the individual has to give up to get to them. they cannot do their job efficiently unless they have the power to tell you what to do. very interesting, isn't it? yet our society today generally believed that we have to have an efficient government because we have been told time after time after time, we must make the government efficient. but that is the road to loss of freedoms. >> to watch this program in its entirety, go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen and click search. ..

i went to jackson, mississippi, to serve as a volunteer for an effort that the student nonviolent coordinating committee had in getting out to vote in jackson, mississippi. i came back, and i eventually became a member of sncc and this is one that is near and dear to my heart. this book, "hands on the freedom plow" is a compilelation of the

work of many different women, 52 women, who were members of the sncc, north, south, black, white, la tina, and the book itself have been 16 years in the making, and it really has been a labor of love on the part of the people who you see here, some of whom, the majority of whom who were editors and contributors to this book. this is the very first time that you've -- that we've had the assembly of women's stories from sncc in this manner, so this is a very, very meaningful work, and i think you'll enjoy hearing from the people here, so without further adieu, i'd like to get started and introduce you to jean smith young, a child

psychiatrist practicing in the washington, d.c. area. she's worked with a number of community-oriented mental health programs to address the problems of special population including children in foster care and mentally ill youth in the juvenile justice system. she's also instructed medical residence at georgetown and howard university. a phi betakappa graduate and a part of the nonaction violent group, known as nag, and she worked for sncc in southwest georgia and mississippi, and now i'll give the floor over to jean to tell some of her stories. [applause] >> hello? hello. i'm testing this, okay? we are soldiers in the army.

we've got our hands on the freedom employee, but one day we'll get all we can and fights at most, we'll have to stand up and fight anyhow, so here we are -- [applause] i started with that song because i like it, and also because it represents the book, "hands on the freedom plow," and the third reason i started with that because i want to talk about the importance of music and song in the movement, so judy asked me to start first with how did i get there, and the way i got to sncc and mississippi and georgia was i joined nag, the action group at howard, and it would be another day to talk about how wonderful nag was, but one day i

said was this sounds kind of good. i think i'd like to go south, so then the next day, i meet somebody in the middle where all the other sororities and fraternities are dancing and somebody hands me a ticket to go to atlanta, and that's how i got to sncc. i get to atlanta, i find, walk up to a creepy place to the 8th street, walk up the stairs, it's empty, and nobody is there. one wanders out from the back and he looks at me, and i tell him who i am, he said, i guess you thought somebody would be here to greet you. [laughter] it goes on and on. it's been a wonderful time, and i don't have enough time to talk about all the great experiences i've had in sncc, but i wanted to start here how i ended up

going to philadelphia, mississippi to work in philadelphia after goodman and swerner were murdered. i'll read from that section in my part of the book. in may of 1964, i hitched a ride north to ohio where a thousand volunteers would be organized for the massive project. about the third day of the orientation, i was sitting next to julie in the back of western college for women auditorium. the hall was medium sized, large enough to hold the 200 volunteers here for the training session. it was beautiful, a wonderful place to be and think together, but there was so many people there, that i couldn't figure it out out, so i turned to judy, and connected with judy as partners in what is the next phase of this and how do we manage the organization?

we know each other in a deep abiding way. we've always been together. my union theory about this is that we have a special radar system that connects us because of similar events in our lives. we both had the misfortune of losing, daring creative fathers early in life, and the good fortune of having intelligent, driven mothers to carry on. both in our early lives got these two messages. one, life is tough, and you can't depend on a man to take care of you. two, you are very much loved, but there's no pampering around here. [laughter] that's our start in life. here we are in the back of an auditorium trying to figure out what to do with who we are, and bob moses comes to speak. bob came forward. he was the architect of the mississippi summer prompt and came out to explain to us that

this was a big deal, a new phrase in our work and lives, and that it was dangerous. i didn't listen too closely when he talked because i had gotten used to being squared and the atmosphere of danger, and i choose it was better not to think about it. bob went on and on that it was dangerous, and we ignored it, but then something new happened. just as judy and i were sitting there kind of just being in the mood, bob was called off stage for a few minutes. when he came back, he was a different guy. his body was stiff and he was pushed four by four staff members including his wife. they lined up next to bob as he announced in a hesitant way that three of our people, goodman were missing in philadelphia, mississippi, and feared they were dead. dead? i had been moving around mississippi in a cloud of denial

thinking somehow i would be taken care of and nothing would happen to me, and then the reality gripped me, and i was scared. judy was scared too. in fact, everybody in the room was scared, and in this violence, something bad happened. the room was cold and empty. it was awful. the fear made us stopped being who we were, and judy was the only person i felt somehow connected to. i turned to her and i said let's sing. she said, no, girl, i'm not doing that, so then i thought we needed to do something. i still don't know where this song came from. it just came out of the sky of something because i don't know who taught it to me, but in the silence i stood up and started walking towards the front of the hall and singing this song but i don't know where it came from. the song went -- ♪ i don't know why i have to cry

sometimes ♪ ♪ i don't know why i have to ♪ it would be a perfect day ♪ but there's trouble all in my way ♪ ♪ but i'll know by and by when i got to the front, everybody learned the song and everybody was singing and the mood changed, and everybody stood up and joined and we were back and one again ready to take on the challenges that were ahead of us. that was the end of it. after that, judy and i went on to separate projects, and later in the summer after it was clear that they were dead, i joined the group of the team that would go to philadelphia to work to show that we would not be run off by this event. after this orientation, bob made the point, and this is important

historically, that long ago, or several years ago, we made a mistake withdrawing from our position in macombs when herbert lee was killed, and we were determined to follow his lead and go to philadelphia and take our stand. that's my story. okay. [applause] >> betty garmon robinson worked with sncc from 1964 to 1966. in the 70s she moved to baltimore to do factory and union organizing that led her to a career in public health starting with occupational health research and ending at the director of an hiv/aids study clinic. in 1997, she returned to community organizing which she continues today. she is the mother of two

