Transcripts For CSPAN2 True South 20170225

Find offensive. [applause] thanks. Go ahead. You start. Figure out what to do. So much of this book is based on the interview, interviewing people. I am going to be up front. I am really intimidated by this guy. I thought i was intimidated by you. I want to give a little bit of background. I never really met john. I heard of jon else. He is this ghost. My first job was with chinese american filmmaker, legendary filmmaker and i came on the tail end of a series called bean sprouts. The crew a crewmember they would talk about jon else as the white guy that passed the asian litmus test and so i never met him but heard of him. I was working with wayne weighing in monaco and john was her, wayne congratulated him, winning the macarthur fellowship. I had no idea what it was at the time. Wayne said it is called a genius grant. And then i was actually in started working on a film that was actually because what we did is we gave don a camera to just film his everyday life for a full year of his senior year in high school. The style and everything were making the producers quite nervous. I like the final cut, but people werent sure how it was going to fly. I cant remember who it was but johns name came up as somebody to look at the film and give his feedback or stamp of approval. We sent it to jon else and got a call from you. It was very short. It was great. The second one was i am never going to ride on a city bus anymore and look at a kid the same way and the third one was the rap music at the end sucks, take it out. We kept the cut as it was but took out the rap music. Anyway, the next deal, brought me on to uc berkeley, john followed in marlon riggss steps and he brought me to do some consulting, got a firsthand look at the Henry Hampton backside methodology. I had been there for quite of a wild. We were sitting around talking and he said i am going to write a book and i dont know about you all, but that is the last thing that crosses my mind that im going to write a book and here it is. So i want to introduce john, he is going to read a couple passages. It is amazing to be here. This is the party i always wanted to have. Half the people who worked on it are here, the Mother Church of books, what a great way to bring this book into the world. You may have seen part of eyes on the prize but i will read the first few pages for what the series was about and the extraordinary man, Henry Hampton, the creator of eyes on the prize who i worked with for ten years and learned how to be a better teacher, a better human being and better everything. This is four pages, see if i can make it through this. Through the winter of 196465, selma, alabama in a state of siege broken by sudden explosions of violence and on march 7, 40 some days. And africanamerican, Henry Hampton, set out on broad street together with his friend reverend james reed and 1000 other marchers led by Martin Luther king. The goal was to deliver a Voting Rights prediction in montgomery. A quarter mile ahead, hundreds of heavily armed Alabama State troopers placed by sheriff jim clarks famously brutal party. Hampton was on Church Business and by his unitarian employers in boston, strikingly handsome and athletic, a leg brace worn since childhood with polio. Henry had a hard time keeping up with the group, and what will happen if he fell easy prey to white folks in the heard. Henry realize, black citizens of selma, as if by magic for the protective circle around him moving toward the troopers on the other side of the bridge at his pace, called it my own personal honor guard. 48 hours before, black men like Henry Hampton would never have a voice in alabama, savagely beaten, bullwhip, gast, hundreds of peaceful men, women and children cheer from the sidelines. Outraged clergy across the nation entered a call from doctor king, leapt into action and henry, the lay director of information joined hundreds of northern ministers. The new march was on. Headed for another confrontation, crossing the bridge they saw the helmeted troops across the highway during the march to come forward. Still on the bridge, beat sean lewis unconscious, suddenly stopped. And with half a dozen ministers, did not present a clear target to a sniper. Henry hampton did not know the weight of the destiny. And hours before they stop at the county line and fight another day is desperately needed the federal courts and president johnson, leaders were loath to violate a federal judge injunction against marching on montgomery. With a sinking feeling, henry saw a turn around and leave the bewildered marchers who laid their lives on the line through the state capital selma is what had begun as a mass expression of courage and moral witness before the same force as it smashed the blood he sunday march. Also avoid pissing off the president. Henry didnt know what to think that he suspected the moral muck of National Politics the principal clarity and and pragmatic politics. And they live to fight another day. And in that jumbled and strategical moment. And someday someone will make a great story. In 1986, Henry Hampton met the curbside in boston. And production on eyes on the prize, and puddle jumpers over georgia. And in a miserable freezing rain. And we parsed and to pick up the largest bottle i had ever seen. Unpaid lab bills at the roof of the office, half the staff in angry revolt over late paychecks to step up with the money to compete the civil Rights Television series. And and little of the filmmaking he loved. And in the last few months his post polio syndrome had begun again. In happier times in mississippi and alabama, had been a lark. And eyes on the pies, talking about his keep tiffany in selma and my own days in some of the same winter, the sublime power of freedom and small but mounting victories with the freedom struggle in south africa. Martin luther king could have been elected president and asked where king got the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice. Around the night i followed him up the stairs to his black side office was books and folders stocked hired a picture of doctor king on one wall, gandhi in the corner, his