and i think a really important thing we have experienced in this cycle especially, and of course you can check out molly protects us to check out the issues and everything that i care about. i have been sharing my own abortion story. i had an abortion in the state in 2014 and i cannot believe that today i count myself lucky that it was legal and safe. and that message has resonated at the doorsteps. the courage to be exactly who i am often ends in tears and hugs at the ends of conversations. i think that authenticity you are talking about is necessary and advantageous and will get is a win tomorrow. >> i have to say goodbye but i wanted to self-correct. you actually won your primary by 14 points. i wanted to make sure i got that accurate. thank you so much. texas state senator, molly cook. good luck tomorrow. >> thank you so much. >> that does it for us. we want to see you tomorrow and the rest of the week for the

msnbc coverage for donald trump's camille trial. next, a conversation at the apollo. >> isn't it great to be at the apollo! . >> i grew up coming to this place so many times and tonight, especially, i thought about when i was coming in backstage. i have been on this stage for godfather of soul james brown

who was like a father and michael jackson and the list goes on. tonight, you will have something that is special at the apollo. you are going to have two icons that are going to talk about their work and talk about what they do in this country that is so needed at this time. it couldn't be a better night at the apollo. this is not just a great show tonight but this is history. [ applause ] [ cheering ] so it is my honor and my pleasure that i can't tonight bring you the godfather of soul, but i bring you the godmother. rachel maddow. [ applause ] >> i got you on that one.

[ applause ] [ cheering ] wow! how are you doing? i am so nervous. fantastic! fantastic. thank you all for being here. it is such an honor to be here at the apollo and for this event. so it was early january. the country was supposed to be

preparing for a peaceful transfer of power in washington. the elections had happened in november. so in january, everyone was due to be sworn in. the new leadership should be taking over but that early january, there was a problem. and there had been grumbling about it. people had been worried about it. but as we got closer and closer to the day on which the power was supposed to transfer, it really looked like the peaceful transfer of power was not going to happen. and this was the front page of the new york times. "senate snarled. seating is blocked. southerners prevent senate organization. extended debate begun." it is supposed to be the united states senate being seated but it is not happening. they can't convene. this happens in january 1947. and the problem they were having is that there was a

single senator who was a problem. and the problem they were having is that most members of the united states senate did not believe he should be seated among them. and if he was going to be blocked from taking his seat, segregationist senators were so outraged by that that they decided they would block there from being any senate at all. they would filibuster the convening of the senate and there would be no u.s. senate anymore, not unless their guy got in. the man in question is someone you are introduced to in the first chapter of joy reid's new book which is called "medgar and really." [ cheering ] [ applause ] the love story that awakened america. joy introduces us to this particular senator. among other things, he was the center in mississippi. he was

the representative and washington. i say it is nuts and i will now prove it. while joy brought you an introduction to the sender in the book, i have brought her the worst president in the world which i will give her now in front of all of you. i brought tape of that senator appearing on meet the press in the middle of that scandal. and i will warn you that it is terrible. it is i think inarguably obscene. but it should give you some sense as to what the exact problem was with this senator. here it was. >> senator, are you or have you ever been a member of the kkk? >> i have. i am a member, number 40 in mississippi. >> do you think you will get any support? >> i do.

>> no man can leave the klan. he takes in order to do that. >> on this, i would go to the reporter's integrity against yours. every seem to agree on that quote. what did you say? >> i said the best time to keep a [bleep] away from a white democratic primary in mississippi is to do it the night before. >> what did you mean? >> didn't that amount to the lynch law? >> mr. andrews and senator and all the group and for the balance of this program, we will have to ask you not to refer to any race, group or individual in any derogatory terms. >> very well. >> very well. i will note for the record that none of the reporters were using this language. it was the sitting senator. in fact, even after being admonished like that, he went on to use the n word 12 more times in the live broadcast on

meet the press. so there has been a supreme court ruling that said you couldn't have whites only primaries. but when that senator, senator theodore bilbo was up for election in mississippi two's ears later in 1946, he openly and repeatedly told audiences in mississippi that they needed to do everything in their power. they needed to be willing to shed blood to prevent any black person from voting in mississippi's primary elections. this was not something he did once and got confronted with. it is not something he hid. he said this at every campaign event. he was proud of it. he is proud to admit it even on meet the press. the only reason it ended up causing him any trouble at all, the only reason it would ultimately may be cost him his senate seat, the only reason it would stop the whole senate from being convened at all january of 1947, the whole problem with it only arose for him because of his constituents

who were black world war ii veterans. including medgar evers. [ applause ] >> plus u.s. military veterans returning home at the end of world war ii including the 20- year-old medgar evers and his brother charles, they insisted in the 1946 election that they would not only register to vote but they would vote. they had fought for their country. they knew what the supreme court had ruled. they knew the supreme court said they could vote even if this guy said that they couldn't. and what resulted was incredibly violent. joy writes about it in her book. there were about 1500 black mississippians that braved beatings and armed mobs to cast a vote in the 1946 mississippi primary. but there were more than a half million black mississippians that were eligible to cast a

vote. only 1500 were able to and even that number was such as scandal and such a challenge that it ended up bringing washington to its knees because black veterans petitioned the senate about the violence that confronted them when they tried to vote. they petitioned the senate specifically about senator bilbo having called for that violence and having demanded that violence. and the senate held hearings about it in washington d.c. and held hearings about in washington and in mississippi to field hearings. 96 mississippi voters, black mississippi voters did the bravest thing imaginable and testified at the hearings about the intimidation and the violence brought against them to stop them from voting that year. [ cheering ] [ applause ] in the point of the petition was that the senate should void his election and not seat him in the united states senate. and they assigned segregationist senators to be

on the panel to hear that testimony and hold those hearings in the segregation of senators deciding that they weren't going to prevent a bilbo from being seated on the basis of this but it did get a lot of national attention. it became a national scandal. and the scandal was an embarrassment. senator bilbo was united states senate embarrassment. ultimately, they decided, we may not keep him out of here for inciting murderous mobs against black voters but instead, we will get him for his wild ass corruption. he took bribes up to and including, as joy describes in the book, a new cadillac, a new swimming pool, the excavation of a lake to create an island for his home. they even built him his own private room. it was all bribery. the senate decided they would at least get him for that. the whole reason it happened is because black veterans held this man up for the country to see who he was.

and what the country so was repulsive. [ applause ] >> in the end, january of 1947, the first midterm election after the end of world war ii, the senate is only able to convene. we only have a congress at all because bilbo agreed that he would not try to be seated. he would instead go home to mississippi and get medical treatment that he needed and they would just handle the whole issue of his moral hope latuda and his corruption when he came back to washington. and senator theodore bilbo finally found it in himself to do the honorable thing for once in his life. he finally had the decency to go home and die. [ applause ] [ cheering ] and he never came back to the united states senate. he never came back to washington so they never had to vote on whether or not to seat him. and that is how we got the

senate back. and today, theodore bilbo has been lost to history. he doesn't lumen our history anymore. today who looms in our history is medgar evers. medgar evers strategic mind and his bravery are a story of heroism and bravery that echoes through generations. we remember him for his work as the field secretary, mississippi field secretary of the naacp and for his martyrdom and his assassination. we should also remember him for what happened the moment he came back from world war ii. he was on a bus coming home to mississippi. he had been discharged by the army. he was being sent home. on the bus, home from his army service in europe fighting against the nazis. he was

beaten. he was set upon and beaten. he said he was beaten to within an inch of his life. he said it was the worst beating of his life because he refused to moved to the back of the bus. he was wearing his army uniform when he received the beating. as a new veteran come registering to vote, trying to vote and standing up against bilbo's terroristic claim in the senate seat, joy writes that the early fight in mississippi branded both medgar evers and his little brother charles as young men to watch. as agitators. the year after that fight, medgar evers started college and was soon to be followed by a young woman, marilee louise beasley who laid eyes on him her first day at school and never stopped looking at him again. [ applause ] they fell for each other the first moment they saw each other. they married within a year.

