford to arrest them. The fire chief could either obey the order or be fired. The chief was not fired that day. The pep rally, the freedom anthems, kids sweating from the exertion of singing in the body he. Today felt a bit like yesterday inside the church in the final moments before the doors were opened to the glare of the afternoon. Today was also different. There were too many cops outside, for one. Hundreds of them as if the whole force had shown up. Cops with tanks and all of those fire trucks. It looked like the battle of the apocalypse. For the kids who had been inside the church they saw so many onlookers on the street. One person put it, 3000 people with most of them black and some of them parents all of them s staring at the show of force she had assembled they found strength in the school friends. She told herself she would not back down. Why there were white and colored lines in the city. She could not go to the local amusement park. She was just a child but she vowed to do something that might make her childrens lives better. The whole of the congregation inside just like the day before. Much like yesterday the church doors swung wide. The first group of 50 marched out. The police barricaded streets while thousands of onlookers and press effectively cordoned off the other side. There was one place for the children to march. Straight toward the fire trucks ahead. They try to be brave as they walked. They sing a song. They noticed the giant fire hoses. She thought where is the fire . It must be massive. She walked as the nozzles were leveled at her fellow protesters. She thought, james never said a word about fire hoses. Bull connor was blind out of one of his eyes. He said he was able to see the full truth and glory of the white man out of the other i. The captain of the Police Department a few feet away put a bullhorn to his lips. Disperse or you are going to get wet. The kids have been trained not to disperse. They inched forward again. Some children saw how it took three or four firemen just to hold the hose. Other firemen quickly mounted hoses on massive metal tripods as if the water was artillery. As if the water that would rush out. The force of a canon. Last chance, he said through the bullhorn. The kids did not move. He told the firemen to turn the nozzles to fogging. This would drench the kids with half the strength of the hose potential. He watched the children and they inched forward again. Like a geyser, the water shot up. The force was Strong Enough to send many children fleeing and screaming in pain. The water stone, one teenage boy later said. After the dousing and the mist that spread in the wake of the water, they saw something amazing. About 10 kids had refused to move. These boys and girls, completely soaked, held their ground and continued to sing as more water hit them. They grabbed each others hands for balance and lifted them to the sky. They raised their hands as one and belted out the single word of a song over and over until everyone in the park could hear it. Freedom. I just want to pause. At the institute you have this photo. 10 kids completely drenched and you can see them. It brings tears to my eyes every time i see it. The defiance, the plea of their one word anthem. Photographers had the presence of mind to capture this moment. Instantly iconic. Bull saw these kids as something other than freedom fighters. He saw them as degenerates trying to wrest control of the afternoon from him blast them with the water, some heard him shout. One firefighter said, good lord i was scared to death about what might happen if they actually turned the nozzles to full power. An order from bull was an order from bull. Obey or be canned. The moment of indecision stretched out. In the end, what can be said is no firefighter have the bravery of those children standing more than 30 feet from him. Know firemen want away from his job that day. Instead, as one they cranked up the pressure and steadied themselves. The water lashed out. The singing stopped immediately. As if from automatic machine gun fire, in the words of one writer, the force of the water flattened the kids. One boy tried to rise again and a stream hit him square in the face and back flipped him. I actually saw this footage. He almost does a 360. These fire hoses either held by four men or mounted on tripod so highly pressurized that the power could knock breaks loose from mortar or strip bark from trees at a distance of 100 feet. The water down some children at perhaps 30 feet. It stripped the shirt off one boy pickett just disintegrated. The kids shouted in agony as they began the slow retreat. Some children kept trying to stand against it. They did not want to leave. It was at that point that james bevel sent out the next 50 kids. Reinforcements. From then on the day showcased an almost otherworldly bravery and savaging. One girl walked into it and it cart wheeled her end over end. The firemen had the cruelty to focus the stream on the exposed back of one girl. The water slid her 50 feet as she screamed in pain and fear. Elsewhere children huddled behind trees or light poles or attempted to use each other as shields. We could hear the firemen yelling, knocked the n word down. Parents started to retaliate. They threw everything at the firefighters. Bull connor did not like that. He ordered the firefighters to train the water on the crowd. The fight was on now. Mass arrests. Cops cracking people across the skull. Footage showed victims bleeding from their temples and bull antagonize the crowd by hopping into his tank and driving up and down the street as more bottles and bricks rained down. Then the next group of 50 protesters. The hissing water. The screaming children. The songs between the screams. They rushed out another 50. 