great grambling mess of a desk at the convergence of force fields and spread out doesnt rejection letters from corporations and foundations, sank into his chair, why not give us money . And his 6 part civil rights theories and producers, researchers, editors, archive materials with a full head of steam, running out of money. It should have been easy. And the first attempt to produce the great story of civil rights with commercial television that ended in humiliating failure. And taking him with that. He knew and i knew if you laid off the staff on monday morning, turned up the heat, closed the doors, the screen would expire forever. Start the prediction letters, and and gone to his bank. And and critical two weeks, and the Tipping Point grant. [applause] that is our guy. Why write a book . Documentaries are too hard. I never intended to write a book in the Civil Rights Movement, nor when i was working with black side and kept very poor notes but henry died in 1998 and five years ago i began looking around and i thought eyes eyes on the prize, there should be an operating manual, how to do this, how to make these giant complex Television Documentary series about equity and equal justice. And someone writing a book about eyes on the prize, no one was. I started out. Fortunately, extraordinary Henry Hampton archive at Washington University in st. Louis, looking at the uncut russians, the interviews we did. Interviews for eyes on the prize, look at the company tax statements. And there were plenty of legal papers, i was able to go back in my own files and find legal depositions from legal cases i was involved in in is to be and georgia, pieced it together. I came off of an extremely difficult rain recommend documentary that ended in utter failure. I thought writing any book has to be easier than making any film. How wrong i was. It was a different process. It took four years, not fulltime between 4 years of working at it. It was a different animal, a very different animal. You can pack an enormous amount of information in a book that can never get on screen or a film but you are up against it when it comes to direct sensory experience. I tried to write a chapter about freedom songs. This organizing muzzle, we walked into cannon fire with enough freedom songs and on the page a bunch of words to songs but in a film you can put those folks in that church and sell alabama on the screen and you are transported. But writing a book is refreshingly solitary. You can do it anywhere, sit in the cafe in Silicon Valley and go to la and sit on the beach and write. But i have to say i missed the collegial collegiality of making films together. And also the physicality of making films is something. You are in and out of vehicles which first light, into peoples houses in alabama, blasting the next location, setting up cameras, you finish up by 9 00 at night, barely make it back to the hotel and if you are lucky a coffee shop is not close it if you are not lucky you have something in your room and turn around the next day and do the whole thing. I dont know what i will do next, trying to write another book, they are both incredibly satisfying. I have a question. You guys have the book, you can read the text in the Henry Hampton, true south Henry Hampton and eyes on the prize the Landmark Television series that reframed the Civil Rights Movement, then there is the title, true south Henry Hampton and eyes on the prize the Landmark Television series that reframed the Civil Rights Movement and then there is jon else. What is interesting about that concept is actually reading it is the structure of the book as i see it. It has got all interconnected. Henry, jon else, the Civil Rights Movement, in the true south, you interweave it together and eyes on the prize. If i was going to attack anything like that i might just do that. Just do civil rights or how did you come up with that structure . Should have published just the cover. Would have been a lot easier. This is not the original title was messy history and viking publisher says know what is going to buy a book called messy history. I Henry Hampton and eyes on the prize the Landmark Television series that reframed the Civil Rights Movement. I put a question mark after it, a bunch of northerners making films about civil rights in the american south. We had some southerners working with us but mostly people from california and new york. I wanted to raise the question. I managed to sneak in one sentence with a . True south Henry Hampton and eyes on the prize the Landmark Television series that reframed the Civil Rights Movement. That was not the photo i wanted on the cover. They said it is going to sell. Fine with me. My only problem with this photo it is it all mail and this movement to the south was driven equally by men and women. I started out the book without myself in it. I am not one to put myself in the foreground but it suddenly seemed disingenuous. I had dropped out of college in 1964 to go to mississippi to work on Voter Registration and not go back to college, stayed in the south, so i would and a partisan when i joined the staff to make eyes on the prize. It seemed odd to write the story without acknowledging my own involvement in both of those. I love doing complicated stories. I am cursed with wanting to tell three or four stories at once and one of the things that made the book hard, it is interesting, in film it is easy to do flashbacks and audiences understand what flashbacks are and audiences forward and the Technical Work of writing was difficult beyond belief. It jumps around in time, all over the map 1955 to a discussion about the murder of 1985. And the filming of tills cousin in 1987, back to the time i first learned about it in 1963, all over the map, was difficult to pull off. Henry is a largerthanlife figure. Can you talk about what drew you to him . And a little bit of his back story too. The back story is crucial. Speaking of drew. I could call out a lot of people. I want to mention two people, one person worked with us from the beginning of this project were getting rejected by everything and one person who worked at the end and the back is timely who was