Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tonight From Washington 20130904

Members were contingent and unsecure with their jobs. Now its over 70 . That trend seems to be continuing. The trend of state legislatures defunding Higher Education gradually shifting the cost from taxpayers to students, thats now a 25 year trend. Trends like that dont always and quickly. I think theres a future for state funding in higher Public Education is not great. Both of those things do not mind mote bode well for maintaining Higher Education. If i were to recommend anything i would recommend the federal government pay for public Higher Education and make it freeforall children come to all americanamerican s. 60 billion a year and a couple of battleships left, we have actually made public Higher Education a genuine public good. I think without some fundamental change the quality is going to erode. Scientists all over the country having to choose the basic research that will bring in the most dollars. Rather they choose the research that will do the most good for the people in the United States and across the world. This is the system, the american Higher Education system that has thrived on freedom and has thrived him people being able to follow their imagination and do what they think is most vital and interesting. That made it for half a century a great system of higher to k. Chin and i need to preserve it. Cspan velasco question. Knowing what you know about whats been going on a pass on whats going to happen in the future would you become a professor again . Guest i really cant imagine doing anything else. There are moments in my classes that are sometimes but my students and i struggle with questions that we really cant answer but that are vitally important. We spend a couple of hours doing that. If the freedom to pursue the intellectual questions that matter to me the most, that has really been just thrilling. I wouldnt take a different career. Cspan cary nelson professor at the university of illinois, when is your term over . Guest june of 2012. Cspan we think you very much in the title of the book is no university is an island. Guest thanks for having me on in spite of the earthquake. That is what made it memorable. [laughter] for a dvd copy of this program call 18776627726. For free transcriptranscrip ts or to give sure comments about this Program Visit us at q. End date. Org. Q a programs are also available at cspan podcasts. Coming up next booktv presents after words an hourlong program where we invite guest host to interview authors. This week author and civil rights activists Clarence Jones discusses his new book, behind the dream. In that the former adviser and speechwriter for dr. Martin luther king, jr. Examines the creation of the i have a dream speech. The Stanford Stanford University Scholar in residence also discusses his relationship with the civil rights leader and several of his fellow advisers. He speaks with herb boyd. Host Clarence Jones i am blessed and astonisheastonished to be with you because over the years all of my books have been trying to catch up with you to get a few quotes in a better understanding of dr. Kings life. He spent a solid eight years with him. I know for five books out there david garos buck Taylor Branch they mentioned you and they cite you. I said i need to catch up with him because i need to get that same information. I was never successful but someone else was trying to catch up with you and that was docked or king. Your first book combo there is a riveting section in which you talk about the first encounters and the first time you had an opportunity guest the opening paragraph quick way, first of all im delighted to be here and have the opportunity to talk with you. We have so many mutual friends in common. Your question brings me back so many years to february of 1960. I was 29 years old and im going to be 80 years old on january 28. 1960 at was just years out of law school. I got a call from a distingin nuied york city, coule delaney. He had known me and given me a letter of recommendation for law school. He called me and said clarence, he said i am taking on the chief defense counsel and defending dr. King from Montgomery Alabama who has been indicted for perjury and tax evasion on his state income tax return. We have three other excellent attorneys, to Tax Specialist from chicago. So he talked to me about the cases. But we need a law clerk. We knew need someone to do the legal research. Today a law clerk of course has looking for justice of the Supreme Court of the appellate system. On the defense case i was essentially going to be a legal over but geographically it was in Montgomery Alabama and i was in california. I listened and they said well judge i will be willing to help you do anything i can to do research. No, no you have to come here clearance. And i said im just at the start of the law career. He said that is why i am calling you. Whatever youre doing im not trying to denigrate it anyway but this would ease some good experience for you. I said judge im sorry i just cant do it. It was very difficult to say no to him. It was really difficult to say no to him. Host that was on a thursday night and on friday morning i get another call in this time he says i didnt know it at the time of my telephone conversation but you know dr. King is planning a speaking engagement in california and in fact he is in the area now. Before he left i told him that he should try to see you when he gets there. I gave him your telephone number and so forth. I listened and i thought to myself the judge doesnt give up. That is what i thought to myself i said im not going to leave. I was in the suburbs. I wasnt going to leave and meets dr. Martin kaine. So he said no, no. I told him he needs to come to your home and that was friday night. It was all arranged. Two gentlemen are standing at the door. They both one has to have gone in the phone with a hat on says mr. Jones i am martin kaine. This is my colleague i think he said. He had worn rimmed glasses on. He comes into my home and sits down and at that time i had a reasonably nice home and in some ways you might say i was not quite living large but i was living semilarge. My wife who is now deceased compton and, now deceased. There was a cherry in the middle of the living room and a retractable ceiling and all this. That was great in now and by the way just to put it in context this is 1960. Dr. King had been successful in the montgomery bus boycott. The Supreme Court in 1957, between 57 and 1960 and i dont member the exact date the Supreme Court handed out a decision outlawing segregation. And he was on the cover of time magazine. So an common vernacular and again he would be considered a celebrity, right . And my wife, she reacted to him like he was a celebrity. When i told her he was coming, you would have thought a combination of moses and jesus christ in Michael Jackson and George Clooney sydney party a everything you can think of all rolled into one. She was so you know. Host she knew it in advance that he was coming. Guest oh yes, sir yes. He comes into the house and he sits down and we go right he gets right to the point. He says you know mr. Jones there are lots of white lawyers who help us in the south and help us in our work. He didnt say in the south. He said that what we need are young black lawyers and young black professionals. Joseph delaney has spoken so highly about you and i would hope that you would help me in this case because he thinks so much of you. And he described what he was doing and then he asked me some questions about myself. I told him well you know was an only child and my mother was a mother was the maid and a cook and my father was a chauffeur. Host you were born in philadelphia. Guest born in philadelphia and my mother and father were a chauffeur and a gardener. I was born january 8, 1931 and in the only house they had. It was a house of people that they work as servants so i have this recollection before the age of six of being in four different foster families. The foster families were friends of my parents to looking back they probably said would you keep little clarence for us . By the time i was the age of six my mother said we have to change this so they put me in a catholic boys school. Then i went to Public School and you know i told them that my mother died when i was a junior at Columbia College and she never lived to see me graduate. I was only 19 years old. A lot of things. And i repeated i really would like to help you and they said dr. King i said i will do anything here that i can. Now to be contextual again no cell phones no blackberries. I dont remember if they were fax machines. I dont think there were any fax machines. In fact when he wanted to send something urgent youth went to the post office and Senate Special delivery. I believe they had mail grams but if you wanted to get a document unless you used a special courier just a few minutes out of the door and my wife turns to me and she says to me, what are you doing that is so important that you cant help this man became all this distance to see you and ask for your help . I went hold on a minute. That is not quite accurate. He didnt come all this ways to see me. He had a speaking engagement in california anyway. Judge delaney stopped by. Then she said well, she could she pushed me and i do remember saying look just because he got his hand caught in the cookie jar that is not my problem. He wasnt guilty and wasnt being indicted. She looked at me and she said i dont believe you. You just graduated from law school and i know the way i feel. And she was angry at me. Then i began to be angry at martin king. Like young couples and so forth we had no major issues between us and hear this preacher comes to my house and in a matter of two hours gets my wife angry at me so i am angry at him. The next morning and i dont want to spend too much time that the next morning he called me and i picked up the phone. Mr. Jones . I said yes. My name is door and mcdonald. This was the secretary. My name is Doren Mcdonald and you know mr. Jones dr. King enjoyed so much his visit with you and mr. Jones but he forgot, he forgot to tell you that he wanted youtube, as his guest. He is preaching in los angeles on sunday. I listened and so i took down the information. The phone was on the wall in the kitchen and my wife is standing there and i turned to her and i told her what was said and she turned to me again early in the morning, 9 30 in the morning california time. She said you may not be going to montgomery that you are going to the church. I said the invitation is for both of us. She said no, you go. So i go to the church. Its in Baldwin Hills in 1960. The ball then hills i assume you know Baldwin Hills is in california, Southern California the community before successful blacks could move to brentwood belair. This is where the artist the businessman and the lawyers and doctors, where anybody lived if you have any money. Reverend h. B. Charles my memory was a minimum of 1500 maybe more but i think it was 1500 in the church. Dr. King is introduced and then he gets up and he says ladies and gentlemen, no brothers and sisters the text of my sermon today is the role and responsibility of the professional in aiding our misfortune of brothers and sisters struggling for their freedom in the south. So i thought to myself compact this is one smart dude. He came to the right church in the right place to deliver his message. I had never heard him speak before. I had seen him but i had never heard him speak before. So he began to speak in greater detail and greater eloquence and greater passion in an oratory ape passionate description of the struggle. Then he pauses and im sitting like not in the middle but one third toward the front. He never looks at me and he says for example there is a young man sitting in this church today. My friend in new york whom i respect, they tell me that this young man has been touched by the lord. They tell me that this man is being touched by jesus. When he goes into the law library and read things they tell me my new york friends who i respect that he goes all the way back to 1066. We were able to conquer the magna carta and then when this young man writes down, they tell me that the words are so compelling that they jump off the page. Im thinking to myself i absolutely dont have the slightest idea that he is talking about me. I am thinking to myself i have only known for seven months and i knew starting out as a young person just like today its about networking so im thinking to myself i want to meet this dude that he is describing. He is going to help me get ahead. And then he continues on. He says i had a chance to visit with this young man. I said oh lord, you know. Then he began to tell the Church Things that he told the Church Things that i told them about myself which were set in private, not necessarily confidential but private. The only analogy i can give you is roberta has the song killing me softly with your song. He was killing me softly with stories that i had given him about my life particularly about my parents. And then he said, he quoted this poem and he sort of changed a little bit. By putting my mother in that position of the scrubbing the flo uses the point like so many of you sitting in this audience today wouldnt be here but for the fact that somebody worked in somebodys white folks house to make it possible for you to be a lawyer. As he began to talk about this and particularly as he began to put my lot mother within the context of the Langston Hughes poem tears began to come down my face. It was like