I have always believed that unearned suffering is redemptive and if a man has not discovered something so dear and precious that he will die for it, then he doesnt have much to live for. We have seen that the revolution began in many ways and that the course of this following has many tributaries. Now we are concerned with its effects which we said are not uniform. One of the difficult fights but one which has scored impressive gains is in shattering what reverend Martin Luther king has called the appalling apathy of the good people. Dr. Blake told a fellow member, some time or other we are all going to have to stand and be on the receiving end of a fire hose. Leaders of all three faiths decided they must do something, not just say something, and soon many clergymen were stepping from behind their pulpits and joining the ranks of pickets. Until then Church Action had been limited to a few fronts, among them new orleans. It was three years ago that grade School Desegregation came to the deep south it happened here in new orleans, the battle developed within the White Community, those who saw desegregation as an eventuality with which to reach an accommodation, personified by most members of the school board. On the other side those who shouted never, many of them members of the rural dominated state legislature. For a time the second force prevailed largely because the city leadership shrank from the fight. As frequently happens in leadership vacuums, even in the streets of so sophisticated a city as this one, violence overtakes reason. It happened right here on the street in new orleans. On that november day teenagers protesting the desegregation of two grade schools a few days before moved downtown becoming more unruly. Fire trucks backed up by a police line scattered the crowd with billowing streams of water. What first started as a turned into something mean and dangerous. At the schools themselves, women dominated the hard core of bitterness displayed morning after morning. Some clutched babies in their arms and screamed ep pa thats at u. S. Marshals escorting children into the school building. Many were directed to a young minister who refused to join the boycott of the school who took his child to the school and there were taunts for mrs. Raymond gabrielle who refused to boycott. I have no sense of hatred. I dont feel this hatred that most of these people find and therefore i feel that i am within my Constitutional Rights as an american to send her there if it is within my judgment thats where she should go im within my rights to send her there until my judgment changes. Reaction in the state capital at baton rouge was a condemnation. The legislature and soft speaking desegregation. Jimmy davis did nothing to discourage or restrain the women. To keep our southern traditions thats done so much for all of us i think my own father would come out of his antioch grave and slap my face. All sorts of legislations were proposed, many of them patently ridiculous. They died stillborn. An announcement a year ago the catholic system in new orleans would operate on a desegregated basis. He considers the segregation more egregious than adultery or murder. God forgives adultery, but hes very angry those who integrate. Long time undisputed boss of two counties backstaged legislation of state proposals in the legislator. I say the leaders of catholic are bringing the church to disrepute. But itll give them a whole lot more. All you have to do is shut their water off and the moment a negro child walks into the school every decent selfrespecting loving parent should take his white child out of that broken school. There is today here a more of a reckon of the reality of the eventuality of desegregation. What happened here three years ago particularly the image of the small group of screaming women, the paralysis of leadership led to the determination of other cities they wanted none of that and that they must prepare to avoid it. So that when desegregation peacefully to atlanta, to memphis, to nashville, to dallas it was because of the Lessons Learned at little rock reinforced by new orleans. Race hatred running rampant in one place has resulted in dozens of other places acting to avoid such sorry scenes. Most often businessmen are the first in the White Community to make the move. Most often the gains realized by n negros have been in public accommodations. Take Oklahoma City. Oklahoma city with its oil wells in the shadow of the State Capitol was basically a southern town. And here the very young led the assaults on racial barriers. For 5 years they persistently demonstrated lunch counters and stores they won only small concession. The dam broke. First a hotel, then a single restaurant, then another hotel. The battle had been won peacefully, the youngsters celebrated. The next target a segregated amusement park. Wedgewoods owner maurice woods met with the youngsters and suggested one week integration and called for a gradual change. Its strictly financial and there have been several cases where situations such as mine have gone downhill because they integrated too quickly. The public wasnt ready for it. And were going to try it work it out over a period of time. What that time will be i cant say, but we want to impress upon you that demonstrations are not the answer. His answer came in the sober faces and from youth counsel advisor mrs. Clara luper. To hear an intelligent businessman say to the white people in Oklahoma City you arent ready to integrate an amusement park. Oklahoma has always been a leader in the field of human relations and the civil rights battlefield is here in oklahoma and we have taken more cases is to the Supreme Court than any other state in the history of america. And weve been able to do it given the fact the whites and coloreds have worked together amp. Today maurice said the move has cost him about 1,000 a day in lost business and