mind, the strategies, the techniques. and when you read this book, i think you will find that those strategies are there for any community group to go to action. and i don't mean violence now, but just a plan of action that we can adopt today that took place then. i of how important it is that today we look at what's happening in philadelphia, mississippi, when this man is on trial for the murder of the three civil rights leaders that occurred one year almost to the day after medgar's assassination. here we are looking at that. what do we see? we still see a few ku klux klan members cheering him on.

we still find that people in those communities are saying that's an old case. we don't need to revive it. why bring up the past? let's let it go. let's let god take care of it. and i answer did not god give us a mind? did not god give us the strength? why are we depending on that? that can bring closure, i feel, to all of these negatives that still float around in the air, whether they be in mississippi or whether it be in other parts of this country. it was the same thing that was told to me. years and years i searched for evidence that would help us get a third trial with medgar's assassin. people said you're crazy, you're living in the past. you've got to move away from it.

i can't help you. i won't help you. and this one word, one word that medgar had and i had, and i hope all of us want to make positive changes will have, and that's perseverance. a believing in something, a being determined, having that vision. being determined of seeing that vision comes into being. and assessing whatever is out there, the pros and the consequence to make the positive change that we need. it's almost as i stand before you today it's like all of these things are kind of coming around full circle again. and we're finding interest again in what happened during that time because indeed it does relate to us today and where we are. i say oftentimes that we don't have to worry about the klan or

others visiting us in their white robes and hoods. but what we do have to worry about or be concerned or at least aware about are those in the brooks brothers suits who are still undercutting what this country is all about and what it's supposed to be about and what medgar worked and stood for. now, you might ask me why, why this book? for years, i was upset, i was hurt, i was angry. i didn't know what to do. and i said why is it that every book, every magazine, every pamphlet, every calendar that corporate america puts out or what not, medgar's name is not mentioned, or it is mentioned

as a footnote, or there is simply one sentence that says medgar evers, civil rights leader, slain june 12, 1963, period. this book is not about medgar's death. it is about his life, of living, of loving, of strategizing, of moving forward. and hopefully as we read, as we pass the book on to others, we will reach out to young people. young people who are interested in this period of time and those who are not, to help them to understand and move away in many cases from the attitude i don't need your help, i don't need to know. i have made it on myself. that is something i don't need to be bothered with.

hopefully in this book, we will find ways to communicate with them and through medgar's letters, through his reports you will be able to say to them this is why. make this link between this past where you are today and your future and the role you play one way or the other, positive or negative, as leaders in your community. so if those things can happen as a result of this book, then i personally would be able to say medgar, it was worth it. and sometimes that is very difficult to say. again, i think about emmett till and i think about us as our young son, who was 3 years old when his father was assassinated, a young man, went

to arlington cemetery when his dad's basket was exhumed, and they took the body, the casket to albany, new york. and van insisted on being there. we didn't know what they would find in the casket. what they did find changed his life forever. because when the casket was opened, medgar's body was as well preserved as it had been two or three weeks since his death, except for the tips of his fingers. that was documented on tv. it was documented in pictures. so we know. and i know that it was a fact when my child said to me mom, now i know where i came from. it was a blessing that that happened. so as much as we might think that it's very difficult for us

to go through times like that, it's critically important as well. and i am just so hopeful that as we revisit these cases, as we revisit where we are and we are honest with ourselves in terms of where we are in our communities, that we will soon adopt what manning marable says, that we need servant leaders. not people who are out there for the glory and for the press, but people who have a vision, who truly believe in their people, in their country, and to change it around. there is a letter in this book that medgar sent to president eisenhower at the time, and he said to him you have invited people from russia, a delegation from russia to come to america and view how democratic we are, how we vote. and he said to him may i

suggest to you, mr. president, that you bring that russian delegation to mississippi so they can see what it's like, see what it's like. and i'm saying this now, see what it's like to be asked the question how many bubbles in a bar of soap? to see what it is to be asked how many peas or beans in this jar? to see what it's like to have from the depth of your soul the spirit and the desire to register and to vote. and you can't do it. instead, your business is shot in two. your name is listed in the paper. the banks call in your mortgage overnight in full. think of those things, my friends. not to go back with a negative oh, this is the way it was, but

to learn from it. and i truly hope that that is what will happen. i am just overwhelmed by the people who have purchased this book, who have come to me, who have stood as you are sitting and said we need this book because there is nothing out there by him. we need to know what he thought . we need to know how he walked. wep. we need to know how he walked. we node to know how he felt about death. and i hasten quickly to say that medgar evers did not want to be a martyr. he did not want to die. he wanted to live to see his children grow up. but as he said to me in those last days, i am so tired but i can't stop. this is something i must do.

and i knew he meant that because we did not have an all sweet and kind marriage. it was a loving one, it was a very good one, but in the early years i couldn't embrace, as i said earlier, all that he was doing. it was because i was afraid. but he said to me i cannot fight the people out there, and bring my people along and come home and fight with you. myrlie, you have a choice to make. either you're with me or you aren't. and, of course, i'm standing here, so you know the decision that i made. as i look at all of the changes that have taken place in our country, even though it may be difficult to say, i can say medgar, it was worth it all, and he would agree with me as well. i thank you, and if you have any questions, i will be

willing to answer them. [applause] >> if there are questions, fine. if there aren't, that's wonderful, too, because i expect all of you to purchase one or more books. and we will be absolutely delighted to sign them. well, i don't see any hands. >> still thinking. >> still thinking. the gentleman here. >> try to talk into the mike, if you can, if that's possible. >> can you hear me? good evening. i admire your strength. my -- i grew up in virginia. i went to a high school in a

small rural county in virginia. the black history section was only like seven books. the first book i ever read was for "for us to live." i couldn't find a copy of it. when i became a man, i told myself i would get the original copies of all the books i received in hard copy. i picked this up in a black memorabilia show in gaithersburg. i would be honored if you would sign it for me this evening as well. >> i would be honored. thank you very much. >> pleek into the mike. >> again, i would be delighted to sign it for you. thank you. >> i did have my hand up. i went to the play last night. what did you think of your character in the play -- in the play last night? >> i was so pleased to be in

attendance at that play "if this hat could talk." it's about the life of dorothy haigt. i was also surprised to see the myrlie character in the play. i had no idea. what did i think of it? i think the young woman performed admirably. i see myself a little bit differently than i think she did, and perhaps i was like that at that time, and living has made me much tougher and stronger. i truly was devastated when medgar was killed. what can i say except that he was the love of my life? i wasn't sure that i could live.

i'm not sure i wanted to live after that, but i had three children who were looking at me, and i had to survive for them. i can recall in her words in the play, she said certainly no one is going to hurt you, medgar, because the f.b.i. is here and others are here. the f.b.i. is here was not meant as a sense of protection, because we knew better than that. they were not there to protect us at all. so there was that little -- i don't know what to call it -- that maybe gave the sense that i truly thought that the f.b.i. was going to protect us, and that was not so at all. i'm just pleased that the character was there. for the brief moment because you didn't ask, but i am going to ask this, when the movie "the ghost of mississippi" came

out and whoopi goldberg played myrlie, i said to whoopi on one occasion please put a little whoopi into the myrlie character. and i know she wanted the correct pay to portray me, but i was very angry at that time, and i wanted a little more emotion to show with it. she did a very good job with the script that she had, which wasn't much for that character. so, you know, different interpretations of a person. medgar used to say to me sometimes you aren't quite as nice as people think. they don't know because i have to live with you. so, you know, i don't know. it all depends on who you are, where you are at that particular period in time. but thank you for asking, and i hope that that play will be successful throughout this country. >> i'm just wondering if over the years you have given some

thought to perhaps what we might do now to continue and build on some of the struggle people made. it seems at a certain point people experienced certain gains and maybe didn't think about all of the effort that had gone into the progress we have now and the effort we need to really move forward again. we're kind of in a point where if we don't move forward from here, we're going to move backwards. if you have any ideas of what you think might be -- >> i'm sure that dr. marable also has strong opinions with that as well. i truly feel that those of us of that generation who were activists and paid such dear prices were so pleased when we began to see some progress being made, when we realized that our children would not

have to go through the same things that we did at that time, and we were retired, battle fatigued, and just kind of stood back and let out a big whew. we've finally done it. as a result of that, i truly don't believe that we worked with our children in terms of imparting that history to them in the way we should have, and now we are trying to recapture some of that, and i'm afraid we're going to have to be very creative in order to do that and to bring young people into the fold, or at least listen to them and follow them because that's really what we did during the civil rights movement. our young people took the stand, and they moved forward, and they were beaten and they were bitten by dogs and they were thrown into dirty trash trucks. they found themselves behind

barbed wire in mississippi with the food being brought in in tin tubs and the policeman spitting in it, you know? they went through so much during that time, and some way or the other, we have to do that, too. i do believe with all of the different groups that we have, and the media still ask who is your leader. not leaders. who is your leader? that we are going to have to come together as a unit at least for once and develop a plan of action, of strategy that every organization can go out and implement in its own way. very similar to what mayor hatcher did in gary, indiana, some years ago when he brought the groups together. >> one of the reasons that --

the way that i became involved in this project was myrlie honored me very deeply by inviting me to give the first medgar evers honorary lecture in jackson, mississippi, in 2003. and during the research, i learned that when medgar was killed, in his back pocket, he had his voter card showing that he was a registered voter. it was stained in his blood from his assassination. medgar evers was killed because he fought for the democratic right that all americans have to vote. what is important for us to consider is that that vote is now being taken away all over this country and especially in

mississippi. a third of all black males in that state have lost the right to vote for life. we have millions of americans, white, black, and hispanic who have lost the right to vote either permanently or temporarily because they are former prisoners. and so the prison industrial complex, the structure of the criminal justice system in this country that penalizes unfairly millions of people who are disproportionately black and hispanic, and low-income and working class and unemployed folk taking away their right to vote after they have paid their debt to society, millions of people. 818,000 floridians, citizens of the state of florida were not allowed to vote in the presidential election of 2000 because they had a felony --

prior felony conviction. in states like mississippi, across the south especially in the far west. many of these states you lose the right to vote for the rest of your natural life. and so what i call the new racial dough main, the colorblind racism of the 21st century doesn't have the simplicity of the old white and colored signs that segregated us when i was a child, when i was a boy growing up, visiting my grandmother and my relatives in tuskegee, alabama, in the 1960's. the new colorblind racism is mass unemployment, mass incarceration, and mass disenfranchisement. all three of these things, this unholy trinity, it represents a new kind of institutional racism that in my view is even more pernicious than the old jim crow system because it's

colorblind. it doesn't operate with the word -- with the epithets of nigger. it now carries out the disenfranchisement and oppression in a colorblind race-neutral way. read "the new york times" the other day, pointing out that african-americans who have the identical criminal record and identical job qualifications will be turned down for jobs at three times the right of white former prisoners. an african-american male who has no criminal record has a more difficult time getting a job in this country than a white man who has gone to prison. so when you look at are we going backward -- oh, yes, we're going backward rapidly. so i participated in this book because, unfortunately, we must

relearn the knowledge that medgar had. we've moved backward 50 years from the kind of vision and strategy and commitment to serve the community that medgar embodied, and until we get a leadership that speaks to that, we will continue to regress. but if we have a knowledge base of what it takes, what does it take to lead? leaders aren't born. they are made. medgar's parents, that community helped make him the visionary he was. we can make our young women and men have the same values, courage, and principles yet again because the challenges are even greater today than they were then, because we now have colorblind racism.

>> thank you. just let me add this to what se last few days, i believe we have certainly had a wake-up call in this country. when the senate voted to apologize for the lynchings that have taken place, everyone did not vote in favor of that. you would think today that might not be the case, but when you look at it, you say initially there should have been no lynchings anyway. secondly, it's taken so long to say i'm sorry. what benefit does that get for us, i'm not sure. and maybe the benefit comes from the third thing that i'm going to mention, is that

everyone did not vote for that, and if you look at it, i go right home again, because the representatives from the state of mississippi said no, and they said why should we do that? and i think of one in particular who said praises be unto you, strom thurmond, at his birthday party. have you forgotten that little incident? if we had elected you then, we wouldn't have to deal with these now. what did he do? he went on b.e.t., he went on every radio station and tv station he could get on

apologizing for it because i think -- i think it was the president who said you really need to do something to smooth that over. even if you feel that way. and he did that. but doesn't that say to you what i just said no longer in white robes but in blue brooks brothers suits. these men after all the apologies that they made said no, we are not voting on apology, why should we? we don't have to. and for any of us who have fallen asleep and think that it's all right, you need to refer to that and think how far have we come and what do we have to do, because you don't register, you don't vote, you

don't say all right, i have done my part, and then not keep up with what those elected and appointed officials are doing. it's a continuous struggle, and you have to be awear lest we're going to end up losing everything through all kinds of acts that are being passed, all kinds of action that is being taken on terrorism today, and the little subtleties that go underneath. am i taking too much time? yes, i am, but i do want to say we must be aware, ever-vigilant. >> all right. [applause] >> myrlie, you should get the last word. you no, i said it. >> i want to thank you for coming out tonight. i know there are additional questions, but c-span is

covering this, so we have to reach at least the conclusion at this stage. but we're not disappearing, and we will answer questions. yes, you do have -- but you seem to have an urgent question. yes? one more question. one more. >> i need to say something that's very important. i'm from the mississippi delta. medgar evers was one of my heroes. when i was growing up in mississippi. in fact, i saw him shortly before he was killed. i want to say that i will always remember his service and the freedom struggle. i am grateful that the two of you are bringing his legacy and his living and the documents, we need the documents that show his sacrifice.

i just can't tell you how this anniversary, it's like an anniversary because this time in june so many years ago reminds me of the day that i learned that he had died. i will always, always remember that. and i just can't tell you how we mississippians benefited from his sacrifice. >> it is a fitting closure. medgar -- and the only thing i would add to that is that actually medgar evers lives because as long as there is the struggle for justice, medgar is alive and well, and this book is a testament to his courage, to his dignity. it is his voice, it is his vision for the struggle for

freedom. it was an honor to work with myrlie to put this together so that a future generation could be similarly inexpired to achieve the greatness that he embodies. thank you so much. and now please come forward. we would love to sign your copies. thank you very much. [applause]

"washington journal" is live every morning on c-span at 7:00 a.m. eastern. satellite events to tell you about tomorrow. the american enterprise institute hosts petite naval operations are talking about maybe spent the next 10 years. that is on c-span3.

the panel of scholars from the brookings institution will discuss the use of military force in syria at 3:00 p.m. eastern. >> the ringing of the spell and announces the opening of thanksgiving day of the 22nd annual sale. >> this house will always grow. it just seemed that we came here and we didn't have anything of the past in the house. hardly anything which before 1902. then when we met in colombia, the presidential powers they are had all of the history of that country in it. every piece of furniture in it and i thought the white house should be like that. >> our message is that mothers that are concerned come as first ladies, ms citizens of the world, we are doing all we can possible.

>> season two of the original first ladies includes an image, looking at the private lives of the women who served as first lady and her own their own words. live on monday night including your calls and tweets. it will air on c-span and c-span3. >> the commander of international forces they that afghan forces are leading 90% of oteri operations. all u.s. troops are scheduled to be withdrawn by the end of next year. this briefing is an hour. but the joint operations division

chief and the joint staff of the secretary of defense and deputy director for the joint staff. the 506th parachute infantry regiment was commanded by the evil institute division during their deployment in support of the second combat team of combat in both iraq and afghanistan and he was the deputy commanding general for the most recently commended 10th mountain division. mark milley currently commands out of fort hood, texas. he will provide brief opening remarks and take your questions.

>> thank you, bill. i appreciate it. although i can't see the folks in the room, thank you for coming. several of you have served afghanistan and previously served as well. i want to thank bill for those little bits of introduction. i want to thank everyone for joining me. i like to do briefly today is to give the introductory statement, kind of a in my perspective. many of you have a lot of experience here in afghanistan. i am on my third tour. i came into this country with the second brigade 10th mountain at the beginning of the mission here in afghanistan. i'd like to give a little bit of contextual perspective from a guy that has done a few tutors in this country.

when i first arrived in this country, like many of you can remember, there was no afghan national army. there was no afghan national police. there was the remnants of the taliban and that had been shattered and it was minor anarchy that had been emerging from brutal warfare for 30 years, first under the soviets. then it broke apart to the regime of the taliban. so in this part of the country, if you are about 30 years old or younger, and you have experienced nothing but unrelenting consecutive water. for me it looked a bit like the pictures that i used to see what

the cities in europe and japan that had been all bombed out. that is what so many cities look like. there was really nothing here. there was no health care or water or sense of hope. it was just a state in which the people had been devastated by years of war. if you flash forward to today, you have a significantly much more positive situation on your hands. first of all, it is the security forces that we, in fact, have almost 350,000 uniformed police or army in multiple different types that are fighting the

fight and carrying the load every single day. in addition to that, not only do they have the numbers, but this army is capable. they have gone from zero to 350,000 in a relatively short amount of time. they are capable and they have proven it over and over again that they have legitimately been in the lead. we have gone through part of the fighting season were the enemies laid out their objectives and they picked back up. but for the most part, this army and police force have been part of this every single day. and i believe that is an important story to be told. have there been one or two

outpost? yes. but you're talking about three or four outposts and the bottom line is that the afghans have successfully defended the majority of the population in this country. if you look at where the population lives, you have kandahar and you know all of the major urban areas. that is where the afghan security forces have focused their efforts to protect the population. they are executing the insurgency, the afghans are. and their purpose is to protect the majority of the population. they have effectively done on than they have been in the

league. if you look back all the way back to 2006 come i think it's fair to say that the united states and other members of the coalition were in the lead, fighting with a counterinsurgency operation. then if you look at the 2006 in 2007 timeframe, we had at that time somewhere to the tune of afghan security forces and we started fighting what we called shoulder to shoulder. then outlasted all the way up until this timeframe. we started very deliberately having this in the lead. and that was addressed in the

milestone ceremony that took place last year. but from last winter to the late winter and early spring and now into the sun some are they had started leading 90% of the operations. so what does that mean? well, that means that they are planning and coordinating and synchronizing and they are executing this every day. about a thousand less per day. this week they are doing this with multiple special operations throughout. we do support them. we provide advisors. we train and advise. we assess and we enable and provide this. over the next part and it has

completely taken the lead in this. this is a different fight today than what i saw before. this is a price in which the forces of the government are engaged every single day, which you can tell has been a part of the afghan security forces. the bottom line is that is a huge change in a significant change that has occurred over here. it is culminating right now. secondly i think you have to talk about the enemy. the enemy that i have seen is quantitatively and qualitatively different of enemy i have seen in the previous time. you know all of the names. at the capabilities are different and so far this year

and is fighting season, what have they been able to do? and suicide bombings, intimidate people, they are continuing to do ied's. and they cannot provide an alternative role of government. it clearly indicates the vast majority of people in this country don't regret the agenda of the program that is being offered by the opponents and enemies of afghanistan right now and all of these radical groups. severe are two so there are two significant things that i think are different that have occurred over time and that we are witnessing for the fruits of that labor right now. as you look at a couple of other

things that i think the really significant that have changed, i have had some guys on my staff do a little bit of research on what causes societies to change and to look at some of the fundamentals that cause them to change. these are not things that catch headlines. but there has been some significant changes in. that is huge there was no media 12 years ago. today there is a press corps here. there was 175, 180 radio stations throughout this country that did not exist. and in addition to that, you have all kinds of high speed mutations from internet

telephones and other social media. that is so insignificant. that communication explosion in a country of 30 million is making a difference day in and day out. if you shift gears, in this country, as you know, is mountainous we compartmentalized by the physical terrain and etc. roads make a difference when it's fundamentally very important. for the last 12 years there has been over 24,000 commoners of roads. those networks are serving to connect the people of afghanistan to each other. so there is a command of the amount of movement. if you look at the airlines of communication, there are 52 airlines flying in and out every

day. now you have two of them find here. so that, to me, matters. when you talk about this. that has significant societal change written all over it where people are exposed to ideas and so forth. what does that mean for the enemy? that is not a good picture for the enemy. so that is not true. in this particular case in this country with this explosion of information, time is on the side of the government and the people that are supporting a progressive afghanistan it is

trying to show that people are denied information and knowledge in either huge change. this country has only about 30 million people are so common about 10 million are engaged in some form of education of the primary or secondary level or at the university level. almost 200,000 university students. seventy universities spread of this country right now. several hundred thousand elementary schools in this country. because al qaeda is a post that they want to control education. all they want to do is have nothing more than not, and that is not what is happening in this country great you have about a third of this country whose literacy rate has skyrocketed

from a mere 10% all the way up to 20% right now and it is climbing so quickly. the education level is significant. but even more important or not is the demographic of this country. right now you have something like 50% of this country. underneath the age of 25 years, as we speak. that population is getting educated in a very short amount of time. and i think that the taliban will be behind them when the educated people will learn the social sciences and math and assume positions of responsibility. we are seeing that and we are seeking out all over the place with young urban intellectuals. we are seeing a broad rising of young people that are clearly

and unambiguously rejecting the agenda of the taliban. the average age of an afghan man was 42 years old. if you look at it today, depending on the study you look at, it is somewhere between 52 and 56. if you go back to london in 1750 to start the industrial revolution, the average age was 42 years old. if you flash forward 21870, took a great deal to get 56 years old. this country has experienced huge growth and positive health care. they have gone out to several communities in almost every single community now has him kind of health care, doctors, nurses, and it was a heckuva lot better than anything that existed with the taliban.

the people are seeing now. they are seeing communications and education if you look at the economy and you came here, there is cars and maintenance and mechanics and there is an economy that is bubbling over in and around this country that did not exist before. the gdp is still dependent upon foreign aid and unemployment has positive signs are still out there. their early indicators of potential, and i think it's all for the positive. across the board in 12 years, this country has come a long way. it is not the same country even three or four or five years ago. this is significantly advance from advanced from where we were. it is mostly due, i believe, to

the taliban and the enemy tactics of murdering people, terrorizing people, they killed over 100 civilians just last month. it is mostly due to the afghan security forces and what they have been able to do in last few years. as well as all the sacrifices and blood and sweat and tears that the forces have shown over the last 12 years. so i can tell you by witness that things are quite a bit different and quite a bit better in afghanistan than they were and i am much more optimistic as well as the afghan security forces and i think things will turn out okay in afghanistan. with that, i'm so glad to take your questions.

