[applause] it is good to be at the mississippi delta. May be so much change. To talk about this book so hiding from police on this particular street and had even more memories of city police here and this is what much of the book was about of those strong people of creed would that does not include i tell the story and i want doing here but the green family the legendary family and laura who ran the sheriff in town exceptionally strong people and part of the Southern Movement is the people that protect us. I will get back to that thought. I am often asked with this particular book when you read the book you will see this is much more than a book about guns. I have been a working reporter for most of my life. I primarily has been a Foreign Affairs reporter. To have established national geographic. With the Internet News Service concern i recommend you could, that all africa is the only way to keep up during the day this is what is happening in nigeria and one of the things i learned almost immediately into the field or the craft is that its news is more often distorted more than what is left out of any bias you can spot bias the you dont know what is left out but this is a problem but it is particularly a problem with the history of the Freedom Movement of what took place across the south. But it is mostly shaped by what hasnt been told. Is essentially my dissatisfaction with the history of the movement i will tell you one story. Was one virtus stories in your back pocket. In 2001 is the book about education to give it to people in mississippi include a a principal of the middle school. In then, make us appear to the delta. With the middle School Students but Franklin Middle School is across the street from the public library. So i decided to engage with school jake school kids if they knew anything about her and they did not know anything. And pointing at the library she was important. They need to know about her. Added be back in a few days to tell them some things about her and i was going to tell the story but i said i knew her in when i said that they were 30 years old and mr. Charles cobb you were alive back end . [laughter] and at one level and how do i know . Cabellas dave messina for old enough . Ive put beside me saying Something Like we and freddie douglas. [laughter] to sit around to try and decide what to do. But it did place in my mind a necessity of the history if anybody was going to meet that necessity but i bitterly shifted gears. To have very little Foreign Affairs. So when i think is important to note. In to fill in what has been absent. It came out of nowhere not connected to anything. With the bunch of kids that came down to free the downtrodden. And we were talking about the problem of history that the public understanding of history can be boiled down and martin stood up and then they say to the day. [laughter] and then they shouted out black power but to this kind of oversimplification is at the heart of this is conveying what movement that people did more people were doing so because they were thinking about how to challenge segregation. The Mississippi Movement was not led by bob ward charlie it was led from Hollis Watkins and i will not tip off all the names that i could but the Mississippi Movement in southerners led the Southern Movement and they were thinking about what kind of society they wanted to live hidden and what action to take to get the kind of society and that point is missed i read history books sometimes about my idea of the freedom school. They would say to a9 wrote the proposal. But nobody asked me. I could probably read it without a bookmark. Frederick douglass and his 1855 autobiography complained about abolitionist. Frederick douglas complaint the whites abolitionist thought it weakens the cause. They only wanted him to rewrite the wrongs although escaping from slavery kyle is now reading and thinking. However he did not have plantation manner of speech in massachusetts entice the very society once counseled douglas people will not ever believe you it is not best. The abolitionist then went on to states to give us a fax. We will take care of the philosophy. That is still with us with how the movement is with us. It is not about cowboys or gunfighters it is a movement story what people are thinking for our the actions they took to gain freedom and currents were important factor in that. So i ncpmf f to do this story partly because my somewhat cynical reporter cents kick did and i know ifc i put guns in the title naked civil rights. [laughter] you will save what is he writing about . And i do think guns helped make it. Having a small farm is your nextdoor neighbor a legendary figure in mississippi event with Martin Luther king 1964 after the usual courtesies the introduction hartmann who is never known to be shy about expressing his opinion said reverend thomas this nonviolent stuff is no good. It will get you killed in tragically he was absolutely right but the sentence was too long. So i contracted to what you see this nonviolent stuffll get you killed but i do feel compelled as you sit here to look at me to give him his props. [laughter] id in a lot of ways this is like the people like him who shaped the movement in the south. Pilot to elaborate a little bit on guns in the movement because the other question i get is a issa that hypocritical for this to have occurred or contradictory . And i tell people no. One way to think about the movement is to divide into two sections to seek desegregation in the other part that the other part grounded in Grassroots