it just you know,. Guest i am really just touched. Guest as i said he was a celebrity standing on the steps of the pulpit and as im walking toward him he looks at me looking like the cheshire cat that swallowed the mouse. He said i never mentioned your name mr. Jones. I never mentioned her name. I just kept walking toward him and he said you know youll understand the baptist preachers sometimes have to make an example to make our point. I just kept walking toward him and i extended my hand to him and i put my hand in his hand and i said dr. King when do you want me to come to Montgomery Alabama . The deal was sealed. Actually i dont think i called what martin said about me but the subtext of the title shouldve been it changed my life there is no question about it. Guest so clarence you go on what happened with the case . Guest , the case. Think about this. In april and i cant remember the exact month but the case he is acquitted by an allwhite jury. Guest it was may 6, 1960. The reason he was acquitted, you know bob layton, these two tax attorneys in chicago, go one hit then a supervisor for the Internal Revenue service. One was the supervising attorney for the Internal Revenue service and the other had been a tax examiner for the revenue service. They would early destroyed the states case. It was clear to me that the only way that those 12 white people could come back and made the conviction, they said, im sure they must have said we cant convict him because we are going to look like a fool. Racism may be something but pride is something else. They just just dried the governments case. How can a convict somebody . They would look like fools. That was amazing. You know we had some great lawyers obviously as you know from the 1954 case with charlie houston and hamilton and Thurgood Marshall n. Carter and those guys, clarence, i cant encode his [inaudible] host all the way down to johnny cochran. Guest oh please come could johnny cochran. Host what happened in terms of the transition from being his attorney to being a confidant with his speeches and everything . Guest i ended up being first of all there theres the person i have not mentioned and his name is Stanley David leveson. Host should americans know who he is . Guest they should know if they read this book. This book is dedicated to Stanley David leveson. Now why do i do that . Stanley leveson matt martin came in the late 1956 i believe, early 1957. He was an independently wealthy real estate attorney, Real Estate Management attorney. He developed a with martin came primarily in terms initially a fundraising. Stanley have this art of writing appeal letters, fundraising appeal letters. Virtually all of the letters solicited money under the martin named on letterhead and were not entirely written by martin. They were written by family members. Stanley and i became very good friends when i came to new york. Host you move to riverdalriverdal e. Guest i move to riverdale in 1961. I immediately began working with not Cleveland Robinson but one of the top labor leaders in harlem. A. Philip randolph and stanley but particularly with stanley. Stanley de facto was the de facto northern officer of the conference which was in effect the fundraising arm and jack odell was a key figure. Interesting both jack and stanley organized the leftwing background. When i say organized they were members of the communist party. Stanley and his brother identical twins were members of the communist party up until 1956 i believe. Not i believe, i know and they broke with the party over this soviet and i mean severed all relationships. I have often thought the Civil Rights Movement and the relationship with martin came became a substitute for stanley. Stanley was such an intensely organized person. He never had the relationship of the communist party and martin came with the southern leadership became with the communist party had been to him. He devoted most of his nonprofessional working time but they developed a close working relationship. Host too close for some people. Guest too close and as a result i and stanley began to work jointly. In fact a large part of the cachet, a large part of the credibility which other than that which i earned on my own in relationship to martin, a large part was also from the fact that stanley was consistently in my presence even when i wasnt around. Martin would consistently refer to me as one of the people he could most trust him one of the people that was essential to him so martin began to look at me and stanley together. Looking at me as a right hand. Stanley was older but we for together. There came a time in june 1963 when martin was having a meeting with the sopel rights leaders at the white house and john kennedy took away from the meeting and walked with him privately in the rose garden. He said to him i have a message for you dr. King. We have some information that you are hiring communist and one of them is a soviet agent, as soviet spy. Stanley levinson. Host and jack odell. Guest jack odell has been an organizer. Jack odell when he appeared before one of the committees he had taken the fifth amendment and so forth. The difference between jack odell and stanley in relationship to martin is that stanley had told martin, had told him that he had been a member of the communist party and the at severed his relationship with them. Jack odell never told martin and it never became an issue but he never told him. So, when president kennedy revealed this thing about stanley i dont know exactly what martin said in the conversation but in effect he told me, he said i told the president that i knew about stanleys background. The president said they had to go. In fact to use the analogy at that time the scandal was a macmillan government. He said if you get brought down as a civil rights leader you will bring us down because we have a major civil rights bill so you have got to get rid of them. The very next day martin comes to new york. Its so important that he comes to new york and we are having a oneonone discussion. One of the most amazing thing is , he knew stanley before i did he says to me clarence do you think hes a communist . What, im saying . No i dont. He said i just wonder, do you think he rejoined the party . I said absolutely not. He said why are you so sure . I said stanley has an identical twin. Martin chuckled and he said i think i know. Aside from his wife beatrice and when he sees his identical twin he spends most of his time with me working on stuff for you and when he is not in his office he would be on the phone with me so i dont know what kind of party member he could be because when does he do at . He would have to start at 1 00 a. M. And 6 00 a. M. In the morning. That is not possible. Then i didnt know it at the time and this is why the fbi thing was so vicious. The fbi, they say stanley is a communist and king has to get rid of him but guess what . He approached both stanley and and knowing they had token with the party. In other words they knew they were no longer communist but one of them would resume that party membership. I often wondered whether they were angry at stanley because he turned them down and he wanted to continue to paint him as a communist. So that rate. Host that raises an interesting point clarence because now stanley becoming close to martin obviously with the whole wiretapping and surveillance and the whole intel set in motion at that point. July 13, 1963 until december, 1967 every telephone call between Martin Luther king jr. And Clarence Jones and between Clarence Jones and Stanley Leveson, between Stanley Leveson and Martin Luther king jr. , every telephone call was wiretapped. The conversations were transcribed. Additionally with respect to Clarence Johnson martin king every meeting that we attended together and every place that we would agree to meet or actually meet was under photographic surveillance. Host these repairmen show up. Guest yeah, right. Host the house is wired. Guest i was thinking, i used to drink heavily but it was controlled drinking. I liked martinis and during that time we would have Conference Calls. Martin would double up with laughter because we would have Conference Calls at 11 00 at night. Before the Conference Call would start i would say no hold on now. Do you have always of your equipment they are . I want to be sure you get everything down because this is going to be a long conference. Martin would say clarence stop with the theatrics. Lets just get on with it that i really believed it. Let me make sure to say so we can move on, i believe Stanley Leveson this jewish lawyer and in any other context when you look at the magnitude of his contributions to martin king and the Civilized Movement he would be given a civilian i dont know , he would be a white house honoree without question. Host he died when . 1979 . Guest yes, maam 279. The Civil Rights Movement personally i think the history of the Civil Rights Movement in relationship to martin king i think that stanley has not gotten his proper due. I think there has been a effort to rebalance history and not bring the contribution to the forefront. I decided that if no one else im going to tell the story whenever he i can and dedicate this book to stanley. It has taken 47 years to get around to this particular book. What hesitation and what made you finally decide i have to go ahead and do this book . Guest well the original hesitation with respect to what would martin say, i was concerned about correta and some of the king family particularly correta who i have Great Respect and affection. After martins death, i didnt see things the same way that she saw them in relationship to martin and i didnt see the relationship to the assassination. So i felt that i could speak more freely. The other thing is i frankly got tired. I just got tired of everybody lax and whites procreating martin kings mantle and his words, his speeches for their own. Perhaps the most current example of that and i was into the book when it happened. I couldnt believe that glenn beck was going to hold a rally at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial on the same day august 28, 2010 and do it within the context of i have a dream. Martin king does not belong to me. He doesnt belong to the Civil Rights Movement. Martin king is an American Icon but if you are going to associate yourself with him or even think to claim part of his mantle come could do it within the context of the truth and accuracy. I guess i got so tired of hearing all these opponents of affirmative action quote time after time i am opposed to affirmative action because i stand with dr. Came. I want my children to be judged by the content of their character and not of the color of skin so mark king was he was one of the earliest proponents of affirmative action. He understood the need. In fact if you read Lyndon Johnsons speech that he gave at howard university. Host we shall overcome. Guest no i mean the ones you cant take the person who has been in slavery and say we are going to put them in the same position as the starting line. Thats not fair. Guess there were people who couldnt get it. I do think and i have come to my own conclusions that racebased affirmative action is no longer an appropriate remedy. To the extent that there is going to be affirmative action, in other words what im saying to you is that the poor white person from appalachia may be entitled to affirmative action just as a poor africanamerican or hispanic person. Host to put it in an Economic Framework to one of the things people understand about the speech and you make a beautiful analogy in terms of metaphors like catching lightning in a bottle. In riverdale he comes up here and you were working on the speech together, or part of of the time, not all the time. So its finished and everything. Guest no, we did not work on the speech as a finished entity. What we did work on was ideas. We worked on content. He even considered the language that might be appropriate to express the idea. Ultimately you know i read things that says Clarence Jones the coauthor of i have a dream. That is not accurate. Every speech that Stanley Leveson and Clarence Jones worked on for Martin Luther king jr. They were Martin Luther king jr. s. They were Clarence Jones speeches. The materials which i am pleased to have contributed for this draft textual material to refer to to include in this final preparation i am proud that he included me but its not mine, okay . Its his and i want to make that very clear. There shouldnt be any more clear indication of my contribution than that. First of all i come from an Investment Banking group background. Before that i was a lawyer but i didnt have any experience in bail money and getting money from some rockefeller at the chase manhattan bank. They are getting bail money to take down to birmingham alabama. So i thought as i was using an analogy. Host talk about could. Guest in the opening paragraph i talked about you cant believe that we have come this far. I cant believe we have come this far. I think i actually said we have come here today. We have come here today to redeem, okay . To redeem the professoriat note that has been returned unpaid for insufficient funds. Host i cant think in terms of that promise very note because rockefeller guest thats right and we cant believe that there are not sufficient funds in the bank fall. I said i cant believe that there are not sufficient funds in the fault to redeem this promise very note. And then they added on some other things. Host to a certain extent the talking points outlined some of the language instead of that you have helped him