they were fiercely and love until he was assassinated in 1963 and beyond. and that love story, including the beyond, is rendered here in this new book by my beloved friend, joy. [ cheering ] [ applause ] >> i will say this one last thing. even if history is not your thing, even if it is not what moves you the way it moves dorks like me enjoy, this story of medgar evers is history but it is also a love story and is also a parable and a paragon of bravery that can teach us how to live now. if you can read the life stories of americans who live through what they live through, if you come read these life stories and not feel a fire lit under you to do more yourself, give more, risk more and live in a way that history will put you on the right side of it, then you need to get yourself

checked out because you are not okay. >> it is one of the great joys in my life that i work somewhere where i have colleagues that share my obsession with forgotten monsters like theodore bilbo and who can also earn trust and friendship of heroes who are still among us like merrily evers williams, to persuade her to tell her story. who also have the juice, the sheer talent and energy and beautiful mind and passionate fans to help put this story legacy and love story back on the american heroes where it belongs. the only person who could do that is here tonight. please welcome my friend, the great joy reid. [ applause ] [ cheering ]

why choose a sleep number smart bed? can i make my side softer? i like my side firmer. sleep number does that. now, save 50% on the sleep number limited edition smart bed. plus, free home delivery when you add any base. shop now at sleepnumber.com [music playing] tiffany: my daughter is mila. she is 19 months old. she is a little ray of sunshine. one of the happiest babies you'll probably ever meet.

[giggles] children with down syndrome typically have a higher risk for developing acute myeloid leukemia, or just leukemia in general. and here we are. marlo thomas: st. jude children's research hospital works day after day to find cures and save the lives of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. tiffany: she was referred to st. jude at 11 months. they knew what to do as soon as they got her diagnosis. they already had her treatment plan drawn out. and they were like, this is what we're going to do. this is how long it's going to take. this is how long in between. this place is like a family to us now. like, i can't say enough how grateful we are to be here. medical bills are always a big thing to everybody because everybody knows that anything medical is going to be expensive. we have received no bills since being at st. jude. we have paid for nothing.

marlo thomas: thanks to generous donors like you, families never receive a bill from st. jude for treatment, travel, housing, or food so they can focus on helping their child live. for just $19 a month, you'll help us continue the lifesaving research and treatment that these kids need now and in the future. join with your credit or debit card right now, and we'll send you this st. jude t-shirt that you can proudly wear to show your support. tiffany: anybody and everybody that contributes anything to this place, no matter if it's a big business or just the grandmother that donates once a month, they are changing people's lives. and that's a big deal. [music playing]

norman, bad news... i never graduated from med school. what? -but the good news is... xfinity mobile just got even better! now, you can automatically connect to wifi speeds up to a gig on the go. plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. i gotta get this deal... i know... faster wifi and savings? ...i don't want to miss that. that's amazing doc. mobile savings are calling. visit xfinitymobile.com to learn more.

doc? we are at the apollo theater. i mean, like pinch yourself. the legends that have been on this stage. >> i know. i can't even think about it. in fact, i mean i'm wearing glasses and i can't see any of you. which is good. because if i could, i would die. joy, the book has been out about eight weeks. number one new york times bestseller. i know from experience, writing books, that you live in the research and you live in the writing and it is a lonely

thing and you create this thing and you don't know how it will live in the world. i want to ask you what you have learned from having this book and this story out in the world for weeks now. people reading it and people responding to it. people telling you what it means to them. >> one of the things i have definitely learned, i'm so grateful that people have responded to the story. we are history geeks. i would just read a straight up book about the history of mississippi with no love story and it. i'm interested in history because i think it is needed. we need to understand where we have come from. but i did the story is a love story for a very particular reason and the reason is evers williams. she gives you that when you talk with her. what i have learned and just talking to people now across the country about this book is how hungry people are to hear about love and to think about the possibility the love can move things and do things.

people care about history. people also care about and are pleasantly surprised that even in some of the worst moments in our history, people did ordinary things. and i think that is what is most powerful about this story. these are ordinary people who had an ordinary and wonderful life beyond the horror that they were facing. >> i felt like one of the things you are teaching in this book, and was an explicit but it was laced through it, was that love is part of human resilience. that there is this repeated -- myrlie goes back and over and over again to this thing that was said to her by medgar, which was painful, which is that, i can't not do this. i'm doing this for you. i'm doing this for the kids. the effort is confronting him by saying, you need to stop doing this work. me and the kids need you more.

i'm doing this work out of my love for you. and that is this helix of depth in terms of how hard this is. i think you are trying to tell us that her love for him was transformative both through grief and making her the leader that she became. >> it was. and i think we like to think of -- i think we like to think of the civil rights movement and of the era, the 1940s world war ii, post-world war ii era, through rose colored glasses. the glasses you really can't see. and we assume that everybody black was eager to be in the civil rights movement. and everybody that was a world war ii veteran was heroic and good. none of those things were true. there were people that fought in world war ii heroically in europe and came home and practiced fascism at home. and there were a lot of black people who just wanted to live their lives, go to work, send

their kids to school and just not have to deal day in and day out with racism and not have to fight it. and also, they were afraid. and i think that it is something people don't like to admit. everybody wants to think that if you went back in time and you were in that era, you would be on the front lines for evers. most people were just trying to survive. they were just trying to get through the day and not get lynched and not get humiliated in front of their children. and just getting through that day in its own way was heroic and they were just trying to do that. we both have covered what happened with mr. stier gain of only in russia. the reason it is a powerful story is because it is abnormal to be him. it is abnormal to be medgar evers. it is abnormal to be myrlie. she was a normal person who

just wanted to marry her insurance salesman husband and live her life. and everything else he was doing terrified her and she was honest about that. and he was honest with her saying, i get that. but if i don't do this, this state in this country won't be good enough for you or my kids. [ applause ] >> one of the things i learned from your book is that in his life, before he was murdered, one of the ways he was written about in the national black press was essentially a poster child for, i'm not leaving mississippi. he was saying, she wanted to leave as soon as he was graduated and they were married. and he was saying, i love mississippi. there is so much wrong with mississippi and it is so dangerous and i will never leave the state. and that was a curiosity, even in his lifetime, that somebody with the resources, the ability and the notoriety he had, would

choose to stay. but it was a deep form of patriotism and love of his country and of his state. >> this was in 1958 ebony magazine with a profile on him. first in the big national press. and it is titled "why i love mississippi." it is a weird thing. these are northern black journalists coming to the south and talking with the southern black man. and their where an appreciable number of black people, black men in particular, that went to europe during the world war ii era and didn't come back because to live a normal life in france, you didn't have to be discriminated against. he deliberately came back. you have to remember that mississippi has this connective tissue to chicago. if you are a black person from chicago, your people are probably from mississippi. there was is $11.50 train that went back and forth. a lot of people, when they got out of mississippi, went straight to chicago. indiana or other places. chicago has a lot of

mississippi folks and this family was born of one of those families with that connective tissue. charles and medgar evers, charles brother, they would chicago every summer. they knew what chicago was like. they had traveled a little bit. they had choices. when he had his middle-class job with the naacp, they could theoretically said, station me somewhere else with the insurance industry job. he could have said i want to go somewhere else. he was smart enough. certainly capable enough to live anywhere else. we did this background and went all the way back to enslavement of these two families. the evers and myrlie's family. what you find is that they have come in the very beginning from africa to mississippi. so they have mississippi and their bones, roots, blood and tears. both of them. for him, i think his attitude was, why should i leave mississippi? if fascists don't like me, maybe they should leave

mississippi. >> i love that you tell the story about him hunting and fishing and being outdoorsy and wanting to expose his kids to the country. >> he has this quote that i love from abraham lincoln. that he had in his home. a quote from abraham lincoln that says, i'm driven to my knees knowing that i have nowhere else to go. that is the shorthand of it. i think that is how he felt. he didn't want to live in a concrete jungle. he didn't want to live in the city. he wanted to be in the country where he could fish and hunt and do things he loved. he loved the nature mississippi. he loved the fauna and the flora and the things about mississippi that were not the people. and he just felt that the people needed to do better. they say we should stop eating so much meat.