>> you seem to be forecasting the demise of the taliban. how does that factor into this between the taliban and the government if the taliban has no future? >> well, let me revise and extend. this is an adaptive on the other hand, the taliban stated objective is to seize political power in afghanistan. i do not think at this point in time with the strength and

capability with the taliban or any of their allies have the capability to receive political power in the country of afghanistan under current conditions. i don't see that demise. but i don't think they have the capability to obtain their strategic objective. you have this in terms of the popular support you have to have this water for them to be defined as political power. and i don't think that that condition exists anymore. but it does continue for the the fighting to continue for a long

period of time. can they manage this so the insurgents do not present an existential threat to the government? i think the answer is yes. that is what i can conclude so far. i think all indicators have done while in fight after fight, day in and day out. they are getting the upper hand being able to achieve their objectives. i also do not see them just disappearing. that is really a political question in the have to figure that out. they are working on that and

that is not a military task. as it progresses and develops, you will have an effect on the battlefield. that is not something to work out. >> you mentioned that the enemy is different now, what reason do you have to believe that you are not just biding their time. there's only a year left, there's no sign of any kind of a decision yet so what makes you think that they are biding their time and coming back to afghanistan in an effort to take over the.

>> i have asked myself that question 1000 times. how can i be sure that they are not just preserving the husbanding resources and getting ready for the departure and i would say that a couple of things and my professional judgment is that they were not fighting at the time. according to their own strategic guidance ordered and clearly indicated that they wanted to push this offensive. so i don't think that their intent was to with anything back. but we have plenty of classified

information for failing to show aggressiveness and they replaced several on the battlefield. for me to conclude that the enemy has tried to mount this against them and thus far have failed across the country. >> the general coded that afghan forces were sustained. is that true, and how does that work for the betrayal of the afghan security forces.

>> thank you, david. it is good to hear your voice. i read that article about the general said and what he actually said that he did not assume that it was sustainable and i think it is a substantial difference in meaning. they are suffered more casualties. they are out there putting it to the enemy across the entire battle space. against all of the various

groups and they are inflicting more than they are taking, but they are taking this. and on average it is probably in the range of 50 to 100 or so afghan security forces are killed in action. that is not at all insignificant. we want to continue to work with them on the techniques and procedures in order to minimize this. and all of these devices that we use. any time there are casualties, there is an impact. so you want to make sure that

any individual soldier wants to make sure that they are going to get adequate medical care. in order to evacuate the soldiers and get them to appropriate medical care. and we provide but they are now developing a capability with this in a list with us. they have been supporting themselves and those two capabilities are making this one even.

they have much greater use than they were in previous years. they were calling for fire and justifying several things. and this is xt model with times gone by. those capabilities at the unit level will change, we think of the technologies and the techniques and procedures will work toward that and then for the direct fire stuff in a direct firefight that tends to have the friendly forces. so we're taking the capability

to address that. so some people say that this could never sustain the rate of casualties and they think that the ability is directly related to the political objectivity and for them, i think that is a mexican and they are fighting for their country and the existence of their future. and there are 24 maneuver brigades here. there are six different ones that have shattered and lost the ability to carry on the fight as a result of casualties. i think that speaks volumes and

that includes the willingness to define their own country. and i think they are fully cognizant of that. and they want to be fully aware that they will live under taliban rule. these guys are absolutely determined to fight for their country. they are doing a good job about it so i think that that is an open question. i openly believe that -- you know, i think there was probably about 80 or 90 wounded in these are serious wounds. these are physically tough people and you have to almost go

back in time to the middle of the 1800s in boots and bare feet over the mountains of virginia and to find people is hard and tough. it is significant. they are working on a wide variety. on the other hand the afghan security forces, although significant, i don't think that is going to shatter or break the security force. >> do you think that afghan

security forces post 2014 will sony does and if they don't still have that support that they have today in those areas, it will receive this is the casualties a lot. what is your opinion? >> a couple of things. i would argue that it is too early to tell. we need to get the full results of this fighting season which we will get in october. and we will provide a military

recommendation on through the senior leadership and etc. and what kind of capabilities are needed in 2015 and beyond. it is an ongoing process and it is not finalized. and we have to get more data on exactly what kind of capabilities and what we will need assistance on. having said that, as you're aware, there is a mission that comes out after the current mandate. and there is this nato mission that is in development now in terms of the planning of it. this includes the tasks and so

forth. and i think that it is exactly not something that could be needed. i do think that some element of support is going to be not so much at the tactical level. the handouts in the brigades are part of the counterpart lease. and they are pretty good at moving and communicating and monitoring this combination. and they are doing pretty good relative to this enemy in this country. but the parts that need additional work that we will work hard over the months and years is too short of things at the institutional level.

and that is a very sophisticated and logistic system to make sure that we have the right vehicle at the right time. something like this at the higher level that definitely needs additional work. things like personal management systems need work and those sorts of things. and the integration of combined arms is coming along pretty well, meaning that the unit out there has the ability to call for and adjust the casualties. they are actually doing pretty good right now with this dismounted force. but we need to continue to work the system over time.

fuel and water, you have to do things like all of these compounds that they are taking over. we want to make sure they are taking over sewage and electricity and all of those things and that has to get work. helicopters and medevac are currently systems in development. they ran an offer operation which was a multi-brigade operation and they plan to synchronize it and they were able to assist their troops and they brought in 6000 tons of

resupply. they brought in humanitarian aid and they did take casualties and they were able to evacuate this on their own. and they have this with unmanned aerial vehicles and other capabilities. we did not have to drop any bombs. so they are capable of doing some operations and what we need to do is see that across the board. we need to see that across this state level here in the next year and a half before the 31st of december. and what residual capabilities they will need and we think that

those will be at a higher level and not necessarily at the tactical level. that is my assessment at this point. >> i understand that it's not necessarily part of this agreement and is wondering if that is pushing it a little too thin. >> well, i level is below the president president of afghanistan and i do not engage with president hamid karzai in the ambassadors do that.

he has to solve that. he is going to determine what he thinks is appropriate. our position is that we would like to have a bilateral security agreement. and i think that publicly determine and others have stated that they would like to see that and that is what impacts it. where it has impact is what i would call a sense of anxiety and a fear of the future in the sense of hedging on the part of afghans across the board. both the civilian elites and military leadership.

there is a degree of anxiety out there within afghanistan about what 2014 means. i think the sooner the various leaders define out with a degree of certainty, i think the better it will be for the government of afghanistan and the future of the people of afghanistan. that is a political question, and i'm not sure. and they are working on it. and we want to get that done. i think that is in the best interest of the campaign effort over here. but we will have to wait until we see that political leadership >> you talked about the taliban and trying to push the taliban and it resulted in one american

casualty. you expect that it's going to increase as the drawdown is coming? and also what can you tell us about that. >> well, the short answer is yes. in what was called a high-profile attack. and this involves dismounted forces and etc. and that was a significant attack involving multiple car

bombs and a dismounted suicide bomber to penetrate these casualties. but the defenders did extraordinarily well. and the afghan security forces do this as well. the americans did great. it was a tough attack. and the defenders did well. the enemy completely failed from that particular situation. we do expect more from noah's and/or key infrastructures and etc. and they have had several

this as well. there has been 13 high-profile attacks beginning of may. and the others against afghan facilities. all of them were a resounding failure, both in terms of trying to make a political statement, and one of them looked a suicide bomber in the parking lot and they look civilians. they attached a representative and they killed some folks there, and they attacked this and i would not call those attacks anything that demonstrates any kind of viable

capability and other than that they haven't been able to achieve much success at all. we do expect that this is an environment in which the enemy has objectives that they are trying to achieve and they are using this to do it. they are using a tool of violence and at least they they're having some success in doing that. >> thank you. have you had success in areas that you have not expected as you transition? is that right, and are there other areas?

>> yes, there are several of them. there are ups and downs. there is good and bad and there is much more good than bad in respect to how they are performing. one of them are talking about this, as you are well aware. a lot of these have come from this area and they had had a benefit as we could tell see this, so the afghan security forces decided that they would go back and reassert this and a

few other examples as well. and they have come in and they did make contact and they have maintained such good control since june. they are working to bring in a holding force with places that have afghan police and they have worked a variety of governmental actions than they have been pushing him further to secure this and etc. they are doing a very good job at that. they have put that together.

they have found us into some very rugged terrain. you know, one thing that surprised me was how this worked in just a few years ago. they have been brought to kandahar and they are operating down there that is quite a bit different than what i saw before. so that is a significant and positive change. it appears to be holding up pretty well. so the enemy has tried hard.

especially using this defense especially as they were in all of that said there are several spots. if you go out to this, both places are extremely stable and they are relative to the insurgency. and there is, you know, other types of activity. but relatively new to the insurgency, highway one, it is inside of the district and it has been a tough fight this summer. the enemy in combination with criminal groups and combination with other actions of miscreants

has been attacking various envoys, torching talks, but that is about a 20-mile stretch of road just south so that area has been contested. it has run a good operation and that is an area that has been contested. well, there are parts that are part of this. and these afghan security forces are in a fight there. so there were times when this was significant.

there's about 15 to 20% in afghanistan that is significantly contested. some of it is not contested. if you look at a population standpoint it is about the same. some of them are not significantly contested. most occur in all areas, and that is where the afghan security forces are part of. >> have any idea how much television has now? >> i'm sorry but i cannot hear

the question. is that the question? >> i don't know for certain. i am not sure anyone knows exactly how many taliban and people there are. at rest, you get a wide range. then you have to define it in further. we are talking about armed combatants and supporters of the taliban that lend a logistical or political support. and it has a broad kind of comment and i would probably be reluctant to give numbers.

but you're probably looking at something as 10 or 15,000 armed combatants and it is multiple groups. so you have this and you have al qaeda and you have about four or five other main groups. you have a top three at set amount but have these similar objectives and they are these similar species of fish that are swimming generally in the same pond but they are not unified by any stretch of the imagination. but taken them as a whole, it's probably in the range of accuracy and about as good as anyone could give a gas in terms

of the left and right bookend of the numbers. and i think that i think that is a question that is not answerable with any high degree of accuracy. >> are there any lessons or comments? >> if there's one question i can kind of wrap it up. >> okay. >> for years we have been hearing that the afghan people are not part of the same afghan army. by the afghan police catching up? and it is actually part of these

afghans in the lead. so how are they adapting to that >> the first question for the afghan police is terms of training has clearly lagged behind the army from the very beginning of this operation. if you go back to the agreement and any kind of traces through the years, the level of effort was beyond this and this is part of putting this in focus. that was recognized a few years ago, i don't know, probably maybe 2008 or 2009 or 2010 and they have the police forces.

so you have the afghan border police and you have the afghan pleased that are in higher areas and you have this type of organization and you have different types of police and they are all different levels of a concerted effort that has been done and we are continuing that today and we are seeing this on the part of the police that we have seen in the past. it is clearly attacking local police because that police force is truly the frontline and they

are not as formidable and conducting small unit in the afghans have part of this army. and they take more casualties than the army. ..

that is our mission and task. we do not conduct unlateral offensive operation. we did did years ago. we don't do that anymore. what we do is help the afghans in their conduct of their service. and we train them, we advise them, we work schools, we help equip them. then we assist where needed and asked. in that relationship has worked out well. the afghans have stepped up to the plate. as you can tell, they are in fact fighting the fight. let me just wrap up it. it's good to hear the voices. i hope search doing well. with respect to afghanistan, you

know, going back to where i started. a lot has happened in twelve years in this country. some of which makes headlines, some of which does not. there's a significant degree of societal change in the security conditions, the security capabilities on the part of the afghan government, and at least as important are the societal changes in term of education, communication, and so on and so forth. taken as a whole. it's still early in the sense of, you know, how does it turn up? but i would argue that the changes that have occurred in this country speak that or would suggest that the momentum of this war has shifted in the favor of government of afghanistan, and not in the favor of the taliban. and i think taliban capability wise and political action wise

dot no advocate the ability to present an external threat to the country. provided we do what we do. and the afghan security force. my own estimate. this is my estimate not any kind of not in's. but my own estimate is that the situation in afghanistan is significantly better than what many people may appreciate it to be. given a twelve-year view or a forty-year view. most afghans would tell you that the situation today is better than it certainly was twenty five years ago or twenty years ago or twelve or thirteen years ago. i hear that repeatedly, not just from people that are senior in rank and the afghan security force. i hear it from lot of people all over the country of various walk of life. i think that the united states and the international security

forces from nato have got a lot to be proud of what occurred in the last twelve years. the sware not over. the war is being contested. it is still being fought in day in and day out. it's not yet won. right now i would say that the conditions are set for winning this war, and but it is not yet won and not yet over. with that, i'll bit ado. and wish you the best and appreciate the time. >> thank you, sir. british prime minister took questions this morning on the u.k.-syria policy. lane week after the house of commons narrowly defeatedded his motion calling for military action against the syrian government. labor leader who lead that opposition questioned the prime

minister. you can see today's discussion in the entirety online at c-span.org. w it'sho no different within e house. ierence w and need to stand up for the innocent people of syria. up fte the question -- s the question estion at issue -- [shouting] >> i think the house is approach this issue so far in a calm measured way and should carry on doing that. the point is how to do that. now, mr. speaker, there are large barriers, big barriers as we found that over the last year or more to the geneva to piece talks actually happening. whether there isn't a case for immediate talks between those parties backing those countries the rebels, and those countries backing the regime. that happened during the civil in lebanon and it would at least

provide a basis for discussion. >> i agree with the right honorable gentleman that britain should use all of its diplomatic muscle to discuss with those countries, back those -- those who back the regime and those who back the rebels and the opposition to try and bring those talks about and that is why i've had repeated discussions for instance, with president putin and most recently last monday, and what i traveled to seem specifically to discuss this issue. but i come back to this point. it's all very well for the countries supporting either side to want these piece talks to take place, would you also need is for those people involved in the conflict ensued to recognize it's in their interests to see a piece process start to begin. i think we can convince the syrian national council it is in the interest because the transition could lead to a genuinely free elections and change for sure you. but we need the regime, assad himself to realize that it is his and -- it is in his

interest. and for that to happen we do need to take and the world needs to take a very tough response to things like chemical weapons attacks. i accept that britain can't depart and won't be part of a note to action on that front. but we must not integrate give up our special booktv programming focusing open the civil lights continues in a few minutes. there's a continuous argument among lincoln scholar with the radical or the moderate in is and the reason why it's continuing there's very strong evidence on both sides of it.

it's not just play both sides of the street. i think it's he felt the pull of both sides of the argument. it's a difference between mends and ends. i think he was with the radical as far as ends. i think he was aware of the temptation being swept away. what is the speech about? except other than the temptation being swept away. i think this is in his mind a taming tension between his commitment to this worldly means and i should say legalist means and worldly end. he didn't say i can abolish slavely because god told me too. there was something scrupulously legal about the way he works. i think it's one of the things that saved him from the power of idealism.

next the "carry me home: birmingham, alabama: the climactic battle of the civil rights revolution." she focuses on the 1963 bombing of the 16th street church that killed four young girls. and the times when the police try to disperse young demonstrators with fire hoses and dogs. this is an hour. one of the last line in your book and acknowledgment is the following. i thank my father, martin forr delivering me as robert wrote ro out of the history hitory and the awful responsibili of time. what are you getting at there? >> if you can figure out what that quote mean, let me know because i have been pondering firt years. it's the last line from "all the

king's men," which was sofert an inspiration for this book, because as you recll n that book the main character is able to tie his own history to characters that he thought had nothing to do with him. when he was growing up as a child of privileg, the -- i would say the emotional impetus for writing this book was trying to figure out my father and trying to figure out his personal history, i was able to figure out real history. >> why did you want to do that? >> well, he was a really interesting figure, to say the least. he was a down, mobile, kind of renegade son of a civically prominent family in birmingham. and he just didn't make sense to me. he was sort of this vigilante spirit among the country-clubbers. i wanted to find out why he turned tout way he did if >> she alive today? >> he is. >> has he read the book? >> the last i heard he was still reading it and is really proud of me.

>> what is his reaction to the way you characterized him >> i think he feels that it was honest and true. and i think one of the reasons he has taken it so well is we always had a very strong bond. and it's not -- even though i reveal some, perhaps, painful or embarrassing things about me, it was not done vindictively. it was done in an attempt to understand. >> painful things about you. >> about him. >> what is the most painful thing you wrote about him? >> well, actually, the thing i was most worried about is his troubled relationship with his own father. his own father had been a harvard educated big lyer for the power company, and i think he gave my father a fairly short shrift when he was growing up. oddly enough, even though i reveal things about my father's bigotry, that was the thing i was worried about the most in

way because i felt that was the original wound in a way that made him rebel against his past and his backgrnd. >> what is the first thing you can remember about birmingham, alabama? >> oh, funny you should ask. the first thing i remember was atheim--ven though my father was from birmingham, when i was growing up, we lived in a small town in cherokee county in the sticks and we came into town to visit his mother, my grandmother. there was a paint sign that had these sort of goon-like figures with blue hair sprouting from their heads, almost like a troll doll that we see now. we called t bushy hair, and when we saw those, we were at my grandmother's house. that, and of course, th vulcan, the largest iron man in the world who held a neon torch that shone green on days when there has been no traffic fatalities in birngham and red when there was a traffic fatality. >> that's what this picture is.

awe you saw in the early part of the book, the 1976 centennial or something of that was the first reason why you were interested in even doing this. explain that. >> well, i had grown up thinking that the cataclysmic events of 1963 which was the climax of the book and the civil rights movement had nothing to do with me. dr. king's demonstrations there, the firehouses and police dogs, the church bombing, i was growing up over the mountain away from all that have. and just felt totally alienated from that. and the book that you mention was this alabama volume in a bicentennial series on the 50 states. it had aery brief account of the troubles in birmingham. and i realized for the first time reading that that a man named sitz mire had been the only white man in town, a businessman, who would agree to let his name be used in the negotiations with dr. king. i scread to my apartment in

cambridge, massachusetts, that's my cousin and it was the first time i realized this had anything to do with me. it embarked me on this jrney home. >> he's a picture. who was he? is he still alive? >> he is not alive, but i knew his son and grandson quite well. he was -- he was a businessman who had -- ended p realizing he was the protagonist of the book because he touched eve corner of the book. he started out as one of the big segregationist architects of the dixie succession from the democratic party in 1948 when the south succeeded from the party. it was this big. it was compared to the original succession it was s important. she was the sponsor and -- he was the sponsor and partial bankroller of one of the most

rabid racist demagogues, a man named ace carter who then came to fame as forest cart e the author of a best selling literature piece. and finally he became a friend of the civil rights movement. he went through some strange process of faith and redemption that i never quite understood either, but he switched sides and ultimately did the right thing. >> the 16th street baptist church bombing. this is recorded several weeks before it's aired, but last night on the radio i heard in the middle of reading this book, it's still an issue from 1963. what's going on there? >> well, it took -- it took a long time to bring any case because for several reasons. one is that the evidence is just really weak. the arch perpetrator of the crime was convicted by the state of alabama in1977, but since then the four other suspects, chief suspects in t crime, were -- they neer could build enough evidence on them.

