I am the Vice President of the Constitutional Center outreach center. I want to welcome you. We are spending a lot of time marking the orient anniversary of the Voting Rights act, looking at through the lens of , the a low liuzzo. Liuzzo. Im sure you have been upstairs. Least the stories of at are 2200 people and they viola liuzzo and john lewis, who was supposed to be here tonight, but is stuck in washington. Derry may wrote a very interesting and compelling book to talk about the fbis role in the murder of viola eurozone liuzzo and other factors. Gary, thank you. [applause] mr. May thank you. Thank you to everyone body was removed for autopsy. You may recall he was a teenager who went down to mississippi to visit his uncle and cousins. Ot entirely sure what happened he may have flirted with a young 21yearold woman at the grocery store. Know till was kidnapped from his uncles home by two men in the middle of the night and tortured and murdered. His body was thrown into the tallahassee
Good evening. My name is tony green. I am the Vice President for programs and National Outreach at the National Constitution center. I want to welcome you. Today, we are spending a lot of time marking the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights act. Were looking at it through the lens of one woman, viola liuzzo, who died in the Civil Rights Movement. Upstairs, and im sure all of you have been to the National Constitution Center Exhibit space, we have something called the American National tree, which has the stories of 100 people. And two of the people on there, at least, are heroes of the Civil Rights Movement and the battle to get to the Voting Rights act, and they are viola liuzzo and john lewis, who is supposed to be here tonight, but unfortunately is stuck in washington for votes. Gary may, who has written a very readable, interesting, and compelling book, is with us tonight to talk about the fbis role in Viola Liuzzos murder, the ku klux klan, and the other factors that led to why
someone has taken a young man, hung him in a tree. who would do something this hideous? michael donald was an innocent good samaritan, not a thug. the mobile police department just didn t want to believe that mobile would still have klan in it. but they did. that s why we kept marching and protesting, letting them know we were going to take this lion down. the admitted klansmen turned to action as the words, guilty of capital murder, sank in. it was the first time since at least the early 1900s that a white had been sentenced to death for a crime committed against a black person in the state of alabama. beulah mae donald is grieving, but also seeking justice for her child. this is a black woman who s just lost her son to lynching. finds the strength to move forward in a civil suit against the klan in alabama. the stakes could not be higher. the body of a black man has been found hanging from a tree in mobile, alabama. lynching is a tool to control and oppr
Ford, but also a parttime consultant to president kennedy and president johnson. More than any living person, i think you saw all the principal commanderinchief around vietnam up close. Can you talk about each of those men and what characterize their position on the war . First of all, let me say, what an honor it is for me to be here and to participate in a conference that is needed to heal wounds of the debates about vietnam. So i want to congratulate the library for organizing this and providing the opportunity. I would like to say also that its sort of symbolic that secretary kerry is coming here tomorrow night. He was Walking Around with placards outside the white house when i served there. [laughter] and the point i want to make is weve become good friends at the end of it and he came to my 90th Birthday Party and made a joke in which he said, he pointed out what his actions had been then and that it was a pity that we didnt have an opportunity to talk rather than confront each o
Mr. Hanna, it strikes me in your response to some of my colleagues on this side of the aisle, comments with your role about Vice President cheney and the agreement or the decision to invade iraq is it was a mistake and you apologize for that in your own way. But we should just move on from that. Is that a misrepresentation of how you view your actions . Its senate more complicated than that. Of course. And too long to explain. That, yes, if the case depended on weapons of mass destruction in iraq, that was false. And the American People didnt understand the grounds on which we were going to war to take out a guy who is a horrible dictator and a major strategic threat to american interests that the American Congress in 1998 passed a law almost unanimously saying the iraq liberation act saying weve got to doing . To get rid of this guy. Didnt say war necessarily but it says weve got a big problem with iraq, we need to doing . About it. But it was based, wouldnt you say, on the assumption