so we made meat out of plants. because we aren't quitters. impossible. we're solving the meat problem with more meat. (♪♪) hey folks, chris counahan for leaffilter—the permanent gutter solution that protects your home in so many ways, it takes more than one chris to explain it. am i right chris? that's right chris. but together, i think we've got the job covered. like leaffilter has your gutters covered - keeping out debris, like this. and protecting you from getting up on this thing to clean out your gutters ever again. and our install process keeps your roof warranty in tact. exactly, chris. and you know how else leaffilter protects your home? how's that chris? i don't know, i'm asking you. oh. ah, by redirecting water away from your foundation.

sure, and? with our lifetime transferable no clogs warranty. at leaffilter, we stand by our work for as long as you own your home. longer chris. whoa that's huge. how do folks get leaffilter? we'd be glad to come out for a free no-hassle inspection. to schedule your free inspection, call 833-leaffilter today or visit leaffilter.com leaffilter. we're small enough to listen, (together) big enough to deliver. nice to meet ya. my name is david. i've been a pharmacist for 44 years. when i have customers come in and ask for something for memory, i recommend prevagen. number one, because it's effective. does not require a prescription. and i've been taking it quite a while myself and i know it works. and i love it when the customers come back in and tell me, "david, that really works so good for me." makes my day. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. you can't leave without cuddles.

but, you also can't leave covered in hair. with bounce pet, you can cuddle and brush that hair off. bounce, it's the sheet.

shell renewable race fuel.

reducing emissions by 60%. ♪♪ we're moving forward with indycar. because we're moving forward with everybody. shell. powering progress. at least 22 people have been killed by severe storms and tornadoes that swept through the south this holiday weekend. hundreds of thousands of people are also without power. kentucky under a state of emergency tonight. and east coast, heavy rain and thunderstorms causing trouble delays on what was one of the busiest travel weekends on record. tsa counted nearly 3 million travelers to pastor u.s. airports friday, the most ever for a single day late today, the biden administration called for images of the carnage from the gazan city of rafah heartbreaking and devastating.

a statement from the national security council also said, "we understand the strike killed two senior hamas terrorists who were responsible for attacks against israeli civilians. israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians.." local health officials say 45 people were killed in an idea of strike that set fire to a tent encampment and displaced palestinians have been sheltering there. the israel prime minister benjamin netanyahu called the incident tragic and says israel is investigating. closing arguments and donald trump's first criminal trial are to start at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow morning in new york. trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the case accusing -- accused of helping pay off an adult film star so that she would not reveal their affair on the final days of the 2016 campaign. trump denies the affair and the charges. now back to joy reid and rachel maddow live at the apollo.

one of the things -- you are talking about the rose- colored glasses in the way we look back and we like to look back and think that not only would we be a hero but that everybody we relate to when we think of history, they were probably heroes too. one of the things you spent quite a bit of time repeatedly going back to are african- americans in mississippi who were paid by the mississippi sovereignty commission which was a state organized spy agency, to spy on the civil rights movement. and the files of the sovereignty commission will curl your hair. it is unlike anything else in american political history. there were black leaders, black newspaper owners and editors and black activists who were essentially on the payroll of the segregationist movement to spy on leaders like medgar evers and others. and you make

sure to tell those stories and named them as well. i wanted to ask you about that decision. >> the truth of the matter is that segregation and maintaining it after, it required a massive apparatus that in the state of mississippi included the sovereignty commission. it included the white citizens council which was basically addressed a version of the klan. people that owned the banks and the insurance companies and could pull your mortgage if they found that you joined the naacp work and then it was the violent section of the klan. it also required the complicity of some black people who made the calculation that either for financial reasons or others, it was better to play ball. some of them were business owners who like having a captive audience. in a segregated society, you as a store owner, black people had to shop with you. there was nowhere else for them to go. there were some black newspaper

editors that both the naacp was too radical and didn't like the way they were speaking about the mississippi society and thought they were troublemakers and that they were hurting the business communities that were all black and they felt that the status quo could work for them financially. and since they weren't suffering, they didn't see any reason to change it. >> and they did take money. and the thing that was so interesting is some were exposed at that time almost in realtime in that era. he discovered that the leading, not just any newspaper, but the leading black newspaper editor in jackson, mississippi, the editor of the newspaper was taking money. leading pastors were taking money. >> so this gets to the question for me that loomed over the whole book for me in my most-watched documentary which is, little bit of inside baseball about how we do our work. it is about good guys and bad guys in history. and at a very fundamental

level, is making the case that james weldon was right and if we're going to take inspiration from civil rights leaders that were martyred, then there is this triumphant of metzger and you make the case of putting myrlie evers-williams in front of mind as heroes. americans that were brave in the face of evil and oppression. what do we do in the history with people committing the evil and who are perpetrating the oppression? the reason i want to talk to you about this is i feel like you've made really interesting choices about what history to tell in this book and i'm fundamentally divided because part of me is very happy that nobody has heard of theodore bobo. being lost to history, yeah! good. i'm glad you are. but part of me wants everybody to know what he did and who he was. i feel like part of why we have

seemed unprepared and ill- equipped to deal with our generations worst confrontation with oppression and tyranny, is because we don't know much about the oppressors and the tyrants of previous generations. [ applause ] >> so how do you thread that? it is a great influence. a great curse to tell somebody, you will be forgotten. you will be lost to history. you will have no headstone. on the other hand, maybe that is not the worst thing that could happen to the worst people. >> i agree with you. i am 70 that once no villains lost to history. the reason i say that is that, it does sometimes feel like we keep reliving the same errors in american history over and over again. and in this current era, it does feel like -- and we know you watch rachel's incredible

show. when you are talking about the 1930s and the 1940s, what it sounds like you are talking about is now. and the only way that you can get people to repeat the same errors is that they don't remember it happened before. that you think donald trump is some generous thing that never existed before. but when you say no, here is another version of that and if you think, this never happened before or you have seen people denied the right to voters -- denying access to the ballot, no. it is pretty much the same playbook. nothing is new under the sun. people don't change the tactics of evil. they just repeat it because people forget that it happened. i'm not for amnesia in that since. and so we were talking in the back. rachel maddow i'm fairly sure bugs my house because she is obsessed with everything i'm obsessed with. literally when we both discussed we were obsessed with equatorial guinea, i said

nobody else cares about equatorial guinea besides you and me. >> so we have done tons of reading about it. >> and we are both obsessed with bilbo. when i saw theodore bilbo showed up in the appeal from the state of colorado to try to get donald trump thrown off the ballot, i was so happy that all the people around me but i was such a weirdo that i think they probably wanted to leave the room. but i was like, guys, to my poor producers, it is theodore bilbo. he is here. and they're like, okay. does it matter? >> it matters. very quickly, the reason you have to pay attention to theodore bilbo is because, what theodore bilbo and others like him are doing, were not fighting black participation in the general election. they were fighting it in the primary. these were the trials of the democratic party. not the republican party. this was the way -- talking about the 14th amendment the

14th amendment and the 13th, 14th and 15th were meant to enfranchise and create real citizenship for black people. the creative ways that southern states got around it were to say essentially that the democratic party, which was the only game in town in the south. same with the republican party now, we are not saying you can't vote because they're black but we are saying that you don't meet the rules of our private organization and we will find all these creative ways to make sure you can vote because the primary is the general. the primary is the power. we have forgotten that in american politics now. americans have forgotten the power of primaries pick the whole civil rights site essentially in the south was about getting black people access to the only game in town, the democratic primary. if you couldn't vote in the primary, it didn't matter what happened after that because republicans couldn't be elected. reverse that now. put the republicans were the democrats were and flip the parties and it's the same playbook. i think we have got to remember

in order to progress. we can't fight a demon that we beat before but forgot the formula. >> exactly. >> can i tell you one more theater bilbo story? >> yes. >> mississippi we believe has only had two statues of governors in the mississippi state capitol and one of them is theodore bilbo. and they commissioned, after he died in 1947, they commissioned a german sculptor. to create a life-sized bust of him which sounds big but he was very small. >> it is life-sized and they put him in the rotunda. this is a man, before he died, when they sent him home from washington and when he died, he wrote one book. it was called "your choice."