incredibly gracious and fun to the Early Development of eyes on the prize and the early funders were gods gift to us. On the other end is drew takahashi and others in San Francisco who suffered through making our series logo and still have not been paid. I will give you a free copy of the book. It is interesting. When Glenn Michael died, great boss for all of us i thought Henry Hampton, if you took the smarts and warmth and combine that with the young steve jobs, that was Henry Hampton. He was the smartest guy on the room, the warmest guy in the room and the fiercest visionary in the room. I was working on true south Henry Hampton and eyes on the prize the Landmark Television series that reframed the Civil Rights Movement and doing a lot of documentary work with steve jobs, completely schizophrenic, commuting back and forth to boston. Harry was a lot more fun to be with and a driven similarity between the two. He was born in segregated st. Louis, missouri, in the 1940s. The most privileged life a young black man in segregated st. Louis could have and his father the director of the homer phillips hospital for color, surgeon, and henry had it all as a young man, the africanamerican version of norman rockwell, this young man, catholic high school, if you integrated schools at the time in the st. Louis, first was the murder of emmett hill, and the young and, 14 years old traveled from chicago to mississippi, and storeowners wife, the store owner in the sharecroppers home, to beat him severely, shot him through and a fisherman found his body a week over. Would have vanished in this vast lost souls in mississippi of which there are hundreds of thousands by that time. And the black press in america, med began to notice. And hundred reporters attending. The equivalent of Michael Brown in ferguson and eric garner in new york and the National Media attention is the equivalent of social media today and henry was rattled beyond belief by the picture of emmetts savaged face, i never heard of emmett till in california. Henrys entire generation was the till generation, henry discovered its mission with the murder of emmett till and that accounted for what he was by the time i met him which there was the grade of a great polio epidemic in the United States and the salt vaccine in trial form in his office but didnt want to use it, couldnt move his eggs. Came out of the hospital two month later as a quadriplegic, worked his way with one leg and walked with a the traumatic events when he was a 15yearold with a stunning adulthood. The first time he ever felt the other, first time he felt rejected and that informs the rest of his life. He was a bench. He was a guy that inspired literally hundreds of particularly young filmmakers, it is no secret he tried to make eyes on the prize for commercial television, launched it as a giant, 26 part series for abc, a complete and utter failure, a train wreck partly because neither knew how to make large historical documentaries. This was years before ken burns, years before any of the series we take for granted. He didnt know what he was doing. When it was launched in 1985, he was wise enough to go to Public Television which did not make ratings demands, he hired a bunch of experienced people and spent a couple years after that the second part, busy history from 1965 to the 80s with black panthers and nationalism and affirmativeaction. And in sacramento, california. Heading off to yale. I grew up in providences. In sacrament of, california in the 19s like the plains of texas. I set off and got accepted to yale university, i was so out of my league at yale. John kerry was striding across campus like he was already secretary of state and i felt so dumb at yale and ill at ease and out of my lean. At the same time the early 1960s, two things were happening, television was new, Television News was in our face before the vietnam war and the Civil Rights Movement was exploding, waves of change were about to break over america and we were cloistered in this dorm room in the middle of winter, we turn on the television and these freedom riders getting beaten up and shot to register to vote in mississippi and contradictions in american democracy were so vivid and obvious to us with a civics teacher. Everything he taught us is flying apart, the wheels were flying off america. You couldnt not do anything but the trigger was an extraordinary man named bob moses was organizing a project in mississippi, the first civil rights worker to work in this in the heart of the iceberg, rural mississippi was the toughest territory for the Civil Rights Movement. Bob came up with a plan, they were not making progress registering black voters in mississippi but being killed and arrested by the hundreds. Bob was arrested and beat up and this is all happening in the dark down here. The nation doesnt know about this. If washington simply do, what was going on down here, it would change, legislation would get passed and we got to bring the spotlight into rural mississippi. You bring white students from colleges up north and when they coming to mississippi the National Press will follow and this will be a National Story and we can take our case to the Democratic Convention in 1964 and a lot of us went by firebreathing part of the Civil Rights Movement was a church led movement was i wake up someday and where is the church . Where are those great thundering progressive voices, abernathy and king, ministers of the gospel. A whole bunch of us in mississippi, in the fall of 1965. Barney frank was in the group, lieberman was in the group and i went to the summer of 64 and the National Press paid attention to us and are enough there was a grizzly, you know, prophecy come through, there were three young men kidnapped and killed, two white civil rights workers from the north. James chaney, a young black man from mississippi. I landed in meridian, spent the summer in meridian, by that time. Being down there, the contradictions became more apparent in the dorm room in connecticut. At the funeral of james chaney. I signed on to work for the student Violent Coordinating Committee and international office. I got assigned to selma. Can