daughters and has two grandchildren. [applause] >> thanks, jennifer. [applause] so, how did i get to sncc? my parents were working class. they both got a college education, and they joined the middle class, and they were very nervous about their new place in the middle class, and therefore they were very worried about -- move it a little bit? okay. they were worried about how would people see them, and so they were very cautious. at the same time, i grie up with a kind of a fairness person. i was for fairness here, and fairness there. i don't know where i got it from, but that's how i saw it then, and then i went to college in upstate new york, and the sit-ins happened, and i could not believe that black students in the south could not eat at lunch counters. there was something about that

that i couldn't believe it, and so i and sever other women on campus supported a demonstration in the spring of 1960, and that was the beginning. it took me four more years to get to sncc. in the meantime i did northern support and raised money, wrote letters, called congressmen, ect.. in graduate school in berkeley, i was part of a group -- some of this is in the story too, i was part of a group of graduate students and read about social movements in the u.s., and what we learned is the struggle against racism, institutional racism, and the struggle of the african-american people was one struggle where the energy existed for a real fundamental change in the country. i left. also, we talked about the ivory

tower and you had to be part of what was happening in the country, so i quit graduate school, never did get a master's degree, and left for sncc. what i'm going to read is give you just a little snapshot of what it might have been like. i was young, very naive i have to say as a young white person growing up in the north with not too much understanding or political education. i'll just start to read and give you a little snapshot of what it was like. this is summer of 64. in june of 18964 when sncc moved to greenwood, mississippi for freedom summer, i went along. i had come to sncc in march. greenwood was a large town by mississippi standards, but there was probably no more than six or seven dozen houses in the negro section because people lived as sharecroppers on a plantation. the small frame houses were painted white with green trim

and lined up in rows on dirt roads. sometimes there was a smaller house in the back of the main house. my host lived in one like this with only three rooms. for the whole summer, they slept on the living room couch and chair, giving me the only bedroom. overrealmed by their generosity, i was respectful, but worried i had not thanked them enough and not been as conscious of their sacrifice as i should have been. that's the white liberal guilt stuff; right? [laughter] anyway, i'm beyond that, but anyway, that's where i was then. [laughter] the sncc office was on the first floor of an old building on avenue n. they had a telephone and a chair and a desk. i worked the national phone line. it was like an 800-number, and we communicated with the northern support groups

mobilizing them to support whatever what was happening in the south, whatever we needed, contact press, send money. we typed for several hours to reproduce the line reports detailing all the activities in mississippi on a particular day so there were four of us. we worked around the clock in long shifts with no particular schedule getting four to six hours of sleep per day. each week we received a check of $10. really, it was $9.64 after taxes from the atlanta office, and that was supposed to purchase all of our essentials. it's where i spent a lot of that money on one regular male a day at -- regular meal a day at a restaurant in greenwood.

however, because of the staff and all of the visitors ate there, i'm sure, and he welcomed freedom fighters so his restaurant, but i am sure he really supported us and there were many times that we ate free. here i ate my share of greens cialtion -- greens, fish, and pork chops. our work was protecting the field staff, and leaving the office un atepidded is -- attended is something we dare not do. civil rights workers who ventured into mississippi's roads could disappear, be arrested, or killed for challenging the system. when we heard about an arrest, we called the jail to let them know that we knew, and then we knew that they had somebody in custody, and then we called the rarely cooperative fbi and the washington family and our northern contacts for them to

mobilize, call a demonstration, call the justice department, whatever it was. i'm going to speak this part. my parents called me constantly because they thought that i was duped by communists. this is especially relevant today because there were four columnists at the time, right-wing journalists who accused the civil rights movement of being under communism control. my nervous parents threatened to bring me home and send me to a deprogramming place because they were so convinced i was not in my right mind, and paradoxically my mother sent care packages throughout this period even included an air conditioner for the office that summerment on the one hand i was sure my parents knew we were sweltering

and sent the air-condition out of general concern, but i couldn't help wonder if they thought the gifts would bring me back home and do the unimagined brainwashing. i think i should stop. i have a little more, but i'll stop because i know we're tight on time. [applause] >> maria is a community organizer, writer, photographer, and occasional adjunct professor. she worked for sncc from 1963 to 1967 primarily in bamsz and mississippi -- alabama and mississippi supporting organizers with material and photographs. she was invited to northern new mexico in 1968 to help start agriculture cooperatives and community health clinics. in 1990, varela was awarded a

prize for helping native americans rebirth and sheep growers to preserve their cultures and economies. maria varela. [applause] >> i join sncc relocket at that particular -- reluctantly. i was working in a theology-based movement of students on college campuses at the time which felt that christianity really had an obligation in dealing with justice and poverty, and because of the times that i was working, 61-6 2, i was an organizer going by bus from campus to campus exhorting students to support the sit-in movement and the freedom rides, and then about, i don't know, probably somewhere

in early or late 62 i got a letter from a friend of mine from the sncc office asking to come south to work with her at the sncc office. that's when my so-called values and beliefs really collided with reality because i did not want to go, and i really sat on that letter for two or three months and never responded, and sitting in a bunk bed one time up in some catholic college in green bay, wipes, i thought, what a hypocrite. you just, you know, sorry, you have to go, so i did that reluctantly, got on the bus, went down to be there by the summer. got diverted to sort of a summer program for young black kids that were on their own doing sit-ins in their little rural

community because they read about the college students doing it, and saw it on television, and they were doing spontaneous thing and getting beat up and put in jail, and so sncc put together a program to help the kids get strategies and training in nonviolence. while there, a lot of sncc people were invited to speak to the kids and be role models for them, and i met frank smith, and we had lunch together one afternoon, and he's like, how did you get here? i explained to him about the young person students, and he got a really kind of intense look on his face. i didn't know what that was about, and the next day he was talking with bernard who came from in the selma office for sncc. they came over to me and said, so, would you consider going to selma? i said, no.