nobody involved in the case has ever talked about it, so we may nev knowhat really happened leading up to that explosion. also, the investigation initially was very compromised. birmingham was johansburg at the time. it was the most segregated city in america. the birmingham police was in cahoots with the klan and had a long tradition of collaboration. some of the members of the klan who perpetrated the bombing had been under the protections of the police so that investigation was flawed, as well as the f.b.i.'s initial investigation. >> what happened on that day? what was the exact date, do you remember? >> oh, sure. it s september 15, 1963. and the schools of birmingham had just been desegregated ovr the previous couple of weeks. >> who was president? >> kennedy was president. and george wallace was governor. and wallace had called out the

state troopers to try to block the young school children from entering the schools in birmingham. i believe it rally was given a signal to the segregationists that they could go ahead and do what was necessary to stop the desegregation of schools. what had happned was that president kennedy had introduced federal legislation to outlaw segregation as a result of the big demonstration there is with the police dogs and fie hoses that spring. to the klan realized that their franchise was running out, and they were going to do anything to stop integration from coming about. they ended up bombing the church to do that. >> what was the klan? >> what was the klan? the klawas a very interesting terrorist arm of the establishment for a very long time. and it started out in the 20's in earn estas the sort of, oddly enough, the liberal arm of the democratic party. it was sort of this insurgent,

radical, populist, sort of incarnation of the have-nots bids for power over the previous couple of decades. that explains how hugo black, the great civil libetartian supreme court justice had the political career launched by the klan because he was part of the insurgent arm of the party. so uo of course becomes an avenue dealer and the supreme court justice, and in the meantime, the klan becomes the terrorist arm of the anti-new dealers. they are to fight the union, to tar it with racism and -- or tar it with, that it's trying to promote social equalty amo the workers. and finally by the -- so the industrialists of birmingham, the heavy manufacturing industrialists who owned the city, had encouraged this because the last thing they wanted was a strong organized

labor. so they encouraged the terrorism to disrupt labor, and then finally in the late 950's, the terrorists become bad for business because the economy is changing and moving away from heavy manufacturing toward service. and the industrialists, the business community, starts to disavow the klan, but it's too late. they have let this force loose in the community and they can't call it back. it leads up to the church bombing. >> in 1963 how many people lived in birmingham? >> in the city proper, about 250,000. >> what was the racial mix? >> about 40% black. >> i don't know whether you say it or not, but i think you did. the most segregated city in the world? >> it was called the johannesburg in america, d dr. king caed ithe most segregated city in the america. >> how would that be? >> that were exceptional in alabama? segregated parking lots. as one of the sources in my book said, why would they have to segregate the cars? they can't have sex.

because that's wht it kind of boiled down to. >> why was it so strong there? did you learn tha in your study? >> oh, yeah, it was because -- it went back to this industrial base. there was a very strong economic motive to enforce egregation rigidly, to foment rcial stride. it boiled down to keeping the racial force divided so they could keep wages down v the white workers identified with management, and they would tar the union as the inward union so that -- to try to repel whites from joining. >> it took you 15 years to do this? >> well, 19. >> 19. >> 19, yeah. >> what were you doing during the 19 years beside writing this book? >> well, i have to say that five of the years were spent cutting the book because the original manuscript was, believe it or not, three times onger than what you have in your hand there. so -- >> and you are talking about a

book that is 700 pages. >> the original manuscript was 3,400 pages. so you know i had to cut it, i cut it, i ruined it. i arted over again. and finally i was able to figure out a way to tell the narrative in a more streamlined fashion, although the reviews call it exhaustive. anyway, i think this is like the cliff notes version of it. >> where were you living? >> living in boston to begin with when i read the account of fitzmire. i had been working for an alternativeweely there and eventually was the editor of -- the managing editor of "boston magazine." >> what was that sname? >> "the boston phoenix." >> how did you get into journalism in the first place? >> the only thing it qualified to do when i graduated from college was reviewing books. i started to review books for the "boston phoenix," and after

th i moved into feature journalism and taught myself on the job. >> where did you go to college? >> wesley, where my grandmother went, so i was destined to go there from birth. >> whatwas your dad doing when you went to college? >> a small business rebuilding air compressorsso fill scub tanks for recreational use. he was an avid scuba diver. >> what was your relationip to him in those days? >> in college, that was the most estranged period. i entered the counter lture in the early 1970's, and during the vietnam war, and we really fell out over the war. he was sort of th rchie bunker type, and we went -- we had a few rough years there where we didn't speak very much. >> there is a name that pops out of the book almost out of nowhe that we know in this town, margaret cutwhiler. >> she was my sorority sister.

>> where? >> at the brook hills school for girls in birmingham. she was a class ahead of me. it turns out that her family was from one of the founding families of birmingham. >> it's pronounced? >> that's actually margaret's bid l name, debralabin. her family are major characters or major players in the book. >> why? >> well, they were a very prominent coal family because they were coal operators. i think they were the fifth largest producer of commercial coal in the country, i think. i mean they were quite big, and they had become during the new deal, the sort of saunch, anti-roosevelt family in the south. they had bankrolled a lot of anti-union, anti-new deal propaganda. and margaret's great, great

grand fother had become the anti-union icon nationwide. he was the only major coal operator to resist john l. lewis and the mine workers to keep them out of his camp. >> used to be a spokesman for the bush administration at the state department. >> margaret, yeah. >> do you know her well? >> i don't. our families were close. my aunt and her mother were i each ere's weddings. >> in this book you have pictures of a lot of the characters. if you are my age, you remember some of the names and the pictures. do you remember them? in 1963 you would have been how snold. >> i was 10 in 1963. i don't. i was totally ignorant of what was going on. it turns out that, i mean, i ended up getting to one of the interviews for the book. >> this is a picture of a man named bull connor. who was he >> bull connor was -- most people know him as the cartoon

villain of the civil rights era. he was the police commissioner of birmingham who was the perfect enemy for the civil rights movement. he's the one who sicked the dogs and fire hoses on martin luther king's child demonstrators in the spring of 196 the. he -- one of the purposes of the book was to present the segregationists in full dimension and try to really explain who they were, why they were, how they came to act seemingly against the values of their christian culture. and it turned out that bull connor had been installed in city hall in the 1930's by the corporate interests of birmingham as sort of a connection to the masses. they were the -- the industrialists were trying to figure out a way to turn the grass roots against the new deal. bull connor was the anti-new deal mascot. they put him in city hall. >> who was fred shult

shuttlesworth? >> he's my hero. the hero of the book. a confrontational baptist reacher who led the civil rights struggle. he was known throughout the civil rights movement as the wild man from birmingham because he was sort of crazily courageous. he put himself in harm's way in order to test god, to see if god was going to prote him. his church had been bombed in 1956. the bed he was lying on flew up like a magic carpet and he came out unscathed. so he really felt he was anointed to lead the fight, and ended up being a really important figure. >> where is he today? >> he has a church in cincinnati, ohio. >> did you talk to him about this? >> oh, a lot, a lot. i am glad he is still alive to see the story. >> what is the most important thing you learned from talking to him? >> what i really learned is how important he was in pushing king into greatness. that if it hasn't been for

shuttlesworth, we probably wouldn't be celebrating a national holiday for dr. kink today. >> why is that? >> king was coming into birmingham and had been extremely passive and unfocused. there was a sense he really did not want this to accept this mantel of leadership, which makes it seem more that he was this man of destiny. it was shuttlesworth that pushed him to get off the lecture circuits, stop talking to the white people. you've got to leave and galvanize the people and le us to the promised land because he realized he had the authority to do that. shuttlesworth was always pushing -- he was the vanguard, strategic vanguard of the movement who pioneered direct action by disobeying unjust laws as opposed to passively resisting them. he was just a major figure who hasn't gotten credit in most accounts of the movement. >> who is this man right there with the tie on and the coat

open? >> this guy ws the reason the f.b.i. investigation of the church bombing was flawed. this was f.b.i.'s chief informant inside the most violent klan in america. the eastview 13th clavern. >> what does that mean >> a small group, a club, a subset of the state klan. >> and eastview 13 is all through the book. what is that? >> awe east view 13 is the name of the violent clan, clavern, klan based in the birming birmingham. >> did you talk to anybody who was a member of tha group? >> oh, yeah. >> how about your family? >> were they members? my hands went clammy when i read the f.b.i. informant reports and

came across a man named loyal mcwhorter. i thought that was a man who would make up a name like that, like any father, so i had a few tough weeks thinking there was somebody that was my father. there was a man that was probably by country cousin of mine. i talked to his brother, and loyal was murdered by his girlfriend while liing in bed. he was such a bad person that the girlfriend got off. >> did you ever ask your father point-blank, were you a member of the klan? >> oh, yeah. oh, yeah. absolutely. >> what did he say? >> he never gave a straht answer. i know he wasn't a member of the klan, but he never said what he was doing at the, quote civil rights meetings, fighting the civil rights movement. i never quite -- there's a verbatim transcript of my interview with him in the epilogue trying to pin hem down. he just would never quite tell

me. >> why? >> i don't know. i think maybe one of the short of touching things he said to me was that, he said, i'm afraid i didn't do all the things you may have thought i did. as if i was hoping that he had done the worst, and he almost apologized that, you know, he wasn't going to offer up any big punch lineor something. and it was sort of tuching but kind of frightening grandiose that he would have claimed false credit or blame for some of this klan criminal activity that he really hadn't participated in. >> the transcript i he epilogue started with, you knew -- i said. i knew them all, he said. you knew gary thomas rho, you estioned him. who bombed the chur, you ask. he gave me a half-lidded look, and said it was the janitor.

that's not the only time i saw it in the book. >> right. you read it. am impresse you ass the pop quiz. >> it was the janitor. why would they always give that answer? >> a lot of people thought blacks had bombed their own church in order to get publicity for the movement. that was a very popular theory among thinking people as well as the sort of nut cases. so the janitor had been called in for questioning by the f.b.i., and because of that -- i'm not sure whether he was a suspect in their minds or not, but he was questioned by them. so as a result of that, here was this popular theory that came down that the janitor had done it. >> you spend a lot of time in the book telling the story of the bombing itself. have you gone around and talked to people, how many people remember it? >> the adults remember it. one of the reasons i wrote the book was because i didn't

remember it. i don't remember when i foud t about it. it was almost as if i had always known, but president kennedy was assassinated two months later and of course i remember everything about that. so i know it wasn't that i was too young for it to really register, and i wondered why it was something that happened a couple mile from my house had not registered on my consciousness at all. >> is the church there today? >> it is. >> is it still calle 16th street baptist church? >> it's across the stet from a really great museum, the civil rights institute. the church had been restored. a lot of the stained glass was damaged in the bombing. it's looking for an identity. it was even looking for an identity at the time. ironicly it was the 16th street was the seat of the white bourgeois that had been pretty hostile to king. they had made accommodations with segregation and had too

much to lose. it was a mass who didn't have to risk that much in order to participate in the struggle. reverend shuttlesworth was very unpopular with the black middle class because he as a mass leader. and there was a big division between the black classes and the black masses, the masses were called "them asses" bcause they were an embarrassment to the striving elements of the community who had really made great strides and didn't want to risk that. 16th street was very much in that tradition, and they had let the movement use the church grudgingly. >> september of 1963, president kennedy is in office. what else is going on in the world? has this issue been much in the news? >> oh, very much. the civil right act or what became the civil rights act of 1964 was debated in congress at the time. it looked like it might be a

losing proposition. there was, george wallace had been up screaming about it. the civil wrongs bill or something. >> what is this picture in your book? >> that's -- oh, that's george wallace. that happened in the previous june. that's george wallace standing had run for governor on a pledge to halt the desegreation of the schools of alabama even if he had to stand in the schoolhouse door. so there he is facing down the deputy attorney general. >> and onthat september day, on that sunday morning, paint the atmosphere. >> in the church? >> yeah. >> the sunday school was just nding down. a lot of the kids' sunday school classes were taking place in the basement. a few girls going to the bathroom to primp. >> what time is this? >> this is like 10:15 in the morning. normally the girls would have

gone to a drugstore to get a coke before the church service, but on this day the pastor was inaugurating a youth day because he was trying to breathe new life into the congregation which was stale and stodge. three girls were earing white and ty were going to be singing in the chior and everything. denise mcary, carol robertson, adddy holland, and cynthia wesley were primping because they wanted to look really nic. they were combing their hair in the mirror. another one of their sunday school classmat came into the bathroom and said something like, they need you to get back to sunday school class because those who don't obey the lord live only half as long. at 10:22, this bundle of dynate that was against the east wall of the church exploded. it blew out a man-size hole in the wall of thebathroom.

blew the clothes off the girls. stackelike cordwood under debris, and killed them all. one had been decapitated. >> did you talk to any of the fathers and mothers? you tell stories that they can remember -- to tell the stories about going to the morgue and finding them. >> in one case -- most of that was actually from f.b.i. documents and inrviews with witnesses on the scene becuse the families have a hard time talking about it. i mean it's likely that when spike lee did a movie, they were willing to talk about it, about the four little girls, about the church bombing. the -- the pastor, when they came upon the girls, he didn't recognize them because he thought they looked like women in tir 40's. and he couldn't figure out who they could be because he knew there had just been kids down

stairs. so the owner of a dry cleaner across the street from the church came up and he looked at the shoe, the foot of one of the girl's, and he said, lord, that's denice. it was his 11-year-old grand daughter. and that's -- denise, yeah. so that was the first time the pastor realized these were children. and the other one of the -- i think it was the father of denise wesley -- i mean of cynthia wesley also recognized her shoe sticking out from the sheet in this make-shift morgue at the hospital. so those were the -- the clothes had been sort of the la thought on earth, and that was ended up being blown off them and in one case identifying them. >> what happened in the aftermath of that? >> of the church, well, the area was sealed off. the white people were more

worried about rioting blacks, it seemed, than they were ability the victims. the only thing that i was able to find out -- i found out from my mother's datebook that i had been in a civic production of the "music man," the musical. and my rehearsal that night was canceled because we were afraid that the black people would be out abroad in the streets hurting white people. as it turned out, it was two more black children that were killed that day. one by a police bullet and one by two white teenagers who drove by the paper boy and shot him off the handlebars of his bike. it was a really tense situation. martin luther king came back to town. president kennedy's people came back to try to keep the peace, and there were high-level meetings at the white house that night to try to figure out how to deal with the situation. whether troops should be sent in, or, you know, how to keep a lid on things. >> what have you found out about

j. edgar hoover in all this? >> j. edgar hoover was a pretty bad guy, and he was -- par r part ofit, i think, stems from the fact that he was a totally bureaucratic creature. his main goal in life was to protect the bureau from any type of criticism. whenever they would come under criticism from somebody, he would try to find a scape goat. as it happened, in several instances that scapegoat was martin luther king. he had gone off an a vendetta againshim that was so, sort of, it wa so ugly compared with the fact that this klan informant, the picture we showed earlier, was shielded by his bureau. and because they were afraid that his cover would be blown, ey shielded the criminal activity he participated in and his klan brothers from prosecution for various crimes.

so the combination of going after king and protecting the klan is just one of the ugliest chapters in the history of the justice department. >> what did the f.b.i. do ater the bombing? >> the f.b.i. did -- they -- they called out a manhunt that they were comparing to dillinger to find him. they did quite a thorough job, buexcept because they were afraid that gary thomasrowe was involved, they told him to stay away from the scene for a week. they didn't want him o show up in somebody else's investigative files. when they were showing pictures of suspects to witnesses, they didn't show rowe's picture or a picture of his car. they were concernede mght have been involved because he had been involved in other terrorist actions that the klan carried out. i conclud that he proably wasn't involved in the church bombing. i'm not sure whether he knew about it or not, but i don't think he took part iit. >> but years later i read an

account how there was a secret part of the investigation from the f.b.i. years later. and this thing has been going on all these years. how did it stay alive all these years? >> the five main suspects, including the one who was convicted and the two who are going on trial, are -- they were suspects from virtually day three. and they just could not build -- they could not build a case against them. the evidence was, you know, nobody talked. the physical evidence in a bombing isalways virtually nonestent because it's blown up, you know, sometimes there's evidence of a timing device but rarely. and it -- the investigation went through a fallow period and some eager police chief or attorney general would react -- they would reactivate it and come up

with the same problem, which is lack of evidence. it happens that the two possible suspects, one on trial as this air, and one going to be going on trial if he's deemed competent, but most of the evidence is self-incriminating evidence they made to third parties. there's no new evidence about the crime itself. >> in the epilogue of the book you talk a lot about your dad. where does your dad live now. >> he lives outside biringham. he's, you know, virtually retired. >> is your mom alive? >> yeah. >> he's not maryed to her any longer? >> correct. >> you say he has different ways that he has lived his lfe. you talk about it -- does he live in a trailer now? >> he doesn't live in a trailer now. one of the most humiliating moments of my youth was when i found out that my fther was thinking of moving us to a trailer. i was going to this private girls scoothat my grandmother had founded and, you know, it

was this sort of star student and doing everything right. and then my father is thinking about moving us to a trailer, and i just remember thinking, i can never live this down. we didn't move to a trailer, but eventually he -- in the 1970's he lived in a trailer for a while. got it out of his system. didn't stay too long. >> why did he want to do that? what was the motive? >> he grew up in this big house on a hill, a big mansion asi daughters call it, and he he wanted to get as far away from there as he could. a trailer seemed to fit the bill. >> when you were growing up, how did he talk about blacks? both your mother and father about blacks in the home, and how long were they married when you were growing up? >> ty divorced when i was in college, so they were together during my entire childhood. we were taught -- polite children were taght never to use the n word. it was just not a nice thing to

say. my father did use the n word, and i think i sort of rejected his politics almost on class grounds before i did on moral grous because i found it so offensive for our social class to use this word. that's what lower class wyatts used. i found out much later that, guess what, the groaps did use that word, just as they swore they didn't do it around us. my mother was from mississippi, so she wasn't really tied into birmingham society at all,and she's just a really nice person who would never be cruel to anybody. and that -- she sort of lived that ethic whether it was to, you know, a white person or a black person. but she didn't have any political -- she didn't take any political stance on the race issue. >> do you have brothers and sisters? >> fwro two brothers. >> where are they? >> one is in birmingham. i think he was thinking about changing his name when my book came out, but i think they are all happy now.

and not as big of a bomb shell as they feared. and my younger brother is in macon, georgia. >> what were they afraid of? >> i think they were just afraid of the reaction that it was going to be so hostile. that they might suffer reprisals. >> hostile for what reason? >> because i name ames in the book, and it's a pretty unforgiving looat a lot of people that we know. as it turns out, most of the really bad people from the book are dead. i have gotten some sort of sad reaction from the name sakes of some of the people named in the book who were really upset about it. my uncle has been dissing me in the paper there. >> there is your uncle hobert? >> yeah. what is his story? >> he was the guy who carried on the family name. a prominent lawyer in town, and sort of the country club wit,

and efrling, and he's still -- he still is very much part of the community and ver visible part of the community. so he -- >> what do you think of him? >> he's vey close -- i am very close to him. he was sort of a surrogate father to me, so i was a little hurt when he told the birmingham news that diane has written an effectively rgely fictional book. did that ask what he thought was fictional? >> no, they didn't, as a matter of fact. i was a little upset with the birmingham news. >> was he a klansman? >> oh, no, no, no. that was totally beyond the panel for him. >> what doesn't he like about it? yotalk about the mountain book club and the birmingham country club. explain what that's all about. >> well, the book opens on the day of the church bombing at the mountain brok club, which was sort of the sanctuary of the birmingham elite.

my grandfather was one of the charter members and my uncle is one of the the mainstays of the club. so i think that he was really upset about what i said about the club. that's what he was really upset about. >> where is the club? >> it's in this beautiful, piney valley in mountain brook, which is this suburb that was called over the mountain because there was this kind barrier betwn the gritty city and the suburb. it's really one of the most beautiful places in the world. the club was the beautiful, plantation style place where the big meals went -- that's what the big ndustrialists were called. and just had their cocktails. >> what was wrong with that? >> for me? >> yeah. >> i loved it there. >> what's wrong with it now? >> i don't know why he was o offended about what i wrote about it. i think i said that the mountain brook club members sort o disdained the birmingham country club members. i said it was the difference

between -- the difference betwn the two clubs was the difference between kiwanias which ran the city and rotary, which owned it. i don't know what problem he has with that, but it seems to be true to me. >> but you did describe the fact that the clubs have black waiters. what was their relationship with the members and what happened in the mountain brook club the d of the bombing? >> well, the mountain brook club waiters were, you know, it was the sort of classic paternalistic members of the family. like members of the family relationship. and they got a lot of perks, you ow, fr legal advice. my uncle freely gave of legal advice to club waiters and also the african-american family that worked for our family and for his family growing up, so it was sort of, you know, the classic genteel relationship that enabled segregationists to feel ok about it because they had, a,

genuine relationships with black people, and also they had relationships that are civil and kind. so they -- that was the way they were able to overlook he systemic butality of the system itself. >> if you went to the mountain brook club tay, what would you see compared to hat you saw in 1963? . >> well, you know, i went down there when i was down there, and people couldn't believe i showed my face. >> how long did you stay, by the way? >> i stayed for a few hour, but it was abingo night, so it was a lot of families so they didn't know me or didn't care bout the book. but the waiters were glad to see me. >> did you do this after or before you wrote the book? >> i would go back there usually every time i was writing the book, but no, when the book came out and i was on the book tour down there, i went down there to pay a visit. >> do they all know who you were? . the waiter >> did you talk to them?