with. Here he is now on the podium. You are off to the side. Guest im off to the site in the back. Host he goes along and he gets to the word despair where he gets in the ninth paragraph and then what happens in that speech . What happens next. Guest Mahalia Jackson and i said that already. Matt halia jackson had a special relationship. He would call up mahalia and say say [inaudible] she would sing to him on the phone two of the many hymns that were his favorite. Among them precious lord and the old rugged cross. So he had this special relationship. She is sitting up there and i dont know she turns to him and says tell them about the dream, martin. Tell them about the dream. I have often thought why did she shout that . Its like someone asking a couple of to go think my halia jackson interactive martin . He is reading and when she shouts that to him tell them about the dream he acknowledges it and looks out from the podium and i read his body language. I turned to somebody next to him and i said [inaudible] i often thought why did she yell that and for the first time just this week i think maybe she thought that she had heard him speak so many times before and this was such a special occasion and somehow i think she was trying to say to him martin you need to preach. Host there you go. Guest i think what she was trying to say to him she didnt say preach martin but she said tell him about the dream. I read his body language when she said tell them about the speech. He grabbed the podium and looked out at the audience and. Host that was the i have a dream portion. Guest that was the i have a dream phrase that was used before in june. Host and in chicago. Guest and at chicago but is the way he configureconfigure s the the i have a dream phrase. I think i say this and if i dont then i should have. Martin king besides being an extremely gifted orator as we all know using contemporary currency of technology ,com,com ma that this brother dr. King he could cut and paste in real time as he was speaking. I want to show you what i am saying. He is speaking in real time. When i say speaking he is mentally cutting and pasting and inserting into his extemporaneous oratory those things which he said he fourth. You know that is what does. Excuse me. When he finished i went up and i said you are john cole train. It was unbelievable. Host you can speak to that music thing. Guest but you know as i say its a combination. It was a beautiful day. Its the vision of 250,000 plus people. It was the excitement. You know how a. Philip Randolph Randolph you could feel it and he says. Host he was the last speaker. Guest we have come to the time brothers and sisters and now its my pleasure and privilege to introduce the undisputed moral leader of this nation, the reverend dr. Martin luther king, jr. Now by the way, let me go back. You know there was some discussion before the march on washington about who is going to speak. Host and how long. Guest and how long they were going to use beat. Those of us who were around martin and martin himself really felt but he certainly felt and all of us felt it was not appropriate for him to say i want to be the last speaker. Bayard russell raises it and a. Philip randolph and there some resistance to it. When they are talking about well come to one of the reasons you dont want to have Martin Luther. Is because he will tend to speak so long. I wont get into names but they were jockeying for position on who was going to be the closing act. Finally i looked at them and i said i want you to think about this. Do you really want to do any of you really want to follow martin . Do you really want to follow martin came . Why do you say that . I said he could you run the risk of people getting up and leaving. I said you dont you have a major concert. People coming to see ray charles you dont want to put Clarence Jones wear them ray charles is supposed to be because i cant sing. Apparently, just that question and he said what do you think . Everybody referred to him as dr. King. Its amazing how that question was the leveling ground. Do you really want to follow martin came . It was the right man in the right place at the right time. Guest as i see it and do you know what . Do you know what that speech was the phrase i have a dream which is a celebrated phrase, when you look at it from the syntax he is speaking in the future. He is speaking in the future tense. Not in the present tense. That is because martin king had more confidence and a greater prophetic vision of what america could be then the government had of itself. Do you know what america was before Martin Luther king jr. . America was like it dysfunctional alcoholic drug addict who has become addicted to racism and segregation and try different forms and nothing worked. Until this preacher from montgomery came along and he initiated a Recovery Program of nonviolent civil obedience. In multiple steps. Nonviolent civil obedience which forced americas conscience to publicly see the contradiction between the reality in which 12 of this population are people of color and the declaration of independence and our constitution. Its forcing america to see that contradiction. That was the first step to enable us to embark on the peaceful recovery. He was introduced in norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 among the paragraphs by i cant think of his last name now. The police commissioner. Guest among the things he said Martin Luther king jr. Is the only person in the western world who ushered in and lead a fundamental social transformation in a major country without violence. Host one of the things in the book though that struck me that i didnt know about was the measure on your part to copyright that speech. Notforprofit sake but prosperity. Guest i wasnt doing it so much for prosperity. It was cumulatively i had had it up to here with so many people ripping martin off. I had a sense that this i knew the event was going to happen but i had no sense that there would be a major speech. I did at have the sense that whatever he says is going to be used and exploited and i think at this time lets stop it right at the pass. So the limited copies that were made available i pulled it out and they put a little circle to be sure that, mop copyright was not terminated by the large distribution because if you have a common law copyright of something and its distributed without limitation you lose your ability to copyright it under the United States copyright so i did that. I didnt know how important that was until after the march. Somewhere downtown in my office all the record blaring out. The march committee made a deal with berry gordy of Motown Records and they have exclusive rights. I thought this was a motown record. I said this aint a motown record. I quickly got on the phone and call the people and they said this is a public domain. I said excuse me. My two law partners from Harvard Law School with their help and advice we went into federal court and got an injunction, that an injunction and request. The decision of the judge, he upheld it and at the beginning of october, i dont remember what date it was but i had formally submitted for statutory copyright protection. In fact the copyright order issued to martin is sent to me. The copyright is initially my name. In other words the owner of the copyright department, you can see it specifically addressed to me. I do a reproduction of that certificate so everybody sees it host one of the things that struck me also was a possible for Clarence Jones. The letters from earning him jail and you played a very significant and instrumental role in getting that, facilitating that letter. Tell us a little bit about that. So i gillen and say, martin, you have this serious problem. And he almost dismissed me. Well, i know. But martin, you need to understand how serious the says. Some people that you suggest i talked to, he really not that he dismissed me, but he did not pay serious attention to the problem that came to discuss with him. He needed to pay serious attention. He was scribbling. What is this . Have you seen this . What is this . A full page ad from the Birmingham Harold signed by eight or ten white clergyman which in effect told him to get out of town, he was a troublemaker. He sat down to write a response to that. And so i took the riding out, put it under i brought him in paper. He says, when you come in to visit me again, bring me some paper. I would bring from the jail what he wrote so that he could continue. I never looked at what he wrote. Well, yeah. I put it inside my paper. Host as a possible next book for you . People need to know. Contextualized. Guest let me just say, the letter from birmingham, alabama jail is really an extraordinary its almost like a manifesto in some ways. Okay . But what plumy away when i finally found the time to read it, he had no books. He had nothing. And im reading this. I would expect him, as a doctor and the elegy to know scripture. I would expect that. But he was quoting the philosophers, poetry. If you see me working on a speech. Host references all around. Guest trying to get this and so forth. Thinking to myself, dr. King was able to pull out from his memory bank. It was a masterful thing. My next book, i think. Host what are you going to do next . Guest the next book and thinking about is really something i learned from a Philip Randolph, negro participation. The working title is, no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. A new paradigm for the political participation of africanamericans in the 2000 total elections. Host folks, you heard it first year, and that think it will probably be as successful as what is happening here with behind the dream. You have an extraordinary journey. Having those years with dr. King , just prophetic as he was, i think, in many degrees. Such a pleasure to talk with you guest thank you so much. Thank you so much. The science is not actually tell us what to do. It tells us what we think is going to happen, and then we have to make choices about that. Because one of the implications of the line of argument is that the earth is always changing. The societies can change and adapt. Of course we dont know that is necessarily the case with the climate problem. And maybe something that we cannot adapt to, but if you take that idea is this the world the we want to live above . So many things we care about are endangered by the change is happening, and we have a choice about this. Yale University Lecturer is the author. A history of the 1963 march on washington which included Martin Luther king jr. Some i have a dream speech. He discussed the march and is booked at the new haven public library. This is an hour and ten minutes. Well, first of all, thanks to the New Haven Free Public Library for hosting this event and thank you to you all for coming out to hear about this glorious day in American History , the 1963 march on washington. And i would like to start by talking about the concept of heroes. The idea of heroism seems a little outdated these days. We live in a cynical age. We have seen our leaders, all of their warts, cnn fail, seen the kind of cynical maneuvering behind the scenes, not for the better good, but for political advantage and from monetary advantage and so forth. Heroism, i believe, is one of the most important elements of any kind of social progress. I mean and much more every day version of heroism. There is no better movement, no better moment in American History to find real heroes than the 1963 march on washington were all of the factions of the Civil Rights Movement were gathered really for the first and only time. This was a sprawling movement, involving diverse groups from all over the country, north, south, east, west camauro, urban. It involves School Teachers and ministers and housewives and students and laborers and farmers and everyone that you can imagine got involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Many of them, thousands of them, in fact, became heroes. I think that when you go to the mall on august 28 to 1963 youre going to encounter literally thousands of them right there, and i want to talk about a few of these and what made their great deeds possible. I want to start off by talking about a young man named James Lee Pruitt, 18 years old at the time from greenwood, mississippi and james lee priutt came to the march with a contingent of people from mississippi. Now, james lee priutt carried a sign with him, actually to. Homemade signs, and one of them said dont prosecute people for trying to sign up to vote. The others said a free vote for everybody in mississippi in 1964. For this effort, and bringing his own sign, he was approached by a security official said, youre not want to have. The march on Washington Committee had specifically set standards for how the signs would come out. The United Auto Workers paid for the signs. There was a group of people, the organizers had to approve every single sign that was carried along the march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. So there was reason for a Security Guard to approach him and say, sorry, you cannot carry a sign. James lee priutt was probably a little bit scared, a little bit intimidated, a little bit surprised. The kind of froze in a moment. Finally someone called out, show them the note. So he took out of his pocket and note, unfolded, and give it to the Security Officer. This is what the Security Officer read. Back in may jenny pruitt was arrested for taking part in a demonstration. He was convicted and sentenced to four months in prison plus a 400 fine for marching. He eventually ended up after a few