[laughter] they said, well, look, here's the situation. one of the ministers there who is the strongest in the movement is a french canadian priest who was the head of the black catholic parrish there and we need him because he's the only one to open the churches for voter registration. we're baptist, and he is dealing with others who are not happy with the situation and he needs someone of his own faith holsaert to be there, and so, you know, i said give me time to think about it. the old catholic thing kicked in, and there i was on the plane to selma. i knew casey because she invited me. i didn't know frank and bernard, but they had faith that i could

do this. that faith that was established in the short week made me do things i wouldn't have ever done on my own which i think is the story of a lot of us through these relationships. it was a large part of me being able to do this, and i want to go forward and read to you sort of where i was by about 1964. i looked down at the speedometer. it hovered at 115. my 1957 pa card hurried down the highway. i saw the two-toned 1962 chevy with white occupants trying to pass us, again. the barrel of a long gun poked up between the two men in the front seat. it seemed like an eternity sense we left memphis and got on the

interstate. my companions and older black woman and daughter and i left the sncc gathering in tennessee of the we were on our way to the mississippi delta. traveling in an integrated car in daylight left us tension. i thought the cover of dakness meant the worst of the journey was over, and then i turned and saw the white male occupants of the chevy starring at us. it was open season on civil rights workers. we got on the interstate, and they chased us. this is a pakkard8-cylinder held up at 120 miles per hour. i heard my dad say, you know, you shouldn't speed because you could blow a rod here. [laughter] dad, get out of my brain. [laughter] well, there was a truck in front, and i thought i'm just going to shoot pass the truck, and park in front of him while

going because they won't shoot me or us as a truck driver as a witness. the truck driver pulled out and we hovered by the semi for another few hours. the silence and if they had fallen apart, we would not have made it. i shot back up to 125 when i saw the exit. the chevy was a 6 cylinder, so it couldn't make it up the hill. i made it to the exit with no truck or chevy, cut the lights, and welcomed the darkness. the chevy roared over us into the night. there was not a word spoken as we continued through baseville on the way to the delta. the fear subsided. finally in small murmurs with

chuckles, we dared to believe it was over. i thought that company muff been god's chair yacht maker. encounters like these became normal who were new to the south. they had been normal for generations of those born and raised in the south. as civil rights workers, we had to prepared any time any place to walk the killing field. we learned a variety of responses to danger, sometimes to fade into the background assuming low local camouflage or play dead that the stalker loses interest or sometimes do something so bold to catch them off balance. we learned to overcome the paralysis of fear and develop finely tuned survival senses we never knew we had.

[applause] >> [inaudible] i became the next owner of that car. >> yes, she did. i forget that. [laughter] >> it was a god-send and a lifesaver. she was a student and teacher of history, martha norman earned a teaching degree in history and completed course work towards a ph.d. at the university of michigan. for 12 years she has taut various courses in african-american history, wayne state, university of toledo, and the university of michigan. she also remapped involved in community programs including antihunger and tutorial programs. during several periods of her adult life, she has been a full-time homemaker raising three sons and caring for her

aging parents. martha. [applause] >> good evening. i was born in provie dense, rhode island, and when i was 6 years old, my family moved in a white neighborhood that was downright hostile. the reason for the meef was my -- move was my father was losing his site. they decided to close his office and bout a funeral parlor where they represented -- rented out the top floor. our new neighbors through stones in the windows, the local motorcycle gang congregated at the front of our house. once, someone tried to set the house on fire, and another time my father and i were told at gun

point to leave the area. i spent most of my school year in all white settings experiences meanness, isolation, being ignored, and excluded that came with what we then called representing the race. i could never be sure a teacher would recognize by upheld hand, or that my classmates right resort to the "n" word. from the time i entered college at the university of michigan in the fall of 1961, we were receiving fairly constant movement news and visit from movement activists including curtis hayes describing efforts in the fall of 1961, and tom hayden who came up that winter

fresh from jail. in the spring of 1962, we were invited to attend a sncc conference in north carolina. with the freedom songs and stories of beatings and jailings, sncc workers talked about the notion of a radically democratic organizing and how the southern freedom movement could liberalize the country as a whole especially with southern black people voting who could defeat the conservative southern congressmen who held a strangle hold on the national committee. i was drawn in emotionally by being around people who were like myself, black, political, and very radical. further, i was convinced that the organizing philosophies and strategies a heard about just might work. i made plans to go south, but my parents who had lived apart for

two years so i could attend my mother's college as an in-state student would not hear of it. i continued to do work for the movement and waited until i turned 18, and then went south in the sumple of 19 -- summer of 1963. throughout my time in alabama and mississippi, i was always afraid. not much happened to me directly, still i feared being the victim of the deadly and accessive brutality on black people in the south and other movement workers. buys paper downtown in greenwood in the summer of 1963, i noticed a white man greeted warmly by everyone making his way down the sidewalk across from us. oh, i asked, is that the mayor? no, my friend replied, that's brian, the man who just shot and killed a black man.