he claims the negros who wanted integration are not supporting the park. City leaders told Department Heads they would have to go along. If you feel that you cannot adhere to this policy of the council in all good faith then i think you and i need to sit down and talk about it. I can realize what human nature is. I can sympathize with it, but nonetheless it might pose a problem. If you feel you cant act without prejudice or at least control inherent prejudices all of us do have, and frankly we might as well face it, youre in the wrong business. Leader of the nonviolent but determined negro drive is a young lawyer. Hes aware of the economic realities. Basically the Negro Community is pretty healthy. Construction work and federal employment is pretty broad in oklahoma. I would think that in skill and semiskill areas is where we lack quite a bit in opportunities. This is the area were really concentrating in because when it comes to the domestic and manual labor its the most wide and pretty liberal. Integration was not an accident. White and negro leaders were determined from the beginning their city would not become another oxford or birmingham or jackson. And they realized today it is not utopia either. This negro area some of it slums is one of the problems remaining, but they have the making of an answer, responsible leaders on both sides. Attorney porter and mrs. Luper can sit down and seek honest solutions for their differences. The chairman of the community is businessman frank kerry who discussed the major goals of the city. Perhaps thats a little complicated but this first area would be on the east side which is heavily negro. The negroes are somewhat contained on the east side and this is not unique in oklahoma. They exist in other parts of the country, but this pressure must be relieved in some way that is satisfactory for the negroes to be able to expand. The negro is taking a few steps forward but not everywhere. Mississippi has just nominated paul b. Johnson for governor. As lieutenant guvmer hes proven himself by his total commitment by the effort made to prevent the integration of the university of mississippi. They endorsed johnson by a larger vote than they gave ross barnett, the outgoing governor who early in an autumn stood bathed in floodlights on a football field in jackson and told the audience i love mississippi. I love her people. I love and i respect our heritage. 24 hours this became a battlefield. A vicious mob rioted in protest of 29yearold air force veteran james meredith. The battle scars still show the administration building. As the command post for the federal forces that was a prime target of the riot. Governor ross barnett a die hard segregation banned University Officials from complying with a federal court order. Barnett rationalized his action with the obsolete concept of interposition, an exercise of state power to protect its citizens from illegal use of federal power. On september 30th hundreds of u. S. Marshals preceded meredith to the campus. Some carried tear gas guns. A convoy of army trucks moves in. Soon after they took up positions meredith was slipped secretly into nearby baxter hall. President kennedy appeared live from washington. He noted meredith had arrive on campus without the use of troops so far and emphasized federal courts would be obeyed. Irresponsible defiance in the Governors Office was translated into violence on the campus. Unreally students arrived to hoot and jeer at marshals. Some students began throwing things through the darkness at the marshals. An army truck was set on fire. The chief ordered his men to retaliate with tear gas. The campus was no longer guardered. Outsiders poured in. The battle became more deadly. Several were wounded. More troops arrived and were bombarded with flying objects. Several were hit, windshield were smashed by Early Morning the battle was over. Two men were dead, almost 200 injured. In the gray Morning Light flames still flickered among the charred hunks of cars. Meredith was taken to tand enro. She was admitted never accepted. From his uncampus isolation he later wrote he was the most segregated negro in america. He received his diploma, the final try by barnett to have it held up. Meredith now plans to raise money in washington for an Educational Fund he established for needy college students. Now tonight an interpretive footnote from mississippi governor ross barnett recorded especially for this program. Fellow americans you are witnessing one more chapter in what has been termed the television revolution. Information media including the tv networks have publicized and dramatized the race issue far beyond its relative importance in todays world. The three hour special program and the degree of coverage accordingly august 28 march on washington underlined the fact that the American Public is being propagandized by over emphasis. The race issue is a legitimate issue in america in its proper context. But the race issue as it has been presented to you in recent months is being used as a smoke screen to hide the biggest power grab in American History. Behind the headlines, and deep in the text of the legislation lies a very grave threat, an immediate threat to the basic rights and independence of all americans, all of you. Not merely those of us who insist on a racially segregated social system in our own localities. The real goal of the conspiracy which tempts your emotions with this race issue is concentration of all effect cive power in the Central Government at washington. You can see that the real issue at stake in America Today is centralization of power in washington and not the race issue. One of the most certain effects of the revolution has been to change the picture that most whites have held of most negroes, and this hardly because negroes are changing but because whites many for the first time in memory are being compelled to really