14yearold Carol Mckinstry trying to sing and marching as water leveled the kids in front of her and now her as well. It hit her in the face and hissed across her hairline pulling it from the roots, scalping her effectively. It made her cry in pain. Then the canine crew. Bull releasing six German Shepherds. The dogs snarling and biting whomever they wished as adults fled and children try to avert them like bull fighters. One of the dogs, a black German Shepherd named bull, viciously lunged at a small boy and clamped his teeth around the boys throat and shook its head from side to side until eventually let the boy go and the child was rushed to the hospital. Another 50 marching and then another. One group of firemen trained their hose on the huddled massive children on their knees on the sidewalk, completely defenseless at a distance of perhaps 15 feet. The whales from these kids and elsewhere in the park. The overwhelming power of the hose such that the firemen holding it could no longer contain it. The hose freeing itself, spraying water and twisting wildly like an angry serpent until one firefighter tried to grab hold of it and the nozzle slapped him hard across the face and knocked him out cold. The press captured all of this. Hundreds of pressmen from across the world filming everything. The afternoon turning into something darker still. A white man driving his car into the crowd and a black teenager fighting a cop and grabbing the cops gun from the holster as the cops reclaimed it by beating the kid before he could shoot. Elsewhere, or rather everywhere, streams of water and the dogs, absolutely crazed now. A German Shepherd named leo attacking a 15yearold boy named walter gadsden. Leo leaping into the air and clamping down like the dog was feasting on him. Good lord, the carnage of this day. A reporter stopping to gather himself in one moment and saying to a photographer, i have never seen anything like this in my life. A sentiment that he would repeat for decades after, even when reporting from war zones. Nothing distressed him or frightened him like double d day in birmingham. In that moment, as he spoke the photographer thought about his own life. Three years as a photographer in the marines. He agreed with him. Commenting that the dogs were the worst part. The snarl of the German Shepherds. How they ripped flesh. Other victims screamed in pain and terror. It was revolting, he later said. Neither man knew that at various street corners around the park, wyatt walker of the sclc had enlisted his deputies to blow dog whistles. Blow them as hard as they could because he wanted this scene. He wanted these optics. Everything must escalate. He helped to instigate a white rage and the consequent lack suffering that were native to birmingham and had been since its founding. The quicker he could show all of that to the press who would in turn show it to the nation and the world, the sooner he could get what he wanted from that nation and world. Equality. A pitch of the line to draw on the dirt. It had been his rationale all along. Now that the day was here and those doing the suffering were children, james bevel when outside at 3 00, two hours in a lifetime after the protests began and shouted at the kids to move back into the church. James bevel had seen enough. A cop found king. He looked queasy and told him that both sides needed to call it off for the day. It was unclear if he was negotiating with the approval of bull connor. King was only too happy to accept the truce. He had seen enough for one day. That was double dday its a complex story. Its a hard story. But how do you get to hear after 100 years . Was wyatt walker so wrong . This is a question that i ask is apparent all the time. In your archives there are so many interviews with so many parents. In the days when birmingham was just as dangerous and they were castrating black men. They were taking a cattle stick, labeling them. Burned with kkk on his side. Now it is their kids and it is really hard. What i can say and what your archives show is that the kids knew what they were doing. They had been trained by bevel and Fred Shuttlesworth. They knew it might get this bad. James bevel had shown them footage of one of his first protests in nashville. In that footage, you see white diner owners and patrons within the diner taking black people and throwing them over the counters edge. The owner of the diner made sure to keep black people inside, locked the doors and fumigated the place. There is footage of this. People struggling to breathe until the Fire Department breaks down the doors. When they showed that footage to the kids in birmingham, the first thing he told them was that birmingham would be worse like orders of magnitude. Was not wrong. Do you know how many kids stepped away and said i dont want to do this . None. They were young but they were brave and smart. That i did not read to you is what happened later that night. Tried to preside over the meeting and parents came and were not happy at all. I understand why. Wyatt walker said, i would alter my morality for the sake of winning. As the executive director of the sclc. Its tough. Thats what it took to win in birmingham. We will have a chance this weekend to celebrate the 60th anniversary. When i had a chance to piece all of this together in the archives i realized it was so much more than the fire hoses that we see on some grainy documentary. Nothing against those documentaries. It does not capture what actually happened. If you get a chance to see them. Im going to see them tomorrow morning. I wrestle with at a lot. I really do. I dont know where i fall. I am so grateful for what happened. They had to realize. We have to make a really hard choice here. What is it going to take for us to win and finally break segregation. What i can tell you, to jump way ahead in the book, jumping way ahead in late may of 1963, birmingham is integrated. Fred shuttlesworths, greatest day of his life. Everything he fought for his whole life. It was even better for king. What