the man was a cartoon villain. and separate and apart from the swimming pool and the lake they built. they have got the statue of him in the rotunda. someone at this point gets in the head to maybe move them out of the rotunda. put him in a conference room that nobody uses. they then realize they don't actually have a choice to move him anywhere else. when they commissioned the statue from the german sculptor, they passed a law that said, this statue of theodore bilbo is never under mississippi state law allowed to leave the first floor of the mississippi state capitol. so they put him in the conference room. and ultimately they started using the conference room. who started using the conference room? the black caucus of the mississippi legislature. who, to their credit, uses him as a coat rack. >> even at this point, it is a

problem. at some point, 70 takes it upon themselves to move into somewhere else on the first floor of the capital. and they find a storage closet next to the elevator shaft and they wrap him in as best as blankets and shove him in the storage closet. [ cheering ] [ applause ] >> this only happened in the last couple years. 18 months ago, they decided, we are moving into the basement. and he is only just now moved to the basement and on to the mississippi civil rights museum. that man has a weird fable. and mississippi is suffering from even just the lead version of him. and learning those stories is an important part of learning how people fought against it.

my daughter is mila. she is 19 months old. she is a little ray of sunshine. one of the happiest babies you'll probably ever meet. children with down syndrome typically have a higher risk for developing acute myeloid leukemia or just leukemia in general. and here we are. saint jude children's research hospital works day after day to find cures and save the lives of children with cancer and other life threatening diseases. she was referred to saint jude at 11 months. they knew what to do as soon as they got her diagnosis. they already had her treatment plan drawn out and they were like, this is what we're going to do. this is how long it's going to take. this is how long in between. this place is like a family to us now. like, i can't say enough how grateful we are to be here.

medical bills are always a big thing to everybody, because everybody knows that anything medical is going to be expensive. and we have received no bills since being at saint jude. we have paid for nothing. thanks to generous donors like you, families never receive a bill from saint jude for treatment, travel, housing or food so they can focus on helping their child live. for just $19 a month, you'll help us continue the life saving research and treatment these kids need. join with your debit or credit card right now, and we'll send you this saint jude t-shirt that you can proudly wear to show your support. anybody and everybody that contributes anything to this place, no matter if it's a big business or just the grandmother that donates, you know, once a month, they are changing people's lives and that's a big deal. (♪♪)

we're here with chris counahan of our local leaffilter. so chris, tell us how leaffilter is different from every other gutter protection on the market. with leaffilters, patented filter technology, there are no gaps, no openings, no place for debris to get in at all. and we install leaffilter on your existing gutters. it's a permanent solution. you'll never have to climb a ladder to clean out your gutters again. that's amazing, chris. tell me about the process. simple and easy. just give us a call, set up an appointment. we'll come out and give you a free gutter inspection. if they're sagging, we'll repair them. if they're broken, we'll replace them. if they're in good shape, our local team will install leaffilter in as little as a few hours. wow. and i understand you guys have a lifetime no clogs guarantee? we do. it's actually a lifetime transferable no clogs guarantee. you know, that's peace of mind and then some. so, how do people sign up? to schedule your free inspection. call 833-leaffilter today our agents are standing by.

or visit leaffilter.com. if you like today we are in a moment where the rule of law is on life support. i feel like this went down the memory hole very quickly. but with the first criminal indictment of donald trump announced, there was a southern governor who announced if they are going to try to extradite you from florida, i will direct state law enforcement to block the extradition. that was governor ron desantis

of florida. and he has done well, hasn't he? >> things have turned out good. >> it feels fatal to -- displaying court orders. it feels fatal. but we had a before of course. this is what the story is. with massive resistance to civil rights rulings from the courts in the south. we have had widespread defiance of the rule of law in this country for years and years and years. not bad laws. good laws. to fight and practice. so while we are thinking about the rule of law and the challenges we have against it now, what should we have learned from that experience in the civil rights movement that teaches us more about how to combat that threat now? >> this was actually a core challenge medgar evers faced. you have court rulings going the naacp's way. they are winning in court over and over again.

the courts, all white, are saying, you have to grant black citizens this right or that right. to access the bus terminals. to eat in the restaurant. you have to do it. you see this massive creativity. the massive resistance of finding ways to say we will defy that. defying supreme court orders was the thing back then. for medgar evers, his frustration was that the naacp's answer to your question, we will go back to court again. we will do another thing. we will win again and again and again. the challenge of that was young people in the south and in the state of mississippi. they weren't interested in this strategy. for them, they didn't have mortgages that could be recalled by citizens council banker. they didn't have a job they could be let go from. they were high school students or college students. they had the bravado of youth. and so their answer was, we will fight in the streets. we will march on the

segregationists. we will sit in the library and refuse to leave. we will get a resident and use bodies to resist. we will slow down the progress of the economy and make it impossible for people to live a peaceful and quiet segregated life. and medgar evers sided with him and defiance of his bosses who are very angry about it. and so he is torn. his job is to do what he is told which is to sign people up and register for them to vote. which people are too terrified to do. adults too scare. to sign people up for naacp memberships where people would get fired if they joined the naacp. the kids are saying, we are going to march. and he is saying, i will bail you out of jail. when you get locked up, i will bail you out. there was this sense that the only thing you could do was do your own version of physical resistance to tyranny. that kind of was the big question in the south. dr. king, who medgar evers deeply revered and went to replicate the movement of what

he did in birmingham and what he did in alabama, he was trying to do that and mississippi. king had the same idea. the only thing you could do when you have people defying the supreme court of the united states is to force them to watch the violence they are willing to perpetrate on television. and if you are going to do this to us, you will make sure it is heavily publicized. one of medgar evers beefs with the way black americans had reacted to their subjugation, was the silence. was the fact that when someone was lynched, they sort of just melted into the ground. nobody talked about it or protested about it or said anything about it. and he said, we need to make sure that whatever is done to us is done publicly. he founded a newspaper to make sure that happens. and so i think the king and metzger agreed that the only thing you can do when you get to the point where people are willing to defy the supreme court of the united states and

subsequent court orders was physically resist. physically resist in public so that people have to feel the shame of what they are willing to do. smile! you found it. the feeling of finding psoriasis can't filter out the real you. so go ahead, live unfiltered with the one and only sotyktu, a once-daily pill for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, and the chance at clear or almost clear skin. it's like the feeling of finding you're so ready for your close-up. or finding you don't have to hide your skin just your background. once-daily sotyktu was proven better, getting more people clearer skin than the leading pill. don't take if you're allergic to sotyktu; serious reactions can occur.

sotyktu can lower your ability to fight infections, including tb. serious infections, cancers including lymphoma, muscle problems, and changes in certain labs have occurred. tell your doctor if you have an infection, liver or kidney problems, high triglycerides, or had a vaccine or plan to. sotyktu is a tyk2 inhibitor. tyk2 is part of the jak family. it's not known if sotyktu has the same risks as jak inhibitors. find what plaque psoriasis has been hiding. there's only one sotyktu, so ask for it by name. so clearly you. sotyktu. we're trying to save the planet with nuggets. so clearly you. because we need the planet. and we also need nuggets. impossible. we're solving the meat problem with more meat.

did you know... 80% of women are struggling with hair damage? just like i was. dryness and frizz could be damaged hair that can't retain moisture. new pantene miracle rescue deep conditioner, with first-of-its-kind melting pro-v pearls... locks in moisture to repair 6 months of damage in one wash, without weigh down. guaranteed or your money back! for resilient, healthy-looking hair... if you know, you know it's pantene. a lot of new dry eye patients in my office tell me about their frequent dry eyes, which may point to dry eye disease. millions of americans were estimated to have it. they've tried artificial tears again and again, but the relief is temporary. xiidra can provide lasting relief. xiidra treats the signs and symptoms of dry eye disease. don't use if you're allergic to xiidra. common side effects include eye irritation, discomfort or blurred vision when applied to the eye, and unusual taste sensation. doctor: why wait? ask your eye doctor about a 90-day prescription for xiidra today.