Community organizing in the rule south. So what occurred in 1960 is a very old tradition with the plantation not so what were they doing . Sometimes it was legal or sabotage sometimes assassination sometimes it was just escape had in most cases organizing the ways and means to survive and live in a very strange world if you look at black history in the United States, you see a stream of organized efforts to take various forms to gain freedom and that some other movement erupted in places like we would mississippi they came over here to begin organizing or where the first bunch of sick people entered in to begin Voter Registration as part of the organizing tradition that began far earlier in the shape it takes very much depends upon the circumstances people find themselves living in but the Common Thread is the desire for freedom. And that is important to understand and what i portray in this book. They use guns who obviously weapons were used with the post civil war effort at the post the pale face brotherhood a. M. To a bunch of organizations seeking to dismember the fledgling attempts to create democracy in the south. But black veterans of world war i and world war ii have a very large presence in this book because i think after world war i and especially world war ii, they led the way in the fight for freedom. This is the guy who pulls sncc him into mississippi and eric henry the pharmacist who became the president of the naacp for federated organizations and it is what i argued in the book that change the climate of the south. There are horrible stories that i dont tell in this book i may tell and another about the slaughter of black veterans because a number of them were killed under White Supremacy the story that i tell in this book are the black veterans who survived and willing to take people like myself in it sncc who were 21 years old in the project director though old guy in the book who was 26. These veterans as i described in the book how they had the weapons ready. So largely made up of caribbean war veterans extremely important to understand the movement and i tell how they came to organize to protect the collar workers who were organizing in louisiana. With den culture is a part come ive lived it many homes in the mississippi delta 1962 and 1967 and i have never did not have a shotgun in the quarter to put a 45 on the night table and ask how to use it. Antisay at 1. I have for shotguns in my bedroom or shotguns in every corner of my bedroom. In the first crack is he will not write his momma again. This is Martin Luther king to have pistols in his home in the journalistic interview Martin Luther king to use intel into the armchair and they yell out to hold out there are some crystals and then they ask martin king and he said adjustors self. But just yourself. He applied for the concealed carry permit. He did not get it put an organization helping him complained and said as he understands nonviolence . But it was a lie if and and he was rising and claimed to be the guy that Martin Luther king from nonviolence as a way of life. But i would not enter into that discussion but just taking note of the fact because that is what he did when he was alive with us. So the easiest way to understand it is all you have to do is in sharp political terms is that they will react to terrorism violence directed the way anybody reacts to do the best they can to protect and increase would war Holmes County in mississippi grabbing a rifle or a shotgun is the effective way of protecting ones home and family and friends and community and up person in arkansas among others and i quote to an in the book you can play with them pray with them or pray at them but if you are dead you will not make the effective organizer and that is the real world. All i try to do is some portrait of black people in the real world of terrible violence of mississippi bin young people weather in greenwood or washington d. C. Dont realize how murderous the state was or how much the south was. People would kill you for trying to register your vote. The first of the leaders to take us down into southwest mississippi the strongest part of the kkk was gunned down in broad daylight at the tower cotton gin. Made by a member of the Mississippi State legislature who was never brought to trial the man who witnessed the murder and testify he was killed. Getting a lot of his truck one night this was a murderous place nobody was paying attention toc it many were world war ii veterans he said we will not accept this anymore and i discuss why the war has this effect but in part it is not a book about black guerrilla warfare. It is not of romance about guns the assembly a portrayal of the life here in the black south although this is not a memoir or an autobiography coming is a history. The other saying i should say that i try to do in this book again last to do with how history is presented i tried to connect the dots in American History that explain why White Supremacy emerged what is the contradictions of the country . They carry into the 20th century when we began working in the south. Bob moses when he speaks has the audience join him in the recitation to the United States constitution and as you know, the first three words are the preamble we the people and the point bob makes it too has people beside the preamble is we the people it does not say we the white people. It does not save us and others or the new englanders it says we the people. And to launch a discussion around those three words after the of recitation. Also in my discussion of