you talk a little bit about henry has a background, you have a background, how you came together. We have both been in selma, and in 1985 i was working with colossal pictures on the specialeffects unit on top gun with cocacola commercial and being a big science series for Public Television. Sarah worked on that. I noticed in a cpb bulletin, got printed newsletters that came in your mailbox, there was a series to be made about the Civil Rights Movement. I called the phone number and this friendly guy answered the phone, Henry Hampton, he said if you are ever in boston come on by and see what we are up to. The pbs science series nova. And i went to wgbh where henry and his staff had a big production meeting about to begin eyes eyes on the prize. I walked to the back of a screening room, watching state troopers and marchers and i came from working in atlanta and john lewis down the hall from my Office Getting beaten and in the dark watching that footage i had to work on eyes on the prize. This is the guy i wanted to work with. I Henry Hampton and we went out for a drink, he offered me a job. I started working on eyes on the prize commuting to boston on the top or of a leaky that was our office. Can you talk a little bit about that experience how henry developed the black side method, thrown right into it just as he was this is affecting it is a second try and he knew it. It was do or die. We knew this was the last chance to do it and if we succeeded this would be the first and for the moment the definitive documentary about civil rights and we knew people were dying, people who were the warriors in the Civil Rights Movement where passing away. Henry hamptons, one of the reasons he formed a Company Called black side and one of the reasons he set out to solve the story of the Civil Rights Movement is he was uncomfortable with whites alone telling the story of the black Civil Rights Movement in the previous work had been done by virtually all white production crews for white executives in los angeles. There were big debates. Judy richardson, one of our mainstays, judy was an africanamerican woman whom i had known and worked with in the south and he was on the staff, several of us were activists on staff, should partisans be doing the history of the parties movement judy argued eyes on the prize to be done by an allblack production and what a statement that would make. This is a fine piece of work done by an entirely African Americans team. It would be astonishing. It would be a real landmark. Like allblacks, and he argued because the civil rights it involves white people and black people involved men and women and the National Audience he was desperate to reach a mainstream audience, constantly we look at the rough cut and he will say what will we think of this . Really wanted to reach all americans. He felt the films had to be made by all americans. And each 1hour episode of eyes on the prize directed by two people. A man and woman and black person and white person. That became known as the black side method. He wanted people to hash it out. We have secrets from one another. When i say police i say one thing and use a police and another and i say law, i say one thing, you say another. We have secrets from each other across great gaps of gender and race and he wanted combat. He wanted people to work this out in the editing room and it was brilliant. What it meant was there was no single truth to any one of these stories was what happened in montgomery, alabama, men and women who organize the bus by god, there are many ways of looking at that story and he felt this was a way to get it, several different troops at once, incredibly in efficient, cost a fortune. Bottling antacids. Henry confided in his sister, the black side method was driving him to his grave. It was called the abrasion of good mine. We try to do that at the graduate school of journalism, get done young documentary makers in the room and work stuff out. At times it was simply abrasive. There were times when there were a lot of screeching tires speeding away from the building and you could hear yelling coming out of the editing rooms and henry finally tired of it. Eight years later by the 10 series, we were doing the Great Depression or something and he said i cant this is one person in charge, one director. The company, throughout its entire life, read half men and half women, two thirds black and the rest were everything, asian, white, you name it. I tried to carry that method over into my teaching, a lot of students alumni running documentary programs around the country, they try to do that. Host the other thing i found interesting is before you guys even started, a school, session which you guys were brought on, what a lot of you, not even knowing what the specific job was, a great leap of faith from the crew. You had to go with this guy. Henry hampton had a force field there was irresistible and if you amplified his force field by the force field of the Civil Rights Movement you were sunk. There was no way to escape that. Device by the black side of it. The amount in Television History used a lot of talent from the bbc, it was produced at wgbh and it is an amazing, tragic epic about the vietnam war. Ken burns is about to release a new version of that. Henry said they have been retold by new filmmakers every generation. It is absolutely true. And the Vietnam Television program, and on the vietnam series what they did in the early days trying to invent giant historical series on television, these were incredibly expensive and complicated. It is supposed to be easy when you turn the television on. It took five years to do it was one of the devices that was employed from the Vietnam Service was a thing called school. If you are going to do a film about the Civil Rights Movement or the Great Depression why would you not call on the expertise of folks spending their lives studying this subject, not to put them on camera, henry never went with historians on camera, he wanted to be to be told by people in the movement, by cooks and maids and sharecroppers. If you werent there, that was the. All the historians, we were 20 years out from the Civil