>> i interviewed a number of the waiters, oh, yeah, so yeah, they recognized me. >> what was the reaction when you went to birminghamand had the book in hand and went to the bookstores? how muchf a did you do there? >> an extensive tour and i did a lot of right-wing talk shows, too. the reaction is fascinating. i would say the typical reaction is -- and this sort of sums up birmingham is why -- why do you want to drag that up again after years. i mean, why people care about birmingham? the people -- why people in birmingham haven't just quite gotten this was the most important place and the most important story in american history perhaps. so finally i came up with an answer, which was, would you question why people would want to read about gettysburg. this is the gettysburg of the civil war. this is the turning-point

battle. and i think finally, you know, people are beginning to accept that it's just not going to go away. this is history that was made here, and that people are always going to be interested in it. the other reaction i had gotten has been shock that all this went on. i mean tracin all the sources of the system back to the new deal and the labor movement and the anti-labor resistance and stuff, which i think has just been a big shock to a lot of people. >> in the acknowledgments, you say my family richard rosen and lucy and ibell were my companions on this journey. and theyade my life complete. my in-aws. your husband? what does he do? >> his a writer of mystery novels, and nonfiction. and he has also worked in television. >> where do all the rosens live? >> the rosens are in chicago. >> and yor family? where do you live now. >> manhattan island, new york.

>> besides writing the book, what do you do on a fulltime basis? >> i hate t say it, but i wrote the book on a fulltime basis. i raised my daughters, and i have written for the "new york times" for years and occasionally done journalism, but this really kept me busy. >> lucy is 12 and is bell is nine. >> what do they think of all this? >> of course my older daughter calls me a loser and crackhead, and whatever is a popular expression of contempt. my younger daughter thinks that people will recoize me on the street now. they kind of took the two extreme positions. >> do they have any relationship with your father or mther? >> oh, yeah. yeah >> all this come up at the family get togethers? >> not really. i mean they sort of -- they have been fascinated with my father, too. they haven't been able to quite

figure him out because he is not the typical grandfather. i'm not sure they really know exactly what's in here yet. >> you went with your father -- i want to get the rigt place here. velmus. you have this in the epilogue again, a transcript. what happened there? >> well, velmus was the beer joint my father went to after work for many years. so in the course of doing research, i found that one of the benefits of doing research with him was that i really re-established a with him, because i had this al tier yor reason to expos myself to him that may have been once painful. i accompanied him to the beer joint, and just listened to the guys talk about, you know, use the "n" word and talk about yankees and, you know, the same old stuff. >> there's a little exchange

that says somebody says you are writing a book about birmingham. one man said, tell them what it's about, papa said to you. it's mostly about 1963, you said. and then your father said, it's about the anythinger movement. what did you do when he said that it's about the nigger movement? >> probably -- you mean did i correct him or anything? >> yeh. when you go back there and he talks that way, do you correct him? >> i did for a long time, during my 20's. i spent my 20's trying to change him, and then i guess i spent the 30's and 40's trying to understand him. i kind of retired by then -- by then i definitely retired from the role of trying to reform him. i just decided it wasn't my job or my mission. >> you say for the ext hour at vellmas, i was treated to comments like, you know as far as i am concerned, you can take all the niggers and put tem in a boat and ship them back to africa. you know what?

send the jews after them. i think niggers are all right and everybody should own one or two or three of them. people in the beer joint said that to you. >> they were talking to each other and just kind or -- >> did they know you were wring a book? >> oh, yeah, i think i may have been taking notes while they were writing. that was one of the ways i ws able to be present in that, that i knew that i was not -- i was not part of it really. >> can you figure out why people want to talk that way today? >> these people were people who were socioeconomically marginal, and they -- >> soshe economically marginal. >> on the edge. >> they were on the edge. >> this is what makes them feel good. and that's why the -- the klansmen were the sort of dregs of the society because they were, a, the most threatened by ingration because their jobs might -- they might lose jobs

actually to black people if they weren't systemically discriminated against. and also because it was their way of feeling important, that they were better than somebody. i think it's called the narscism of small differences. the closer you are together, t more you make of the tiny differences. >> you say your family has a connection to a man named robert welsh. >> oh, yeah. robert welsh was the founder of the john birch society, and as it turned out, he was my grandfather's roommate at harvard law school. he introduced my grandfather and grandmother to each other. >> what is that society, the john birch society? >> it was this super conservative, anti-communist organization which was supposedly an educational organization to alert people to e communist myths around the corner about to take over

america. and it became sort of the respectable altenative for a lot of the segregationists in birmingham to join after, you know, they certainly wouldn't be in the klan. and if they wanted to organize, they would often be part of the john birch society because that was socially acceptable. >> later on in the epilogue you say, they didn't believe in russian domination of t united states and the hierarchy of the union. they believed everybody was responsible for what they did, for their own actions. i always thought that erybody is responsible for their own actions. if their actions ain't too good, they may need to do a little bit more praying. who is saying that? >> that's my father trying to kind of explain why he believed what he did and why he was pt of the resistance. he now says that he had nothing against black people and there's -- there's a lot of stuff in the book about his true relationships with black people.

he spent a nightn jail once on behalf of some country club waiters because he had seen a rload of white people run a red light and hit this carload of black waiters from the country club. he told the police what had happened and the white kids who hit the car, the waiters car, challenged them to a fight. they had a fight, and it was my father and uncle who went to jail for them. so he did have, you know, a complicated relationship with blacks. he had real intimacy with some black people, and he would always say now it was because he thought the civil rights movement was under the influence of communists. that's why he felt likehe had to get involved. >> any change in birmingham between 1963 and 2001? >> oh, i mean you just can't conceive of what it was like in 1963. i mean the change has been just incredible, n to me one of the great lessons of this is that, you know, people always said that even if you -- you can't legislate hearts and minds.

people are people. human nature is human nature. and you can't get rid of the system overnight. but guess what? they did. it was amazingly peaceful. that is not to say that birmingham is not still a segregated society. >> is the mountain brook club, by the way, integrated? >> >> i don't think that it is. i think my uncull was desinated to bring -- i think my uncle was designated to the bring black guest as a member. >> what about the birmingham country club? >> possibly. it possibly is. remember the whole controversy the was a untrytournament that this was a country club in birmingham that had to undergo emergency desegregation that put the country club on the spot and got a lot of scrambling for a qualified member. >> i think the photograph one of the early photographs you talk about. tell us what that's about. >> guest: that was a sort of classic movement picture of the

birmingham demonstration. that was a police dog attacking a teenager named walter. and it was that photograph that president kennedy saw and said it made him sick, and sort of galvanized the country behind the legislation to abolish segregation. i compare it to uncle tom's cabin. it told the truth about segregation. there were a lot of misleading details. walter was not a demonstrator. he was playing hooky and one of the bystander. he wasn't participating in the movement. this picture rig here. chuck morgan. who was he? wheris he? >> chuck was one of theheros of the book. a young turk lawyer in birmingham and some people in washington may remember him as the -- he was the head of the

aclu for a while, a sort of flamboyant lawyer who went from doing civil rights law to the other side. he started representing establishment firms, but he -- >> when did he do that, by the way? >> in the 1980's. >> where does he live now? >> in florida. he is retired. he's -- he was a very flamboyant, liberal guy who -- his claim to fame in birmingham about which he ended up writing a book was that after the church was bombed, he gave a speech to a young -- something called the young mens business club in which he blamed the entire community for the crime. and he was esentially run out of town, as my father put it. he and my father were close friends growing up. >> did you talk to him about this book? >> oh, yeah, many times. >> what s his attitude? >> couldn't have been more pleased that the story was being told. >> you have a story -- it's just one of those things or

incidences that happened during those days and may still happen about tom king who ran for mayor and the photograph. what was it? >> oh, yeah. this was one of the -- the bigamistries of birmingham politics. tom king was running for mayor against a man named art hanes who went on to fame as james earl ray's first lawyer, but the segregationist candidate. tom king was chuck morgan's candidate. they were the liberals. bull connor -- tom king was meeting with bull connor and one of art hanes operatives paid a black -- they let a back convict out of jail. paid him to go up to tom king and shake his hand. tom king, when i interviewed him, said he felt doom wash over him because the black man held his hand for, like, a good 10

seconds and walked away and they got a photograph of it. that was the ultimate taboo. >> what year? >> 1961. >> the prisoner was waiting somewhere in the hallway and walked down and shook his hand. >> right. grabbed it. normally, you know, a canny politician wouldn't have shaken hands, but he just stuck his hand out -- you know, mr. king, stuck his hand out, and it ws that photograph that pretty much cost him the election for mayor. >> was the 19 years or were the 19 years worth it? >> you know i have beenaazed at how quickly i went from, oh my gosh, you can't finish a book in 19 years to great achievement. great achievement. yeah, this has all been worth it, i have to say. >> in the reviews and in the time on the book tour, what is the best they have said about you and the worst they have said about you? does it ever hurt when they say the negative >> on the ok tur, well, i

haven't gotten anything negative to my face. a klanan showed up at a book signing. i have had a few heart flutters. but mostly, you know, it must be the reaction that has been phenomenal. somebody on the right-wing talk shows would call up and say this should be required reading for everybody in birmingham. and one -- that was a white suburban matron called to say that. the next caller was a black person who said i know so many people in the book. and this is just an amazing, you know, account of this sort of hidden history. >> your mom and dad haven't been married for years. has your mom read this? >> awe she hasn't read it, but she is the biggest p.r. agent who has taken t all over town and flaunts it. she is really proud. >> she hasn't read it at all?

>> a lot of people in birmingham read the personal stuff to see, you know, to see about me and my family and possibly the people they grew up with. she -- i think she, i mean, she was maryed to him, so she knows what a perplexing character he . and i think she understands why i did this. >> what's nexfor you? anotr book? >> i think so. i would like to get a political column. i feel competent writing columns that you can get out and see the next day. i'd like to do that for a while. then i have a few other book ideas. >> like what? >> well, one of them would be about another city, but i think i have to wait for my kids to leave home to be able to do the research for that. i might turn to my mother's family in mississippi next. >> our guest is diane mcwhorter. this is teway the book looks, "carry me home." this pick was taken when and

what is it? >> children bracing themselves against the fire hose spray, taken in may of 1963. >> in birmin >> of the senate foreign relations committee has approved a resolution authorizing president obama to use airstrikes against syria for up to 90 days and will prohibit the use of ground forces. the vote was 10-7 with the massachusetts senator voting present. the resolution now goes to the full senate. well senators were debating their resolution, secretary of state john kerry was testifying before the house foreign affairs committee. you can see the entire hearing on line at c-span.org. here is some of what he said about the question of going to war. >> let me be very, very clear. when i walked into this room a purchase -- person of conscience stood up behind me as is the ability of people in our country, and that person said,

please don't take us to war, don't take us to another war. i think the three of us sitting here understand that plea as well as any people in this country. let me be clear, we are not asking america to go to war. i say that sitting next to two individuals who will know what war is, and there are others here who know what more is. they know the difference between going to war and what the president is requesting now. we all agree, there will be no american boots on the ground. the president has made crystal clear, we have no intention of assuming responsibility for the civil war of assad. that is not in the cards. that is not what is here. the president is asking only for the power to make certain that

the united states of america means what we say. he is asking for authorization, targeted an limited, to deter and degrade the capacity of assad to use chemical weapons. i will make it clear, for those who feel that more ought to be done or that, you know, in keeping with the policy that assad must go, clearly the degradation of his capacity to use those weapons has an impact on the the fidelity of the weapons available to him and will have an impact on the battlefield. just today before coming in here i read an e-mail about that general, the minister of defense who has just defected and is now in turkey. there are other defections that we are hearing about because of the potential that we might take action. so there will be downstream impacts, though that is not the

principal purpose of what the president is asking you for. >> our special book tv programming continues with jonathan rieder on his book "gospel of freedom: martin luther king, jr.'s letter from birmingham jail and the struggle that changed a nation". jonathan rieder, a sociology professor at columbia university spoke in birmingham, alabama for an hour and 15 minutes.nng. >> well, good evening. welcome.co i'm very pleased that you all have joined us this evening. i also want to welcome our good friends from c-span who were taping tonight's program that will be broadcast on book tv at a future time.rs are locked. you cannot leave until the books are sold. [laughter]

martinmartin luther king often quoted the 19th century ab listist thomas parker said the arc of the fifty years ago this very day, four young black college students walked in the tront door of the building down the stairs, they went over to a table and sat down and started to read. as one of them described to me later fake read. he was scared he was about to be arrested. the libraries were segregated. we had libraries for african-americans. the building was closed to blacks. they could not enter the building or use the collections here. those four students came in that day and sat down and did what you did at the library.

they read for awhile. they knocked down wall. the next day more students from miles college came. they saturday down, they read, one of them went to the desk and for a library card. on the next day the library board somewhat reluctantly voted, but bending to the arc of justice, the library board voted to desegregate the birmingham public library. it was one day before king was arrested and began writing the letter from birmingham jail. think about the building that 50 years ago tonight was closed to african-american now houses one of the finest research collections in existence on the civil rights movement. and the african-american experience. and it's not out -- out of that collection in part that the book we're going celebrate tonight has been researched and read here.

we're pleased to have two authors with us tonight. first, we have jonathan reider, professor of sociology at columbia university, hey the author of "the word of the lord is upon me" has been a regular commentator and contributing editor to new republican. also with us is -- appeared surprise winning author -- birmingham, alabama. and the battle of the civil rights movement. which is just been released in a new updated paperback edition. she's the author of a "deremer she writes regularly for the "usa today." everyone join me in welcoming jonathan reider.

[applause] i should say not to add luster to my résume, to reassure i'm not a self-rich use northerner. i have written about white racism in brooklyn as well. the jews and italians in brooklyn again liberalism. let me say first off a certain humility is in order. for one thing, it's a tremendous delight to be here with diane, who is telling of "carry me home" is epic as the events in birmingham themselves or the epic quality that what people did in the town deserves. i can tell you, i don't want to

be too gracious. buy my new book first. there's plenty of new stuff in the new edition. buy that too. there another reason for humility -- i couldn't have done "gospel of freedom "without two special people. our host for the evening, jim baguette, many years ago first prepared my way in the book connor collection. you have no idea how long it took me to get used to the bull connor collection. you may be used to the phrase. i thank also the things that his institution, the birmingham public library has done in making this history alive. i need thank another gifting archivist laura anderson for similar kinds of -- my dependent ens, i must say. she was the one who first connected me to some of the

realtively unknown tapes of dr. king. some of which the sound system doesn't fail us tonight. i'll play a little bit. if i had any ability in my book to bring alive the mass meetings with the sounds of king, king in passive, king in majesty, king in bitterness, resentment. all the different sides of king, i owe those recordings and the man who donated them to the bcri, reverend c. herbert oliver. another great freedom fighter in birmingham who was fighting racism and segregation in 1948. i want to say what jim and laura what their institutions go is not logistical and practical, the words make it possible for us never to forget the courage and the blood and the sacrifice which america of born as a democracy. it's a sacred as well as a

logistical which the duoresearch institutions do. as we know from a lot of other settings, if you're going avoid the past and understand something like never again, you have to know how to remember and you can't remember sentimentally or dishonesty. jim and laura make it possibility. if there's any humility here. i'm going think of dr. king in birmingham in keeping with him, i have only written in history. the anemia birminghaming haim made the history. in rising up fifty years ago, they, and i should for the people in the room, you didn't make only history in birmingham. you helped make the nation anu. i'll come back to that. that ultimately is the meaning

of the 50th years. we don't want to give to some notion that history was easy. we, proud in america. we don't honor whatever the value and the institution and the decoration are by pretending it was the time of unfreedom in order congratulate ourselves we got to the promised land. i should add that part of the other -- i'll add quickly is in my other work on king i spent time with the foot soldiers. we know the famous people. there are all of those amazing colleagues of dr. king who went in to a dozen other places. people like reverend willie, and jt johnson. i never got a chance to meet james orange, i had the privilege of interviewing andrew some years ago that man of

gentle defiance. he remind us it was the young people on the streets of birmingham who made flesh the theory that dr. king put forward until the letter for birmingham jail when he talked about extremist for love and justice, it was worth all the people in the alabama christian movement for human rights and james orange and meatball and andrew and all of those young people we can't forget the history forget what they did as well. now in this audience i'm not going spend lot of time rehashing the dramatic detail of the freedom struggle. i need set the context before i get to the letter. i'll try to do it pretty quickly. when i'm done, i'm going makes it up with questions with jim and diane. we want to get those in the audience. what is that history? the legendary and the acm, hr,

the mass meetings vibrating with a sound i'm on my way to -- [inaudible] defiant young people who stare down the diabolical connor. connor losing it on may 3rd and the world owes him greatly as president kennedy once said, bobby ken day say it too, actually. that the movement owed connor for finally losing it and becoming a prop within the movement drama that would awaking, the nation. the eight clergy men who ended up criticizing king may not have liked tension, in fact within one day -- the next morning after the dog was biting that black young man, it was on the paper -- the front page of the "new york times." kennedy was sending assistant u.s. marshall. they were thinking we may not be

able to avoid this as a moral issue. we may need to think about a civil rights issue all that have begins. american democracy wasn't vanquished -- wasn't vindicated in birmingham but a start of movement in changed the world we live in. now, i'm not going say much. i'll say one sentence. king in the letter is talking about the gospel of freedom. i have brought the gospel of freedom like the eighth century bc -- or like paul going through the greek or roman world and answering the mas done began call. it's not just for the hometown. he's going tout preach it. he's preaching the gospel of freedom to the whites. dr. king knew there was a gospel of freedom for blacks and the mass meetings were about his convincing them that you must deliver yourself. god will not take you there simply because you pray and king

back in march, before the demon strappingses got going is an ebb kneeser you hear him in the voice of god saying to moses. tell the children of israel to go forward. why are they wining? go forward and king said if he's got -- i can't do it all myself. so that is the other drama of black awakening within the meetings. i'll say less about that in the questions. we can come back to that. we have after much indecision the movement is not going well in those days of april 3rd through april 8, 9, 10, 11. on good friday in the early morning king decides to inviolate the junction and go jail. he would suffer with the saver your on the cross. how many times did he preach they could put you in jail and transform you to glory? but once in jail, the jail

became a dungeon of dispond sincerity. king spiraled down to depression, panic, and lost his spirit as a freedom warrior. then everything changed. he read the statement of eight white alabama clergymen criticizing him for being an extremist. it's untimely, the new mayor is going usher in a new day. why didn't you wait? suddenly king is propelling himself up that out of the valley up the mountain on a tide of indignation. so i want to start with what we think about the letter and where we get it wrong. yes, it's about injustice here. i'm here because of justice is here. it's universal.

moral anger but anger. we, yes there's paul and saint august seen, but that is not where it begins. and understand the letter we need keep that in mind. so the letter and the man comes rippling off the page of the letter is try to recreate it in my book gospel of freedom it's not driven by fancy philosophy. he's not a dreamer. that man in a letter has a glorious come complexity. the accelerate hard to get a handle of. it's not one thing. academics try to figure. they classify it a public letter this, that, formal rhetoric? there are the constant display of these incredible marijuanas. we know how furious king is at

the ministers. for criticize -- they call me an extremist. he starts off my dear fellow clergymen, precious gentility. when he's mad he says i'm dmointed. i hope you can see this patient men why is he wasting his time with white preachers we have an insurgency to run. we have the mass meetings. we have bailed and king is in a snit over the white clergy in a different way ct vivian said to me. it's what we expected because they were doing evil or comprising with evil. so we have that patient marijuanaly king. we have the professor king who lectures on the meeting of a moral law we have the tour guide king who takes white to the

imminent recess of black vulnerability. when you have been humiliated. when your black brothers and sisters are lynched, when you have to explain to a 6-year-old girl that his daughter, that yo lane data why she can't to go fun town been you live with a debilitating sense of nobodiness. when you think king is going explode in anger. taxable property black u. it's the collective people. when you, when you when you, 276 word sentence he suddenly pulls out of it like an airplane in a swoon and says, now turning back to the you maybe you will understand why we have it hard. that's that eerie tour that king takes a voyage in to the depth of the white christian soul. he focused on the christian

glery. and said i have gone through the wonderful spiers of the white churches and wondered who worships there. who is their god? it sounds like a room naitding. but there is cold distance like an anthropologist looking at it different. doesn't share the same god of king? who is their god. there's coldness there. masking the anger. there's the stay cottic after he spent paragraphs trying to say we're not reckless. i'm not an extremist. the more i thought about it, i am an extremist. gee us -- jesus was an extremist. ands up saying i don't care what

you think of me. minnesota anything else it becomes a relentless smack down of ordinary white people. we need to understand the radicalism of king's disappointment. ordinary white people who consider themselves decent but never binged with indignation over the fact of jim crow. and we know some of the white clergy and their children to this day felt wronged love your. not because it's the law, not because law and orders but because she and she are your

brothers and sisters. be when king preaches that elsewhere he's the voice of saint paul saying this is blasphemy. the smack county of ordinary white people which includes the kennedy administration that keeps saying wait as well. the eight clergymen. it's not that he's not answering them. but they perfectly distill all of this reluctance of a white nation that cannot, i'm quoting king, he say, i should have realized that the oppressed cannot understand the yearnings and longings of the oppressed. very powerful. we don't think of this king when we celebrate the dreamer as a tough chai'stizer. in the gospel freedom i try to show there's a transition when the first part is the dpip mat

trying to persuade whites. appealing to the humanity. trying intellectual and manners. half way through it change. i must confess i've been disappointed. the whole second half is a profit pro -- it's as if we are meeting king anew. it's the king that many african-americans who knew him from the mass meetings and preaching new the ambassador of brother hollywood turns out not to be a dreerm but a christian warrior. he didn't think many whites had much empathy or willingness to act on it for black people. he wasn't naive.