selfevident theyre certain unalienable rights jefferson was being served by one of his african slaves in. When he wrote that. He had 200 on his plantation i think to the notes to virginia he said his first memory as a child was being carried on a pillow by an african slave. So we have this founding contradiction that connects then i happen to think white people were invented. [laughter] i think there is a whole connected history here to understand how blacks connect with children scott decision he was the slave from his master been sued for the freedom and lost it is fascinating with that rationale of the chief justice bitches he says we cannot have blacks being citizens of the United States they could interfere with the political process a and could get guns to make United States and unstable. And with that passive genet decision is the black man has no rights you should read the whole decision of the you get a real sense of light supremacist was like. To give them the right to vote so connects the dots of history may be a the west route expansion the conquest of the native americans or the civil war but many people resent you putting history on the table for black people it is widely wine so much . When you make a simple straightforward presence so this clarifies the history as a far as it is concerned it is not the whole story of American History or even though whole story of the southern Freedom Movement but it is offering some clarity on this. It is just a handy way to do this you catch everybodys attention these days. You save Martin Luther king had guns in his house. Or the sncc walkers were living with the farmers they were men and women. Since were in greenwood two sons in family s. A. Legendary feebly with some of movement the sheriff came out the police chief cater out to try a to persuade her to not be used for a civilrights rally. But the police chief did not want her. It was threatening in a manner but when she sat in that rocking chair on her front porch, there is no winchester within arms reach in and she picked it up and said this is my main and the hindu were trespassing on my land and you dont have permission to be admired man to see you should be lively and. He left. And that is how the rally was held. That is how the tough fears people and i could go on and on in every state of the old confederacy with the deacons did in the Martin LutherKing Movement and to be protected by world war ii and korean war veterans and what is interesting i am a reporter. I am not a scholar. I depend does the writer on scholarship for all i criticisms there has been emerging since the middle 80s a new scholarship that one approach is history from the bottom up instead of the top down tackles history around the grass roots efforts even out of ohio i could give a commercial. You know, leslie and her book on mississippi we will shoot back. The whole group and i could give you a printed out blocks west. Of course, mine is at the top. [laughter] but there is a scholarship be routine that is helpful to people like me but i agree reporter not a scholar. I will tell you raise story that is what this book that attempts to do i will tell you we story about guns and how they fit with sncc to officially declare themselves nonviolent and when you look at the story there are tensions between the possession and use of guns for selfdefense and nonviolent activism they would work in tandem with one another. One example from my own personal experience in mississippi and then i will take some questions. One of the countys i worked it is interesting because anyone who would emerge it is important to understand women played a powerful role in the movement it would emerge as the leader of the movement to become the mayor. And also become an interestingly enough and expert on china in you need to read the autobiography to see how she became an expert but anyway she was active in the Voter Registration effort by her husband was not her husband said charlie , i know you are nonviolent i am not going to that courthouse without my pistol and a somebody messes with me at the courthouse i will shoot them and i know that will cause you some trouble so i am not going. [laughter] so how does that work . But i know he saw himself s. A. A participant in the Nonviolent Movement and saw no contradiction in that of the Nonviolent Movement but still had the shotguns and rifles cleaned every night. So i will take some questions. Is characterized to fight against jim crow. Jimcrow in a way describes the forces and the think any of the equation would have been different had the move it ben more adequately characterized as the of revolution of the forces aligned against this movement . The short answer is i dont know. Of the question of phraseology is interesting more often than not we characterize affirmatively as the Freedom Movement more than the Civilrights Movement bear with me for a minute i want to read something from jefferies one of the historians i was talking about. But first i want to read to things. A young scholar at Ohio State University historian makes the argument the passage appears in his books that the move is better characterized as a Freedom Rights Movement rather than the Civilrights Movement but in terms of your question it is worthwhile to listen to what he has to say framing the Civilrights Movement as freedoms and colleges the centrality of slavery in emancipation to conceptualization of freedom to incorporate the long history of protest going back to the daybreak of freedom to extend beyond that arad to recognize the