along with other civil rights workers, we worked passing the places where this or that murder took place including reverend reid and sammy young. my time in the south did expose me to the most brutal aspect of southern racism. two days into the orientation in the beginning of the summer, i learned that a black girl in her early teens from the nearby county was raped by 13 white men. one was a bread men who left his truck parked. she died from infections resulting from this attack. later, i went to the canvas outside greenwood from a plantation that was plucked from the history books. big white houses and off to the back and the side a row of small unpainted cabins, some on

stilts, a common type of structure in the south. near the end of our time there, i went into one of those houses on stilts. inside, there was a small central stove and hardly any furniturement i found myself talking with a young woman who was my age and had a fretful baby. is the baby not feeling well, i asked? no, she answered. i think my baby has any moan ya for the third time. oh, i said chitchatting. what did the doctor say in i didn't go this time. the bossman didn't allow it because i had gone twice this year, but the baby's really sick this time. my sense was that she had accepted that her baby would die, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. overwhelmed, i left quickly and went around to the back of her house and through up. my head spinning from this reality until the thought that generations of black babies

denied such basic care and their mother's pain. i gained a deeper understanding of the realities of racism and it gives me great sorrow to know this kind of scenario is still too common in our communities here and all over the world where black mothers lose their children to hunger, preventable disease, and unnecessary violence. i gained tremendous respect for the courage and resilience of the black people living in these communities who maintain their decency and dignity faces these conditions on a regular basis. my respect grew ten-fold as i joined them when they fought for freedom at the highest and deepest level risking everything on the chan that some change could be made. whenever i was canvassing in the black communities in the south, when i was asking the simple question, would you like to try

to register to vote or come to such and such meeting? the unspoken understanding was of course. we know that you could lose your job, did to jail, get beaten up, your house might be gone, and ultimately you might lose your life. there were people, thousands of them, who actually answered yes to the terms, and that is what made up the civil rights movement, and that movement won the vote, ended segregation, and tempered white southern terrorism, and it also liberalized america in ways that we did not imagine. freeing black people across the country from say it loud, i'm black and i'm proud, bringing blacks that led to native american studies and so on softening the ground and serving as a training camp for the women's movement, the student movement, and even advocating that human rights applied to all

people including prisoners. i hope that one legacy of the movement would be that my children would not have to live their lives burdened with the fear and carefulness that accompanies being a member of an o oppressed raise. this was not fulfilled. when my son was high school age living in the detroit area, that area was dangerous for black men. our son was held by police and present at random shootings and arrested. we all got use the to hearing repeated gunfire every weekend. what was the most difficult is accompany my son to the funeral of children of our friends knowing that racism was the root cause of these deaths, and that there was no consolelation for the slain youth's parents. i look forward to a day when our communities can be safe and secure places for young and old

alike, when our children will be attended excellent public schools, and their parents will have jobs and adequate housing sharing the abundance that society has to offer. you might say i'm a dreamer, but i know i'm not the only one. in the 60s, we attacked prison of oppression, and we felt the walls give way, and there were openings made. now we have to tear the walls down completely here and abroad. there's a song we used to sing in the movement which guy and candy karen changed to make it nongender specific. just my hands can't tear a prison down. just your hands can't tear a prison down, but it's two and two and 50 make a million. we'll see that day come round. we'll see that day come round. [applause]

>> [inaudible] , joan trumpauer mulholland grew up across the river in articlington and grog -- graduated in 1964 and returned to articlington and worked in dc for the federal government. next came marriage and children. she retired after 30 years of working in articlington's elementary school. joan? [applause] >> now today when there's poets in articlington, it may not seem like the south, but, let me tell you a few things i remember from the 40s, 50s, and even the 60s. i remember that when the trollly crossed from washington, d.c. to virginia, it stopped, and negroes had to move to the back.

a white man home was bombed because he invited a officer he was stationed with in jrmny. i remember plan meeting posting on telephone poles in articlington. i remember my mother locking the car doors when we drove through halls hill, a black neighborhood, and telling my sister and me not to look at the people in the car stopped next to us at the light because they were colored. i remember endless discussions at my grandmother's in georgia about whether or not a particular lynching vick fill was -- victim was guilty of a crime, but not about whether lynching was right or wrong, and i remember the first and last names of my chewed friends and neighbors and betty is sitting here mongs you, but only the first names of the blacks who worked with us. i never knew their last names.

now, for what i have written for the book. i am southern and white, as southern as the red clay of georgia. northern virginia is where i lived, rural georgia was down home. my grandmother used to say the only foreigner we ever had in the family was a yankee. [laughter] as a teenager, that meant my father. [laughter] as a teenager witnessing virginia's campaign of massive resistance to court ordered school desegregation, i knew something was terribly wrong in the south both as a christian and as a southerner. i felt when i had a chance to do something to change things, i should do it. we southerners needed to put our own house in order. when i was a student at duke university in dure ram, north

carolina in 1960, my chance came with the sit-ins. a few students and i joined the black north carolina students at the lunch counters, and in the jails. the repercussions for such that i dropped out of duke at the end of the year and returned to the washington, d.c. area. there i had an office job and participated in the local movement led by the nonviolence action group, nag. my particular contribution to the book is a diary i kept about the freedom rides. the next string of the freedom rides were bloody and students on different campuses mobilized to keep the rides going. nag members say thomas was taking a vacation when he left for the ride, but then the nude photos of him burned and bleeding by this bus suddenly

appeared among southern students, nag was only second to nashville. in early june 1961 i was in a group that flu from dc to new orleans to catch the train to jackson. in the last two weeks when i was in the jail, i kept a diary right here, hidden in the hem of my skirt that was covered by heavy ruffles. i crumpled and recrumpled the pages to chemothem concealed in my skirt. expectations of a shakedown and dwindling paper supplies continued to increasingly abbreviated writing style. day one, june 8. there are four cots on the walls and four ma tresses on the floor.