i should have realized he said it's important thans few members of the 0 prezzive race can understand the deep -- the exodus sneaking in there. despite the dignity and refinement you can sense the controlled anger if we read it question miss it. for years i heard the word wait. it rings in the ear of every negro. kick is now speaking not under universal mankind but a black man. if pierces him as well. i want to start moving toward the end and we can develop some of these themes and others

whenever they want to take it. i want to mention some amazing things that happened toward the end. at the end of the letter king observes even if the white church does not come to our aid, i have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in birmingham. let's thought about. many of you know the history. he's still in jail. there's a little debate that he finish in a few days it's irrelevant. most is done. we edit our stuff. we're two weeks before d day. why is he confident? blacks had not risen up after he went to jail. and say we're going jail too. when was the confidence? we know the answer to this. it's king's faith in god. what he almost said to black and

white audience he doesn't say at the end. the resurrection follows the cruise fiction. he re-- in a sermon addressed to fellow clergymen. he refuses to share a spiritual thought with them. he has disdain and anger. he's not going to go there. it's rare that he didn't go. nor does he say have a black and white dream of kids holding hands together. he doesn't quote the exceptional american nation. that democracy is destined for america.

there's a mystery here. you can go in to it more if you are interested or diane or jim is. unralphing is key to understanding king in a new way. i'll say that years before the flowering of black pride, king was finding faith and love of his people. not just mankind but his people and the memory of the slain ancestors and the defiant grace in what he calls in the letter hoe shares it with white people. he didn't say for black audiences. the bottom vitality of our slave fore bearers. if we were able to survive the inexcusable cruelty of slavery, the setbacks in birmingham will not keep us back. i'll rev it at that for now.

it's easy to see the lurch forward as inevitable. as sing saw it america was a need in redemption not a redeemer nation. it's there in the mass meetings. it's there when he's preaching. that becomes clear from one of the most dramatic discovery of gospel in freedom. there's an alternative version of the letter. nobody knows about it that king preached two days after he gets out of jail. he repeats many of the line of the letter. it's far black audience. he's not trying to persuade them. he's using it to goad them on. it allows us to adding the sound back. we add the emotion that is there.

you can hear the angry tremor in king's voice. we are through with segregation now henceforth and forever. it's the same voice you hear on may 3rd, the day after -- hours after connor use the hoses and the dogs and king said our black faces will stand up to connor's white tanks. it's a defiant christian king but a defiant king. bear with me. we'll see if it works. if it does, i'll do it. he's better than i am. i would rather he do it. [inaudible] [inaudible] pushed out of the --

[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [cheering and applause] [inaudible]

[inaudible] at the close of that spoken, black verse of the letter, king imagines freedom bells ringing from every mountain in the united. from red mountain in alabama and he imagines the day that blacks were to be sing "my country 'tis of though, sweet land of liberty." i'll close with this thought. with this celebration of the american nation, after all as in a few months later, he repeats this. it's in anticipation of i have a dream. when he sings hardly. his pronouncement in that church the sacred church if america is to be a great land was a taunt.

it wasn't create great land. if black were able to sing with new meaning, my country 'tis of though, if they were singing able to sing at all, king lists a series of ifs. we will protest together and go to jail together. then we will be able to sing. in short, the nation most white americans thought they live in wouldn't exist until black people and especially the black people of birmingham helped create it. thank you. [applause] >> welcome back, i should say. i want to recognize a few people who are here who were and/or

freedom riders. one is katherine berks brooks who was part of the second wave of freedom riders. she was part of the national student movement, and is now a local icon. can you stand up? [applause] and is dpowg john still here? he was the u.s. attorney here in birmingham who prosecuted the bombers of the 16th street church in 2002 and 2001. [applause] i guess it seem to be my lot in life establish the birmingham narrative of great event. i'm going give a little context about the letter from the birmingham standpoint.

it sort of feeds in to this-ism we're in the mist of. yearning that the country feels -- explainer and the human resources facilitators. and probably if you don't know anything about the birmingham story you might think he wrote the letter from jail. people read and said that is great. what actually happened at the time was that the letter, which king's chief of staff had seen as a propaganda opportunity, actually. he couldn't get anybody interested in it. as if the letter was typed up and sent around.

there's a copy in jim's archive in the birmingham police surveillance file. schfs a freefs campaign in georgia. he got out of jail too fast. he couldn't do it. at that point they couldn't get king -- it "new york times" magazine, you know, they couldn't get the assigning editor couldn't get it past the editor. so basically in this -- you see here which covered everything. there's only one page. and the reason is it made not one bit of difference at the title. the way i look at it is birmingham redeems anointed the letter. they said it's because of

birmingham that now the sacred text in our democracy. i was interested in -- about how, you know, historians have to write about something that has been on the story that the story that how am i going to come up with something new? i think the letter itself as well as the "i have a dream" speech have become part of reconciliation of myth. i'm reading the book and thinking this is john has really carved out the own angle and has to be the first commentator in history to refer to dr. king as a bad ass. i have to give it to you, john. tell me how -- it's, you know, i read the letter as a seething document. still fundamentally diplomatic. can you talk a little bit how

partly listening the recordings and hearing him cut loose before the black church? >> the recording -- [inaudible] what i sphownd unknown alternative version -- so much as the fact nobody -- [inaudible] nobody knew about it. and the fact everyone though you sense the seething in the words of the letter, it's just unmistakable when you hear it. but the other thing is in my last book, i had spent more than a decade cracking down recordings of dr. king and realize how much richness there was to the man that was left out of all the official narratives. scene so i have been discovering the other sides of king from talking to all the king's colleagues and tracking down again, the ordinary sermon.

i had a sense of i already discovered how important black pride and, well, it wasn't a black nationalist. he wasn't so far away from many of the things that were radical people were arguing. so hearing king both this preached version of the letter, but also more generally really changing my idea of what king the man was about. i taught the letter for twenty years. i kept seeing things that were in front of my eyes. it's only in the last couple of years they thought what is the meaning of the fact that he doesn't address the clergymen end spiritually. i can't find almost any other moment in which king doesn't end like that. and there's the text of work

involved that involves both, again, the recordings c. herbert 09 vif. my re acquaintance with king. if you know how the hear and read the letter from birmingham jail. it's all there. it's like meeting dr. king anew. you're a plover of sociology. how did you teach the letter during the twenty years of teaching it? >> i didn't teach that in a sociology course. i loved writing. i teach first-year writing seminar. i thought it was a great work. forget the substance for a minute. it's an amazing artistic establishment. we did a lot of looking at the text i took it out of the historical context. the anthropologists have a way of making everything proprietary. as an ethiopian an referred as

white racial black lash in brooklyn. tell me about the -- i think of your birmingham. it's something that comes out. a movement, the prison, and then the awakening. what a is the reaction you're getting. as you said, we're exposed to a "i have a dream" speech sermon on the -- you talk about the seething king. how did student respond to that. if u yo taught that. and how is the response to the book? >> well, i think the response has been really extraordinary so far. it comes on a number of levels. last week i was on tsh he was saying, you know, you have the

tough king. of course, that is the letter king. not the dream king. and i said, no, no, no wait. if you listen to i have a dream, the king is there. thing but that's in the first half. i said within no, it's in the second half too. if you know how to hear it. king i was a gene use at hiding and insinuating. he donees downtown anger in the second part book -- but look at the substance. he re-- preached version at 16th street baptist church at the end of dream he says we will be able to sing my country 'tis of though if we work together and protest together. so with king the stawns never varies. it's sometimes there in an insin situation in a hit. he's a jeeb use of adapting the

tone to his intention. he wasn't yelling at the eight clergymen who made walker citied me his cup of endurance right over. he wanted a civil rights bill. he didn't want to sort of chastise america mainly. suddenly the interracial groups that were meeting. the clergy not the eight clergy here one or two of them were perhaps over time responded. but there were rabbis and catholic priests and ministers who were joining in. king didn't want to kind of get in their face. because he was welcoming those allies. but it's still the toughness very much there. yes. i guess what you're saying, john, you haven't gotten any pushback for turning king in to

wright? >> well, -- i'm kidding. >> it's a great question. because people, you know, my last book came on deion wrote a column on wright when she quoted and he said, wright isn't martin luther king. we're not turning him in to that. neither is ryder. there is more than there in king that resonates with wright. if you read most of wrielgt's speeches which is something he also said. yes, i know diane can be a bad [ bleep ] as well. it's a good point that there is a long tradition in african-american theologies and preaching that has chastisement. there's the loving grace of the savior. they are all part of king. they are all there. the rebuke and the love. that's why ct said look he's

telling them of the evil. that's what a preacher does in a prophet does because they can be redeemed. one way to think about it. that's why the transition is a midpoint. when skinning basically done explaining, than to me is the most significant part. he gets all the reasonable part under the way. if you read from where he says i must confess my jewish and christian brothers and boom, it reminds you how complicated king's relationship to manners was. he was refined that never kept him from being tough didn't come out tough. when joseph put it to me once, he was a gentle spirit with a tough message. and vitamin sent's line as most of us know. king was an inconvenient hero.

he meant to be increant, but america wants a convenient king who makes us feel good. >> let's transition to a more convenient season right now. i think we should maybe read a little bit of the address to the moderate. -- the single page in my book about the letter pretty much dealing with his chastising of the moderate. i think that probably most of my -- i guess my biggest fear in terms of looking asking myself what i would have done back then is would i have been a moderate? the moderates don't do well in history. even the brave moderates who become liberals back then. somebody like david who really put a lot on the line. it you read -- , you know, went ton become mayor. he ousted bull connor from

office. a young lawyer. if you read his quotes now from back then. he didn't look good. and yet he was really brave. and really progressive. i think i always wonder we know he wouldn't have been in the clan or -- i always ask myself would i have had the courage act on a conviction that only going hurt me in order to maybe help somebody else? then be marginalized. there was a word for people in white people in the south who did speak out. it was called the -- so if you are going put yourself on the line, you're endangering yourself and joining the group. so that's maybe that's why his address to the moderate really got me. do you want to read a little bit of that? i do. i want to underline your point.

i think it's essential. there's a tradition in white liberalism or not even liberalism. the enlightened folk to define themselves in opposition to the red neck it's true in brooklyn, manhattan, or down here. there's a great statement that ralph has always made which is i always had great sympathy for the red knick and the wool hat. the second point that really, i think, diane makes. it's a prothreatic point which is none of can be smug or self-righteous. when he was mad, the northern liberal rabbi arrive on may 7 or

8th and walked down the 16th street baptist church. .. fred shuttlesworth here's grafting complaining about how tough it is and they don't want to become visible in birmingham and they want to get into this and whiteside and here is a guy who has the courage to risk death taking way more risks and

these people are complaining. he is supposed to sympathize with the whites who say go slow so these things are complicated and we need to be careful. that is what i think going back to the text here and as many of you know, jim baggett has sponsored a reading that is spread -- of the letter that has spread across the country in the world which you should say something about pretty extraordinary. the far reaches of the world just like in europe. it's everywhere. andrew young said to me king preferred to speak rather than right and we all know that so if he could have delivered this he probably would have delivered it after all bad where is it? here we go. okay.

this follows the section and i'm going to focus on his criticism first of the white moderate. he has not gotten to the white church. listen to the portrait of the white moderate and he says lukewarm acceptance is harder than outright hatred. i have almost reached the conclusion that the great stumbling block is not the white citizens counselor of of the ku klux of the white moderate and here's the little portrait who is more devoted to order them to justice who prefers a negative speech which is the absence of tension to a positive which is the presence of justice who constantly says i agree with you but i cannot agree with your methods who paternalistically

believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom who lived by an a mythical concept of time and constantly advises to wait for a more convenient season. listen to passive/aggressive. i would hope that the white moderate would understand all of this. this is like what you would tell your kid. i'm very disappointed in you. i had hoped you would understand but i know you didn't. look what happens after he does that. the voice of the profit insinuates itself because not long after it he says we will have to repent in this generation not for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. human progress never rolls in on wheels and inevitability. now again we know what he said at 16th st. baptist church on april 22. we can add the sound back.

he didn't say we will tell you to wait for a convenient season. he said wait for a more convenient season. that is all we have ever heard. so that is the critique of the white moderate and finally the white church that hides behind stained-glass windows. he has now gone through this great trip. i have traveled. listen it's the gentile. i have traveled the length and breadth of alabama mississippi and all the other southern states in sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings i have looked at the beautiful churches with their lofty spirals going heavenward and impressive religious education buildings. over and over i found myself asking what kind of people worship? who is their god? where were their voices when the lips of governor barnett dripped with nullification. where were they when governor wallace gave a clarion call for

violence and hatred? when bruised and weary men and women decided to rise from the dark into the complacency to the bright hills of creative protests? and he has contrasted the church with the early christians and when he describes the christians it sounded like the foot soldiers. they went into town and were called outside agitators and extremists. because they were intoxicated by god and i will just read you one other aspect of the critique because now the preacher is back he writes, i have lost that great line but i will tell you what he says. oh how we have blemished the body of christ and king is saying maybe we have to get up

on -- give up on the white equation. he is talking that talk but what he is saying is when he writes oh if you have heard king as i have when he preaches it once again it's oh oh how we have limits the church of christ, the body of christ. that is what he says. they have been conformist and not courageous and therefore they are really guilty of spiritual malpractice and one other thing he says in criticizing the way of the moderate christian. i have longed to hear them. right here is where he said i have longed to hear them say love the black because he is your brother. it is tough. calling somebody lacking in ecclesia may not be insulting their mama but it's pretty tough. it's pretty tough when you're talking to your fellow christians.

>> you make an important point in the book that when these moderates are appealing to the better nature of the self is not from the standpoint of justice. it's from the standpoint of law and order, that we should follow court orders because that is what a decent society does. not that we should treat our brothers as equals because that is what a decent society does and i think that's very important distinction. >> really important and i think you have set up well. king is contrasting that in his mind with race and religion in chicago in january of that year where he repeats much of the lines that will stream into the letter from birmingham jail and there are seven or 800 white clergy mainly from the north from every denomination and what they are starting to say is racism is a sin.

when christian century publishes a letter from birmingham jail on june 12 the day after kennedy's race speech they removed the names of the eight clergymen because they realize this is unjust for the eight clergymen. they are just the ones who put king over the edge. this is for all of us. including themselves that the white church cannot afford to be smug and we need to think what is our faith really mean? >> that is exactly what i was going to do agree with jim. it's kind of, some kind of weird fluke or a weird consistency i guess i should say of human nature. it's really hard for people to do something for the right reason. even in the debate about torture now it's like we have to prove that it doesn't work in order to make your argument.

you can't just say it's wrong and we don't do that. and what was kind of interesting with the eight clergymen one of the reasons that they were so shocked that king had gone after them was that they had published a statement in january in protest of george wallace's segregation now, segregation forever a doctoral address. and for the first time they had said it's wrong and that was a really notable departure for someone to make a public statement. we listened to that now and it just seems so trivial for somebody to say that but at the time they were really going out on a limb. so when they get this back from king you know they go you are so misunderstood and when i interviewed him in the 80s he was still complaining about how king had made them out to be a bigot.

that was what he had taken away from this experience. >> what the d. say? i miss some of that. >> rabbi was complaining in the 80s when i talk to him that king had made him out to be a bigot and he was really sore about that. >> if we could collect the written questions now and we will continue but we will go ahead and do that. >> you may want to research this later. i am roman catholic and i would remind you of this. dr. king when the -- the united states itself. [inaudible] the archbishop criticized the

priest and the nuns. he criticized the priest and the nuns in support of himself to support the demonstrators but say if he will put the bishop said when he was a nationalist. he was saturated with segregation for many parishes and schools. [inaudible] >> i will just say a quick word because i know jim wants to follow with the questions but i do give a great deal of respect to him because it is true the eight clergy were not all the same and there was the callous bishop carpenter whose response was inexcusable and there was doric who became, he understood.

he said i was against segregation but i did not understand it the way dr. king meant it and the one on two really embody the prophetic ministry of king and after king was killed, he preached the words, the critique of moderates at the commemoration. and because king loved to sample other people's language he would always quote people and imagine them quoting him. he would love the fact that doric was quoting his own words back to him. he would give him such pleasure that he would stream that in and doric became king in some sense. you make a very lovely point. >> did you all write any books about -- of the klan? >> i did not. i did a little bit on bull connor but it's really diane spoke "carry me home" is an

extraordinary voyage into that world so absolutely. it's terrifying and it really puts you back in that time but again a very good points to keep in mind there. >> john let me ask you if you grew up as i did in segregation you heard -- always heard the expression extremists on both sides and what that meant was the civil rights activists were considered to be the moral equivalent of the ku klux and considered comparable. one of the brilliant passages in the letter from birmingham jail, uchitel when he's being called extreme by the clergy that the nerve on his temple starts going crazy. talk a little bit about how he embraces that label. >> well, before that again the

very affable king is trying to say see, i am not extremist anti-does it in a number of boys and he talks about and reminds you of the conservatism. the boston tea party and everything but knox's did in germany was legal and i hope i would have been there for my jewish brothers and sisters if i was in nazi germany and in hungary. he puts himself with the hungarian freedom fighters who violated the wall -- law to fight communist oppression. he is not really an extremist and even says look in these two strains within the african-american community there are black civic there are blacks to become adjusted to segregation or have got a little bit of privilege because they are in the middle and upper middle class and they don't want to rock the boat and then there are these voices of hate who are black nationalists who sometimes border on hatred of the white man. so came, think what he's doing

about there. it's a hope portrait. you thought i was an extremist but i'm a moderate like you. i have my george wallace is and i have his other people so he has now tried to do that and that is when he finally stops and this is how you know that king has been affable and friendly and being nice to the white man but then he turns on a dime. it's a series of slurs going back and forth. he takes the manners right back and becomes as rude as can be. i beg you to forgive me if i have shown an unreasonable impatience. who is going around begging and apologizing to the white man even in 1963? not shuttlesworth or james babil not very many people in sclc would have done that so you think he's not interested and he immediately says in the same parallel but if i have been unreasonably patient --

inpatient and goes whose convoluted phrase that says with justice i beg god to forgive me. what he basically does is he is taking the apology that because what really letters is what god thinks and not the people he just apologized to paid once he family embraces extremism and looks like he is still acting diplomatically but he takes it back and says because ultimately what defines justice is mike god and he says in the quaker edition he left a more explicitly. the differences in the other versions are miniscule. some scholars make a big deal out of that one of the things he took out between may and june was -- let me make sure i've got this exactly. i may be confusing it but in any case there is the importance always of this embrace of extremism. i'll go i know, he does leave it

in. an early version he said think about there were three extremists on calvary. two were extremists for injustice and one was extremist for love and justice. king always identified with jesus more than moses. he used exodus often but if you listen to his weekly sermons overhears, exodus is and that import most of the time. jesus is the savior and the sacrificial endeavor so he says jesus was an extremist. love those who hate you. bless those who despise you. so again, but to really appreciate the power of this letter you have got to see. this is a little bit bad. at first he says c. i'm going to show you that i'm okay with you. i'm glad you approve of me. i'm not going going to show you who have you think i am and then the crowd turns around and says

i am proud to be an extremist. he says i to pleasure the more i thought about it. there is such richness and that. >> john, as the attorneys on law and order say since you opened the door and as a way of asking the question i'm going to ask, what john mentioned the birmingham public library is sponsoring next years reading of the letter from birmingham jail and what we did, a very simple idea. we decided we would have people here at the library read the letter aloud to whomever shows up in months to hear it. we decided that we would issue an invitation to anyone anywhere who wanted to also do the same thing any time on that day. i am not someone who understands social media so i don't quite understand how these things happen, but through the hard