africanamericans civil and human rights objectives to capture is the universality of the coal sent more over it allows for regional differentiation moments of radicalization in periods of social movement. I think much of the civilrights establishment did not take this approach there is a much more limited approach with the desegregating public facilities in those all worthwhile causes but if leadership had embraced this idea, yes we would have a strunc your movement in the 21st century were effective politicians but i will leave that alone. Ended much the same way Vincent Harding whod passed away as a historian citing books for your book list since there is a river or a history of of reconstruction is extremely important book in talking to him not to interview but what i had in mind for the buck and he said i want to remind you of of something charlie. Our struggle was not just against something good to bring into being at the heart of the nonviolent struggle was is still is a vision and a new society to see something in yourself devoted to nonviolence zero is trying to get something simpler out of me but i found it necessary and i did not anticipate this with the rightwing of this book to bring into the discussion a substantial discussion of nonviolence of people who were committed as a way of life i said yes i was in what could be called the Nonviolent Movement but at no point felt i had the courage to adopt it as a way of life so i think the discussion of guns to the discussion of nonviolence and treated that way in this book is a roundabout way to you answer the question. Your initial comments have clearly richard but that goes beyond with hollywoods view of the world is a struggle between good white people and bad white people believe play no role in the outcome. With the narrative that there is a reason is out it is not important but i dylan to preclude your insert but i tell people look to all the speeches that Martin Luther king never gave in any speech but there is the reason why he is projected to the way he is people perceive her as who they had who is also catchy with the words of freedom and that is a dynamic leader of her people. I have a view of that at the heart of that a political sense is the question of citizenship. Who gets to be a full citizenship the way the country has been set up from the very beginning to keep the full rights away with old groups of people and women who did not have the right to vote, black people could not vote intel 1965 and is illegal now . With the laws related to sexual preference full citizenship if they have used throughout the history of the country if you look at black history gets set same time it is a mechanism because we to get quality Public Education good schools resists the meaningful effort. Coming out of the 12th grade level to enroll in College Without taking a remedial course. This is not something complicated. As Frederick Douglass said said, reading and writing a infects a child to be a slave. What you are raising is a political question is essentially. It is about who has power and who doesnt. And how do they use it to. That is something more difficult and complicated then i can talk to about from here. I am looking for to hearing the stories and i am wondering it with that black Panther Party and i wonder if you go into that in the buck . No. It is a book about the south there are a few references to the black Panther Party of california at the epilogue. But the black Panther Party emerges from stoke the carmichael from illinois alabama who went in 1965 so then he knew bobby seale and a few others were beginning to organize to ask sncc if they could use the panthers but they themselves but they came from the year book. [laughter] it does not with age use of guns by the black Panther Party with the revolutionary action comes to mind is different than the south. The south pretty much was done as a defensive measure first of all. Against the klan and while you cards they called up black Panther Party a Guerrilla Organization and issues they dealt with rich different with police to use guns against police faces did in the north a problem particularly in oakland there is no thought in the south live using dozens for any type of aggressive purpose. That needs more exploration. I thought it was too much to put to into one book a discussion it is enormously complicated it is like that southern struggle the has been grossly oversimplified the complexities and the richness very much into historiography. Is this is one area that should be could. That is the inadequate answer i know for your comments. And was that not something . After she tried to register to vote in 1962. In they shot up the community the mayor has the biggest business in town with the Hardware Store and was justice of the pace. With the voting effort was bailing the best way to get publicity is claimed that white people did it. [laughter] but with that intimidation and context it complicates the shot of the man staying with as evidence. In this is my first interest back into the gun discussion because when i get back his word about the gun. Selfdefense is not the price very reason. They were poor and they used them for hunting to put food on the table. They keep varmint out of the garden by iraqs. And then the third item for reasons set vendors cannot. But now what to do without his gun. In to ask if i was sure. I went to get the history book in to see you have a right to your good in the United States. Into full over the page to take the book from me 76 years old and could not read or