happened after that is black people in greenville or montgomery or new orleans and north of the Mason Dixon Line in chicago, austin, new york they said if the most racist and segregated city in america can be integrated, i want my integration. That is where the story of this 10 weeks if you are a person of faith becomes a little bit miraculous. It becomes something that even king had not foreseen. Suddenly there was not just one birmingham. There was 20, 50, 100. So what did Bobby Kennedy have to do . He had to tip his hat to dr. King and say i have to consider this. Remember that bobby is jacks protector. He is the morally abrasive one. He said it is now in our political interest to have to resolve this. We have to consider civil rights legislation. I would argue that the greatest intellectual and spiritual transformation is Bobby Kennedy because of what happens. It becomes far more than just a political argument for bobby. May 2, may 3, fourth, if we are going to isolate 10 weeks that forever altered the trajectory of america, we can further isolate three days. Those were the three days. We are in them right now. They changed america forever. Of allowed me to come here and marry my wife and raise my kids on the street where nobody harasses us. I take pride in that. I am very grateful for birmingham. Im to field them. If everybody doesnt have anything. Yes, right here. Since you it for if there are any questions about what else happened on may 2 or third or anything else i am happy to field them. Since you wrote it for your children, all i can think about is the teenagers tomorrow . Have they read it or have you read it to them . I have told them a lot of times. I have read double dday. What i really think, not only is it a story about danger and courage and what it takes to do that, i really think that those 10 weeks, the ingenuity it took because their plans failed constantly. The courage and faith and kindness that it took. These massive egos had to find a way to coexist. Its not just a great story. Its a guide to life. It is not just for them. The pandemic was tough on everybody in some way or another. The last few years have been tough. I have gotten so sick and tired of all the negativity. To look at the actions of what the sclc did and what those kids in birmingham did, you can just think, i want to try to live my life that way. If anybody who reads this book comes away with anything, keep that in mind. It is explicitly dedicated to my children, an open letter to my three kids but it is really a guide to life for anybody that chooses it. [ inaudible question ] im going to answer this question in a roundabout way. In college i took biblical study classes and the history of the bible and stuff. You are taught fairly early that the texts you want to consult are the ones that are written closest to the event whenever it happened. One way to answer that is i have been in contact with Janice Kelsey who played and integral role on dday. Even though some of these people are still alive, what they gave to the Civil Rights Institute or Public Library 30 years ago, their memories were that much fresher. Because i cannot state is enough. Because it was such an amazing job with these oral histories, often times i dont have any followup questions. This is exactly what i wanted to know. Time after time they took me back and this is exactly what i needed. In some sense i did not reach out to that. A lot of them have passed by now. This is a credit to this institute that it was such a concerted effort to gather the stuff before everybody passes. [ inaudible question ] i have walked these streets in my mind plenty of times. Just like every time i would come down here, a couple of years ago. I got so much information from those three days that you look out at the park. At least when i was here, there was one photo that i was loved. She was being arrested and i called her the defiant girl. You see this look on her face. Her hands were behind her back. It just comes alive. It gives me goosebumps. It is such an old trope, the faulkner line that the past is not dead. Its not even past. You come here to birmingham and you are, like, this is living. This is right here. It is still with us. I wanted to make the book viscerally alive. I wanted this to resonate in 2023. Anything else . Like you, i was fascinated with babel as well. Bevel as well. He came to the incident in 1999. He put the strategy together for the march in selma. Could you talk about that a little bit . What he did as the strategist for that . To try to frame this up, james bevel is kind of the young guy. When he comes to the Birmingham Campaign he was kind of the young guy. King had recruited him from the student nonviolent committee. After that, especially after that in birmingham he becomes ever more central to this executive leadership of the sclc. s strategy, king used to say that bevel both fascinated and frightened him. The originality of his thoughts and righteousness with which he carried out anything. In selma to montgomery, that march is kind of like bevel is like, i want to do in birmingham where we have the press presence and this will be the push now. We have the Civil Rights Act but we need more. The strategy there was just, in some sense the same thing. How can i best put the foot soldiers where they need to be so they can be captured by the press. Just on and on and on. And incredibly original figure. He is someone that i am deeply fascinated by. I will say that when it comes to the birmingham hero, a very quick personal aside. I worked with espn for 17 years. In november 2020, not long after i began the research for this and not long after it had sold to the publisher i got laid off. I did not know i was terrified. My motherinlaw lives with us also. She is from innercity houston as well. I was the primary breadwinner and now i was out of a job and i have this look and what is