days at the notorious prison just outside jackson mississippi and for those of you who know this of the history, it was one of the most inhumane places to be held. He was held for a total of 52 days. He was stripped naked for 47 of those days. His body was covered with grease for much of the time. His prisoners told him that it was poison and it would kill him he was given two meals a day and the russian was cut in half. Held in a six by 9foot cell with 13 other people. At one point he was in solitary confinement. The heat which reached 106 degrees made him pass out. As i said, he was finally released after 52 days of this hell. So the Security Guard redfin of and said, mr. Pruitt, you can carry your sign. Let me tell you about another person on the mall that day. Dorian live near was a student at jackson state, a protege of the mississippi leader of the naacp. She grew up with her sister and several town in mississippi where the only access to outside news was when the medicine man came and would leave behind a magazine or newspaper. Now, soon with a high school she got recruited to join the naacp inserted to make trips to this big city which is where she met medgar and get more and more involved in the movement. She was a major fundraiser for the Civil Rights Movement. What they did in those days, take people who were active and take them around to new york and boston and chicago and los angeles and tell their story about activism throughout the south as a way of raising money to pay for all of the activities of the movement. Along with her sister, she also worked in the movement and worked on the march on washington. She and her sister joyce shared an apartment with a nobleman named horowitz. A regular visitor of that apartment was a young swinger name a singer named bob dylan who was kind of sweet on abcafifteen. But dorie was not only active in the movement, like many other people she was willing to put her body on the line. When medicare evers was assassinated on the morning of june 12, his followers gathered for a major Memorial Service and funeral. Then they wanted to have a funeral procession passed the state capital of mississippi. The police would not allow it. Dorie and her fellow activists decided it would do it anyway. For that impudence she and others were arrested and thrown in jail. Now, after 13 and James Lee Pruitt were not the only people to put their bodies on the line. In 1963 it was the busiest year of the Civil Rights Movement. After the Birmingham Campaign there are more than 2,000 demonstrations across the country, more than 50,000 people were jailed, and some were killed. Now, why is it that ordinary people like this would be willing to put their bottom align . Why is it that they would expose himself to so much physical danger, lethal danger . One of the major reasons, and one of the major causes of the Civil Rights Movement Eventual Success was an man named a. Philip randolph, the man who brought mass demonstrations in to the Civil Rights Movement and, incidentally, also the person who dreamed up the march. It was his vision to have this math mass gathering. Now, around the time that a. Phillip randolph got involved in politics in new york in the 19 teens and into the 20s, the civilRights Movement basically had two different approaches to promoting the cause. One was what you might call the booker t. Washington approach. Booker t. Washington was a major educator, the first black figure invited to dine at the white house with president theodore roosevelt. And booker t. Washington essentially argued that blacks, in order to thrive, need to accept segregation and simply build their own institutions within their own world. It was shootout to fight the massive structures of segregation. Of course you have to understand, this was a time when lynchings were quite common. Another figure, w. E. B. Boyce disagreed vehemently. He argued that blacks in the Civil Rights Movement in general had to be much more aggressive and active. They had to become troublemakers, organize everywhere that they could. It was the boys came up with the concept. By that he meant that the Civil Rights Movement and the black community as a whole needed to identify the cream of the crop, the very best and brightest and get in to be a kind of vanguard for the movement, to lead the charge, to decide what happened when and to decide the tactics and strategies and so forth for the movement. So you have these two models of civil rights. Both of them, when you think about it, our elite models. W. E. B. Du bois focused on the talented tenth. Booker t. Washington focused on a small group of black Leaders Within the community operating within the confines of segregation. But along came a. Philip randolph, born in crescent city, florida. He moved to new york because you wanted to be an actor and appeared in many plays. His father did not approve of acting. He did not think it was immoral activity, and so his son gave in and gave up acting. He sent up to the streets and gave classic soap box oration about all of the issues of the day, economics, labor, civil rights, war and peace, you name it. He drew large crowds. He got involved in organizing. Have a couple of failed efforts to organize labor unions until he finally succeeded. After many years he organized the pullman porters. In this day and age we dont even really remember much about the pullman car porters, but at the time the Pullman Company was the single biggest employer of blacks in the United States. So organizing them would be a major coup for the black community. He had to endure violence. He had to endure threats. He had to endure his own people getting kicked out of their job. He was even offered bribes. He took a photograph of a blank check that was sent to him, and then he sent it back so that he would have proof of the brunt. He eventually succeeded and became a folk hero within the community. The lesson a. Philip randolph got from his activism was that the only thing that would help the black community overcome what he called a slave mentality or an inferiority complex was to get bodies out on the street, get bodies out in the town square, it bodies out on the picket line to thrust themselves forward, to give themselves or to assert their identity. Only by giving them physically into the mix could they ever overcome the inferiority if they suffered. So where did James Lee Pruitt and dorie get the courage and the hundreds of thousands of other people get the courage to come out and put their bodies on the line . One of the main reasons was a. Philip randolph who, by the way, at the time was called the most dangerous negro in america by the fbi coma a little bit later decide to use on Martin Luther king. That is not enough to put your body on the line. Yet to think intelligently and strategically and creatively. There were a number of people, many on the mall the day who thought and acted very creatively. The Civil Rights Movement was above all by highly Intelligent Movement it invented the strategies in politics we now take for granted. One of the strategies the Civil Rights Movement uniquely plot to american politics they did not invent but brought to a mass scale was the practice of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. The reason this was so important is quite simple. The state has a monopoly on the use of force, and monopoly on the use of violence in society. If you try to meet the states power with firing once you will be vastly overmatched. The only way to meet the power of violence is with nonviolence. There one of them Major Repairs of this was a man named pirate ruston, a protege of a. Philip randolph who organized the march on washington. And what he argued was that nonviolent resistance was critical to any kind of success of his Civil Rights Movement for tomb two reasons. One of them is what questions are aware of. But the other is much more strategic. Will you do when you resist power and do it non violently and except the consequences of it is essentially withdraw consent from the state. I do not accept the legitimacy of this power that is putting me below. And so if enough people withdraw consent the regime crumbles or at least that part of the regime, that law can crumble. The only way that the apartheid terrorist system which existed for the black community for much of American History, the only way that it could crumble is if enough people with drug concern to. Of course you do not have to participate in a constitutional convention. Any time we stop there red light or agree to pay our taxes or do anything that involves cooperation with the local government or State Government or federal government, any time with cooperate we are essentially giving tacit consent. The genius of Bayard Rustin was to realize if you withdraw the consent the state loses its powerful hold over you. If there were a number of people at the march on washington who understood this and acted on this. One was a man named jerome smith, 23 at the time of the march, from the warns, and he had been involved in civil rights activism at this time for 13 years, since he was the grand aged ten growing up in new orleans. Now the way that the bus operated in new orleans and many other cities at the time was they had these things called screens that they put between the seats. They fit into a slot. If more whites got on the bus then moved to slow further and further back toward the back of the bus. Any time awake moved the slot for the back blacks had to give up their seats. One of the every day indignities of being black in the south. Now jerome smith in 1950 when he was ten years old pickup one and three to the ground and said, im not calling along with this. The driver threatened to have him arrested. A kindly old woman took him aside and said dont worry, i will take this boy to see his father and make sure he gets the spanking of a lifetime. As soon as the bus driver drove away she embraced him and said, keep on doing what youre doing. That is exactly what he did. He was one of the freedom riders. His greatest contribution, i believe, happened in may of 1963 and played a major role and the Eventual Success of the march on washington. Jerome smith was one of a handful of people invited to the apartment of attorney general robert f. Kennedy in new york city. It was a group organized at the last minute by the author James Baldwin and included some of the leading lights of black intellectual life like lorraine hansberry, kenneth clarke, harry belafonte. They all showed up at the apartment to give a state of the nation for the black community and the United States. After welcoming his casts Robert Kennedy recited some of the gains that the Kennedy Administration was planning for civil rights. He went down a list that included hiring more blacks than any previous administration, having more executive orders for civil rights, support for a number of different civil rights initiatives. When he was finished he opened the floor for discussion and question. The senior members of this group turned to youngbear ron smith and said, look, mr. Attorney general, we want you to hear directly from someone in a fire on this. Jerome smith was sitting right in front of Robert Kennedy. Robert kennedy was sitting on a chair. And the first thing that he told the attorney general was, mr. Attorney general, you make me want to puke. And needless to say Bobby Kennedy was shot. That was just the beginning. He proceeded to tell him that if the u. S. Had gotten involved in a war with cuba he would not fight. The attorney general was aghast. This concept of conscientious refusal for military service was a little bit foreign to him. He looked around the room at the older members of this gathering for a little bit of support. He wanted them to put the young man in his place. They nodded and said, thats right. He is speaking what we want. This meeting lasted three hours. At the end of it robert f. Kennedy walked out physical shaken. So did James Baldwin, the author who organized the whole event in the first place i talked with a man who took him to a tv station for a live interview, henry morgenthau. And he told me that James Baldwin was so shaken up, so physically to stir that he just said, henry, you need to take me to a bar and we need to get a drink. In refused. When need to take this interview. And in the interview fall plan was still physically shaken out. This was a Pivotal Moment for the summer. It was only a few weeks later that president john kennedy announced his support for the most overreaching civil rights legislation since reconstruction in a speech, june 11th, he gave the most farreaching statement of support for the Civil Rights Movement as a moral cause, has an american cause. There had never been a speech as personal rights in American History by president. Now, jerome smith was speaking intelligently. He was getting to the heart of the matter, which is that segregation and all people systems, in fact, depend upon the consent of the people. It might not be that blacks voted for segregation. They did not. They did not vote for anything, most of them. It might not be even that a lot of white people voted for segregation. Half the country was kind of aloof from the whole issue. But by going along with a system that allows it to happen, you are giving tacit consent. And what jerome smith was telling Robert Kennedy was, i am withdrawing my consent. This is very much along with Bayard Rustin. Let me tell you about someone else and acted with extreme intelligence. A young girl named barbara john who lived in a town called farm bill, virginia. It was in the county called Prince Edward