Rights Movement, the first golden age of the movement, the Civil Rights Movement, it takes its upss and downs, in 1965, we were 20 years out but a fair amount of scholarship, a fair amount of time to look back at what this means so we brought the books, a lot of the activists came to school, we sat around for two days in rooms at wgbh to figure out what is here. What is the force of violence . Eyes on the prize, whose eyes is that . What are the themes of this series . It was energized, if you are over 50, and that too is expensive, i wont say in efficient but burned up a lot of time and money, there was a fixture on the black side, nobody can afford it until people dont do it anymore. And graduate students have advisers which why not call up the woman who has been studying it for 50 years, you would be crazy not to. Be change in the book, the struggle of making eyes, parallel or similar to the struggles of the civil rights and i may have overstated that. Eyes on the prize was easier than winning the right to vote each interesting to look at the two offices was i was working in atlanta, georgia in the mid 60s. I worked at black side and the two offices were startlingly similar, they were threadbare, they were tenement buildings, the boss, James Foreman and Henry Anthony came clean the restrooms on the weekends and in both buildings, the Civil Rights Office in the south had to worry whether a crazy guy was going to throw a bomb, somebody is going to take a shot which we did not sit at windows of those offices in georgia. Didnt have to worry about that, nobody went to jail for working at black side and went to jail for problems early, Corporate Tax prices. Didnt have the same layout and a lot of the same people were wandering the halls, Judy Richardson who is illegible is working with us, bob moses came down the hall at black side, alexander who i first met in mississippi in 1964, one of our advisors on eyes on the prize, the greatest similarities between my recollection those days and the david boston making eyes, with a constant relentless struggle for money. My job at sncc for a while was the northern campus court made her. I was 20 years old and i was supposed to be raising all this money with northern campuses and it was incredibly difficult. I raised money for eyes on the prize which i volunteered to raise the funding. I was very proud, got the state of mississippi to spend taxpayer dollars to help pay for eyes on the prize which was the episode about why the state arrested me 20 years before. The other similarity was zealotry. The neck office at black side office were both crammed with zealots. In a good sense. Orlando and i shared the apartment upstairs, and very soon left beginning. And you walk down 5 flights of stairs and work all day, diet of activism and bloodshed, and messy history and get a bite to eat and work again and go to orlandos apartment and go back downstairs and work again, we called it the uboat. On a bad day you call that the slave ship. He would never leave. All we did. The same is true in neck, driven by the same craziness. There is also this tenacity, parallel between Voter Registration and 5 years later trying to get people to go on camera and tell their story or an or even find those people, it feels like the same drive. It was similar in its intent. You have to understand when i was trying to register voters, by your presence on the front porch of the sharecroppers house meant danger for them which california i was going and they were stuck at the end of that road at the mercy of the Deputy Sheriff and the sheriffs would often follow behind us and talk to folks and sometimes come along for us. They risked everything to talk to us. Years later, trying to get veterans of the Civil Rights Movement to talk to us is a curious process, and the ordinary parishioners, the crooked timber of humanity, the maintenance cooks, on camera in the forefront and everything that came before understandably concentrated on doctor king and his charismatic leadership and concentrated on the notion of washington coming into save black folks in mississippi and he knew perfectly well the Civil Rights Movement was driven from below by tens of thousands of ordinary people who decided to take charge of their own destiny in their system of american apartheid. Of 26yearold a local leader who joined the thousand local people each and nobody had written a book about those people, no one interviewed before. It was easy to find bob moses and Ralph Abernathy and diane nash. We had a huge research team, and looking through its, and mrs. Blackwell, neither one of these arrested 12 times in 1965. Mrs. Blackwell, orlando interviewed, Michael Flynn shot the interview, mrs. Blackwell had been an activist organizer in 1964 Voter Registration and she had been arrested 12 times by the local sheriff. Orlando bagwell went to 198520 years later to interview about her of experiences. In 1985 Anita Blackwell was the mayor of myers or mississippi. Those of you who are documentary filmmakers i give a shout out to the sand found people. When you are doing interviews, traffic is a problem she lived in dyersville, a little town of 5000 and there were trucks constantly going by. Africanamerican woman Anita Blackwell registered to vote 20 years before picked up the telephone and called the sheriff and told him to stop on the block. She could be interviewed about why the previous sheriff arrested 12 times a dangerous story, everything was great. A lot of it ended happily but the monster sleeps with one eye open that struggle did not end in 1965 and a lot of games made by mrs. Blackwell and others in the midtolate 60s as we all know im being undone. Important to note, i wish Orlando Bagwell, one of the most brilliant interviewers i ever worked with, we are not getting a lot of sleep. We were on short wages and short rations and we would pull into nashville, tennessee, orlando would make a point to go the night before and talk for hours. He would talk for hours, walk around town, so when we finally sat down and got the cameras set up, he would talk some more. The sun is moving, ladies changing and we will get to the next interview and