it's relatively clean and cool because it's in the basement. the toilets stopped and the shower is cool which is good. shortly before the lites go out, the steward comes, two card board boxes of cigarettes, papers and envelopes. we can't have anything to read or anything glass. however, we are able to bring in everything we were carrying from our bag. a regular prisoner in the cell next to us gets along with the trustees, and he brings the paper nearly every day. things can be passed easily from one cell to the next. the food is plain, but better than some campuses. [laughter] the boys are upstairs, but if we call to them the windows will be closed, but we hear them sing. they too. last night they brought papers with our sentences on them. jane made hers into an airplane. lunch was beans and greens, and

then in the afternoon two more freedom riders joined us on the floor. they with from up north coming down with two white boys and a negro girl, pat who was in the next cell. there was a rainstorm with as much thuppedder and water in here until e closed the window. i slept a good deal this afternoon and read my book. actually, i finished it while i was in that jail. dinner is potatoes, fish, and corn bread. i woke up as they were bringing in breakfast. no salt and the cold grits this morning, three prunes and three biscuits. it was better than yesterday. one girl from each cell got to get clothes. no opportunity to make phone calls yet. the boys stayed a group of specially selected outstanding students brought into jackson to study government. the boys came by, four or five

of them. our reaction was laugher. they were uneasy. after they went to other cells, we decided we should be more dig dignified. when they came back, we sang a song and then a pause and a third veer. someone whistled, and we made it through. almost as the lights went out, the singing started until 11. the boys sang some, and we would sing, and a man named charles a nonfreedom rider has a beautiful voice and sang several so lows. one sang how great thou art, and one guy answer the back and everyone sang louder. it was one of the most uplifting experiences i've ever had. day four. the jailer said when we asked we couldn't make phone calls or call the lawyer because of our

singing way past midnight. however, we can see the lawyer if he comes to see us. real nice. we're singing again tonight. [laughter] when we started putting up the mats, a lot of the stuffing fell out, and we dumped in the hall in protest. dinner was a biscuit, bacon, and molasses. on the fourth floor, we played a game and the jailers had 17 more arrested. surprise. they turned out the lights at 9. we sang more, but they left fans on, and we couldn't hear. bobby says they are trying to send us to the pen. some girl cried, please, mr. kennedy. day 7. many girl state delegates towards i made a sign. attention tourists, i am not a yankee.

i'm from georgia. the guard took it upset. the girl has a souvenir. much talk of new york's food and songs. by the time i get out, i'll know how a minority feels. actually, one other southern white girl was eventually arrested and joined us so i had company. day 14, usual break. exercise and ballet, little read and write. so many 17 in a cell meant for four, not much peace. haven't slept well the last two nights. meeting on what to do with cigarettes. no rationing. wy nrk n slement in the shower that dripped. she sleeps most of the day. jailers getting worse. slept, letters are rationed. wrote letters and read. long day.

dinner. long evening. dance, learning cha-cha. lights out early. boycott and ten more arrested. [applause] >> she lived in north carolina. she is a teacher and fiction writer and remained active aless lesbian and antiwar struggles. [applause] >> so isn't it beautiful? [applause] i am going to turn 70 years old in 2013, and i have never been happier in my life as i am after this book has finally come out. i was raised by two mothers in

new york city. my mother by birth was yunis who is jewish, and by my mother by affection, charity abigail bailey who is african-american. during the course of that childhood, we spent a year in haiti and a household of four women because i have a sister as well, and we were quite noteworthy. in this childhood, i was schooled to accept and be proud of my otherness from the rest of conventional 1940s-1950s united states, and i was also schooled to speak truth to power as they say and to be fightenned by that, but also to accept that

this was something i had to doment one of the things that i found fascinating working on this book as an editor was that i -- many of the white women, not all, but many of them, perhaps most, had had prior experiences of crossing cultural boundaries, and many of us had experiences directly with race and racism which for most people, white people in the united states, was not particularly true particularly in the 1950s. the other thing that all of us, i think, in the book or most of us regardless of race share the was some sort of social or political activist experience. my experience aside from living in a household which in itself was a political statement although that's not why we lived

together, was in high school i was very active with something called the harlem brotherhood group, connected with the national conference of christians and jews. i saw ivan come in, and ivan also had experience with nccj, and i think with harlem brother, her group. so, in christmas in 1961 i was at school and i received a phone call and went to the eastern maryland and one of the people arrested with me is also here tonight. peggy priestly who is in the book was one of the people also who was arrested, and ang angela

butler as well. at the age of 19 in the autumn of 1962, i went south to register voters in southwest georgia and was there for a year. i returned partly because in connection with the stay in the jail in georgia, i caught hepatitis and what i'd like to say is the experience in the south really altered many things for me among other things that altered my blood chemistry in a way that was pretty serious. i'm going to read from the time that i was in southwest georgia. the autumn that i was in southwest georgia just happened to be the same time as the cuban missile crisis k and so i want to read a couple sentences about

that. dm contrast to the movements uplifting music, in october i heard u.s. bombers roar overhead flying from albany turner air force base to patrol leaving white segregationists like shall have matthews to go to the counties. i had this experience of the government sending these planes to control cuba from the air force base in the town where i was working where many of us were working, and yet the federal government's position with respect to our safety and even as voting registration workers which moment we were federally protected is that they were helpless to protect us, and yet these bombers went over

daily. go back to a little about what it was like in the movement. one of the things that struck me, although i had also often been afraid in my childhood because my house was attacked, but not in a dire way like others, were the stories of terror that were told to us or were told in the south and in the old days had kept people in their place, and that's what i'm going to read about in a little bit. we were told the story of james fraser years before in bad baker county. years before in bad baker county, he had been beaten to death and put in jail.