county. In the years following the brown versus board of education decision all of the south organized massive resistance to integration of Public Schools, and no one was more massive or resistant than the state of virginia. In fact, virginia closed down virginia passed along in 1959 saying no county or city needs to provide Public Education for anybody. If you want, you can shut down your School System. Back in 1951 barbara joan was concerned about the inequality of School Facilities with black and white schools. What happened was in virginia at the time you were only required to provide schooling from grades k8. After that you could send them off to work in the fields or farms or factories or to do nothing. There was one School System in virginia that did offer k12 education for blacks, and that was in Prince Edward county. That is why the schools were so overwhelmed. And so robert john intelligently organized a boycott of the school until blacks would get equal facilities. She went with her group of supporters to the naacp asking support. They said, we will support you, but we wont support for separate but equal. We will only support if you join this lawsuit that we think will make it to the United States Supreme Court and become a litigant in the case that will become known as brown versus board of education. A 15 yearold girl helped to unleash a whole series of events that eventually led to the crisis of the schools being shut down in Prince Edward county from 1959 until 1964. Many of the people who went to the march well, not many, about 100 verso orzo volunteered in Prince Edward county that summer to create summer schools for all of the kids could never been to school before there were some who did not know how to hold a pencil or what the alphabet was. They had not been exposed to even the most basic teaching and learning. And number of people who ended up on the mall that day sleeping for most of the day, it turns out, but many of those people were essentially children of the movement that barbara helped to create. So the Civil Rights Movement first had to get physically involved, get people to put their bodies on line. Then it had to come up with intelligent strategies for overcoming extremely long odds against them. They were a vast minority and had no opportunity to use any power at the ballot box. When they try to exercise any kind of right or privilege there were terrorized. So in order to overcome this situation to have to first put their body on , second come up with a smart strategic approach which Bayard Rustin was the leading figure for. I was not going to be enough. I want to tell you about a couple of figures. One was daisy bates. One of the leading supporters and organizers and helpers for the little rock nine. The Rock Central High School was desegregated. The National Guard was sent by president Dwight Eisenhower because governor or fall far this did not want to see Central High School desegregated. Theyre kind of everyday adviser, counselor, a teacher, comforter. She had been involved in politics for many years and became the point person to help these nine children get through the terror of walking to School Every Day confronting physical and emotional. She became one of the heroines of the movement. No, daisy bates could have been excused for being hateful. Just after she was born her mother was raped and murdered by three white racists. And she was putting put into the care of a couple of stepparents. As she grew up she saw her stepparents taken an enormous amount of abuse themselves. She saw it with her own eyes. She went after stepfather and said, why do you accept this abuse . Why dont you hate these people into the steve . And he said quite simply and this is a comment you will hear, you return hate with love. You can hate and violence. You can hate the intimidation. You could hate the and fairness. You can hate the lobbying on the side of the races, but if you hate all of that you have to do something about it. She dedicated her life to working in a Civil Rights Movement. The key point is you return it with love which is a profound concept. There was someone else at the march that day. He came down from kent ohio in his little vw bug. They sat out on the mall and listened to the activities. He held an umbrella. The sun was intense. Edwin markham with the king got to a certain part in his speech where he said what i think are the most important for words, not i have a dream, but on arent suffering is redemptive. Harold later told me he felt the surge of electricity go through his body. It was as if he had been touched by the most profound thing in his life. You remember back to the story his father used to tell him about his grandfather who was the landowner in alabama. One day he was sitting on his oars on his own property. He was shot dead by a white farmer who was jealous and angry that a black man could possibly own anything. And win his father told him the story about how his father his grandfather were shot down in cold blood he essentially told harold of the same thing that daisies stepfather told her which is that you cannot hatred. You cannot fight hatred with hatred. She and harold likewise took that to heart. Now, for a lot of people, the highlight of the whole watch march on washington was the famous i have a dream speech. I agree, it was the highlight. As i said before, i would like to emphasize four different words. Honor and suffering is redemptive. And when he uttered these words, he was trying to do something as he would say soulful. He was trying to hold the movement together. This movement was pondering and facing unprecedented pressure from the outside. This was the summer that the fbi decided there were going to go after Martin Luther king with everything they had. This was the summer when literally tens of thousands of blacks were thrown into jail, some and conditions as bad as James Lee Pruitt for the temerity to march in stand up for basic human rights. This was the summer also win the younger blacks in the movement were starting to get impatient with Martin Luther king and his emphasis on nonviolent resistance. They started to listen more to people like malcolm x who talked about by any means necessary and also a guy named Robert Williams who had already fled the country one of the leading apostles of fighting violence with violence. There were a number of people involved in monroe, north carolina, some big battles there. He was he was finding and malcolm was finding a lot more followers who were arguing no to nonviolence and no to integration. And at the same time that there was this movement on the left, and more radical edge of the Civil Rights Movement to repudiate the very core of the movement, there was growing pressure from the right, not only developing plans to go after the movement, but movements throughout the south among the governors and the state legislatures to essentially passed constitutional amendments that would take the right of congress away to legislate anything on sole right. Slowly moving toward passage of the time. It would have essentially created in the Confederate States of america. There was a lot going on. He wanted to hold the movement together. The core of the movement was, of course, nonviolence and integration. To do that he had to somehow reach his followers who had been so abused for so long who had walked into pill your clubs and water cannons, carted off to jail, left there, terrorized. He had to somehow appeal. And in what i consider to be the core of his speech and the core message of he said i know you have come here out of great trial and tribulation. Some of you have come out of marriage. Some of you have come here having suffered physical abuse, economic abuse, and every other kind of indignity. He said, but are want to tell you, honor suffering is redemptive. Think about that. Here was a leader, have real leader who was talking truth to people. He was not telling them it would be easy. He was not telling them that there was a safe place to go. He was telling that to go back to mississippi, alabama, louisiana, georgia. Go right back into the middle of the violence and the terror. He was telling them that if you do then there will be a redemption. You might not see it, but there will be redemption. Think about it. He was telling them in the sense that progress cannot come from the beneficence of the people in power. Theyre going to fight back when you want to take away. If it was born to be easy there was no need for the movement in the first place. This is hard work. He insisted that under arent suffering as redemptive. That adds what i think is the third core element of this great movement. Always much more powerful because it taps into things that once there no one can take away. He took seriously the command to love of neighbor as thyself. He sometimes joked, the tsunami now have to like him. And it was this extra element, this third element, along with bodies on line and thinking with high intelligence as ever has been brought to bear. These elements were on display. I want to close the couple of quick comments. I started talking about harrelson. I would argue strongly that every one of these people i mentioned is a hero, and there were thousands of other ordinary euros on the mall. Ive always told a few stories. One of the important things to remember is it has to come from ordinary people. It cannot come from the professional activists. Martin after king was a professional activists. They did all kinds of great things for their people and for this country. It had to be the ordinary people who were sprawled out in front of them. I just heard the talk last night , a psychologist argues about ordinary everyday heroes and says that in waterford good to happen you have to prepare to be a hero. Ordinary people have to prepare to be a hero the extreme situation, and its almost always going to be an unpredictable moments, theyre ready to jump in and do the right thing. The small contained upwards of 500,000 people, the official estimate is 250. More independent estimates say more like 400. Filled with ordinary heroes. That is why the march on washington was so important. For the very First Time Ever all america got to see the glory of the Civil Rights Movement. Now, i understand that we have a little bit of time for questions. The way this works is that because cspan is taping this, you have to talk into a microphone which the dew is going to be passing around. Okay. So he is there with the mike. Anyone who wants to have a question, i am happy to entertain. I was going to ask you with the title came from. There are a lot of great anthems, and that is one of them. Atop that it really kind of captured the termination to move forward no matter what. No matter what cancun there was no going back, no going back to terrorism. No going back to anything except for basic equal rights for everybody. I thought that song captured the defiance and determination that hundreds of thousands of people display that summer. Won over here. Our love your boat. I think it is brilliant. I am wondering what you as an author went through in terms of a changing or non changing image that you personally held, what he thought, what you thought as he reported it and went out and rode it and what you think now. Well, you know, i have always been in all of Martin Luther king. I remember when he was shot i was seven years old. I lived in philadelphia at the time. The Philadelphia Inquirer included a big glossy color photograph. I take it over my bed. I dont know what it was because i was too young to understand. I dont know what it was the was so captivating. He has always been discreet source of inspiration. I also have always known that he was human. He had his own frailties, floss. He did not always to the right thing, not always as courageous as he should have been. But to me the thing that is most great is not that he had so many great quantities but that he was able to overcome his own inherent limitations. When he was a boy his teachers said there was not really anything special about him intellectually. He could not ride it all. He almost never spoke. You could tell back then that he had this determination. He did not know what it was. He wanted a little different. It was not until after he finished college and went to the seminary just outside philadelphia, it was not until the end that his vision for himself as a leader and a civil rights activist really jelled. It was also not until then that he stopped hitting a people and it is hard not to hate people who are pressing. Growing up in atlanta, even in the comfortable circumstances where he grew up, in dignitys more or around. What amazes me so much is that intense striving to go to the next level, to not be satisfied with how much you know, not be satisfied even with your own philosophical point of view. Her round the time of the montgomery bus boycott that was a nonviolent movement. Cain did not really understand what nonviolence ones. He had our cards on his porch, pistols line around, and it was not until Bayard Rustin came down from new york that he was called the american ghandi. It was not until he came into his house, moved into his basement to live, not until he got there and he really understood not only tactics but the power of nonviolence. Up till you one more thing. I love this man. The talked to a guy named Floyd Mckissick chair near his bother with the speaker for their congress of racial equality. The leader was in jail in louisiana at the time. So mckissick stood in for him. Now a state legislator in north carolina. He told me that his image of Martin Luther king, jr. Is