write. He took the book from me none of us thought much more about it then we noticed we ask his wife in she went to get the good news said it was all right that he would get himself killed because he is going down to get his gun because i said he had a right and he was not prepared to live with that but he had a raggedy old truck there we heard that pulling back so i told him i came to get the gun and what did he say . He said the mayor said i did not have a right to my gun. So what did you do then . I told him again i come to get my gun. And then i told him i held of the book and opened it up to the page you fold over and told him this book says i do. Said then they gave him a the done back. I am not sure of the social dynamic of that but he did give him the gun back one of the few instances i can recall Officials Authority to take a weapon in the breezy and the that did not happen with the students had a boy, in jonesboro louisiana. 0f the guns were never confiscated. I think thats because they understood a that these men were prepared to use their weapons and b to confiscate the weapons would make it worse. The final analysis these White Supremacists for all of their rhetoric, for practical people. Among other things as much as they believed in White Supremacy they werent repaired to die for it. So there are very few instances that i can think of where guns were taken away. Its too deep in the southern culture. When miss mississippi legislator in 1956 tried to introduce gun registration legislation and he said in introducing it, he said to protect us from those who are out to do us harm meaning the black people. The bill never got out of committee in the Mississippi State legislature so i think the gun culture is just too deep. It almost transcends race in some ways. There are differences. Black people tend not to have automatic weapons in why people did have automatic weapons you know im sometimes you get difficult for blacks to get large qualities of bullets. You have some racial but by and large the gun culture trumped the racism in these societies. And i think they thought it would just be too dangerous to try and take guns from guys like the deacons or guys like Hartman Turnbow here in Holmes County or any of these guys, andrew moore done in cleveland or mrs. Mcgee on her farm out their in flaura county. So i have been studying the Freedom Movement for a few years and also looking at food systems and agricultural systems and whats interesting to me is to see how many connections there are between farmers and this issue of guns and power. They look at harper turnbow and also Fannie Lou Hamer the frequent Farm Corporation and also look at the public for new africa, the public government of africa. Land seems like its crucial to this equation so i guess my question is do you think that the story is more about guns or is it more about Land Ownership . While i think the story is about freedom you now and part of achieving freedom has to do with land. At least some people thought that. In greenville they had a sharecropper strike. Sometimes the idea of freedom revolved around guns, just staying alive. Certainly down in southwest mississippi which was the most klan invested part of the state in some ways the most violent part of the state. Guns were tied to the idea of freedom and so the core idea is that your freedom and freedom and citizenship playing around with that idea you know. I think land, its possible to have a discussion of land. Im not sure whether there are meaningful discussions at this point. Because unless you were a big landowner in mississippi, you are just living a substance subsistent life. You can have the land but you know, unless you are big enough its not going to farm formed the heart of your economic wellbeing. In some respects this is a problem that arrived earlier for black people. I think its not just black in mississippi now. Small white farmers, small black farmers anywhere out west small ranchers and the like just having economically impossible time. What you asked would it have been more relevant in the postcivil war period when blacks consciously not only sought land but saw it as directly connected to their idea of freedom. My great great grandfather migrated to the delta from what tom to alabama and acquired land within a group of people out from clarksdale. It was called new africa. And when i read his letters, because he stopped at what was this Normal School on the way out to mississippi, when i read his letters its unmistakable that the idea of land was tied to the idea of independence, freedom and selfreliance and selfsufficiency. But this was 19th century mississippi. I think in 21st century mississippi, im not sure. One, i have no expertise on this so i cant comment in any great detail or length on this but my gut feeling about this is its mighty tough to be a small landholder and im not sure that the idea of owning a small farm is as connected to the idea of freedom and selfreliance as it was in the 19th century. But i stress that i dont have great expertise on that point. I do think there is this social movement that converged out that they air up washington on that question of land. My grandfather being in 1893 graduate of tuskegee when he went back to his rural hamlet aside from education, the other question with land acquisition. I came across a diary of his that was around 1901 through 1903 when you would find an entry for Lowndes County 20 acres. He is encouraging his students to buy and after hes there for about five years when he came back he said maybe