going to happen. I came to the institute, and i did a ton of research. One day i was at the gift shop and there was a photo of Fred Shuttlesworth. I had read a lot by then about the late march night where he gave the speech in Harry Belafontes apartment. To me, it means not only the physical courage but it is almost a spiritual thing. You have to prepare yourself to give yourself over to whatever will come next. That is the only way you can live. I really think he meant it in lots of different ways. Bringing it back to the institute that day, i took that photo. I bought a small photo and put it on my computer. This came at a time when i did not know exactly what i was going to do. I decided i am going to try to go it alone. I always wanted to be a writer not relying on anybody. Lets see if i can make it. Every day not every day but there were many days where i was scared out of my mind. I would write what i needed to write. Sometimes i would just look at his photo. Fred, what do you think . It, he was just an unending source of courage and strength. I really feel that i came to know him in some sense even though he died in, i think, 2011. I am deeply, deeply grateful i got a chance to understand who he was and the life that he lived and how amazing he was. I dont want to go through my resume now. Everything ended up turning out just fine. I have Fred Shuttlesworth to thank for a big part of that. [ inaudible question ] yes. It is good. My hope is that i have a lot of hopes for this book. I hope that it sells really well but one of the hopes that i have is that more americans will be aware of who james bevel was. To understand the complicated morality that wyatt walker had. Understanding just to Fred Shuttlesworth was. He should be a national icon. To you guys know fred charlesworths name is listed as a defendant more cases that reached the Supreme Court some people are nodding so you do know this. More than any other american ever. Fred shuttlesworth versus the city of birmingham, the state of alabama, the United States government. Over and over and over. Thats how dedicated he was to civil rights and freedom and equality. Just not afraid to die to live. So what do you hope i sat on a Panel Last Week with Denise Mcnair and other nonprofit organizers, and somebody asked the question, who is the next king . The response was, there is never a next. They did what they did. Now what are you going to do . So what would your challenge be to the young people . I think that is a good point. I will answer that a couple ways. The first is that i think that the person who commented is right. You should never be the next anybody. You should be the first you. However that ends up manifesting itself in the world, great. I am not too cynical about kids and youth today. If you look at, say, young legislators in tennessee. I think both of those guys are in their 20s. They are doing something. If you look a few years back, who were the people that were on the streets during the black lives matter protests . They were kids. They were teenagers, 20 something. My daughter wanted to play a huge role in it. A slightly more complicated way to answer that question is, i see a lot of regression. I see it in the book bans. I see a thin book burnings as if suddenly that is a thing again. I see it in the exhausting discussion of what exactly Critical Race Theory is and should we be teaching it. It is america. Teach it all, man. [laughter] as somebody, i like to say i straddled the line between liberalism and progressivism in my own politics. I am deeply ashamed of the left right now as well. The age of cancel culture and the weird obsession with skin deep identities. I understand the need to say that there has been structural racism. I completely get that. Sonja and i were the original woke long before it was cool. On the streets in dallas we used to joke, another interracial. [laughter] i will give you another instance. These are anecdotes but they speak to something that is happening on the left right now. Right now at the university of california berkeley there is housing for bipoc students , like Indigenous People of color. Did you know that no white person can enter . I dont think Fred Shuttlesworth would be in favor of that. Did you know that not long after george floyd was killed, the very progressive students at New York University tried very hard to pass a new School Policy that said that lack students black students should not be dorms in the same residences as white students . That does not sound like the dream that Martin Luther king had. Throughout the left you see, i think it is the polar opposites. I think the far right is insane with the book bans, just drop it. Also book serbian band on the left. Suddenly we cannot read mark twain because the nword is used. Its an american document as much as anything else. I feel that there is regression everywhere. Perhaps now more than ever we should think about 60 years ago. In fact, maybe this is a way to close it. We talk a little bit about kings famous dream. I dont know if i share this with you when i was here. April 16, at 16th Street Baptist Church, king took the stage at a mass meeting and he said, i had a dream tonight. I had a dream that little with little black girls and they would swim together and play in the park together and then in a king crescendo he said, yet, i had a dream tonight. That line was uttered first in birmingham, alabama. That is another way that birmingham changed everything. I guess i want us all to keep that in mind. That is the sort of integrated future we should strive to it thank you. [ applause ] if you are enjoying American History tv, sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive the weekly schedule of upcoming programs like lectures, presidency and more. Sign up for the American History tv newsletter today and watch American History tv every saturday, or anytime online at