work of a number of people here and through this magic of this social media thing it just took off and we have on our web site at page asking everyone to just let us know that you are going to be a -- doing a reading and where and how you might do it. when i left my office to come up here we had 176 locations signed up so far. they are all over the world. [applause] thank you john. we have locations in 28 states. we have people who will be reading the letter and the wonderful thing is it's going to go on all day because it's going to start in australia and it's going to come around the world. we have people in south africa somalia cameroon israel england northern ireland germany thailand. we have a teacher in taiwan who

is teaching her students about the letter. they are going to read the letter on the 16th and then the students are going to write letters back to dr. king which we will be receiving. so i said all of that to ask you to talk about that because you can include in the book talking about the place of the letter has not just in birmingham history or american history but in world history and in freedom fighting all over the world. >> there are two complementary impulses at work in the letter. one, of the man who is a fighter for his people. he says i'm here because injustice is here but it's really because black people are suffering. but he never forgets that he is here because universal humanity

suffers. so there is nothing that he is doing in birmingham in particular or not in particular but in the letter from the birmingham jail it's -- lazarus because the sid as king makes him is he was a rich man but it wasn't his riches that makes him the center. he is a center sinner because he did not recognize the gimpy beggar covered with sores at his door. he walked past him as if he didn't exist. in a sense for king his preaching as we have an obligation to respond to everybody, not just our own people. white people on the sidelines. that is the critique of the moderates. they have to respond and black people have to liberate themselves so it's utterly sensible that over time this document has been read not only as a civil rights in birmingham

document but as it ascends psychotically to its status it takes a while to grow. it goes to the nobel prize and describes quote words spoken to mankind. is such a powerful document that it resonates at that very occasion. the freedom fighters in polish solidarity understand this speaks to our vision of christian militants. lech walensa so when he comes to america since people to talk to andrew young and to tell them thank you for teaching us to always give our opponents ace face-saving way out. he goes to south africa and apartheid and goes to the east german movement pastors movement against communism and eventually the european and christian and black world and goes to iran and

tahrir square and tiananmen square. so i think the greatness of the document is as wyatt walker felt an and andrew young put it this way, is a philosophical document that summarizes the christian strain within the civil rights movement. it may not capture sncc but it captures an important part of the movement. it has been read by people around the world who see in king's critique of moderation and civil disobedience and his affirmation of protest kind of a reflection of their own struggles and is all great documents are, they usually read it in the light of their own world so it's all different. if you look at the game movement there is a very well-known and bisexual web site which basically translates the letter

from birmingham jail into what it means for people addressing white moderates. so, the answer is part of its power is its artistry. part of its story is the statement of black defiance and christian forbearance and the other part is that universal words spoken to mankind. >> i think we have time for one or two questions from the audience and this is touching on something i was wondering as well in terms of you know i think about president obama and the fine line he walks in not saying the angry black man because that so quickly you no, turns on you. this person has asked the u.s. a sociologist feel that king realized during his stay that -- with the apathy of the complacent and when he returned

he had to change his statue. he had to push people out of their comfort zones to succeed. >> you know i have talked plenty tonight so i don't think i need to go on too long. but yes i think the question answers itself absolutely. remember he wanted to push blacks out of their comfort zone as well as whites out of their comfort zone. the gospel of freedom, there are versions for the oppressed and the oppressor. >> this is a good question to end with here for both of our authors. my question today with so many people of color in prison and a greater disparity between rich and poor, what do we need to do today to defend the promise of 1963? >> i think that we need to use

1963 to learn to teach ourselves how to recognize and is king said inevitability. human progress does not come on wheels of inevitability and i thought that when i was younger. i do think there is his arc that it was getting better and i don't really believe that anymore. they think things he coming around and it's really important to be able to break the code in figure out when these injustices are coming around again because they always, under a different disguise. now you know we have used some of the tools of 1963 now to fight back against the immigration law that was passed in the state that to me was reinventing jim crow. we couldn't quite -- the legislature couldn't quite recognize and of wasn't

remembering that we have been there before but the resistance was ready. resistance has not succeeded so that is kind of you know but their assistance is there and knows what to do now. the clergy was the first out of the gate on that and they were ready to protest this immigration laws. and then you know of other people joined in as well including the newspapers who are king's enemy here. so you now it's just maybe you get a little bit better as you go on down in history but it's the same issues that keep recurring. >> you know i and "gospel of freedom" by saying we misunderstood what king meant by the arc of justice and it was related to what king imagines moses, god telling moses to tell the children of israel. the arc and i'm really repeating what diane just said in a

somewhat different image. king did not believe the arc of the universe would bend towards justice without men and women doing the bending which is her point about co-workers. i hate to use a fancy word and i don't usually like them but king's vision of deliverance is quite difference from reverend cl franklin's version who was also a freedom fighter but aretha franklin's father one of the great preachers of the 20th century. when he preaches he says wait on him. he will part the waters. king's view was god wants you to deliver yourself and the bending of the universe requires that actual people bend it. the faith of the arc of justice because god is on your side. that brings us back to criminal

justice and a whole lot of other things. king would say today our work is not done. he wasn't a glass is half full guy. not in a bitter pessimistic way. just because all black people do not suffer from jim crow doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of other suffering people who required the intervention of co-workers. or co-workers for whoever is your spiritual guidance. the co-workers of active human beings to minister their pain and bring justice. so the answer is exodus repeats itself in every time and every place. it just looks different in every time and therefore the obligation of people never ceases. >> i've always thought the ultimate lesson of birmingham is

one that as diane pointed out was seen playing out in our own time with questions over and the current rights and i think the lesson is when you come down on the wrong side of justice that history does not judge you well. and you live with the consequences. i will say that i've been an archivist and a historian for 20 years and i am encouraged in that i see more and more people that are open to see this story in its complexity and to see this not only as a tragic story and some people feel we just need to stop talking about. and people who want to know and want to understand why this happened and why this does keep happening. i know you pointed out many times, kia birmingham conserve the world is a good example and as a starting place for all

these conversations we need to have. speedway you all please join me in thaghts leader was murdered in 1963. this is a little more than an hour.

[applause] >> thank you. it is wonderful to be here this evening. i am going to read very briefly three short excerpts from the autobiography of medgar evers that captures different aspects of what the book covers. "the autobiography of medgar evers" was a labor of love for both myrlie and myself because medgar evers was more than simply a pioneer of the black freedom struggle. he was indeed a central figure in american history who has yet to be fully recognized for the giants that he was. this evening i would like to speak for about 20 minutes.

myrlie is going to follow with her own personal reflections and comments on her experiences and the struggle were civil rights working side bayside with the central figure of american history maker wiley uppers and then we can entertain questions and your comments. the true origins of medgar evers political life can be traced back actually 21832 when the mississippi state constitutional convention was held establishing that state. the delegates at that convention adopted the principle of universal white manhood suffrage eliminating all property qualifications on the voting franchise. however lacks, slave or free were obviously not permitted to

vote. during the. not following the civil war reconstruction from 186-52-1877 there was a brief experiment in multiracial and bi-racial democracy in that state but with the demise of reconstruction that was snuffed out. the legal and political regime of white supremacy was established in 1890 where the state held a new constitutional convention a series of provisions adopted including the poll tax letters he tests deliberately designed to exclude the african-american from voting blacks were also kept from the polls by outright violence and lynchings. between 1882 and 1927th there were 517 african-americans

lynched in the state of mississippi. the highest number in the nation of any state during that. not. a backward politically regressive culture rooted in violence firmly established by the early 20th century making mississippi symbolic of everything undemocratic and oppressive in the american south. it was and that oppressive environment of white domination black subordination into which medgar evers was born on july 2, 1925 in decatur mississippi. he was one of six children of james and jesse evers. james was employed at the decatur simple sawmill and his wife jessie took in laundry and ironing for local white families. the evers family was never well-to-do get it managed to

acquire land and a modest degree of security. jesse was a devout christian extremely active in the church of god in christ-centered piety and deep faith had an effect on all of her children. james attended one of the towns baptist churches serving as a deacon of the congregation. both parents preached to their children the qualities of self-reliance pride and self-respect directly contradicted by the customary values that african-americans in that state were supposed to assume. as a child metzger was taught that his maternal great-grandfather during reconstruction had actually killed two white men in a dispute and it somehow managed to escape white retaliation by escaping from town. metzger as he was growing up was taught to have pride in himself

and an awareness of his own heritage and history. when he was about 14 years old and event occurred that had a profound impact on all the subsequent events in his life. a neighborhood friend of his father got into trouble supposedly for quote sassing a local white woman. at the local fairgrounds. the black man was promptly apprehended and brutally beaten to death. the lynching had a profound effect on his feelings about racist conditions surrounding himself and his entire family. he was determined to escape the omnipresent pain and fear that segregation imposed on every black person. as a teenager he sought to assert himself in various ways according to myrlie during our interviews last year in writing this book.

in high school medgar for a zoot suit wearing large oversized suit coats and baggy slacks. the hip style also favored at the same time by a young malcolm little who would later become famous as malcolm x. medgar often wore large stylish hats tilted to the side and as myrlie put it his vocabulary was a little on the raunchy side. in 1943 medgar prematurely left high school by lying about his real age and followed his brother charles into the army. he served in europe during world war ii. in 1944 the u.s. supreme court in the smith versus ball out loud the right -- primary election which had solidly

throughout the south was a principle means of disenfranchising african-american voters. in 1946 the mississippi state legislature passed a law -- from paying the local poll tax. there were also 80,000 african-americans who were residents of the state of mississippi who served in the u.s. segregated army in world war ii who would also be eligible to vote in that state's elections. thousands of veterans like medgar and charles evers came back with a determination to float. so on his 21st birthday on july the second, 1946 charles and medgar evers and four other young black world war ii veterans walk to the county

courthouse. word of plan to their voting spread and decatur's main street was nearly taken. a cluster of 20 well-armed angry white men stood at the courthouse entrance. according to the account of charles evers they held shotguns rifles and pistols. they stood at the courthouse steps eyeballing each other. the whites recognized medgar and charles and urge them to leave before violence erupted. the county sheriff watching the confrontation did nothing to assist the blacks vote. it indeed the sheriff according to charles quote wasn't going to let us both that he didn't want to try to kill us. he knew we might -- you might have to kill us but he didn't want to do that. finally with medgar who decided today was not the best time to have the confrontation and certainly not when the odds were six against 20. don't worry said medgar we will

get them next time. as they departed one in and raged racist yelled quote you are going to get all the -- [inaudible] this was the beginning of the political education of medgar evers. our book documents medgar's writings and speeches. the extraordinary journey that this great man took beginning as he was coming back from the war, sacrificing his life, sacrificing all of these things. his freedom to fight for democracy that did not include his family and his friends or himself. he attended alcorn university,

alcorn college and became one of the most well-respected students in the college. .. perhaps his main accomplishment was winning and -- winning over an 18-year-old sister from mississippi to be his wife. and the two became an indom nabble force, in a partnership that rewrote the history of the civil rights movement. i want to move forward in the book and talk about what happened when myrlie and medgar went to live at their first -- the first home that they had was in mound bayou, mississippi. now, for young people out here,

mount bye yew is an historic african-american town founded by montgomery in the mississippi delta. the book begins in early 1952, the evers household moved to mount bayou and medgar began to travel extensively throughout the delta visiting dozens of 'em improve relinquished homes to -- he could scarcely believe the backwardsness of the delta region. he said that gave him a real taste of poverty on the plantation, myrlie now flects. that. >> this is a taste of poverty on the plantation. he said to me that we second call these people mr. and mrs. and i can give them a sense of dignity. i can help them and i can help them when they need to escape o

landlords incredible sum of money simply would vanish from their hasn'ties in the middle of the night fleing to memphis then freedom in the north to chicago. medgar courageously decided to assist them. medgar became active in civil rights organizations, and he, along with other young black women and men, seriously questioned whether it was possible to achieve substantive civil rights or political reforms. perhaps other kinds of solutions and strategies. learning from the experiences of black people struggling throughout the african -- throughout africa and the cribans needed to be employed in the black belt south. medgar was fascinated particularly by the revolution that was being waved in kenya

in the 1950's, and in particular, the charismatic intellectual kenyatta. kenyatta came to personify for medgar, the kind of leadership the african-americans needed to embodyy. medgar studied whether armed struggle should be employed. why oppress blacks in the mississippi delta against their white oppressers? medgar seriously struggled with the issue. was armed struggle the way forward? eventually medgar came to the conclusion that it was possible to build a nonviolent movement. nevertheless, i think it is significant that when myrlie and medgar had their first child, darryl, his middle name is kenyatta.

unlike dr. king, medgar was not an advocate of nonviolence in the face of white terrorism. he purchaseed a rifle, and over the next years carried it with him in his automobile in case he had to protect his family or himself. he concluded that race war was unfortunately a very real possibility in the deep south. if white structural racism, the extensive socioeconomic institutions of prejudice, power, and privilege that created a permanent sub class of americans. endured, then what alternatives would blacks have? myrlie, during the writing of this book said to me that medgar and her quote, we found ourselves in a separate part of america.

how we could not be starved out, how we could be in a location where we would not be surrounded and wiped out at one time. he was thinking about building a nation, a nation of black people. this is a side of medgar evers that few of us really appreciate i'd like to go to the very end of the book and talk briefly, first by reading a short excerpt then talking about my personal experiences working with myrlie. medgar evers was sags nailted. -- assassinated. when pronounced dead at the university of mississippi medical center at 1 cologne 14 a.m. june 12, 1963. he was 37 years of age. this was the first political assassination of the modern black freedom movement. but it would not be the last. perhaps the thousands of women,

men, and children who gathered in jackson to honor their servant leader understood this that evers death had changed everything. thousands of people who came 6,000 who came to the funeral including dr. king and other prominent civil rights leaders understood that something had fundamentally changed. the vast majority came, however, were not prominent celebrities. they were not prominent civil rights spokespersons, they came from hundreds of tiny touns and rural areas from all over the state of mississippi to honor their native son. they marched three miles from the ma sonic temple to the home on the street. all of them we want.

others chanted "after medgar, no more fear." following the formal funeral march, several demonstrators went to capital street downtown. the reverend ed quing, other civil rights activists quho could be quickly identified by the police were clubbed, stampeded, the cops began to shoot up in the air over the heads of the demonstrators. in death med ger -- medgar evers became not just the principal architect of the black freedom struggle in the state of mississippi. he was no longer the holder of the most difficult civil rights job in the country. that of field organizer of the naacp in the most difficult and racist state in the nation.

he was now indeed, a hero to the entire nation. following medgar's efforts, several rights organizations doubled their amendment to contain fundamental democratic change against racism in mississippi. the congress racial equality slerted their voter registration campaign in the fourth district. they then launched an ambitious -- so that thousands of mississippi residents would indeed vote. they organized a mock election held in the autumn of 1963 in which nearly 100,000 african-americans vote indeed that state in the mock election. the following year there was the freedom summer of 1964. 1,000 largely white idealistic

college students traveled to the state of mississippi to assist local civil rights workers engaging in voter registration and education campaigns. and yet as all of us know, there were more sacrifices. three civil rights activists, michael shwarner, and two others were brutally murdered in late august 1964, white racists were responsible for fire bombing and attacking. that summer alone, 37 black churches, 80 civil rights workers were seriously injured by beatings. 9,000 civil rights activists that summer alone had been arrested. but with the courageous leadership of fanny lou hamer, of aaron henny, of charles evers who had replaced his late

younger brother as the naacp field secretary, there was no turning back. in august, 1964, president lyndon johnson -- they passed the civil rights act outlawing racial segregation laws. the first such law in american history. the following year the voting rights act was passed. by 1969, in the span of only six years, mississippi went from less than 6% blacks who were registered to vote to 61%. today, the largest number of after kwan american elected officials of any state in the country is from the state of mississippi. medgar evers' vision has yet partially -- and i want to repeat that. partially has come true.

this is the book that documents in his own words the struggle of medgar evers. but i want to speak for just one minute about the courage, the dignity, and the struggle of myrlie evers williams. in putting together this book, this labor of love. i traveled several times to mississippi, and i walked with myrlie through her former home. where medgar had been killed. i stood in the carport where medgar had been shot cowardly in the back. she told me the story of how late at night after her husband's murder, that she would go outside in the middle of the night and try to scrub out the stain of his blood stai the carport, from the driveway,

a stain that was a stain on the driveway, but a stain that had taken away a beloved father from her children, a loving husband from herself, but had taken away a central figure and visionary leader of the black freedom struggle. and for all of us, regardless of race who believe in democracy in this country. i walked into her bedroom, and she paused for a moment, and i asked her why. she told me the story of several days before medgar's assassination, he came home early. she was ironing his white shirts and starching them. she had done about a dozen. she said aren't you going to thank me for ironing and starching your shirts? he said i'm not going to be needing them. what we owe medgar evers and

what we owe myrlie evers williams cannot be put into words. because the struggle for democracy and the struggle for freedom is indeed a struggle. and what we have sacrificed for the principles of this country ironically a majority that benefits from those principles does not realize the sacrifices and the pain that it has taken to win them for all of us. part of medgar's greatness was his conviction that what he thought for was not something narrowly just for black folk, but something that was a principle that extended to all americans. he wanted fairness and justice for all. but as an african-american, he was grounded in his history, he was grounded in his people, and

what he fought for was human dignity and justice for black folk. it is a struggle that was worth fighting for, and he believed it was worth dying for. that is why i am deeply honored to be with my partner and friend, myrlie evers williams, in putting forward for the first time the voice, the writings, and the documents of medgar evers. i'd like to turn the podium over now to myrlie evers williams. [applause] >> thank you. good evening to all of you, and i'm so delighted to see you here. i am, as always, moved by my

friend, dr. manning maribel, and how articulate he is, the historian that he is, the picture that he presents to us so thoroughly and so colorfully. if i may at this point call you manning in front of all of these people, i thank you, i thank you. dr. maribel has played such an important role in getting this book published and out to the public. i want to in my thanking him tell you how this came about. but before i do that, i do want to say that he is a man who makes promises and i'm sure very carefully, but he keeps them.

and that's something that epitomized medgar as well. of not promising anything that you can't keep, but that that you do promise, keep that promise. and that's what medgar did. i thank you, too, for going into his younger years and back ground. i met medgar evers the first day, the first hour of the first day that i was on campus as a freshman student, and we mississippians call it alcorn a&m college. my grandmother and my aunt had just left me at my dormitory, and they left me with their last words of wisdom, and to quote them, they said -- and they called me baby. baby, now don't get involved

with any of those veterans. within 30 minutes, i was involved, so to speak, with one of those veterans. we freshmen had come to the campus a week before everyone else, the upper classmen had come. there was a football practice going on and medgar was a member of the football team. we were standing out by the president's house, and there was a big, tall light pole, and i just happened to be leaning on it, and all of a sudden you heard the found as though a herd of elephants or something was coming your way. we looked up and we saw all of these football fellows still dressed in full regalia and dressed in their cleats, and

that was what was making the noise. they came over, they looked at us up and down as though to say let me see which one i will claim for myself. this man came over to me. he looked at me. i looked at him. and he said you'd better get off of that light pole. you may get shocked. he said i simply tossed my hair. it was long then. and gave him a funny look, and that was it. but i was intrigued. little did i know that his words being shocked would come to fruition because my life was never the same after that moment, never the same after that moment. medgar was what we called at

that time a big wheel on campus. big in sports. editor of his yearbook. president of his class and all of those other wonderful things that dr. marable said. but he was something else as well. he was someone that everyone looked up to, but he was also at the same time someone that people were afraid of. teachers, students, because he would tell them particularly the fraternity men, you party too much. be serious about why you are here. what about the communities from which you came? what about your ability to register and vote? the teachers said about him he rocked the boat. the students said about him he's ok, but he doesn't know what fun is. i found all of that intriguing. when we would talk, i would

find myself making an excuse to go to my dormitory room and look up words that he had used, and he didn't do that to embarrass me or anyone else, but he had moved from that point of expressing himself with words that were not of the best choice to someone who had really become interested, interested in education, interested in refinement, and interested in being able to articulate to everyone, whether they were his classmates, other students, the teachers, the president of the college, anyone else what he felt, how he saw his country, and what he thought needed to be done. he said i went into the army, i served my country, i came home and i found out that i was

still a second-class citizen. my father was still addressed as boy. i was addressed as boy. my mother as girl. in a sense, we were slaves of that mentality during that period of time. medgar decided that he could only do one thing, and that was to give of himself to make those changes. i was really surprised and a little enthralled by the man because in the first couple of weeks that we dated, he said to me i'm going to make you into the kind of woman i want you to be. i was 17 years old. i knew nothing about the women's movement, anything like that. but believe you me, that struck

a chord with me. i don't like this, but i'm fascinated by it. he also said to me shortly thereafter you are going to be the mother of my children. i replied as a naive girl of 17 but you haven't told me you love me yet. and his reply was whenever i do, i'll let you know. but there was something about the man who had a sense of purpose even then, who knew what he wanted, who knew how to go about it that was absolutely fascinating to me, and it was different, very different. medgar came from a family, as you have already heard, of activists. his father challenged the system. they called him crazy jim

because he simply refused to take any of those negatives from other people in the community. it was a time when we were not allowed to walk on the sidewalks. daddy jim made sure his family walked on the sidewalks. when he was challenged about the cost of food, his bill, medgar and charles there in the store with him, and he said no, that's not it. and this group of men descended upon him, and i am told that he said to his sons go outside where it's safe. daddy jim proceeds to take a bottle from some place, crack it across the counter, and to tell those men who were challenging him, his sons, and his family come on, come on.