this gentle father figure who would taken by the hand, walking down the street, buy him an icecream, played with him, tickle him. That is a sign of what people dont see. Multifaceted, always, always interested in growing beyond whatever he was. Anything up front . To use the to questions. Our age as the ford of hair wasnt . If so, what . Account. Well, you know, its hard to say the cynical part of me wants to say yes. I dont know that. I dont know the client needs of hair was. I no there are all kinds of people doing all kinds of creative things. Starting schoolrooms. Colleges like yale and all over the country people are just dying to work and come to the intercity and teach. So theres an idealism is a little bit of that enthusiasm resonate touting . I suppose, but that is a pretty time consuming way to pack you resonate. There is a wellspring, a real desire to do something to make the world better. I think we live in an age where it is kind of hard to do the right thing, hard to have the time to develop yourself. I think we live in a society of greek distraction, a society where we are so unbelievably materially welloff that we have no idea how well off really are. We are dissatisfied when we dont have a new car when we dont have the latest computer were flat screen tv, none of which really matters. These things are really distracting and take your mind off of both how lucky you are on a daytoday basis and how much report there is to do. So i pick above all else we live in the age of distraction. That undermines that really powerful urge the people have to do something good. By the way, this man was at the march. [applause] my recollection is that coming out of the 50s, the whole concept of protest was not legitimate and was regarded as subversive. Do you think the 1963 march played an Important Role in beginning to change that so that you could actually organized the demonstration without the feeling that you were being subversive and might end up in jail or be beaten up by the cops . You were. But i do believe the kind of conventional wisdom about the march on washington is that it did not make that much of a difference. It was a nice way for the different factions together. There was this great speech. A lot of people remember, but in the long run it to not make much difference. That was kind of my point of view. What i have come to realize is it made a huge difference. This was the first time, the first time that all america, to see the Civil Rights Movement unfiltered. It was the first major unofficial event covered live by national tv. And when america was able to see who these people were and how decent the war, and it was palpable. When america was able to see how decent this movement was and how uncomplaining this movement was and have determined to put their own bodies on and have determined there were to love their neighbors. This is all corny. When americans saw this i believe it transformed peoples understanding did it do it instantly . For some yes, for others now. But it made a major difference. A couple of other important facts. Behind the scenes there was a battle over whether there was born to be a woman speaker. Ten officials. The current legitimately complain that they were not represented. The bunch of of the people. And there were told by Philip Randolph and capping three, look, you are represented james farmer represents to. John lewis represents to. There was eventually a compromise. She was given a short little speech. A group of about eight women were asked to stand up and down. But i believe that that played a major role in the emerging womens Rights Movement because there was this really strong, sharp, palpable notion. Hell is it different for blacks to be claiming their rights which they deserve. How is that different from women being able to claim their rights . It became pretty clear pretty quickly that it was not right. And there was another inch and incidents. Only speculation. I believe that the march on washington is a major influence in creating the Free Speech Movement which began that next year. One of the main leaders was involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Ive still not been illdefined out. In any event there was a big battle behindthescenes. The Catholic Church threatened to pull all of its priests and nuns and followers of the march because they considered his speech to be too incendiary. A marched throughout the south to shatter the system of segregation. That was too incendiary for the Catholic Bishop of washington. He threatened to pull out. Eventually he did change his speech. There was a big free speech issue. I was very much on the mind of every activist. The newhall was calling on. In new exactly what was going on i believe that his first speech was filled every bit as much as his second speech. It contributed greatly to the Free Speech Movement and as a result the holstered movement and eventually the peace movement. So this spawned all kinds of things. Can i prove that . No. It had a major influence. This was an american politics at its absolute best on full view, not only the u. S. , but the whole world. This event was covered by satellite throughout the world. So they saw it in africa, asia, europe. There were going to see it in the soviet union, but it went too well. At any rate, it was seen across the world. That, in turn, had a major impact on people in Colonial Systems who were thinking about their own struggles. Martin luther king was a major influence for the Democracy Movement which had a very interesting role on the trajectory of the vietnam war. So this is a signal moment in American History. Anything else . This . You touched on it a bit, but how much to you go into it in your book under the clash of the class is between the leaders, just to be there to support civil rights . When you say class you mean class is. Okay. Well, one of the saddest things that i came upon in this research was a memo that kind of summarized where the planning ones. I got all of the records. I went through them page by page. One of the saddest moments i had was finding a memo where there were listing all of the speakers at the march. One of the lines said unemployed worker. It was crossed out. It was an affectation that use what he wanted to get peoples attention. He said that children, the only thing that matters is having as many people on the mall as possible. To show that this is a grand movement and we are not going anywhere and we get our basic rights. But i think about figured that was probably a correct decision. What i have loved to seen an employed worker get up there and speak from experience . It was one of those compromises that the organizers made to continue moving forward. It was so important for the unemployed worker. These little tensions existed throughout. It was a kind of traditional civil rights approach to more the more radical things. There was all kinds of tension. They were all united because they wanted to make this thing happen. They also realized that the United States was really in danger of kind of blowing up. We kind of think that our times are bad. There is a lot of ugliness, tension, hatred that exists. But it really was exceeded by those times. What enabled them to get through it was really the heroes that we all know about, philip ran off and Martin Luther king and john lewis and all these other people. But also the other heroes that were on the mall. They were really ready for anything. They are the people that reacted when danger approach them. Over here . Thank you. Mccarthyism had not died at that point, unfortunately. Could you explain to what effect they had a role that they played and how that role is given . We were these stewards that were kept in the back. Is very interesting. When the idea for the march verse started to develop in december of 1962, what they were thinking of doing with having a centennial march for the emancipation proclamation. It took effect on january 1, 1863. They were thinking, okay, this is the great centennial year. We need to do Something Like that. They got together in december and they agreed that they would try to get some kind of march on washington going. Philip randolph had organize one and then he called it off because frank lin roosevelt, the president , caved in to his demands for a executive ordered banning discrimination against blacks in wartime. So he wanted to do this march in the worst way for many years. And they kind of planted the seed. By the time that he had met randolph, he had already sent stanley a lot of lights on a fundraising mission. And he told him that i want to go to the left wing or organization. To get money. Here is why, he said. He said kennedy will want to control this thing. So when you talk about georgia the afc if we go to either of these two guys, they are going to go back to john f. Kennedy. So we would lose control of the thing before we even got it going. So he told him to go about to the left oriented labor unions and get money and to start feeling out, you know, who would be interested in doing this. As it turned out, it was the main guy, who was a critical part in this. For example he was on the side of the Catholic Bishops who are against the speech of john lewis and they kind of pressured roy wilkins and john lewis to make sure that they accommodated catholics. They didnt want to see this whole big fashion people lead. So he was a liberal by any stretch. But he was also terribly concerned because of a handful of phrases and speeches. Organized labor was oftentimes deeply racist. Although walter had been talking about this for many years, there was still no significant white membership in the leadership of the uaw at this time. So he had clay feet, but he had not come through on his promise to integrate the labor movement. It was a hard thing. A lot of labor was really concerned if. Much of it was racist as well. Now, is there anything else . You described yourself when all this was happening as the suburban philadelphia at the time of the march i was a 2yearold from chattanooga, tennessee. That does not matter to me. My question is what made you so interested in the subject . You know, i really dont know. But i will tell you that i was already interested in this in this event and incident happened. But when i was young, i was born in Hamilton Hospital in chattanooga, tennessee, in 1960. I was born and the county hospital. My mom gave me a vb book i remember looking at it and seeing i mean, i knew intellectually. I knew it factually. But it did not sink in until i saw that. But the feeling that i think i have had my whole life has been so important. It just swelled as i did the research for this book. But the feeling i had my whole life is thank goodness that was better than okay. It was the law. To think that i was better because i had white skin and to think that i deserved better facilities because i have white skin . We have a lot of problems with race and poverty and classes. So i dont mean to minimize this at all. It was because of these people and i think that i have always been grateful for that. My gratitude just overwhelms me at times as i was doing this research because, you know, it was referred to as a black movement. But there is was really no such thing in one sense anyway. It was a way of redefining what it means to be a citizen of this country and it was redefining how we look on our fellow citizens. I did not hear people using racist words or make the argument that whites are better than blacks. I know people say that. But i didnt hear it. I did not grow up going to a white school, like i went to school with a lot of blacks and hispanics. So growing up in a kind of postracist society, even though it hasnt solved all the problems, that is an incredible gift. I think that i knew that all along. I believe that it is what pulled me forward and tugged hugged me. But it only grew in intensity as i worked on this research. Do you get involved in Civil Rights Movements . A lot happened in this country. Here is what i think about the civil rights. After the march on washington. This is what i would like to think about civil rights going forward. To take a couple minutes to get it out. Very important topic. But after the march on washington, one interview took place about what would happen to the movement. In a famous article was written called from protest to politics. And in these remarks and in this article, he argued that as soon as basic rights were granted, as soon as the legislation passed, the movement itself was kind of over. Now that the people were given basic equality under the law, now what politics is about is bargaining for your piece of the pie. So rather than demanding this all along, the basic rights of humans, the politics shifted from making universal demand to bargaining for your share of the benefits. And as soon as you move to a bargaining style of politics, you lose a lot of moral elasticity. Grants for job training, bilingual education and housing and all kinds of other things. Its not that that doesnt matter, but the kind of giveandtake politics as opposed to universal demand and no compromise kind of politics. That is what we have been dealing with since this period, roughly 65, 68, however you want to trace the end of the Civil Rights Movement. We have become a nation of bargainers benefits. But i believe is that we need to make a move back towards a discussion about what are the universal values that we need. We need to think about politics and policy. We need to think about it in terms of making sure that everyone has access to certain basic things. Let me give you one example. Education. I