shell renewable race fuel. reducing emissions by 60%. ♪♪ we're moving forward with indycar. because we're moving forward with everybody. shell. powering progress.

history is to learn it as if there was a synthesis. there was the legal strategy to

get the good court rulings and then the direct action strategy. they came together and they were all working for the same thing part of the pain of the story of medgar evers is that was not an easy marriage and he was employed by the naacp, which was focusing on the litigation stratsxaej he was in sympathy with direct action, and he at the moment that he was killed was prepared to be getting and had been warned he was going to behe fired. this was itself its own kind of sacrifice and its own kind of bravery ands leadership to brie the gap between those two very difficult strategies. >> this is the reason i say r again, it's ordinary people who do theses things. you have this man who not only isn worried about getting fire whose wife has now had their third child, he's got a 9-year-old, an 8-year-old, and a 3 yesterday. she's left her job. she was his secretary, working

as his secretary when he got the naacp job. once they give birth to the third child, she stays home. now there's one income. they have ae mortgage, they ha two car payments. they have bills. he's a former insurance salesman. he can barely afford to pay his insurance premiums. he's economically stressed and his marriage is stressed because myrlie evers is saying to him, you don't have to do this. they don't even want to protect you. they won't pay for security for this house. they won't pay for protection for you. you can barely afford to keep your car fixed up, and if you car breaks down on the road, you're going to get killed by the klan. and every time i pick up the p phone, it's either some terrified black person who isei trying tors ask you to come and identify a lynching in their family l or it's some angry whi person saying they're going to blow this house up and kill me and killnd you and kill our kid. and so he's got family stress.

and so i just -- i got so invested in this couple and in their normal lives, just thinking how would you deal with that. and there wasea a time when myre did say to me in one of our interviews she was surprised he didn't have a heart attack because he was so stressed out. when you're doing all that and your'r bosses are also all over you and saying i don't agree with what i you're doing, and you're going to get fired if you don't stop, but you deeply believe in your heart and your soul that this isou the only wa to liberate your people, i can't imagine being him. i can't imagineag having to do that. and for her, for myrlie, by the time she buys in, which she says, i'm going to be down with this, it's at the point where their a home is fire bombed and she's the one at home with the kids. and she'sth the one who has to t the garden hose and put it out. there's just a point where she says, you know what, what else can we do? what else can we do? he's not going to stop. they're not going to stop.to so i'm not going to stop.

>> also just the sensitivity and the depth with which you tell how much she knew it was coming, and how much he knew it was coming. may 20th, 1963, medgar evers is miraculously granted tv time, equal timev to respond to segregationist critics of the movement. he givesti a 20-minute speech o television in jackson, mississippi. you talk about how myrlie knows the racist segregationist clarion ledger has already printed their address and now everyone who has a television will see his face.ll they know this is the end, and within ten days their home is fire bombed and by the middle of june he's dead. for them to know it's coming, for themw both to know it's coming, and for him to persist is a form of heroism but also a form of tragedy. i honestly don't know how to

process now, i mean, you made friends withou mrs. evers throu this ugprocess. i can feel you crying writing thatry chapter. and feeling for her and knowing she knew it was coming. how did you process it and how did you factor it into your friendship with her? >> i cried a lot writing this book. i think the saddest story that i remember writing was the one where, and you know, she's a 1950s, 1960s housewife. she does all the cooking, cleaning, and ironing. context. where myrlie irons a set of shirts, you know, crisp white shirts for medgar to go to work that week. and he says, that's so sweet, thank you, but i don't think i'm going to need them. there's a point at which he starts feeling fatalistic, and where they saw where this was going. because the naacp had told him when he had -- his neighbor who

was a member of the naacp and other friends said you have to give this guy protection. he's being followed by the klan, his phone is being tapped. you have to do something. and they said, we have better things to to with our money. and you know, the sense of being abandoned and also threatened with your job, i think at the end, he was just exhausted. and the sort of end, the hardest thing to write really was what we knew what was coming butt it comes in this extraordinary moment. he had done the tv speech, said things about the kind of world he wanted to see created in this country. and then president kennedy gives a speech on june 11th that is very similar. and that uses some of his words. i remember, he had been peppering kennedy with telegram after telegram after telegram. i spent a lot of time in the library of congress. i got my library of congress card. i'm ara super nerd. i was so excited. i took a picture of myself with

it. >> bury me there. >> i'm like, please. but and some of the saddest stuff to read there were the telegrams and the increasingly desperate communications between medgar evers and the white house. saying you need to send the national guard here. you need to send, you know, you're sending russian observers to go look. send them here. let the russians come and see what we're doing here. he was increasingly desperate. so kennedy gives this speech. in a meeting after the speech, it's supposed to be like a triumphant moment because he won kennedy beover. he won this president over who starts using some of his language. a fellow world war ii veteran, he got it. he gets it. in the meeting afterwards, he's told by his bosses you will end the street demonstrations immediately. there will d be no more street demonstrations. there will be no more marches. it's over. >> andor we're cutting off the bail money. >> we're cutting it off. it's done. so he leaves this moment when it should have been his most

triumphant moment, dejected. that's why he gets killed. this was a veteran, man, he was not dr. king, not about that life. he had guns all up in his house. he was not a nonviolence, he didn't believe in that. he wasn't. he wasn't. but, and he had a system that he had developed as a military manl even with his kids, doing drills with them. if you hear a gunshot, you go on the floor, get your brother, lay on top of him, go in the tub because that's the place that's safest. he caught the kids what to do if there was a shooting or fire bombing in the house. but that night, he was so despondent after this triumphant kennedy speech that he makes mistakes. he makes fatal errors that are the reason that this fellow world war ii veteran was able to kill him. >> you mentioned a couple times while we have been talking, a variety of t economic warfare tt i learned a lot about from your book. and when we thing about civil rights struggle, i think we all know about the famous black

boycotts, obviously, the birmingham boycott and the others that have received so much attention. i iddidn't know so much about the jacksonville one, the shopping boycott, but there's also this other side of economic warfare. you mentioned it a couple timesi banks foreclosing on the homes andre businesses of activists. so in the wake of the emmett till trial, the banks and the financiale organizations that d madega normal home loans, norma car loans, normal business loans, normal personal loans to the black community like they had toy anybody else, targeted activists who had participated in trying to get witnesses to come forward for the emmett till trial and foreclosed on their homes and businesses. that's how charles evers moves to chicago. that's how very well off black f activists in mississippi end up leaving and going to chicago. i was thinking about this

because in tim snyder's book on tyranny, lesson 14, one of the lessons that he warns about and that he describes as happening in all sorts of authoritarian countries in front of all sorts of different types of tyranny is to not give tyrants the hooks on which to hang you. and he advises one of his lessons from the 20th century is clean up any legal trouble. clean up any financial trouble. clean up anything that anybody can use against you because the phrase he uses is the nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. and seeing that at work in this story, seeing that at work in mississippi, snyder is warning about that having happened in fascist germany. i wonder if you have been thinking about that in terms of the future in this country. and the ways we need to build up our own resilience and high ce profile people among us such as

yourself, need to protect ourselves and make sure natne w have people who are not just in solidarity with us but looking out for sous? >> absolutely. and to build on your point, think about, again, none of the playbooks are new. people just roll out the same ones over and over again. think about what's happening in jackson, mississippi, now. where jackson, which is an 80% black city, which is the capital of mississippi, has been bereft, has had the control of its own water system seized by the majority white and republican government, and they have attempted to seize their control of their own policing and imposing a capital police system on them. and there's violent policing is violent like -- it's violent in mississippi like it is almost nowhere else, incredibly violent. they're essentially saying black people must not be able to govern themselves in jackson.s

they cannot be able to govern themselves. go to tennessee, very similar. the two states that they're targeting with trying to steal from them control of their own resources are the cities of memphis and the city of nashville. both of which have black leadership in the state house. the justins. justin jones and justin pearson. right? they are the representatives from memphis and jackson. and so what they're essentially fighting their majority conservative white government for is control of the resources of the city of nashville and the county where nashville is, which is the most prosperous, where the bills, the money comes from. they don't want that in control of black people. b you're seeing what's happening in states where they're deconstructing dei. to the extent where even there's a lawsuite against howard university to try to not allow howard university to control the influx of black doctors, to