backed out of the door, and they went home. but that was the kind of example of manhood, of strength , of devotion to family that medgar grew up in. i grew up in another kind of home, one where there were three females in it. my aunt, my grandmother, and myself. we didn't argue because my grandmother had the last word each and every time. so it was peaceful there. they were school teachers. and their motto was don't rock the boat. so here we have these two people coming together, one that says i can't do anything beyond what society has set for me, and the other saying you

are so wrong. you must challenge that society . don't reach for the stars, go beyond that. i admit to you that there were periods of adjustment here and there. i did not always support medgar in his work. that's not something i'm necessarily proud of, but remember how young i was, and i was deathly afraid of his life. when we moved to this town of mount bayou, mississippi, we worked for an insurance company , and how southern it is, the magnolia mutual life insurance company. it was owned by negros, as we used the word to describe ourselves then, and medgar said why not work to build businesses in our own communities?

and i can be control of my career. i worked alongside of him, an i.b.m. punch card operator, as i recall, when the computers as such were every bit as big as this table. we were there, and medgar decided he wanted to pursue a law career. it's something that most people don't know, that medgar evers was thers african-american to apply for admission to the university of mississippi. of course he was rejected. and in this book as i thumbed through it to kind of refresh my memory, i saw a copy of the letter that he had written in response to them, governor coleman's rejection. he was asked well, where are you going to stay? and he said in the dormitory,

sir, with the other students. i bathe every day and i guarantee you this brown will not rub off on anyone else. and he was determined to pursue that. he was rejected. the naacp said come, work with us, open up the first office of the nacp in mississippi, and he accepted, provided that i was his secretary. they agreed, and we moved to jackson, mississippi, and a whole new life opened up to us. but during that time when medgar felt so hostile toward his own country and when he felt that the only way we could possibly survive was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, he and other strategically

planned how they would manipulate and use what little resources they had to protect his family. and i'm reminded now of this one piece of what? warfare i guess i can call it that we had that was broken down into three parts. it was a machine gun. and i often asked him, i said what good will that do if we need it? when one part of it is in the upper delta of clarksdale, the other part is in a lower part of the delta in cleveland, and we have one part, how will we ever come to bring that one -- those three pieces together for one piece of damage, i guess i should call it? and he said don't worry about it. we have a plan. that spoke over the years to the plan that we had as well in the way in which we communicated with each other.

i'm going to fast forward just a little. i find what is happening today so critically important to what happened during that time, because it was during that time when emmett till was killed, and medgar and others dressed in old clothes and disguising themselves as sharecroppers made that investigation possible that we read about today. i remember the anger and the hurt and the need for revenue generals of a sort. but he was able to take that anger in vengeance manner and turn it into can go using the mind, the strategies, the

techniques. and when you read this book, i think you will find that those strategies are there for any community group to go to action. and i don't mean violence now, but just a plan of action that we can adopt today that took place then. i of how important it is that today we look at what's happening in philadelphia, mississippi, when this man is on trial for the murder of the three civil rights leaders that occurred one year almost to the day after medgar's assassination. here we are looking at that. what do we see? we still see a few ku klux klan members cheering him on. we still find that people in

those communities are saying that's an old case. we don't need to revive it. why bring up the past? let's let it go. let's let god take care of it. and i answer did not god give us a mind? did not god give us the strength? why are we depending on that? that can bring closure, i feel, to all of these negatives that still float around in the air, whether they be in mississippi or whether it be in other parts of this country. it was the same thing that was told to me. years and years i searched for evidence that would help us get a third trial with medgar's assassin. people said you're crazy, you're living in the past. you've got to move away from it. i can't help you. i won't help you.

and this one word, one word that medgar had and i had, and i hope all of us want to make positive changes will have, and that's perseverance. a believing in something, a being determined, having that vision. being determined of seeing that vision comes into being. and assessing whatever is out there, the pros and the consequence to make the positive change that we need. it's almost as i stand before you today it's like all of these things are kind of coming around full circle again. and we're finding interest again in what happened during that time because indeed it does relate to us today and where we are. i say oftentimes that we don't have to worry about the klan or others visiting us in their white robes and hoods.

but what we do have to worry about or be concerned or at least aware about are those in the brooks brothers suits who are still undercutting what this country is all about and what it's supposed to be about and what medgar worked and stood for. now, you might ask me why, why this book? for years, i was upset, i was hurt, i was angry. i didn't know what to do. and i said why is it that every book, every magazine, every pamphlet, every calendar that corporate america puts out or what not, medgar's name is not mentioned, or it is mentioned as a footnote, or there is

simply one sentence that says medgar evers, civil rights leader, slain june 12, 1963, period. this book is not about medgar's death. it is about his life, of living, of loving, of strategizing, of moving forward. and hopefully as we read, as we pass the book on to others, we will reach out to young people. young people who are interested in this period of time and those who are not, to help them to understand and move away in many cases from the attitude i don't need your help, i don't need to know. i have made it on myself. that is something i don't need to be bothered with. hopefully in this book, we will find ways to communicate with

them and through medgar's letters, through his reports you will be able to say to them this is why. make this link between this past where you are today and your future and the role you play one way or the other, positive or negative, as leaders in your community. so if those things can happen as a result of this book, then i personally would be able to say medgar, it was worth it. and sometimes that is very difficult to say. again, i think about emmett till and i think about us as our young son, who was 3 years old when his father was assassinated, a young man, went to arlington cemetery when his

dad's basket was exhumed, and they took the body, the casket to albany, new york. and van insisted on being there. we didn't know what they would find in the casket. what they did find changed his life forever. because when the casket was opened, medgar's body was as well preserved as it had been two or three weeks since his death, except for the tips of his fingers. that was documented on tv. it was documented in pictures. so we know. and i know that it was a fact when my child said to me mom, now i know where i came from. it was a blessing that that happened. so as much as we might think that it's very difficult for us to go through times like that,

it's critically important as well. and i am just so hopeful that as we revisit these cases, as we revisit where we are and we are honest with ourselves in terms of where we are in our communities, that we will soon adopt what manning marable says, that we need servant leaders. not people who are out there for the glory and for the press, but people who have a vision, who truly believe in their people, in their country, and to change it around. there is a letter in this book that medgar sent to president eisenhower at the time, and he said to him you have invited people from russia, a delegation from russia to come to america and view how democratic we are, how we vote. and he said to him may i suggest to you, mr. president,

that you bring that russian delegation to mississippi so they can see what it's like, see what it's like. and i'm saying this now, see what it's like to be asked the question how many bubbles in a bar of soap? to see what it is to be asked how many peas or beans in this jar? to see what it's like to have from the depth of your soul the spirit and the desire to register and to vote. and you can't do it. instead, your business is shot in two. your name is listed in the paper. the banks call in your mortgage overnight in full. think of those things, my friends. not to go back with a negative oh, this is the way it was, but to learn from it. and i truly hope that that is

what will happen. i am just overwhelmed by the people who have purchased this book, who have come to me, who have stood as you are sitting and said we need this book because there is nothing out there by him. we need to know what he thought . we need to know how he walked. wep. we need to know how he walked. we node to know how he felt about death. and i hasten quickly to say that medgar evers did not want to be a martyr. he did not want to die. he wanted to live to see his children grow up. but as he said to me in those last days, i am so tired but i can't stop. this is something i must do. and i knew he meant that

because we did not have an all sweet and kind marriage. it was a loving one, it was a very good one, but in the early years i couldn't embrace, as i said earlier, all that he was doing. it was because i was afraid. but he said to me i cannot fight the people out there, and bring my people along and come home and fight with you. myrlie, you have a choice to make. either you're with me or you aren't. and, of course, i'm standing here, so you know the decision that i made. as i look at all of the changes that have taken place in our country, even though it may be difficult to say, i can say medgar, it was worth it all, and he would agree with me as well. i thank you, and if you have any questions, i will be willing to answer them. [applause]

>> if there are questions, fine. if there aren't, that's wonderful, too, because i expect all of you to purchase one or more books. and we will be absolutely delighted to sign them. well, i don't see any hands. >> still thinking. >> still thinking. the gentleman here. >> try to talk into the mike, if you can, if that's possible. >> can you hear me? good evening. i admire your strength. my -- i grew up in virginia. i went to a high school in a

small rural county in virginia. the black history section was only like seven books. the first book i ever read was for "for us to live." i couldn't find a copy of it. when i became a man, i told myself i would get the original copies of all the books i received in hard copy. i picked this up in a black memorabilia show in gaithersburg. i would be honored if you would sign it for me this evening as well. >> i would be honored. thank you very much. >> pleek into the mike. >> again, i would be delighted to sign it for you. thank you. >> i did have my hand up. i went to the play last night. what did you think of your character in the play -- in the play last night? >> i was so pleased to be in attendance at that play "if

this hat could talk." it's about the life of dorothy haigt. i was also surprised to see the myrlie character in the play. i had no idea. what did i think of it? i think the young woman performed admirably. i see myself a little bit differently than i think she did, and perhaps i was like that at that time, and living has made me much tougher and stronger. i truly was devastated when medgar was killed. what can i say except that he was the love of my life? i wasn't sure that i could live. i'm not sure i wanted to live after that, but i had three

children who were looking at me, and i had to survive for them. i can recall in her words in the play, she said certainly no one is going to hurt you, medgar, because the f.b.i. is here and others are here. the f.b.i. is here was not meant as a sense of protection, because we knew better than that. they were not there to protect us at all. so there was that little -- i don't know what to call it -- that maybe gave the sense that i truly thought that the f.b.i. was going to protect us, and that was not so at all. i'm just pleased that the character was there. for the brief moment because you didn't ask, but i am going to ask this, when the movie "the ghost of mississippi" came out and whoopi goldberg played

myrlie, i said to whoopi on one occasion please put a little whoopi into the myrlie character. and i know she wanted the correct pay to portray me, but i was very angry at that time, and i wanted a little more emotion to show with it. she did a very good job with the script that she had, which wasn't much for that character. so, you know, different interpretations of a person. medgar used to say to me sometimes you aren't quite as nice as people think. they don't know because i have to live with you. so, you know, i don't know. it all depends on who you are, where you are at that particular period in time. but thank you for asking, and i hope that that play will be successful throughout this country. >> i'm just wondering if over the years you have given some thought to perhaps what we

might do now to continue and build on some of the struggle people made. it seems at a certain point people experienced certain gains and maybe didn't think about all of the effort that had gone into the progress we have now and the effort we need to really move forward again. we're kind of in a point where if we don't move forward from here, we're going to move backwards. if you have any ideas of what you think might be -- >> i'm sure that dr. marable also has strong opinions with that as well. i truly feel that those of us of that generation who were activists and paid such dear prices were so pleased when we began to see some progress being made, when we realized that our children would not have to go through the same things that we did at that

time, and we were retired, battle fatigued, and just kind of stood back and let out a big whew. we've finally done it. as a result of that, i truly don't believe that we worked with our children in terms of imparting that history to them in the way we should have, and now we are trying to recapture some of that, and i'm afraid we're going to have to be very creative in order to do that and to bring young people into the fold, or at least listen to them and follow them because that's really what we did during the civil rights movement. our young people took the stand, and they moved forward, and they were beaten and they were bitten by dogs and they were thrown into dirty trash trucks. they found themselves behind barbed wire in mississippi with

the food being brought in in tin tubs and the policeman spitting in it, you know? they went through so much during that time, and some way or the other, we have to do that, too. i do believe with all of the different groups that we have, and the media still ask who is your leader. not leaders. who is your leader? that we are going to have to come together as a unit at least for once and develop a plan of action, of strategy that every organization can go out and implement in its own way. very similar to what mayor hatcher did in gary, indiana, some years ago when he brought the groups together. >> one of the reasons that -- the way that i became involved

in this project was myrlie honored me very deeply by inviting me to give the first medgar evers honorary lecture in jackson, mississippi, in 2003. and during the research, i learned that when medgar was killed, in his back pocket, he had his voter card showing that he was a registered voter. it was stained in his blood from his assassination. medgar evers was killed because he fought for the democratic right that all americans have to vote. what is important for us to consider is that that vote is now being taken away all over this country and especially in mississippi. a third of all black males in

that state have lost the right to vote for life. we have millions of americans, white, black, and hispanic who have lost the right to vote either permanently or temporarily because they are former prisoners. and so the prison industrial complex, the structure of the criminal justice system in this country that penalizes unfairly millions of people who are disproportionately black and hispanic, and low-income and working class and unemployed folk taking away their right to vote after they have paid their debt to society, millions of people. 818,000 floridians, citizens of the state of florida were not allowed to vote in the presidential election of 2000 because they had a felony -- prior felony conviction.

in states like mississippi, across the south especially in the far west. many of these states you lose the right to vote for the rest of your natural life. and so what i call the new racial dough main, the colorblind racism of the 21st century doesn't have the simplicity of the old white and colored signs that segregated us when i was a child, when i was a boy growing up, visiting my grandmother and my relatives in tuskegee, alabama, in the 1960's. the new colorblind racism is mass unemployment, mass incarceration, and mass disenfranchisement. all three of these things, this unholy trinity, it represents a new kind of institutional racism that in my view is even more pernicious than the old jim crow system because it's

colorblind. it doesn't operate with the word -- with the epithets of nigger. it now carries out the disenfranchisement and oppression in a colorblind race-neutral way. read "the new york times" the other day, pointing out that african-americans who have the identical criminal record and identical job qualifications will be turned down for jobs at three times the right of white former prisoners. an african-american male who has no criminal record has a more difficult time getting a job in this country than a white man who has gone to prison. so when you look at are we going backward -- oh, yes, we're going backward rapidly. so i participated in this book because, unfortunately, we must relearn the knowledge that

medgar had. we've moved backward 50 years from the kind of vision and strategy and commitment to serve the community that medgar embodied, and until we get a leadership that speaks to that, we will continue to regress. but if we have a knowledge base of what it takes, what does it take to lead? leaders aren't born. they are made. medgar's parents, that community helped make him the visionary he was. we can make our young women and men have the same values, courage, and principles yet again because the challenges are even greater today than they were then, because we now have colorblind racism. >> thank you. just let me add this to what

se last few days, i believe we have certainly had a wake-up call in this country. when the senate voted to apologize for the lynchings that have taken place, everyone did not vote in favor of that. you would think today that might not be the case, but when you look at it, you say initially there should have been no lynchings anyway. secondly, it's taken so long to say i'm sorry. what benefit does that get for us, i'm not sure. and maybe the benefit comes from the third thing that i'm going to mention, is that everyone did not vote for that,

and if you look at it, i go right home again, because the representatives from the state of mississippi said no, and they said why should we do that? and i think of one in particular who said praises be unto you, strom thurmond, at his birthday party. have you forgotten that little incident? if we had elected you then, we wouldn't have to deal with these now. what did he do? he went on b.e.t., he went on every radio station and tv station he could get on apologizing for it because i

think -- i think it was the president who said you really need to do something to smooth that over. even if you feel that way. and he did that. but doesn't that say to you what i just said no longer in white robes but in blue brooks brothers suits. these men after all the apologies that they made said no, we are not voting on apology, why should we? we don't have to. and for any of us who have fallen asleep and think that it's all right, you need to refer to that and think how far have we come and what do we have to do, because you don't register, you don't vote, you don't say all right, i have done my part, and then not keep

up with what those elected and appointed officials are doing. it's a continuous struggle, and you have to be awear lest we're going to end up losing everything through all kinds of acts that are being passed, all kinds of action that is being taken on terrorism today, and the little subtleties that go underneath. am i taking too much time? yes, i am, but i do want to say we must be aware, ever-vigilant. >> all right. [applause] >> myrlie, you should get the last word. you no, i said it. >> i want to thank you for coming out tonight. i know there are additional questions, but c-span is covering this, so we have to reach at least the conclusion

at this stage. but we're not disappearing, and we will answer questions. yes, you do have -- but you seem to have an urgent question. yes? one more question. one more. >> i need to say something that's very important. i'm from the mississippi delta. medgar evers was one of my heroes. when i was growing up in mississippi. in fact, i saw him shortly before he was killed. i want to say that i will always remember his service and the freedom struggle. i am grateful that the two of you are bringing his legacy and his living and the documents, we need the documents that show his sacrifice.

i just can't tell you how this anniversary, it's like an anniversary because this time in june so many years ago reminds me of the day that i learned that he had died. i will always, always remember that. and i just can't tell you how we mississippians benefited from his sacrifice. >> it is a fitting closure. medgar -- and the only thing i would add to that is that actually medgar evers lives because as long as there is the struggle for justice, medgar is alive and well, and this book is a testament to his courage, to his dignity. it is his voice, it is his vision for the struggle for freedom. it was an honor to work with

myrlie to put this together so that a future generation could be similarly inexpired to achieve the greatness that he embodies. thank you so much. and now please come forward. we would love to sign your copies. thank you very much. [applause]

>> diane mcwhorter t very last

line in your book underacknowledgments is the following. i thank my father for delivering me as robert penwarner wrote out of history and into histo and the awful responsibility o time. what are you getting at there? >> if you can figure out what that quote mean, let me know because i have been pondering firt years. it's the last line from "all the king's men," which was sofert an inspiration for this book, because as you reca n that book the main character is able to tie his own history to characters that he thought had nothing to do with him. when he was growing up as a child of privileg, so the -- i would say the emotional impetus for writing this book was trying to figure out my father and trying to figure out his personal history, i was able to figure out real history. >> why did you want to do that? >> well, he was a really interesting figure, to say the least. he was a down, mobile, kind of

renegade son of a civically prominent family in birmingham. and he just didn't make sense to me. he was sort of this vigilante spirit among the country-clubbers. i wanted to find out why he turned tout way he did if >> she alive today? >> he is. >> has he read the book? >> the last i heard he was still reading it and is really proud of me. >> what is his reaction to the way you characterized him >> i think he feels that it was honest and true. and i think one of the reasons he has taken it so well is we always had a very strong bond. and it's not -- even though i reveal some, perhaps, painful or embarrassing things about me, it was not done vindictively. it was done in an attempt to understand. >> painful things about you. >> about him. >> what is the most painful thing you wrote about him? >> well, actually, the thing i was most worried about ishs troubled relationship with his

own father. his own father had been a harvard educated big lyer for the power company, and i think he gave my father a fairly short shrift when he was growing up. oddly enough, even though i reveal things about my father's bigotry, that was the thing i was worried about the most in way because i felt that was the original wound in a way that made him rebel against his past and his backound. >> what is the first thing you can remember about birmingham, alabama? >> oh, funny you should ask. the first thing i remember was at t te --ven though my father was from birmingham, when i was growing up, we lived in a small town in cherokee county in the sticks and we came into town to visit his mother, my grandmother. there was a paint sign that had these sort of goon-like figures with blue hair sprouting from their heads, almost like a troll doll that we see now.