orlando never about itself to be rushed. He completely walked into the moment with whoever he was interviewed in an astonishing interview with medgar evers in which she described being at home lying in bed, shot to Death Outside the door and it was only after hours of sitting with her while the crew was getting more nervous and spread out photos. And locked eyes and she did this in one take, he and she together did this in one take. White people and black people. He wanted to give a space for resisters to talk, candid conversation, very hard getting folks to talk. We tried hard to get guys who murdered him, didnt get them additions. To get everlasting credit the head of the White Citizens Council in mississippi granted us a very candid interview. A little weird for me sitting there as a former i was an outside agitator. But he was very forthright. He didnt try to polish things over. The sheriff in birmingham, alabama, bill bailey, who was there, dogs and fire hoses, jordan wallace himself gave an interview. Black side was a multicultural multiethnic option. A lot of black and white people working together and the question came up if we are going to interview the head of the Citizens Council in mississippi do you want to walk in with an allblack crew or allwhite crew . The next crew . Henry and judith and Judy Richardson argued persuasively and i think correctly that our job was to make people comfortable saying what they want to say and not make feel they edit their speech. Perfect timing. [sirens] not make feel they had to edit their speech because of who was in the room. That meant an allwhite crew, very seldom. He used an allwhite crew. The black producer, lou smith and michael chin at the holiday inn which a couple white guys, just weird like pro was in effect. Mister simmons, head of the council speaking more candidly and that was the aim. Jordan wallace had an integrated crew. He thought he died and gone to hell or something which it was a weird interview. Putting together these with black veterans, medgar evers a bunch of active leaders in the civil rights were trained in the military. Be change a great question is one of the many of eyes on the prize is nonviolence. Nonviolence succeeded during the classic Civil Rights Movement was i was late in understanding nonviolence was a tactical move, philosophical commitments which a lot of quakers involved, unitarians. You are absolutely right off a lot of these leaders of the Civil Rights Movement had been veterans, they knew their way around guns, served in korea, Henry Hampton knew his way around guns, kept guns in the home. When i arrived in radiant, mississippi, slept in Andrew Goodmans bed, where he lived which showed where the pistol was and the ammunition next to it. One great triumph of the Civil Rights Movement is people like andrew young, and doctor king, and a host of others were able to convince tens of thousands of black folks in the south who had every reason to shoot back, every reason to shoot that convinced that that would not work. In birmingham, alabama, a lot of instances where crowds decided to start throwing ricks and bottles and the Movement Leaders were charged right out between the cops and the demonstrators and say, you know, its not going to work. Its a great feel, a guy name howard had influence in henry and he talked about revolutionary patience to employ nonviolence. The other piece of muscle that people forget is the music. You know, the one thing that two things that police could not overcome was nonviolence and freedom songs, drove them crazy. Loaded a whole bunch of prisoners and drove them to state line and dumped them out and said, i couldnt stand their singing. Yeah, yeah. You mentioned a fellow named robert williams, i would love to hear whats not in a documentary, you know, what got left out of this series and there are a lot of things that got left out in eyes of the press starting with the 10,000 other civil right stories from the 1960s. Its ongoing today. And in the decade that we covered, there were literally thousands of actions in thousands of small towns in cities around the south and in the north. Henry had to chose 12 iconic battles . Those are the ones the rest, we had to throw it out. You know, the events in st. Agustin, florida in the spring of 1962, the white rage against African Americans who tried to swim in the beach. The other thing is not in the eyes in the prize is arms selfdefense. Black veterans into an outfit called deacons for defense. M1 rifles, sandbags, they dug fox holes and fought back against ku kluz klan. Robert williams was arrested, he actually fled the country and live today cuba in exile for 20 years. Now henry was in a tough position because he knew perfectly well that the potential finish armed resistance was there. He knew also as i did that very often our meet negotiation the south were actually armed guards not visible but the White Community knew they were there. Henry was faced with a problem. This was the first series about civil rights and henry felt it was critical that all americans see this and that it be very accessible, you know, easy for that white lady in iowa to sit down on television and really learn something from this and he made a tactical or strategic decision, he was not going to talk about selfdefense and not talk about arm selfdefense and not talk about robert williams. We did six shows which is about the Nonviolent Movement up until 1965 and then eyes two which picks up in 1965. It talks a lot about armed rebellion and about arms selfdefense. No guns in this one. On that note, you said that it was harder and mezzier history, can you say some more about that. Henry had to get the first one, the golden age, the one that we know. Rosa parks and dr. Kings i have a dream speech and it took us up through 1965 selma, the great hinge. Henry insisted the end of the program about selma when Lyndon Johnson finally signs the act and everybody is Holding Hands and sings we shall overcome. We did series of 1965 to 1980s, actually. The coalitions that had been together during Civil Rights Movement, blackwhite coalitions, northsouth coalitions, secular and religion