demand that they make howard university's medical system no longer majority black. this is a systematic attempt to wage economic warfare on a group of people, particularly in southern states, who have the numbers that if they voted at scale, would flipot elections. this is not about conservatives or white people not liking black people. and i'll just say very briefly, one of the things that my editor cut down a lot, but i still sprinkled it through the book because iri had a whole chapter and he was like, no, ma'am. i had a whole chapter and in depth history of the history of slavery and the post slavery era in mississippi. because mississippi was the richest state in america when we had slavery. because its cotton comes from the richest soil. this soil creates the highest grade cotton on earth. the queen of england loved

mississipping cotton. that meant you had the best cotton in the world. they needed a massive labor force to produce this cotton. they had one of the largest numbers of enslaved people. after slavery was done, three states, mississippi, louisiana, and south carolina, had majority black populations because they imported so many africans and bred so many africans in their chattel system because they needed a massive labor force. what happens when you then end slavery and reconstruction says that every man, women couldn't vote, but every man could vote, but the majority of your state is black.yo and in the case of mississippi, it's 55% black. what you get is a successful multiracial democracy because the black and tan republicans which was a coalition of radical republicans which used to mean something different back then, and black folks, got together and created things like free public schools, access to health care, trying to educate black children who had never gone to

school in their lives. actual school that wasn't closed during the period when you were tilling the fields. they would close the schools so black kids could work and be child labor. though things really changed in reconstruction and changed mississippi for the better. ending that and ending black access to the ballot was about that. it was about reversing reconstruction. and what we're seeing now in the south where it's the most intense is it's looking at the places that have largein number of people of color, texas, arizona, nevada, mississippi, south carolina, north carolina, virginia, florida, which has one of the highest percentages of black people in the country, so the systematic ways in which they're trying to demoralize black voters and demoralize brown voters and demoralize white liberal voters and demoralize lgbtq voters. it's about reducing the percentage of people who will be willing to or able to

participate so they can win. that is the way fascist governments thrive. >> and to make it worse, i do feel like we are in, in this election cycle in particular, we are in an era of newly, in our lifetime, newly overt out and loud electoral racism. and i mean that not like, i'm discerning racism in something that you're doing. no, like beinge out and loud proud racist. i mean, the steve bannon in europe addressing conservatives in europe saying you will be called racist. wear it as a badge of honor. stephen miller who is a trump administration official running ads in florida saying that the only real racism is racism against white people. and what white people need is white racial solidarity and a government that finally works for white people. i mean, they're running -- they

ran ads to this effect in florida and they're now -- they have written it into policy for what would beto the incoming trp administration as part of project 2025. so and you see it in right-wing culture too.in you see people like elon musk at twitter endorsing pseudo scientific racism, all of this quackery about iq, right, and pseudoscientific racism that's newly popular among the tech bro right wing. this stuff is not subtle. and it is not something that you need investigative journalism to figure out. this is out and proud, and so that's an important distinction because itn means exposing it trying to put a spotlight on it doesn't necessarily work becauss they are not ashamed of it. so what do you do with that? >> and by the way -- no, i mean, and they weren't then either.

you know, one of the things that's so fascinating if you go back and watch in the 1950s, people being interviewed on the street. i love maner on the street interviews. when you look at them from the 1950s and '60s, cbs news reporters would go up to random white couple, and they were very open saying we don't want the n-words in our schools. they weren't ashamed of it then. they didn't think this was embarrassing and they saw the power of television as something that couldas work for them. there was this idea among white supremacists, we're right. if we can get the media to stop being biased, we're right anyway, so it will be obvious we're the morally right people. it was only when the media started actually realizing, wait a minute, there's a villain and a victor here. we can't be neutral or both sides, the idea of racism, you started to get this idea the media was biased. i think what you do with it is that you actually have to speak louder. and ito think you also have to explain to people, we both talk

a lot about democracy on our cr shows, a lot. but i think somebody said to me at a talk that i did recently, you should explain what that in means. i was like, that's a really good point. because it's just a word that we say a lot that i don't think people necessarily know what that means, it means the people get to decide. how are the people deciding when 40% of americans vote in a primary and everyone is stuck, you know what i mean, and everyoneha is stuck with whoeve that 40% choose in the general, and then like 60% vote in the general. well, that means that they didn't decide that. that isn't democracy. we're a low participatory democracy right now. what we're seeing is a disconnect between people and power. where a small number of people have really gotten good at finding ways to exercise minority rule and power. and where the majority of people have become demoralized. and so you're seeing very low voter turnout in places like louisiana, in places like florida. i was inac broward county, one

the bluest counties in florida and one of the worst turnouts, 30 something percent. you get ron desantis because they say he won a great victory. a million people didn't vote that voted in the previous election. that is subtraction, not addiction, and that's not democracy. i think maybe what we do about it is thate we have to start, think, speaking more loudly, and i think more specifically about what we mean by defending democracy and not just saying we should do it. (smelling) ew. gotta get rid of this. ♪tell me why♪ because it stinks. ♪have you tried downy rinse and refresh♪ it helps remove odors 3x better than detergent alone. it worked guys! ♪yeahhhh♪ downy rinse and refresh.

sarah shaw: my day job is as an author relations manager for a publisher. i'm in books, and i think about stories all the time. the st. jude story, it's a beautiful, beautiful story that you can't make up. fundraising and raising awareness for st. jude is not just helping kids in the united states, it's helping kids all over the world, and that's a huge deal. what i do really does make an impact. so i love what i do for st. jude, and i just know that i'm in the right place. ♪♪ missing out on the things you love because of asthma? get back to better breathing with fasenra, an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma that is taken once every 8 weeks.

fasenra is not for sudden breathing problems or other eosinophilic conditions. allergic reactions may occur. don't stop your asthma treatments without talking with your doctor. tell your doctor if your asthma worsens. headache and sore throat may occur. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. step back out there with fasenra. ask your doctor if it's right for you. only purple's gel flex grid passes the raw egg test. no other mattress cradles your body and simultaneously supports your spine. step back out there with fasenra. memory foam doesn't come close. get your best sleep guaranteed. save up to $800 during our memorial day sale. visit purple.com or a store near you hi, i'm eileen. i live in vancouver, washington and i write mystery novels. as i was writing, i found that i just wasn't sharp and that doesn't work when you're writing a mystery

and i knew i needed to do something so i started taking prevagen. i realized that i was much more clear, much sharper. i was remembering the details that i was supposed to. prevagen keeps my brain working right. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription.

i have one last question i want to ask before i cede the questions to all of you. and that is, you're talking about demoralization. the other thing that happens as a democracy is threatened by a authoritarian movement is that politics gets not just boring and demoralizing but dangerous. there starts to be violence that's associated with individual candidates and individual political movements where you expect there to be paramilitary presence at political events. when people who are doing normal political things, whether it be registering to vote or voting, we saw this in the south, this is the part, this is some of the most dramatic elements of the civil rights story, you start to

see violence being used to prevent people from doing the very mundane day-to-day work of democracy. so doing the basic stuff as a citizen becomes an act of bravery. that leads to heroism and also small numbers of people participating. and we are not in a place right now as a country of 330 million people where we can count on a few heroes to fix this for us. we need mass participation. while people are demoralized and people are increasingly afraid. and i have learned so much from you. i want to know what your message is to people watching us right now, people in the theater right now, people looking to you as somebody who understands history and understand these politics better than anyone i know, how do you tell people that it's okay to do it, it's okay to feel afraid, you need to do it anyway, and in fact, you must? >> it's the most important

question. because we, the system that we have inherited from our very imperfect founding father slave owners was, is one in which participatory democracy is the only thing that can save us. the courts aren't going to save us. clarence ain't interested. clarence ain't helping. god love him. bless his heart, like they say in the south. he said i want to just go on trips. and alito is like, i'm going with you. what i say about it is, remember rosebud lee. rosebud lee is somebody that i learned about in doing the research for this book. rosebud lee's husband, the reverend lee, was doing the simple thing and meeting the political violence. he was registering people to vote in a state in which viewer than 6% of black people were registered to vote in the democratic primary. you had to register as a democrat to have any power at all, and the way that democrats

at that time kept black people fraught voting was through political violence, and reverend lee was taking, you know, petitions for black folks to simply register to vote, and he was shot dead by a klansman who pulled up to the side of his car and aimed a gun at him and shot his jaw off. and rosebud lee made a decision that was very brave. she said, you're going to do that to my husband, you're going to see it. everyone is going to see it. she had an open casket funeral for her husband whose face had been shot ought. by the way, the authorities at the time said they believed it was a car accident and what happened to his jaw is his fillings flew out in a car wreck so they didn't have to arrest anyone for his killing. that open casket funeral is where mamie till mobley got the idea for what she did with emmett till. so the first thing i was saying is that really brave and courageous people take inspiration.