mr. paige who was an officer went to pick up the body for the funeral home. when he lifted the body, and i was told this story, his breaken bones clicked like dice. the u.s. commission on civil rights listed the death as the last recorded lirchg lynch -- lynching in the u.s. since 1963. there have been more sadly. there's more cautionary tales. there have a lynching tree in lee county where four men and one woman had been lynched in one day. in baker county, black people weren't supposed to drive through town after sunset. white mother chapters in -- white mother merchants sold not

coke just pepsi to black customers. i mean, i don't know why. one night penny patch, another white volunteer and i were alone in the dark in the freedom house and an intruder smashed the window. we crotched on the floor while through the curtain, he ran his hand over our beds groping through the shattered glass trying to reach us. we called the police, but that man like many who attacked the movement was never arrested. everywhere the rural cross roads of southwest georgia were points of power rmt white men owned the land adjacent to major cross roads, and at night, they guarded those intersections, but

we drove past the lynching tree and eased through those intersections on the way to mass meetings. in lee, and eventually other counties. in tents on sites of burned churches, in the charred rubble of segregation, the black south sheltered a movement that was participating, black-led, and integrated. the move. lived the future -- the movement lived the future of the pass opposing racism, sexism, and elitism. in those tents i understood two things that i would become a teacher, and that as was said in a planning meeting for the 1963 march on mushes demanding racial

justice in the united states in 1963 and perhaps now was revolutionary. thank you. [applause] >> judy richardson was in the national office in atlanta and greenwood, mississippi during the 1964 freedom summer in southwest georgia and in lans county bams. she worked on eyes on the prize and other films and was a teacher workshop, social justice organizations, and as a movement, writer, and lecturer. judy. [applause] >> okay, now, see all you all think we are sitting here looking really calm; right?

we saw this book for the first time five days ago. [laughter] we screamed. we look like we are normal, but we've been working on this book for 15 years, and we are so happy, yeah, hello. [applause] we are so happy to be sharing this with so many of our brothers and sisters, so i would like you all, i'm not asking you to stand up because we have been sitting here, but could you all, just anybody who worked with sncc put your hands up? all right. sncc is in the house. hello. ..

they will see themselves and they will see that they can do it, too. it's about stepping out on faith and you don't know whether you're going to succeed but you've got to do it because if you do nothing nothing changes. okay, now what i'm going to say is talk about very quickly i grew up in new york, the home of the arthur washington irving, so i went to irving high school and our football team was the hit lists horsemen. [laughter] my mother was a homemaker, my father worked in the plant which is where everybody i knew's father worked into the was the chevrolet plant. he helped organize the union, the united auto workers and was

the chairman of that local. when at the point that i was 7-years-old he got on the assembly line, okay, 1952, 53 of suave more of college could quaker college in pennsylvania, and i was on a full four year scholarship which is important. they were trying to increase the african-american enrollment of that point because i had something like i think maybe 900 students. they were bringing in this group of black students, for boys and four girls, eight of us and presumably it was boys and girls so we wouldn't have to intermingle too much with the outside. [laughter] okay. what i found is on campus on suave more of the campus the resistance for democratic society chapter. now the students for democratic society was a democratic progressive right number student and they were very supportive of the work that was coming out of

the students citizens and what we were doing at sncc. so the chapter was doing a lot of work to equalize, to increase salaries of the all black catholic staff including me because i was a work study said that was happening at cafeterias. they were doing work in chester pennsylvania but then they were also organizing busloads of buses, that doesn't make sense, busloads of students to go to cambridge, maryland which was -- and sitting here in d.c., you know that, on the eastern shore of maryland. now i decide to get on one of these buses and i don't do it because i'm in any way committed. it is because my mother is not there to stop me. [laughter] so why get there, and wi-fi is there is this amazing, strong local leader, gloria richardson, yes indeed, obviously no relation to me and she is another one of the contributors to the book.

i also find that this is a "after sncc, student nonviolent coordinating committee. they have required sncc assistance. so i finish my freshman year and decide i'm going to take off the next semester which would be the first semester of my sophomore year to work with sncc. and i assume that it's going to be just six months and that's a whole other question about how my mother takes it. anyway, i decide six months. well who knows, and it turns into three years. what i'm going to do is read a little bit from my chapter, and it's called sncc, my enduring circle of trust. a lot of people here will recognize this. i saw the national office of sncc for the first time in november, 1963. it was a tiny rundown office at 8.5 raymond st, and one block

off of 100 street now martin luther king boulevard. now the university of land as center. the office was located on the second floor above a beauty shop. it definitely didn't fit my image of a national office. i the guy coming in, there's going to be maybe rugs on the floor. pleased to read i was 19 and had gone to atlanta with reggie robinson, sncc's field secretary in maryland where i had been working full time since leaving swarthmore college. from the downstairs national office i saw this large man of the top of the stairs dressed in overalls and a sweeping the stairs. reggie saw him, too, then ran up the stairs and was brought and the hugged each other like long-lost brothers and i thought wow, this is truly an egalitarian office, since i have known the man to be the janitor. it was only after reggie called the man's name that i realized this was jim forman, sncc's

larger than life executive secretary. there was such joy, warmth and affection in this moment that i thought judy, you haven't just joined an organization, you joined a family. sncc really is a band of brothers and, you know, he said sisters, too, and circle of trust, and i assumed i would be in the rest of my life. i later found out that four men also swept up and not so much to clean the dirty office which is good since he wasn't all that good at it. rather he was showing as he often said no job was too low for anyone in sncc to do, and every job was important in sustaining the organization. ridgy introduced us and four men found out i had taken a semester off and that i could take shorthand, which is kind of like testing with symbols. [laughter] i know there's another generation here.