five acres of land was owned by an africanamerican in the entire district. I think that was part of this. I think that is a story in the 19th century. I definitely think that is the story but its 19th century soho groups of people. The delta has really opened up. It was really opened up by blacks. You might remember the delta when my great grandfather migrated this was beyers, panthers, alligators and yellow fever and malaria and snakes and swamp. In a lot of the farms there were some plantations up there but until the levee is built on the railroads are built you know, this is not a very hospitable place, you know but with a few dollars people like my greatgrandfather and his friends and other people. Its probably the only remaining example of this now by people with a few dollars could come here and buy enough land, set up sometimes cooperative farms and communities, set up villages and all of that. I dont know if thats possible in the 21st century is all i am saying. And im not sure that the idea of it is even a strong as it was. Its not difficult to imagine people who had been enslaved. A, one could leave the place where they served as slaves and b wanting to own property and seeing the ownership of property as directly connected to their sense of what freedom was. But i think that notion has faded. I could be wrong here but i think that notion has faded in the 21st century. Thank you. One question here, yes. Yes sir i lived in rural mississippi. [inaudible] my question is that i want to know, im sorry ill try to make it as as i can. The local history has not been told and especially taught in the local schools. The federal government and the state government. There are two levels to that problem. Part of the blame falls on us. Those of us who participated in this movement. We never really made any great efforts to tell the story of this experience in mississippi or central alabama. So part of the blame lies with us. We may be telling the story or more of the story now because we are becoming aware that we have less and less time to tell the story. I dont know that part of the blame falls with us and part of it belongs to the very culture here not just to mississippi in the United States that reduces education to the lowest common dominator. Is afraid at the history. This again gets back to questions of power and who has it and who understands it. The story of mississippi story as is true for much of the south is the story of ordinary people raising their voices and saying enough of this. Mrs. Hamer says im sick and tired of being sick and tired. I think the people who run the country are afraid. They dont want to see a lot of people like mrs. Hamer. These are the unexpected people. Mrs. Hamer with her sixthgrade education, lived all of her life on cotton plantations in the Mississippi Mississippi delta. All of a sudden, not all of a sudden but she emerges not just as has this powerful voice but influential voice. I think that causes discomfort with people like that. Thats why you had all this violence in mississippi in part and there were a lot of people like that. Medgar evers and they are from all strata but particularly the bottom strata of society. So thats a fight we didnt make in the 1960s, this fight is really a fight about education and what kind of education. We solved in some ways the Voting Rights problem and we solved in some respects the access to public accommodations problem. Freedom schools notwithstanding we really never took on and certainly never solved this question of education history and learning including reading, writing and arithmetic. We just didnt take it on so its out there for your generation to deal with. Because the one lesson that emerges from the Southern Movement and the mrs. Amy movement in particular its things change when people began to make it demand for what everybody else says they dont want. They said these people in mississippi dont want to register to vote. It wasnt until this hamer and annie devine and vicki gray and Anita Bob Weil and enzi marr and be at the step though. Again i tend to wander off into these names. If they began to raise their voice. Its one thing if i say these people want to register to vote. Its an tiredly different proposition when they say they want to register to vote. So when it comes down to the school question that you raise the same thing is true because what they say about young people and minorities in school, they say they dont want to learn great and they say they cant learn and i said yes they want to learn or yes, i think they are able to learn, thats just me whistling in the wind. So when students it seems to me young people have to make the demand for what everybody says they dont want. Education. There was a group of kids in baltimore Maryland Associated with bob moses algebra project that attempted to place the School Superintendent under citizens arrest for failing to do his job. At least they attracted some attention to the poor education in the baltimore maryland schools. But i am for things like that. I think students have to do it and im not acting out. Any efforts like that automatically have my support in my willingness to contribute to those efforts at whatever level i can. What is key and what you learn from the south in the 1960s and 50s is you have to make the demand for what you want and you are the only one who can determine what you want. I cant decide what you want for a society that you were going to be living in. Thats the second part of my answer to you. Thank you. [applause] did i go on too long