coalitions. Black power into the discourse and everybody went nuts. Black nationalism rose. Malcolm x. The panthers nationalism, affirmative action. That was a it was all a much more complicated history. It was also much more difficult to fund. I mean, it was hard enough to get people corporations, for instance, to put the corporate logo on the fire hoses in birminghamham and people getting beat up on the bridge in selma, that was tough and there were very few corporate sponsors, a few, you know, Lotus Software Development Gets a big shoutout because they early that helped spreadsheet that helped developers, they stood up and did it. On eyes two there was not a single corporate underwrite. It was aall public must be and bill cosby, interestingly enough they gave a lot of money and big party in new york at their their townhouse and raised a whole bunch of money for us. I dont know if that answers the question. Why do you think why wasnt there Corporate Funding in eyes 2, was there like a shift . Its interesting yeah, its interesting you say that in 2017 when on eyes 2 or 1 . 2. Was there a shift, there seemed to be a shift in the source of funding. Yeah, even ies 1 was 80 public funding and 80 public and straightup foundation. In 1989, did you want to have your corporate logo on malcolm x, in 1968 there were hundreds of riots, rebellions, riots, you know, general motors, General Electric is not going to put the logo on that. Its interesting, that has changed. And now particularly with the era of the golden anal of decade from 1955 to 65, that was fuzzy stuff and people are more than happy, corporations, we were in we interviewed rosa parks who was astonishing birdlike woman who henry was determined i answered this part of your question. Henry was determine today overturn the myth of the my stress who decided to sit down and lightbulb moment and disrupt segregation. She had been arrested. Had been with the Sharecroppers Union and she was the real deal. Henry was keen to bringing organizers to the forefront. She was great. She was very soft spoken. You couldnt imagine. The face that lost a thousand ships, you know. We interviewed her and i came back to palo alto and i was in palo alto and theres a city bus and on the side of the bus was this giant picture of rosa parks and think said think different. Its like a mind did they have any idea. [laughter] did they have any idea. It was the notion of the Silicon Valley notion of disruption. Somebody had a great idea and then, you know, like a month later there was a bus with cesar chavez and there was a bus with dolly lama. The advertising agency, do they do they really know what these people are all about or they just pay to license the image. Nobody ever put malcolm x on a think different bus. No one ever put jesus on a think different bus. [laughter] you know, so where was i doing . Thats why theres no corporate logo. [laughter] on eyes 2. But i was in i just came from sundance. I went to the womens march and it was interesting to see what the new leverage for change may be. And that march had corporate sponsors one of which was chase bank. I thought, wow. Chase bank at sundance. I thought, wow, this is maybe theres something happening here. Anyhow, its too long an answer, what else . Yeah. So we are a generation out now from eyes rifting off of henrys notion that these stories should be revisioned every generation, if you were funded, and if you were to make that series now, how would it look and feel different that youre looking at the civil rights history . You know, i would ask you, i would have you guys make it. Ive been there and done that. It doesnt need to be remade the same way and i dont know that im the one to figure out the new way to make it. What henry would say is, you know, these young folks that came through black side youth you figure out how to do it. Look at the Academy Award nominations yesterday for documentary feature. Four of those films are by African American directors and three of some variation of the African American experience and broadly defined the civil rights struggle. One of them oj made in america is actually very much a direct descendant of eyes on the prize. The 13th, the astonishing wonderful anarchy of styles loaded up with graphics and all kind of music and its got interviews and dolly shots and wonderful thirdgolden age of documentary of a way of addressing a lot of the same issues and im not your negro, film about James Baldwin, using James Baldwin own words as the driving force in that film. So i welcome all of that. I hope that all those new kinds of devices can be use today retail these stories. You look at music as a litmus test for how the stories get told differently in eyes 1, one of the eyes 2 producers told me it was like a preacher story. In eyes 2 its hiphop and marvin gay and deliberate to telegraph that it changed to a secular movement. Henry hated rap, he hated hiphop. He never came around to it. Where am i going . It has to be done differently by each new generation, i dont know if that answers the question or not. Yes. In the civil rights leaders and grassroots activists, did you ever pick up a feeling from these leaders, grassroots and church, et cetera, that they think they thought they could break the back of Jim Crowe States starting in the 50s, was there ever a sense that they thought, this could be done relatively quick like apartheid in south africa, all the experts never thought it would go that fast . Yeah. Thats an interesting question. I mean, it was so so right. We were talking with Orlando Bagwell yesterday and he said that you cant be confused about whether this is right or not and no one was ever confuseed particularly the generation, what is interesting, if we talk about apartheid we made in the last death rows and every day we watched the news coming out johannesburg and henry, he was the first to point out to me that the citizens of south africa were not citizens of south africa, the black citizens, black South Africans were not cities of their own nation and i think whats sustained i cant speak for the people that i worked in the south but my guess is that what sustained people was that no