and type 90 words a minute, and i never made it back to suave more. now let me just say with that and that i did not take any offense to that then, nor do i now. i had a bird's-eye view of the organization i would never have otherwise, and i was nurtured as much by the men as much by the women. i was forced to do some stuff i never thought i could do but no one ever said you can't do that. you've never done it before. always there was pushing to do more than you thought you could ever do and it opened up the world to me. it wasn't just like i'm finding out about anticolonial struggle some africa and in seven southeast asia, south america, nicaragua, guatemala. i would never have found that if i had come in and stayed. i saw the world and it changed my entire your world view and i thought i would be in the rest

of my life. thank you. [applause] >> if you have a question for a specific panelist that's absolutely find or if you have a question just direct it to any panelist. yes, and there's a microphone here, so please, because we are recording this we would appreciate if you would use the microphone. >> [inaudible] -- i would like to congratulate you on the excellent books, a book that ties in the rest of the literature of sncc, you can get the rest of those books buy simply getting in contact with sncc, the 50th anniversary because that reading list with this [inaudible] november the sixth there will be another movement released called citizen riled at busboys and --

politics and prose. [inaudible] [laughter] on october 6, this is america. i am free. [laughter] on october 24th there will be another great book released called count them one by one, the justice department sending -- the district court having the appeal. i want to ask a question to you. please tell us about the panel that you have assembled the university of southern mississippi. >> tell us who you are. >> lawrence, and i grew up with these great women. [applause] >> come again the plug for the panel at the university of southern mississippi october 21st, 22nd and reverend

cecil brigade is the son of victoria and grey adams who lived in baltimore and will be reading from his mother's peace. bricker who worked for sncc will also be there, doris kirby who worked in mississippi for nine years and maryland from new york. these are all women in the book. did my job now? >> [inaudible] >> microphone, please. >> i just wanted to mention that's what is wonderful was a lot of us have been organizing on book events in our areas, and so if you go on to the university of illinois site, and you click on freedom you will

see a calendar of those events, and as much as possible we tried to evolves independent bookstores. just a real plug we have to support teaching for change bookstore. [applause] they are amazing. try not to buy it on amazon. buy it from teaching for change. some of us remember when we had the bookstore which jennifer and i and others here, hello there, yes, we are right up the street, and what did us in is when channel started under selling us a cost. do not let that happen to teaching for change. >> we won't. >> all right. [applause] >> please. >> if you can get really close to the microphone -- sorry. so everyone can hear you. >> on behalf of my wife and asking -- you can hear me? okay. i got it.

[inaudible conversations] >> all right. my wife wants me to ask where is the ibm nash? what is shia to? we don't hear much about her. >> [inaudible] >> okay. [laughter] >> she was in the book and after she was on the panel we just had a panel led the associations of the study of african-american life and history, income she was on that panel. she lives in chicago. she's continued to be an activist and a proponent of non-violent direct action, and what else you want to know? >> the first part of the question is where is diane nash, so that was the information. i just want to ask for people who don't necessarily know what that name means, diane nash was

one of the leaders of the national sit-in movement which successfully desegregated nashville. she was the first of the sit-in activists to work full-time for the movement, and she was the first female secretary for sncc and also she also worked for sclc. >> thank you. first of all good evening. my name is [inaudible] for all of you ladies who are former members of sncc, i'm not that much younger than you will, but i can never thank unef for all of your contributions. because i know i wouldn't be here today as an organizer, as an activist had it not been for you and the ladies who couldn't be here. so thank you. god bless you. [applause] it was a g and blessing. blessing.

i went to the conference you all had earlier this year, and i met some of you and show your hands because i was so excited. again, thank you. my question to all of you, do any of you know or work with sister shirley shahzad and brother sure rod beck in the day, and also, i just found out a few weeks ago there's another book coming out about the movement called the dark end of the street. it's about rosa parks and other women who are active in antirace work that i never heard of before. so again, thank you very much and if you could talk about other things you all are doing. thank you. god bless you. >> i didn't know shirley, i knew the project director in southwest georgia and i'm trying to think of a shirad story. i can't come up with one quick. she might have a shirad story.

>> [inaudible] you can make your way to that microphone while the microphone here. >> i worked with charles shirad the year i was in southwest georgia. he was one of the 12th or 13th, but everett was, who became the original band of sncc field secretaries. the two things i would like to mention about sherrod have to do with the role of women, and the first is when i arrived from greenwich village a little full of myself from my harlem organizing, he said it very seriously faith, i want you to learn how to drive and i felt like i was 19, i felt like i had better things to do with my life than to learn how to drive a car, and he said every soldier in my army must drive a car. now that actually didn't come to

pass but that was because of segregation and that is another story. he also insisted, and this i appreciate and drc in some of the benefits to might come he insisted i learn to speak publicly in front of a crowd because every soldier in the army, etc., etc., whether he is a woman or not must learn to speak in public. but the combination of that particular story is that probably the second or third month i was in southwest georgia was the first anniversary of the albany georgia movement, which is the first time that hundreds of people have gone to jail in the fight against segregation, and there were so many people in jail in albany in november of 19601 they had to ship people to surrounding counties because there was no room in the jails.

sweden this anniversary, dr. king was coming to town to speak etc., etc. so it was a big deal. charlie chabad selected hour co-worker, a woman, to give the speech, and only goodness, it had never occurred to me that a woman could preach, and even more importantly in terms of who charlie sherrod is, he himself was a baptist minister and eloquent. any of us that have heard him speak to know that. and there's no reason why he couldn't have just said he would take the stage that night, but he gave it to all of our benefits. shall i tell the we should overcome story? >> i think we have time for only one more question and i know that many of you have purchased the look, if you haven't already purchased it, it is available at the teaching for change bookshop right here in busboys and poets.