look at the negro. But this has been believed everywhere in louisiana and in reevepoint, montana. There have been no royts there not even any picking. The schools are integrated. They always have been. I can speak with authority on such matters i grew up in these montana towns. Looking back on it now i suppose they were typical western towns but nothing as typical to a boy. I thought our drugstore was unlike any other drugstore across the country. The Church Picnics and institutions unique to us. And the adventure jumping from a barn window to a pile of hay must i suppose be discovered each generation. In reality, of course, we were supremely difficult in what we did and what we wanted and perhaps above all in what we thought. And its here this act of thinking that is germane to this program. We were a fun pair of people or at least our fathers were and the tradition of judging each man by his merits had by no means died out. Still the negro is outside our tradition, a thing apart. In a sense we never really saw him, not the way we saw our friends. We never looked with honesty at negroes. The way we examine the anatomy of a grasshopper or speculated in the after hours life of our teacher. What we see is not the reality but the way it was supposed to be. They played music by all we knew or they were always happy or so we were told. We were allowed to like them if we bished but not to like them. Something apart from us in our time, intertaping, funny, gay, foolish and perhaps of all never to be fussy. The star is Brett Williams himself a negro. And in the process added to the patent. Another standard joke was that the negro being ignorant was filled with silly fears. Fears of ghost in a graveyard. Here we are in 1916 when the old joke was told again. And so we grew up in montana and it was the same in des moines or wichita or wherever. Those of my jen ration spent the years between being a child and being an adult. We all agreed this is the way things are. Why did robson crew so go with friday on saturday night . Well, friday was up to no good. A negro in dressed clothes was always good for a laugh or out with his girl. Even newsreels added their piece, foolish, childish whereby always a little less than lifesized. And this from a newsreel of the early 1930s. Also this from a newsreel of the 1930s. For most of us this sort of thing was simply a distortion that was wrong, unfair, it was demeaning for most of us that is. But for the vicious or the aggressive if the line between contempt and violence was a small one and there was this across a hundred hills. Where did robinson crew so go with friday on saturday night . Well, it wasnt funny now. It never was really. Its not given to every generation to see everything clearly and the children of our children will grow up to be scornful of mistakes not yet made. We know ours and need not be told. In the first half of this century 1,791 negroes were lynched. Happy people, gay, foolish, not to be trusted. We meant the negro. What we were really showing, of course, was ourselves. The pace of change has been slow. 6 years after the interstate Commerce Commission outlawed segregation on interstate buses and trains it got around to establishing penalties for the practice. And 9 1 2 years after the monumental Supreme Court decision declared separate education facilities are inherently unequal most Public Schools still have only token integration if any. It all began in topeka, kansas. At the age of 11 she became the victor in the classic court case brown vs. Board of education. Nowhere was the ritual of resistance to admission more clearly displaced. The auditorium was also being used as a National Stage for george wallace, the governor of alabama. Wallace, a dedicated segregationist came here to fulfill a Campaign Pledge and stand in a schoolhouse door and block the desegregation of any Public Schools. Her enrollment sparked rioting on campus. When she saw the riots was encouraged by University Officials she was expelled just a few days after she had entered. This time influential forces at the university and throughout the state looking at their shoulder at old miss exerted pressure to make sure the tragedy of oxford would not be duplicated here. This time even the extremist groups were urged by their leaders to stay away. Some students were warned by the university any disorder would be published severely. Semicircles were participated in white around the doors of the auditorium to mark the lines of the intending show line. The drama of registration day was played out here as though it had been rehearsed. Governor wallace promising to stand up for alabama and preserve law and order. He drove from the campus of which he had graduated over 20 years ago. Not long after the new students were brought on campus. They remained in the car while the Deputy Attorney general and two other federal officials both alabama graduates approached the door. Governor wallace signaled them to halt. He carefully limited himself to asking the governor for assurance he would not block the entrance of the students. The reply was a long proclamation of defiance. I stand here today as governor of this sovereign state and refuse to commit to the illegal use of power by the Central Government. Those Rights Reserved to them in the constitution of the United States. Among those so right and claimed is the state authority of pupdt schools, colleges and universities. The two students were escorted to their dormitory. They were on campus and they stayed. During the intermission the Alabama National guard was federalized under the command of the brigadier general. After lunch units of the guard were ordered to the campus. About a hundred men marched through the shadow of the auditorium. Governor wallace again took his position. This time he was confronted by general graham and four unarmed guardsman wearing the green berets of special forces.