matter how things rough things got in alabama if you were a black marcher or protestor, you knew you were a citizen of the United States and you knew that eventually you could leap frog over crazy character and you could finally get people in washington, the president , the congress, the Justice Department, you get them to notice and i think for me i know was a sustaining understanding, i dont know if that answers the question. Thats my sense of things. And the music sustained people. Hi, judy. [inaudible] in other words, did you change your perspective on the series that you made yeah, yeah. Well, you know, in its review the New York Times said its 75 pages too long and i know exactly which hes talking about. At the i think its [laughter] what i learned, management matters. We have institutions in this country and in our world, our documentary community we have institutions that we really need that really have to, you know, theyre ib credibly important and they serve documentary making and i like to think they serve america and those institutions have to live on and black side was not and hoop dreams, kim burns was just getting going. Black side along sank beneath the waves. When i was there i was sort of commuting in and out and i was shooting commercials and working with drew and i could afford to maybe miss a paycheck now and then and only when i interviewed a lot of the people, i had begun to understand the depths of frankly of anger because people got caught, people worked at black side and the associate producers and editors were in he was like the big enchilada jet eye. Just caused if there ever was one and we use today talk and that its because the management was he was we were paying for every series and when henry died there was no next series and so the whole thing collapsed. I had a new appreciation for the need for good management. I know that sounds incredibly unglamorous and its not like fire houses and getting arrested for Voter Registration. In some ways its uniquely important. Hi, zach. What did you learn about the movement while working on the series that you didnt know perhaps or wasnt in clear focus. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Respend our lives getting paid to learn about great stuff. What i learned was how complicated the movement was. When i was working in mississippi in georgia i was the lowest level foot soldier. I saw what was going on in rural and i wasnt until i work for henry that i began to realize how messy it all was. I wasnt aware of the rivalries and we use today ridicule a bunch of boy scouts and preachers, but the the complication of those organizations, local organizers, the complication of them trying to figure out which lever to pull to get change happen. Thats what the civil right movement was all about. You have a crazy flamboyantly guy bow conner and organizers, debates were about how we provoke to behave in such a way that congress would notice. Theres important concept and its not going to do any good unless you can bark in a way that appeals to a higher civil power, okay, whether its the State Government or the federal government and henry really opened my eyes to how incredibly complicated that was. We get interviews with people inside the johnson administration. We did i interviewed nicholas, attorney general under johnson and he was i had no idea what was going on behind the scenes, it was during the events in selma where the movement particularly had targeted sheriff jim clark, they just knew that they had a lead actor, the lead bad guy throughout the whole year of two years of working in selma, the Justice Department were drafting a constitutional amendment about Voting Rights and i i was in selma, i had no idea that was going on. Maybe to sort of wrap up, john actually spent six hours this morning from 5 30, starting at 5 30 in the morning doing radio interviews, so [laughter] let me speak to that. When you make a movie, you finish the film and you click play like it goes. [laughter] this is fun being in city lights with you guys but when you write a book its after the book publishes is when the work starts. When you write a book, they are going to ask you radio tour, sure, radio tour is your phone rings at 5 00 in the morning, producer in new york and they cycle you through radio stations around the country 20 minutes at a time live for the next five hours and you have to be like, you know, the perky novelist and they are going to ask you the same questions. Anyhow [laughter] its necessary, you have to do the work. [laughter] did they ask you anything about [inaudible] thats a good question. I was afraid you were going to ask me that. I began writing the book when barack obama was reelected by a huge margin. The book went to the printer the day that donald trump was elected. I had expected for the last couple of years that the book would in some ways, best way would be irrelevant because the arc of the moral universe in america had it was this crazy drunken walk but drunken walk in the right direction toward equity and Voting Rights and all of a sudden, the legacy of dr. King slams up against the legacy of george wallace. All of the talk show people want to know what the relevance to today is. You know, plenty of people who said an awful lot about today. My only thing i would add to it that eyes on the prize is on operating manual for organizers. There are a lot of progressive and social movements that died because all the Story Tellers died and didnt get carried on. Henry felt that this was not about a bunch of laws back then. This was not about how you make change in the 1960s and how you make change any time. I think its a longer discussion, a lot of the leverage that we were able to identify in the 1960s are now broken, but, you know, you know, you better start you better run for office, you better start organizing. I think we are in for the fight of our lives, which we are going to win it. Weve been through some dark times before and america has very often come out of dark times as a stronger, better nation, how is that for a cheery note . [laughter] [applause] thank you, john. Thank you. I guess so. John is happy to sign books