if you would like to have your book signed by the women on the panel or one of the women on the panel you can then -- we will be leaving the room here because there is another event, but you can either remain here and busboys and poets or go across the street some of us will be going across the street and over and even though you can meet the authors, me to the editors and have your books signed. it is just directly across the street. so now for our final question, and then a quick wrap up from our panelists. please. >> my name is lee adams and i want to thank you all for the work that you did and for the work that you've just completed after 16 years. congratulations. i have always -- some of my greatest heroes from the people i have admired most in my life

came out of sncc, and a lot of movement came out of sncc besides the movement to free african-americans in the south. most of these movements have seen some success. the women's movement, the gay-rights movement, the peace movement. there's a movement that was born in sncc that has not seen the success and it's one that is dear to my heart. i would like to know if any of you have continued in that half of people who like marion berry, johnny wilson, eleanor holmes norton to try to trade d.c.. [applause] >> betty. islamic i just want to say that i worked in d.c. after i left the south, i worked with mary and in the office in d.c., and

we were very active in the state could issue, and i carry that -- i've lived in baltimore for now 38 years but every time i think about d.c. and i hear a little snippet like i heard a fence and was elected or he won the primary, and people were saying this is great because he was a supporter of the d.c. statehood and i've always interpreting that and telling people in my community that that's an important struggle. so i'm glad you raised it. >> i want to thank all of you for coming this evening. and this now brings us to a close but i want to say is their anything that anyone from our panel would like to say? okay. judy. come on up here. >> i just want to say there is one person -- there are five editors on this panel. one is missing and i feel a

little bad because she just needs to be acknowledged. i want to acknowledge one other person because it was the first children's book we ever published and she is sitting right over there. [applause] >> for more about this book, visit press.uillinois.edu and search hands on the freedom plow. >> john is the author of cultures of war, pearl harbor, hiroshima, 9/11 and iraq. he's joining us now, the finalists for the national book award in the nonfiction category. professor dower, what is the similarity between pearl harbor and 9/11? >> well, that's where the book begins, when 9/11 happened. headlines all over the u.s., the day of infamy, some of them

voted roosevelt famous date will live in infamy and immediately people said surprise attack to use the word, a cause of steve coo --, causey. i am a historian and i have done a lot of thinking about the war. it's been complicated because then it spun into failure of intelligence, surprise attacks, dennis started to get into world war ii where you had the firemen picture raising the stars and stripes,, that i can't picture. in the president began calling for the war on terror and then he began with rows of will and truman. so it went from the pearl harbor

in 9/11 into world war ii, and then the world trade center reuben's ground zero and then we were in a whole different dimension. this which began with 9/11 infamy and then it became much more complicated. >> tie together hiroshima and iraq. >> well, the tyee is hiroshima and 9/11. that was the real tight because ground zero was an atomic bomb freeze, that was the association and that would put you into the question of terror bombing or deliberately targeting civilians and that is a practice that comes out of world war ii. you wanted to destroy enemy morale, the anglo-american powers in the united states, and

it was done in germany and culminates in hiroshima. so the ground zero 45, grant zero, 2001 is the link. the iraqi link was a choice to begin with because we go from 9/11, the war of choice by the islamist terrorist to the japanese war of choice earlier and there's a parallel and then suddenly we have a war of choice against iraq. then we have a terrific failure of intelligence and iraq, just a disaster failure of intelligence on the part of the united states so then you've got pearl harbor which was a japanese tactical brilliantly strategic finn, the choice of the islamists and america's trees, so i am a

historian and i wanted to understand. it's not all the same. but i wanted to see how you could think comparatively about the war and every site has holy wars and the war has always been with us in our modern time even with our new technology. i really wanted to wrestle with it. i had to try to figure some things out for myself. i have some questions. >> viet nam is not the focus of your book. why? >> it's not a focus of the book because there was simply not the space to do it. the vietnam is one of the major cultures of the war. it's mentioned in passing and in a number of ways. vietnam figures in both as a place you deliberately target noncombat since. vietnam figures in different

ways in the failures of intelligence, and i write that this at some banks. the subtitle could only be so long. it wasn't i was going back to vietnam. but the striking thing in the failure of intelligence is that in vietnam we have basically the united states had lost in an insurgency, and after vietnam we ceased to study counterinsurgency. was dropped from the military academies. we were not going to get involved in that, and there was no preparation for what we encountered in iraq and afghanistan figures and of course but i focus mostly on iraq and they're the failure of intelligence on our part, the u.s. parts, was extraordinary. why? so i was trying to think of this

over time, and one thing this does is it takes you to think comparatively about the u.s. in ways and make people uncomfortable. it's not saying it's all the same but also, it looks about the bush administration per say when you step back in history and look at the bigger picture, you're going back to world war ii, you're going back to other things. at one point and that in the philippines at the turn of the century when the u.s. philippines in 98 or the early 1900's and all the rhetoric was there. i have a lion in the book if you want to find the coast between the ghost writers of george bush you go back to the philippines, the rhetoric for languages all their. to think about the culture it's painful because it is asking hard things about us as human

beings. not just americans or something, but it's about us as human beings in the modern age where we have war all the time, the technology may change but somehow we are caught in the squeal and it's hard to get out. and i do that at the levels of the individuals and the institutions. so at the end, i came upon talking about concept of pathology of individual apologies and institutional bureaucratic dysfunctions. a very, very hard things to wrestle with. took a long time. but that's where it ended up. >> speaking of george bush, have you or will you be reading decision points particularly the chapters on afghanistan and iraq? >> well, i read it very, very

extensively and memoirs by everyone, investigative journalist reports from the bush administration, and i made a decision to keep working on the book until the end of the bush administration. that is when the research starts. i will look at his autobiography certainly, but i hope i can move on to a subject that is cultures of peace or cultures of something else in the future rather than the back to this right now. >> professor john dower has already won the national book award for increasing the feet and he won the pulitzer prize for that as well. he has been nominated for the 2010 national book fiction category for cultures of war, pearl harbor from hiroshima 9/1l and iraq. spec isaac griswald, what is the tenth parallel? in >> of the line of the