know that it is controversial among some people, especially among the teachers union. But i believe that the single most important thing that we can do for civil rights is taxfree and open choice. There is no reason at all that a black child or a poor child or any child should not have the same access to education is somebody coming from a world of privilege. When someone moves from iowa to new york, my father went about three or four months ahead of time specifically to find the best School District he good for me and my brother and my two sisters. In other words, my family were very lucky to have school choice. So now how can other people not have a choice. I believe that it was a fullfledged movement where every single child, every Single Family in the country could select whatever school works best for them, that we would see an unparalleled driving of educational excellence. You could pick other examples as well where others can move up front again and we need to get away from the kind of backandforth bargaining difference. Because i think that that has gotten us into this and it is where people are also confused about what the goal is. If the goal is to create more benefits and create a more correct system. I would like to see this move from protest to politics towards universal basic access. Are you pleased with what you have done with your education . Yes can you educate the world . Do teach everybody what are they doing with that education and all the things that are happening in the world right now. I do know about a lot of things because ive been through a lot. On every economic survey, people make far more money, they have far more choices in the kind of choices that they can have. Ive made more mistakes than i care to admit the night country and i care to admit. Ive also done a lot of things right and a lot of it has to do with me getting a good education in Public Schools and getting a scholarship and i am eternally grateful for the education that i get. Basically what gave me was choice. The more education you get, the more doors that open for the less education you get, the more doors that close. So that is the big thing to me. Would you get involved in the civil right movement. On it and translate about what im doing now. Ive developed a system of writing, which i call a writing code, which i believe can transform anybodys writing a matter of days. Im talking to some people in boston about getting a group of High School Dropouts together so that i can teach them what they did not get in high school. Writing is not as hard. But what it does do is that everybody can enjoy the basic skills of writing. One of my motivations for doing this is putting new powers and tools into ordinary peoples hands. It involves me putting more tools into more peoples hands. Thats right. Understand. But they are tearing about this in many different forms. Okay . Everybody has their questions answered. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. [applause] thank you for coming out. Almanacs washington journal, we will look at president obama the purchase area and international reaction. I guess comes from the American Enterprise institute. Christine allen will discuss the efforts on behalf of lowwage workers to raise minimum wage. We will also be joined by nina easton for fortune magazine, she wrote the cover story of the magazine after a systematic tracking and surveillance device. Washington journal is live every day at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. A document by Leonard Freed and the photography of transport is discussed along with his book, this is the day the march on washington. Good afternoon. Welcome to the library of congress. I am john cole, the director for the library of congress, which is the reading and book promotion arm of the library. We are very pleased to be cosponsoring this program with the library photographs division. The center for the book was created in 1977 to help congress stimulate Public Interest in books and reading and literacy and writings. We are a private and public partnership, with the Library Congress paying our five salaries that we have raised with private money from the beginning to help support the array of programs and projects. Our center for the book exists now in every state. We have a broad audience today, and i challenge you to look up and learn about the books in your state, which work at the state level in promoting reading in libraries. Here at the library of congress, we promote the National Book festival is a library of congress product involved in many parts of the library. It was in its 14th year coming up in this year will be held on september 21 and 22nd. It also includes the first Young Readers center in the library of congress which is located in the Jefferson Building and it is the only place that focuses on the reading interests of Young Readers. Last year we had 40,000 and 10,000 visitors so you can tell that we are working hard not only to raise awareness of Young Readers, but to celebrate reading in all ways. One the ways that we celebrate is through talks such as this and this is in our books and beyond author series. It is a collaborative effort with other divisions of the library to show off books that have been published based on the resources or the projects of the library of congress and it is a special treat to work once again with the princeton photographs division. I would also like to hold up to you to see this book that has come from this library of congress in a way that you can learn about right here in todays programming. Today our program is the film not only by the library of congress for our website, but also by the span and we are very pleased to be able to share this program with the entire country, both through cspan and also through the library of congress website, which now hosts more than 250 of these books and beyond programs. With the filming i ask you to turn off all electronics and we will progress from the Panel Discussion to if we have time, a question and answer session and conclude with a book signing in the foyer of the room. You will have a chance, for the discussion in the questions and answers and you will have that opportunity at the end. There will also be a special display of these photos between one and 2 00 oclock. We have to move along as we can get to all of these features. Id i would like to introduce the mastermind of todays event, werner curtis, who i learned was one of four curators in the photographs division. Im sure that they are all here. It is my pleasure to turn the program over to werner. Lets give her a hand. [applause] thank you very much, john. I have to say that we are all in this together. I am not the mastermind. Today we have bridgitte freed who is the widow of the author of this is the day the march on washington, which we are celebrating. And we have the distinguished doctor Michael Eric Dyson and paul farber. All of them are here with us for a special kind of conversation. I will tell you a little bit about each individual weekly. And i would like to tell you that bridgitte freed matt Leonard Freed in rome. In 1956, he married a year later where they lived in amsterdam. They decided to leave for life in the United States in 1963, just a few months before the march on washington. I dont think that they knew what it was about to happen at that time. Bridgitte freed developed and printed the photographs of Leonard Freed for were 20 years. Including those in the internationally acclaimed photographer. In addition, she now lives in new york in the Hudson Valley and she was born in germany. After living in the United States for over 40 years, she recently became an american citizen. [applause] doctor dyson is one of the most influential and renowned public intellectuals. He is an essay contributor for the book. He published over 18 works of scholarly influence, including navigating the color lines from 1996, i may not get there with you, debating race in 2007 and april 4, 1968, the death of Martin Luther king and how it changed america 2008. The pioneering scholarship has had such a profound effect on americas ideas doctor dyson is a professor at georgetown and has cited one of the most powerful africanamericans by ebony magazine. He has been called the ideal public intellectual of our time by writer naomi wolf and a street fighter into the tie by nathan mccall. A pretty good name, i should say. You may know him from his many guest appearances on msnbc, as i do. It has been my pleasure to work with both bridget and paul over the last several years to bring the photographs into the librarys collection. Paul was a student of professor dyson and later his research assistant. Currently he is a phd candidate having just completed his dissertation in American Culture at the university of michigan. His work has appeared in the Journal Journal of criticism and other outlets. He was named today in speier 100 list for the use of technology and empowering social change. Hes working on a biography. Let us welcome the distinguished guest and learn how in august of 1963, a change to the ongoing worldwide struggle of civil rights. [applause] [applause] how did this book started . Many people would ask and i would say that it was president obama in his first term. He said that i am here because you all have marched. What did i think america was . Well, it was all things to me. My new jewish family and lots of americans, aunts and uncles and cousins came here from amsterdam to photograph the black people. I have no photograph of myself for my sevenmonth stay in america, but free pictures of the grandparents and cousins. Leonard was very frugal. Nothing, he sent him i wish i had a picture of myself of the march on washington. I only have my eyes. And these eyes looked and looked and i would say all of these faces were there at the march in america for me. And then the speech of doctor Martin Luther king, i have a dream. The speech moves over the heads of all those people in the voice was strong. He reached everyone. I had never heard anything like this. [applause] [applause] what a powerful testimony to the multiple means by which people contribute to history. There is no picture of these two because they sacrificed every moment on film for the betterment of this nation. That is more than an antidote. That is part and parcel of the very fabric of american conscience that Martin Luther king wove a golden thread into. His majestic oratory that day as was indicated as powerful and luminous testimony to the ability of words to move us in that speech to redeem us and of rhetoric you call on the higher purposes in the name of ideals for which we are willing to sacrifice. How appropriate, then, that bridget testifies about the madmen in the spirit of her fallen husband whose shutterbug, whose aesthetic glory has given us visual testimony to the majestic sweep of the human soul when it seeks to be free. Freed from its constraints. Freed from the narrow obligation of hatred. Free, Leonard Freed, even in his name, gives us a powerful emblem of freedom that we all seek at the end of the day. I am honored to be here with his wife paul, who was my assistant and when he was my assistant, he was my boss. [laughter] he is one of the most thoroughly organized young people that i have ever met and i am as proud as a father to have my jewish son right here. [applause] he has sprung from not only the loins of his family, but from the powerful collective imagination of people whose love and dedication marked his life as well. My wife, his mother, she is here rhetorically and symbolically his mother. [laughter] i dont want to get into no baby mama drama. [laughter] is photographs are not only the emblem of the calm dignity of the quiet beauty of black people and their allies who are part of the basic fundamental dignity of voting or existing without the artificial constraints of segregation. That day when they listened to the majestic words of Martin Luther king jr. , echoing from not mighty mall in washington dc, who knew that five years later he would lose his life in memphis. That on that day this soontobe marker would conjure the norms and ideals and beliefs which is the foundation of american democracy and he was reminding america of what it should be. He gave america a blueprint of what it could be. And he called it an to the vision of the sweet and powerful romance that the American People have always had with the ideals that nurture us, but which we have not always perfectly obtained. So leonard offers photographic testimony to these peoples dignity and to their quest for decency and they would dress in their sunday best, at least in 1963, in a nation that frowns upon their lack of humanity as to the legitimacy of their claims to be fully human, these noble souls marched to washington dc to tell the nation that despite the repudiation of their fundamental dignity, that they were indeed dignified and blessed with the beauty of moral purpose that could never be exhausted by the infernal and hateful resistance of clark, the sheriff in alabama and those across the nation and the south who did not understand the what these people possessed was mightier than money and deeper than the rivers that flowed beneath this nation at its founding. They captured an internal spirit of resistance in the name of spirit and the faith and the family and of the quiet dignity of the american dream. Martin luther king jr. Cover that dream powerfully that day. His sweet cadence gave voice to a people who knew that at our best we belong shoulder to shoulder with the great figures in American Society that despite the refusal