they duplicate kind of the brilliant inspiration of others. that's what mamie till did, where she got that from. the other thing is to remember that political violence is what kept mississippi from -- is what kept black mississippians for voting. it was charles and medgar evers trying to go and register to vote and having 200 white men with guns face them down and threaten to kill them if they tried to register. and charles and medgar saying we got guns too. then medgar saying maybe it's only four of us and 200 of them, we should go home. they ended up registering but they weren't able to vote in that election. that was the theodore bibo election. and he said the best way to keep black people from voting is to visit them the night before. there was congressional testimony, a field hearing in mississippi in which the members of congress trying to understand what happened in that election. black people were terrorized out of voting. what i would say now is we don't face that level of political

terror. but the level of terror you face now is real. we should acknowledge it's real. had you have proud boys and oath keepers showing up in arizona with long guns, it's intimidating. you know there are mass shooting s and you see people with visible weapons at your polling place or outside where you're trying to count votes where you have ruby freeman and shaye moss threatened with death and kidnapping just for being election workers. this is a time that is very much like medgar evers' time. we have to ask ourselves how did people at that time respond to that? what did they do when they were faced with the same thing? you know what they did? they voted. they voted anyway. and because they understood that as king said, you may not be able to get the racist sheriff to stop being racist toward you or change his mind, but you can vote him out. in the end, i think what people have to remember is that the vote and using the vote is actually the strongest and most

powerful tool that you have. and maybe you vote in numbers. maybe you vote absentee so you don't have to face those gunmen, maybe you get all of your church friends or all of your group chat or friends to organize, you know, a convoy where you can all drive together. you start using your community. using the community that you have built up around you, and you find ways to get together and be brave. but not voting ain't the answer. you're ceding it to the other side. what they want desperately is for you to not participate and for you to become -- for you to give up. in autocratic societies and societies that are fully gone, there are elections like in russia, but they aren't real. they don't matter. when we start to believe elections don't matter, we're on our way to being them. >> that's exactly right. exactly right.

>> at university of maryland global campus, getting a bachelor's degree doesn't have to mean starting from scratch. here you can earn up to 90 undergraduate credits for relevant experience. what will your next success be?

clogged gutters can cause big problems fast. until now. call 833-leaffilter today for your free gutter inspection. i've had terrible flooding problems on my porch. now i understand why. right now leaffilter is offering a free inspection, on your schedule. leaffilter is a permanent gutter solution, so you never have to worry about costly damage from clogged gutters again. call us today and schedule your free inspection. to schedule your free inspection, call 833.leaf.filter today or visit leaffilter.com. ♪ on your period, sudden gushes happen. say goodbye gush fears! thanks to always ultra thins... with rapiddry technology... that absorbs two times faster. hellooo clean and comfortable. always. fear no gush.

i'm richard lui with a news update. closing arguments in donald trump's first criminal trial scheduled to start tomorrow morning in new york. trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in this case. he's accused of helping pay off stormy daniels so she would not reveal their affair in the 2016 presidential campaign. trump denied the affair and the charges. the biden administration is calling images of the carnage from the gazan city of rafah heartbreaking and devastating. but the statement from the national security council also

said we understand the strike killed two senior hamas terrorists who are responsible for attacks against israeli civilians. but as we have been clear, israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians. local health officials say as least 45 people were killed in an idf air strike that set fire to a tent encampment where displaced palestinians have been sheltering. netanyahu called the incident tragic and says israel is investigating. and papua new guinea's government asking the international community for help after saying it believes more than 2,000 people were buried alive in a massive landslide friday. rescue crews are struggling to reach victims in remote mountainous area of the island nation north of australia. today, the white house said u.s. aid is providing money for food, shelter, and sanitation to help out. back to joy reid and rachel maddow live at the apollo.

>> we're going to take some questions from the audience. we're going to have reverend al sharpton come out and join us again. he's going to fact check everything we just said. rev, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> first of all, did we get anything wrong in that discussion? >> no, i think you got it all right. and i think that, you know, what this book did, i almost had to go to therapy. because i think what joy did that has not been done as well is bring the human side of what those that fought these fights were, and last year, i went and spoke for the 60th anniversary of the assassination of medgar. and myrlie evers was there. and i have never told this in public. i told to her. and you know how regal she is. and she took my arm and said,

you ought to say that in public one day. medgar got killed at 39 years old. a lot of the reason that the 250,000 people showed up in the march on washington in '63 is because medgar had gotten killed. and that energized that march. dr. king got killed at 39. malcolm x got killed at 39. and i was -- i grew up in a movement much years later, and i started hitting brooklyn when i was 12. i became youth director to jesse jackson's group here when i was 13. john lewis and jesse jackson told me one night, you don't understand. we're the first generation of leaders that lived past 40. and i don't think people understood until your book, i really almost -- where people's families lived every day expecting to bury their loved

ones. and the human side of it you told, because it was a family thing. i think that this was a beautiful book for history, but it also told a story of a woman that ever day looked at her kids saying your dad may not come home. >> joy, question for you. what made you decide to do this book? and did you travel to mississippi as part of your research? >> well, thank you for the question. what made me decide to do the book was myrlie, ms. myrlie. i had interviewed ms. myrlie for my weekend show at the time, a.m. joy, if anyone remembers that one. and i had interviewed her remotely. and rev will tell you, it's very different meeting her in person. we flew out, i think this was 2018, and she and maxine waters were together as a panel. representative waters. then afterwards, we got to talking, us girls. she started talking about

medgar. it was in such a profound, like, personal and present way. and i said to her, ms. myrlie, you soind like a giggly school girl talking about your boyfriend. he's been dead for almost 60 years. she said in her beautiful, resonant voice, medgar evers was the love of my life. that's pretty good. that's how she sounds. >> you got it. you got it. >> that's how she sounds. when she says that to you, you would be hard pressed not to want to write a whole book about it. and i did travel to jackson the second part of the question, we spent a lot of time in jackson to do this book. we went on the block where they lived. they changed the name now to margaret walker alexander avenue. a great literary figure in her own right lived at the end of the block. and the next block is named for medgar evers. we interviewed the neighbors, many of whom still own those

homes. ms. myrlie's best friend lived across the street. she was in her hospital because she was 90 years young and fresh. she had on her fabulous red lip and a high heel. she was fabulous. and we interviewed the next door neighbor, the mom was also very ill, but the daughter who witnessed the assassination, the aftermath of the assassination was 15 at the time, she and her little sister. we interviewed her, their best friends down the street. this was a very cohesive block and they're still there. we spent a lot of time there. the evers family gave us tremendous access to their archives. we went in, myself, my two researchers and my assistant, and my husband jason, we were in there in these archives. it was incredible. they gave us full access. they let us in when it was closed and we were the only ones in there and we could go through boxes from everything, from their high school letters to marriage certificate to letters they written and all his

communications and we were allowed to photograph it and sit with it. i sat with it for like a year of figuring out what do i do with all this material? we did a lot of jackson, a lot of time in jackson. ♪♪

imagine a future where plastic is not wasted... but instead remade over and over... into the things that keep our food fresher, our families safer, and our planet cleaner. to help us get there, america's plastic makers are investing billions of dollars to create innovative products and new recycling technologies for sustainable change. because when you push for smarter solutions, big things can happen. if you have wet amd, you never want to lose sight of the things you love. some things should stand the test of time. long lasting eylea hd could significantly improve your vision and can help you go up to 4 months between treatments. if you have an eye infection, eye pain or redness, or allergies to eylea hd, don't use. eye injections like eyla hd may cause eye infection, separation of the retina, or rare

but severe swelling of blood vessels in the eye. an increase in eye pressure has been seen. there's an uncommon risk of heart attack or stroke associated with blood clots. the most common side effects were blurred vision, cataract, corneal injury, and eye floaters. and there's still so much to see. if you are on eylea or a similar type of treatment, ask your retina specialist about eylea hd today, for the potential for fewer injections. ♪ ♪

ask your retina specialist about eylea hd welcome to the roots of our legacy. where excellence, comfort, and electricity... are forever in bloom. welcome to beyond. the mercedes-maybach eqs suv. i love your dress.