to acknowledge who we are, and indeed we then were as people. That are irenic would appeal to the nation, even a president , one soon dead, another rising from the heated center of this out to be calm our advocate. Because the president was not in control of providence. That there was a god who spoke from washington dc, now from our christian experience, for all of the writer at of the religious roots, that we rejected as evidenced by her own behavior that seemed any god that we could claim to be our own. These people remind us that ultimately a cosmic sense of purpose and to which they tapped would be enough to see them forward for Economic Transformation and leonard had captured that resistance and that relentless spirit that had assigned power that can never be, if you will, put out by the forces of men and women who failed to see the light. I am so proud to be associated with this project. And i am proud to be with his wife who freed us from this memory and is now documenting with aesthetic glory to beautiful and clam dignity and the wise purpose of human beings when they are in search of freedom. [applause] [applause] [applause] it is as much of a challenge to be on a stage with people you respect that the new teachers in one form or another and to be here is just such a great honor and it also sets up a challenge as to how do you follow dyson and Leonard Freed. I think about the march on washington where a rabbi prince was getting up to speed and he was following a great folksinger. And he starts before his written remarks and said quite simply that i wish that i could sing. [laughter] so i summoned him here to say thank you, deeply. Good day. I would like to share a few perspectives and a bit about the history and memory of the march, which we are now in the 50th anniversary year of this great gathering. Before i do this, i want to make sure that i expressed deep gratitude to a few individuals here, her colleagues are part of the Photograph Division and we thank you so much. Plan number one is the editor of this book and she had such a creative and kind hand and brilliance in shaping us. I want to make sure to name her. Including greg who is there. The yankees and we certainly think bridgitte freed. Thank you so much for your wisdom. I thank you deeply for this opportunity. So the 1963 march on washington photograph is among one of his most elegant and animated of a large body of Civil Rights Era photography, which was a work as a whole that captures the prevalence of Racial Division in america, the decade following the 1954 mandates and legal segregation leading up to and through the landmark civil rights legislation of the mid mid60s. Four of the photographs from the march were included in this book, including this one. The march was just one story amongst dozens of others that included protests and parades in beauty pageants to understand the underpinning and the drive of this work, which is to be explored some of the greater context. I would like to draw the attention is not just an isolated event, but he said that we go through him to understand what led him to the march, and in what ways they brought him forward in his work. He was born in 1929 in brooklyn to russian jewish immigrants. By 1960, she had been living in europe on and off for a decade, and it was very much a part of wrestling with his identity as an expatriot american jew. During his time that he was working on a book of photographs , it focused on jews living in germany and the traces and thomas of the holocaust and he ventured to berlin in august 1961 to check out the scene where there was word that awol was cut into the middle of the city. With citizens of both sides, he wandered close to the boundary of the city, neither on assignment or with a predetermined vision. He ended up finding the most with his camera. He snapped a photograph of an unnamed black soldier standing at the edge of the american sector freed confirmed that this image was powerfully a single shot and taken out a middle distance in blackandwhite, freed stands with his subject between a set of trolley tracks on the wall behind them. This encounter haunted him. And it beckoned his return from exile. Confront segregation and racism. This image would end up being the first photograph in blackandwhite america and as an annotation in the book, he stuck us out in the point of departure and he writes that he and i are to americans and we meet silently and we part silently. Impregnable, it is their on the trolley tracks, reaching back home and back into our lives, and guiding us wherever we need. Its a setting out from this point, he aimed to represent and encroach upon americas racial buffers because after this Opening Image with its multiple boundaries, freed would bury his own perspective that measured distance between a photographer and subject to coach and acknowledge the humanity and shared existence. He photographed many africanamerican subjects and also embedded within one interconnected symptom of race. And he does so by capturing and representing his subject in the field of vision, what they see, how they see each other to make visible the terms and conditions of the segregated society. In the summer of 63, he and his family were photographed in new york city. When you look back to the sheets of this period, see the button with the hand shaking closely and that. Leonard and bridgitte freed brought to several days for the event. It drove encamped outside the city. On august 28, they arrived in washington dc at dawn. Freed begin his day capturing scenes on his handheld camera and he walked at the base of the Washington Monument and to the streets surrounding the theater. Several blocks into the epicenter of the march, he made photographs to passersby and he envisioned this as a prelude to the later gathering at the Lincoln Memorial. Because on that day, he is tapping into the deeper current of historical memory through on the spot studies of geometry and geography. Freed wanted to bring the social layers of architecture into a shared frame. To see this from a panoramic perspective was also the ability to Pay Attention to a crowd of individuals and really to walk alongside and amongst them. It also offered him a spectacle not to marvel from a far, but to explored this march at its ground level. He meandered through multitudes and the resulting images attest to his thoughtful photographic eye, as well as his active but work throughout the day. But if we return to thinking about the role of how this happened, we see one of the only statues of the former president included in this work. It happened to be the same frame, which is the only photograph of the days keynote speaker, doctor Martin Luther king. Much of the march on washington features him either upclose with a crowd behind him. But here, the reader and former president from afar can both be seen in the distance, atmospheric and collective. He also pivots, capturing back shots of the crowd, thousands of marchers separating them with looking behind him. This image serves as the complex and collective portrait of the march on washington at the Lincoln Memorial. And within a year, he crossed paths with king on october 31, 1964. Freed had gone back to europe and then returned again and king himself had just gotten back from europe. On the strip in was announced that he had received the Nobel Peace Prize and this is one of the first public gatherings in his honor. He did great content devoted a full day to the photography, including a speech at a local synagogue. This photograph is included in blackandwhite america and it has taken on such prominent status across the parade goers nearby. King is the centerpiece of the photograph. It we need to think about how he worked with the crowd around the man now, we can consider where he was standing. Was he close enough to reach out and touch or do we see an arm reaching around him one another is pictured to the left. But when we consider the deliberate inclusion, we have to take a step back and really consider whether leonard was close, what his perspective was, and if we think of them as part of the scene were being in the way. This was delivered, of course. Freed for content fully believed in printing the photographs with no cropping. Unlike the black soldiers in berlin, this is not a famous shot, but chosen out of famous perspectives. And in a way he reminds us of the ability to mark social distances between the collectors around him, and to represent these divisions and to challenge them and remind us of the persuasive power of coexistence and there is more to say about the approach in 1965, and especially after his assassination. We can think about this as being an ongoing subject of his work. And this is a shot of the commemorative 20th anniversary march. And here we get a sense of a call to galvanize around his image. But we also have his absence truly mark again and as doctor dyson has powerfully written help april 4, 1968, we get a sense of the cascading forward and freed on 10 freed reminds us to think about these things. So as we close, i would like to put forward my hopes for the day, and to do a small part to Carry Forward the history to summon a few significant names that we need here with us. While the dream is echoed and envisioned and properly so, it served as the iconic memory of the march. I also hope the photographs remind us to revisit the full message that can put forth and to speak out for the 250,000 plus marchers. These veterans of the Civil Rights Movement and all of those in their hometowns and all of those inspired from that point on. So they can fully understand the march on washington is the greatest gathering toward democracy on american soil and to understand it is a noble blueprint of social change that we still have with us. In other words, it is a living archive to see this book as one of the many potential tools is so important. There are many names to name. More as we approach the 15th anniversary this august. But i say now that my first and second grade teacher in philadelphia who attended the march on washington, she was a righteous quaker woman and shared stories with us about her time there. When she put forth all of us was how did you understand what your convictions are in being not just present with them, but being present with other people in sharing them. And of course we see the name doctor Martin Luther king, whose words and actions include ongoing illumination and complex consideration. Julian bond was a young leader who carry forth the spirit of the gathering and brought forward the Civil Rights Movement along the lines of race and class and gender and staved as a moral compass for us. It remained with this, and this year as we mark the anniversary of the march, a month later we will also warn five decades since the brutal bombing of the Baptist Church in birmingham. They deserve our commemorative consideration in our hearts are still heavy with the loss last month of another young woman of color from chicago who was gunned down as another victim in the citys epidemic of violence just days after returning from marching here in washington dc for an inaugural parade and the inoculation of barack obama. We bring them forward. Symbolic than for those of us can only be guaranteed further with greater forms of action beyond the malls massive boundaries. To carry us forward towards tragedy, we say the names of doctor and mrs. Dyson. Scholars and leaders like them have taught me and so many others so much. Especially about intellectual inquiry closer to head in the heart and always between people. Two the 250,000 plus attendees of the march, whose names we dont know well enough, we hope to know more of you in the future. We want to hear your stories. And we want to be able to record them and speak them out ourselves as they will nourish our histories, as well as her pathway forward. Finally, Leonard Freed who spoke out and affirmed the profound beauty and significance of the gathering as collective action and democratic transformation took place. With his photographs would sing the past, we say his name, and we express our gratitude for all of the contributions. This is the day. Thank you. Wednesday night on the tv, books about the Civil Rights Movement. Discussion of the book carry me home in 1963. In a discussion about letters from the birmingham jail and special wednesday Night Edition of booktv beginning at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Coming up on cspan2 come a discussion from the brookings institution. The more booktv on Martin Luther kings i have a dream speech with a 1963 march on washington. This announces the opening on thanksgiving day. It seemed to me such a shame when we came here that there was nothing of the past in the house. Hardly anything before 1902. Another president ial powers there and all of the history of that country and every piece of furniture. I thought the white house should be like that in our lessons with us. As mothers we are concerned and we pledge to do all we can possible to stop this. First ladys influence and image. Looking at the private lives of the women who served as first ladies in their own words. Starting next monday with Edith Roosevelt on cspan and cspan3. The economy is discussed and how it may be negotiated between the United States and the european union. According to a report released by the brookings institution, a trade deal to unilaterally lower trade tears. This is one hour and a half. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Hello, i am the director of the center and im delighted to see so many people here just one day after labor day break