oh thanks! i splurged a little because liberty mutual customized my car insurance and i saved hundreds. that's great. i know, right? i've been telling everyone. baby: liberty. did you hear that? ty just said her first word. can you say “mama”? baby: liberty. can you say “auntie”? baby: liberty. how many people did you tell? only pay for what you need. jingle: ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ baby: ♪ liberty. ♪ what if we don't get down in time jingle: ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ to get a birthday gift for zoe? don't panic. with etsy we can find the perfect gift, and send her a preview right away. thanks guys. [ surprised scream ] don't panic. gift easy with etsy. this is a question for both of you. what advice do you believe medgar evers would provide for

today's youth? >> you want me to go first? so, at the time, what medgar evers was telling the youth at the time was, you have got to be smart if you're going to be out there because you're going to get hurt. they're going to hit you with batons, hit you with fire hoses. what he taught them was how to physically defend themselves. he did drills on how to protect your body from the blows they knew they were going to take. he was concerned they were going to get harmed and he also taught they had to be strategic. i'm going to open this youth councils but we don't want you to get suspended from school for being in the naacp youth council, so we'll call it the naacp youth club. sometimes the club meets, sometimes the council meets, but it's all different names and he would name things different things to keep it like moving along so people could be

strategic. what he would say for young activists, be strategic. be prepared for any violence that you might meet. and stick together. because that's the other thing that these young people did. one little story that really moved me was james cheney, he was in one of these naacp youth leagues. the youth council, and his first act of activism was as a 15-year-old, he pinned an naacp tag he made on his shirt and got suspended. so he didn't just jump into the movement when he was with goodman and swarner, he had been an activist, like reverend sharpton, since he was a kid. >> i think medgar evers would say based on how he lived to make sure you're fighting for the end result. don't get caught up in the drama of the moment, but make sure the drama is used toward an end result. and i think that that's sometimes -- it happened to me

when i was a young activist, we get caught up in the drama. we forget, is this working? like joy was talking about voting. that wasn't dramatic enough for a lot. but at the end of the day, that's what makes the difference. you know medgar evers never lived to see the voting rights act. but he was the one that made it possible. so you may not see the results, but your strategy must be to lead the results. like right now, we're living in a time that is tumultuous, but one thing i thought about, you know, i have rallies every saturday morning at our headquarters. one of the central park five guys was there this morning at our rally. i told him the irony is, as depressing as some of this is, rachel, donald trump will start on trial in the same building. he will start on trial in the

same criminal courthouse that he called on the death penalty for the central park five. so those few of us that stood by the central park five sit back and watch, that's the building we marched for those kids on, who were exonerated now. he's going to have to sit there and watch a jury pick him, prosecuted by a black prosecutor. that we voted and elected. if you were ever to tell donald trump a black prosecutor in georgia, a black prosecutor in new york, and a black woman federal judge in washington. >> and while yusef salaam is serving on the city council in harlem. >> this seems like a fitting following question. does it seem we will keep our

democracy? >> you want to go first? >> i think we have to get it to keep it. but i think we will get what we fight to get. and i think that if we look at the fact that they are not going to do it, and they never did, if there's one thing we can learn from myrlie and medgar is that you get what you fight for. and you got to be willing to do more to get it than they are to keep it from you. >> amen. >> joy, this is for you. what advice would you give to young black ladies who want to get into journalism today? >> so when i was young and a nerdy kid who loved watching the news -- >> you're still young. >> i'm still young.

thank you. i'm still nerdy. i'm both of those. i appreciate that. that's why you have to have your friends around you. i didn't really have a role model for being in journalism. i didn't intend to be a journalist at all. i was supposed to be a doctor. caribbean. but i loved gwen ifill. i loved her because she was the one person who i saw who looked like me and my mom. she was amazing. i met her in 2015. watch this, they say in church. watch this. i'm going somewhere. and in 2015, i'm going somewhere, i was in selma, alabama, and my peripheral vision is terrible. i see across the street, that looks like gwen ifill. i started running, runic like a muppet. i'm like you're the greatest person ever. you're my idol. she was so kind. she turned to this mad woman who was running at her. she opened her arms and gave me the biggest hug. and so i say that to say my

advice would be, gwen ifill for me, i used to run track. i was nerdy but sporty shorty too. i had some athletic ability. i used to run third leg in the relay. and 100, you each run a full 100. then you have to hand off. and the hand off is the game. the first person sets the pace, for me, that's gwen. that's somebody who sets the pace. the person who picks up the pace has to keep the pace. you can't lose the pace. i used to run third leg. you set up the next person for success. then the closer has to close. if all four of those people don't do it, you're not going to win. my advice to young journalists is know who your starter is. who is that person that is your gwen, your inspiration? the inspiration of them, whether you get to meet them and hug them or not, but learn what they did. learn all about what they did. learn about who that pacer was after them. how did the next generation of

people after gwen get in there? figure that out. if you can meet one of them and get one of them in your life, do that. if not, just learn it yourself. then, when you get anywhere in that door, your job is to hand off. your job is to put that baton into the hands of someone else who might not have an opportunity. it's your obligation not to slam the door behind you. it's your obligation to see this as a relay race, not you finishing by yourself. none of us do this by ourselves. we have to have people willing to help us, let us in the door, hand off to us, then when we get the baton, if you don't hand it off, karma will hand you back right back where you started.

everybody wants super straight, super white teeth. they want that hollywood white smile. new sensodyne clinical white provides 2 shades whiter teeth and 24/7 sensitivity protection.

i think it's a great product. it's going to help a lot of patients. but st. jude has gotten us through it. st. jude is hope for every child diagnosed with cancer because the research is being shared all over the world. ed gutters. call leaffilter today. and never clean out clogged gutters again. leaffilter's technology keeps debris out of your gutters for good. guaranteed. call 833.leaf.filter today, or visit leaffilter.com.

(vo) you might be used to living with your albuterol asthma guaranteed. rescue inhaler, but it's a bit of a dinosaur, because it only treats your symptoms, not inflammation. treating both symptoms and inflammation with rescue is supported by asthma experts. finally, there's a modern way to treat symptoms and asthma attacks. airsupra is the first ever dual-action rescue inhaler that treats your asthma symptoms and helps prevent attacks. airsupra is the only rescue fda-approved to do both. airsupra is an as-needed rescue inhaler and should not be used as a maintenance treatment for asthma. get medical help right away if your breathing does not improve, continues to worsen, or for serious allergic reactions. using airsupra more than prescribed could be life threatening. serious side effects include heart problems, increased risk of thrush or infections. welcome to the modern age of dual-action asthma rescue.

ask your doctor if airsupra is right for you. i don't want you to move. i'm gonna miss you so much. you realize we'll have internet waiting for us at the new place, right? oh, we know. we just like making a scene. transferring your services has never been easier. get connected on the day of your move with the xfinity app. can i sleep over at your new place? can katie sleep over tonight? sure, honey! this generation is so dramatic! move with xfinity.