we called th bushy hair, and when we saw those, we were at my grandmother's house. that, and of course, th vulcan, the largest iron man in the world who held a neon torch that shone green on days when there has been no traffic fatalities in birngham and red when there was a traffic fatality. >> that's what this picture is. awe you saw in the early part of the book, the 1976 centennial or something of that was the first reason why you were interested in even doing this. explain that. >> well, i had grown up thinking that the cataclysmic events of 1963 which was the climax of the book and the civil rights movement had nothing to do with me. dr. king's demonstrations there, the firehouses and police dogs, the church bombing, i was growing up over the mountain away from all that have. and just felt totally alienated from that. and the book that you mention

was this alabama volume in a bicentennial series on the 50 states. it had a vy brief account of the troubles in birmingham. and i realized for the first time reading that that a man named sitz mire had been the only white man in town, a businessman, who would agree to let his name be used in the negotiations with dr. king. i scread to my apartment in cambridge, massachusetts, that's my cousin and it was the first time i realized this had anything to do with me. it embarked me on this jrney home. >> he's a picture. who was he? is he still alive? >> he is not alive, but i knew his son and grandson quite well. he was -- he was a businessman who had -- ended p realizing he was the protagonist of the book because he touched eve corner

of the book. he started out as one of the big segregationist architects of the dixie succession from the democratic party in 1948 when the south succeeded from the party. it was this big. it was compared to the original succession it was so important. she was the sponsor and -- he was the sponsor and partial bankroller of one of the most rabid racist demagogues, a man named ace carter who then came to fame as forest cart e the author of a best selling literature piece. and finally he became a friend of the civil rights movement. he went through some strange process of faith and redemption that i never quite understood either, but he switched sides and ultimately did the right thing. >> the 16th street baptist church bombing. this is recorded several weeks before it's aired, but last night on the radio i heard in the middle of reading this book, it's still an issue from 1963. what's going on there? >> well, it took -- it took a

long time to bring any case because for several reasons. one is that the evidence is just really weak. the arch perpetrator of the crime was convicted by the state of alabama in 977, but since then the four other suspects, chief suspects in t crime, were -- they neer could build enough evidence on them. nobody involved in the case has ever talked about it, so we may never knowhat really happened leading up to that explosion. also, the investigation initially was very compromised. birmingham was johansburg at the time. it was the most segregated city in america. the birmingham police was in cahoots with the klan and had a long tradition of collaboration. some of the members of the klan who perpetrated the bombing had been under the protections of the police so that investigation

was flawed, as well as the f.b.i.'s initial investigation. >> what happened on that day? what was the exact date, do you remember? >> oh, sure. it s september 15, 1963. and the schools of birmingham had just been desegregated ovr the previous couple of weeks. >> who was president? >> kennedy was president. and george wallace was governor. and wallace had called out the state troopers to try to block the young school children from entering the schools in birmingham. i believe it rally was given a signal to the segregationists that they could go ahead and do what was necessary to stop the desegregation of schools. what had hapened was that president kennedy had introduced federal legislation to outlaw segregation as a result of the big demonstration there is with the police dogs and fie hoses that spring. to the klan realized that their franchise was running out, and they were going to do anything to stop integration from coming

about. they ended up bombing the church to do that. >> what was the klan? >> what was the klan? the kn was a very interesting terrorist arm of the establishment for a very long time. and it started out in the 20's in earn estas the sort of, oddly enough, the liberal arm of the democratic party. it was sort of this insurgent, radical, populist, sort of incarnation of the have-nots bids for power over the previous couple of decades. that explains how hugo black, the great civil libetartian supreme court justice had the political career launched by the klan because he was part of the insurgent arm of the party. so hugo of course becomes an avenue dealer and the supreme court justice, and in the meantime, the klan becomes the terrorist arm of the anti-new dealers. they are to fight the union, to

tar it with racism and -- or tar it with, that it's trying to promote social equalty amo the workers. and finally by the -- so the industrialists of birmingham, the heavy manufacturing industrialists who owned the city, had encouraged this because the last thing they wanted was a strong organized labor. so they encouraged the terrorism to disrupt labor, and then finally in the late 150's, the terrorists become bad for business because the economy is changing and moving away from heavy manufacturing toward service. and the industrialists, the business community, starts to disavow the klan, but it's too late. they have let this force loose in the community and they can't call it back. it leads up to the church bombing. >> in 1963 how many people lived in birmingham? >> in the city proper, about 250,000. >> what was the racial mix

>> about 40% black. >> i don't know whether you say it or not, but i think you did. the most segregated city in the world? >> it was called the johannesburg in americaand dr. king caed it t most segregated city in the america. >> how would that be? >> that were exceptional in alabama? segregated parking lots. as one of the sources in my book said, why would they have to segregate the cars? they can't have sex. because that's wht it kind of boiled down to. >> why was it so strong there? did you learn tha in your study? >> oh, yeah, it was because -- it went back to this industrial base. there was a very strong economic motive to enforcesegregation rigidly, to foment rcial stride. it boiled down to keeping the racial force divided so they could keep wages down v the white workers identified with management, and they would tar the union as the inward union so

that -- to try to repel whites from joining. >> it took you 15 years to do this? >> well, 19. >> 19. >> 19, yeah. >> what were you doing during the 19 years beside writing this book? >> well, i have to say that five of the years were spent cutting the book because the original manuscript was, believe it or not, three times onger than what you have in your hand there. so -- >> and you are talking about a book that is 700 pages. >> the original manuscript was 3,400 pages. so you know i had to cut it, i cut it, i ruined it. i arted over again. and finally i was able to figure out a way to tell the narrative in a more streamlined fashion, although the reviews call it exhaustive. anyway, i think this is like the cliff notes version of it. >> where were you living? >> living in boston to begin with when i read the account of fitzmire. i had been working for an alternati weely there and

eventually was the editor of -- the managing editor of "boston magazine." >> what was that sname? >> "the boston phoenix." >> how did you get into journalism in the first place? >> the only thing it qualified to do when i graduated from college was reviewing books. i started to review books for the "boston phoenix," and after th i moved into feature journalism and taught myself on the job. >> where did you go to college? >> wesley, where my grandmother went, so i was destined to go there from birth. >> whatwas your dad doing when you went to college? >> a small business rebuilding air compressorsso fill scub tanks for recreational use. he was an avid scuba diver. >> what was your relationip to him in those days? >> in college, that was the most estranged period. i entered the counter lture in

the early 1970's, and during the vietnam war, and we really fell out over the war. he was sort of th rchie bunker type, and we went -- we had a few rough years there where we didn't speak very much. >> there is a name that pops out of the book almost out of nowhe that we know in this town, margaret cutwhiler. >> she was my sorority sister. >> where? >> at the brook hills school for girls in birmingham. she was a class ahead of me. it turns out that her family was from one of the founding families of birmingham. >> it's pronounced? >> that's actually margaret's bid l name, debralabin. her family are major characters or major players in the book. >> why? >> well, they were a very prominent coal family because they were coal operators. i think they were the fifth largest producer of commercial

coal in the country, i think. i mean they were quite big, and they had become during the new deal, the sort of saunch, anti-roosevelt family in the south. they had bankrolled a lot of anti-union, anti-new deal propaganda. and margaret's great, great grand fother had become the anti-union icon nationwide. he was the only major coal operator to resist john l. lewis and the mine workers to keep them out of his camp. >> used to be a spokesman for the bush administration at the state department. >> margaret, yeah. >> do you know her well? >> i don't. our families were close. my aunt and her mother were in each ere's weddings. >> in this book you have pictures of a lot of the characters. if you are my age, you remember some of the names and the

pictures. do you remember them? in 1963 you would have been how snold. >> i was 10 in 1963. i don't. i was totally ignorant of what was going on. it turns out that, i mean, i ended up getting to one of the interviews for the book. >> this is a picture of a man named bull connor. who was h >> bull connor was -- most people know him as the cartoon villain of the civil rights era. he was the police commissioner of birmingham who was the perfect enemy for the civil rights movement. he's the one who sicked the dogs and fire hoses on martin luther king's child demonstrators in the spring of 196 the. he -- one of the purposes of the book was to present the segregationists in full dimension and try to really explain who they were, why they were, how they came to act seemingly against the values of their christian culture. and it turned out that bull

connor had been installed in city hall in the 1930's by the corporate interests of birmingham as sort of a connection to the masses. they were the -- the dustrialists were trying to figure out a way to turn the grass roots against the new deal. bull connor was the anti-new deal mascot. they put him in city hall. >> who was fred shult shuttlesworth? >> he's my hero. the hero of the book. a confrontational baptist reacher who led the civil rights struggle. he was known throughout the civil rights movement as the wild man from birmingham because he was sort of crazily courageous. he put himself in harm's way in order to test god, to see if god was going to prote him. his church had been bombed in 1956. the bed he was lying on flew up like a magic carpet and he came out unscathed. so he really felt he was anointed to lead the fight, and

ended up being a really important figure. >> where is he today? >> he has a church in cincinnati, ohio. >> did you talk to him about this? >> oh, a lot, a lot. i am glad he is still alive to see the story. >> what is the most important thing you learned from talking to him? >> what i really learned is how important he was in pushing king into greatness. that if it hasn't been for shuttlesworth, we probably wouldn't be celebrating a national holiday for dr. kin today. >> why is that? >> king was coming into birmingham and had been extremely passive and unfocused. there was a sense he really did not want this to accept this mantel of leadership, which makes it seem more that he was this man of destiny. it was shuttlesworth that pushed him to get off the lecture circuits, stop talking to the white people. you've got to leave and galvanize the people and ad us to the promised land because h realized he had the authority to

do that. shuttlesworth was always pushing -- he was the vanguard, strategic vanguard of the movement who pioneered direct action by disobeying unjust laws as opposed to passively resisting them. he was just a major figure who hasn't gotten credit in most accounts of the movement. >> who is this man right there with the tie on and the coat open? >> this guy wathe reason the f.b.i. investigation of the church bombing was flawed. this was f.b.i.'s chief informant inside the most violent klan in america. the eastview 13th clavern. >> what does that mean >> a small group, a club, a subset of the state klan. >> and eastview 13 is all through the book. what is that? >> awe east view 13 is the name

of the violent clan, clavern, klan based in the birmin birmingham. >> did you talk to anybody who was a member of tha group? >> oh, yeah. >> how about your family? >> were they members? my hands went clammy when i read the f.b.i. informant reports and came across a man named loyal mcwhorter. i thought that was a man who would make up a name like that, like any father, so i had a few tough weeks thinking there was somebody that was myfather. there was a man that was probably by country cousin of mine. i talked to his brother, and loyal was murdered by his girlfriend while liing in bed. he was such a bad person that the girlfriend got off. >> did you ever ask your father point-blank, were you a member

of the klan? >> oh, yeah. oh, yeah. absolutely. >> what did he say? >> he never gave a straht answer. i know he wasn't a member of the klan, but he never said what he was doing at the, quote civil rights meetings, fighting the civil rights movement. i never quite -- there's a verbatim transcript of my interview with him in the epilogue trying to pin hem down. he just would never quite tell me. >> why? >> i don't know. i think maybe one of the short of touching things he said to me was that, he said, i'm afraid i didn't do all the things you may have thought i did. as if i was hoping that he had done the worst, and he almost apologized that, you know, he wasn't going to offer up any big punch lineor something. and it was sort of tuching but kind of frightening grandiose that he would have claimed false credit or blame for some of this

klan criminal activity that he really hadn't participated in. >> the transcript i he epilogue started with, you knew -- i said. i knew them all, he said. you knew gary thomas rho, you estioned him. who bombed the chu, you ask. he gave me a half-lidded look, and said it was the janitor. that's not the only time i saw it in the book. >> right. you read it. am impresse you ass the pop quiz. >> it was the janitor. why would they always give that answer? >> a lot of people thought blacks had bombed their own church in order to get publicity for the movement. that was a very popular theory among thinking people as well as the sort of nut cases. so the janitor had been called in for questioning by the f.b.i., and because of that -- i'm not sure whether he was a

suspect in their minds or not, but he was questioned by them. so as a result of that, here was this popular theory that came down that the janitor had done it. >> you spend a lot of time in the book telling the story of the bombing itself. have you gone around and talked to people, how many people remember it? >> the adults remember it. one of the reasons i wrote the book was because i didn't remember it. i don't remember when i foun ouabout it. it was almost as if i had always known, but president kennedy was assassinated two months later and of course i remember everything about that. so i know it wasn't that i was too young for it to really register, and i wondered why it was something that happened a couple miles from my house had not registered on my consciousness at all. >> is the church there today? >> it is. >> is it still calle 16th street baptist church? >> it's across the stet from a really great museum, the civil rights institute. the church had been restored.

a lot of the stained glass was damaged in the bombing. it's looking for an identity. it was even looking for an identity at the time. ironicly it was the 16th street was the seat of the white bourgeois that had been pretty hostile to king. they had made accommodations with segregation and had too much to lose. it was a mass who didn't have to risk that much in order to participate in the struggle. reverend shuttlesworth was very unpopular with the black middle class because he as a mass leader. and there was a big division between the black classes and the black masses, the masses were called "them asses" bcause they were an embarrassment to the striving elements of the community who had really made great strides and didn't want to risk that.

16th street was very much in that tradition, and they had let the movement use the church grudgingly. >> september of 1963, president kennedy is in office. what else is going on in the world? has this issue been much in the news? >> oh, very much. the civil right act or what became the civil rights act of 1964 was debated in congress at the time. it looked like it might be a losing proposition. there was, george wallace had been up screaming about it. the civil wrongs bill or something. >> what is this picture in your book? >> that's -- oh, that's george wallace. that happened in the previous june. that's george wallace standing in the schoolhouse door. had run for governor on a pledge to halt the desegregion of the schools of alabama even if he had to stand in the schoolhouse door. so there he is facing down the deputy attorney general.

>> and onthat september day, on that sunday morning, paint the atmosphere. >> in the church? >> yeah. >> the sunday school was just nding down. a lot of the kids' sunday school classes were taking place in the basement. a few girls going to the bathroom to primp. >> what time is this? >> this is like 10:15 in the morning. normally the girls would have gone to a drugstore to get a coke before the church service, but on this day the pastor was inaugurating a youth day because he was trying to breathe new life into the congregation which was stale and stodge. three girls were earing white and ty were going to be singing in the chior and everything. denise mcary, carol robertson, adddy holland, and cynthia wesley were primping because they wanted to look really nic.

they were combing their hair in the mirror. another one of their sunday school classmat came into the bathroom and said something like, they need you to get back to sunday school class because those who don't obey the lord live only half as long. at 10:22, this bundle of dynate that was against the east wall of the church exploded. it blew out a man-size hole in the wall of thebathroom. blew the clothes off the girls. stackelike cordwood under debris, and killed them all. one had been decapitated. >> did you talk to any of the fathers and mothers? you tell stories that they can remember -- to tell the stories about going to the morgue and finding them. >> in one case -- most of that was actually from f.b.i. documents aninrviews with witnesses on the scene becuse the families have a hard time talking about it. i mean it's likely that when

spike lee did a movie, they were willing to talk about it, about the four little girls, about the church bombing. the -- the pastor, when they came upon the girls, he didn't recognize them because he thought they looked like women in tir 40's. and he couldn't figure out who they could be because he knew there had just been kids down stairs. so the owner of a dry cleaner across the street from the church came up and he looked at the shoe, the foot of one of the girl's, and he said, lord, that's denice. it was his 11-year-old grand daughter. and that's -- denise, yeah. so that was the first time the pastor realized these were children. and the other one of the -- i think it was the father of denise wesley -- i mean of cynthia wesley also recognized

her shoe sticking out from the sheet in this make-shift morgue at the hospital. so those were the -- the clothes had been sort of the la thought on earth, and that was ended up being blown off them and in one case identifying them. >> what happened in the aftermath of that? >> of the church, well, the area was sealed off. the white people were more worried about rioting blacks, it seemed, than they were ability the victims. the only thing that i was able to find out -- i found out from my mother's datebook that i had been in a civic production of the "music man," the musical. and my rehearsal that night was canceled because we were afraid that the black people would be out abroad in the streets hurting white people. as it turned out, it was two more black children that were killed that day. one by a police bullet and one by two white teenagers who drove

by the paper boy and shot him off the handlebars of his bike. it was a really tense situation. martin luther king came back to town. president kennedy's people came back to try to keep the peace, and there were high-level meetings at the white house that night to try to figure out how to deal with the situation. whether troops should be sent in, or, you know, how to keep a lid on things. >> what have you found out about j. edgar hoover in all this? >> j. edgar hoover was a pretty bad guy, and he was -- par r part ofit, i think, stems from the fact that he was a totally bureaucratic creature. his main goal in life was to protect the bureau from any type of criticism. whenever they would come under criticism from somebody, he would try to find a scape goat. as it happened, in several instances that scapegoat was martin luther king. he had gone off an a vendetta

agait him that was so, sort of, it was so ugly compared with the fact that this klan informant, the picture we showed earlier, was shieded by his bureau. and because they were afraid that his cover would be blown, they shielded the criminal activity he participated in and his klan brothers from prosecution for various crimes. so the combination of going after king and protecting the klan is just one of the ugliest chapters in the history of the justice department. >> what did the f.b.i. do fter the bombing? >> the f.b.i. did -- they -- they called out a manhunt that they were comparing to dillinger to find him. they did quite a thorough job, buexcept because they were afraid that gary thomasrowe was involved, they told him to stay away from the scene for a week. they didn't want hito show up in somebody else's investigative files. when they were showing pictures

of suspects to witnesses, they didn't show rowe's picture or a picture of his car. they were concern he mght have been involved because he had been involved in other terrorist actions that the klan carried out. i conclud that he proably wasn't involved in the church bombing. i'm not sure whether he knew about it or not, but i don't think he took part iit. >> but years later i read an account how there was a secret part of the investigation from the f.b.i. years later. and this thing has been going on all these years. how did it stay alive all these years? >> the five main suspects, including the one who was convicted and the two who are going on trial, are -- they were suspects from virtually day three. and they just could not build -- they could not build a case against them. the evidence was, you know, nobody talked. the physical evidence in a bombing is lways virtually

noxistent because it's blown up, you know, sometimes there's evidence of a timing device but rarely. and it -- the investigation went through a fallow period and some eager police chief or attorney general would react -- they would reactivate it and comeup with the same problem, which is lack of evidence. it happens that the two possible suspects, one on trial as this air, and one going to be going on trial if he's deemed competent, but most of the evidence is self-incriminating evidence they made to third parties. there's no new evidence about the crime itself. >> in the epilogue of the book you talk a lot about your dad. where does your dad live now. >> he lives outside biriham. he's, you know, virtually retired. >> is your mom alive? >> yeah. >> he's not maryed to her any

longer? >> correct. >> you say he has different ways that he has lived his lfe. you talk about it -- does he live in a trailer now? >> he doesn't live in a trailer now. one of the most humiliating moments of my youth was when i found out that my fther was thinking of moving us to a trailer. i was going to this private girls hl that my grandmother had founded and, you know, it was this sort of star student and doing everything right. and then my father is thinking about moving us to a trailer, and i just remember thinking, i can never live this down. we didn't move to a trailer, but eventually he -- in the 1970's he lived in a trailer for a while. got it out of his system. didn't stay too long. >> why did he want to do that? what was the motive? >> he grew up in this big house on a hill, a big mansion hi daughters call it, and he he wanted to get as far away from there as he could. a trailer seemed to fit the

bill. >> when you were growing up, how did he talk about blacks? both your mother and father about blacks in the home, and how long were they married when you were growing up? >>hey divorced when i was in college, so they were together during my entire childhood. we were taught -- polite children were tught never to use the n word. it was just not a nice thing to say. my father did use the n word, and i think i sort of rejected s olitics almost on class grounds before i did on moral grous because i found it so offensive for our social class to use this word. that's what lower class wyatts used. i found out much later that, guess what, the groanps did use that word, just as they swore they didn't do it around us. my mother was from mississippi, so she wasn't really tied into birmingham society at aland she's just a really nice person who would never be cruel to

anybody. and that -- she sort of lived that ethic whether it was to, you know, a white person or a black person. but she didn't have any political -- she didn't take any political stance on the race issue. >> do you have brothers and sisters? >> fwro two brothers. >> where are they? >> one is in birmingham. i think he was thinking about changing his name when my book came out, but i think they are all happy now. and not as big of a bomb shell as they feared. and my younger brother is in macon, georgia. >> what were they afraid of? >> i think they were just afraid of the reaction that it was going to be so hostile. that they might suffer reprisals. >> hostile for what reason? >> because i name ames in the book, and it's a pretty unforgiving looat a lot of people that we know. as it turns out, most of the really bad people from the book are dead. i have gotten some sort of sad

reaction from the name sakes of some of the people named in the book who were really upset about it. my uncle has been dissing me in the paper there. >> there is your uncle hobert? >> yeah. what is his story? >> he was the guy who carried on the family name. a prominent lawyer in town, and sort of the country club wit, and efrling, and he's still -- he still is very much part of the community and ver visible part of the community. so he -- >> what do you think of him? >> he's vey close -- i am very close to him. he was sort of a surrogate father to me, so i was a little hurt when he told the birmingham news that diane has written an effectively rgely fictional book. did that ask what he thought was fictional? >> no, they didn't, as a matter of fact. i was a little upset with the birmingham news. >> was he a klansman? >> oh, no, no, no.

that was totally beyond the panel for him. >> what doesn't he like about it? yotalk about the mountain book club and the birmingham country club. explain what that's all about. >> well, the book opens on the day of the church bombing at the mountain brok club, which was sort of the sanctuary of the birmingham elite. my grandfather was one of the charter members and my uncle is one of the the mainstays of the club. so i think that he was really upset about what i said about the club. that's what he was really upset about. >> where is the club? >> it's in this beautiful, piney valley in mountain brook, which is this suburb that was called over the mountain because there was this kind barrier betwn the gritty city and the suburb. it's really one of the most beautiful places in the world. the club was the beautiful, plantation style place where the big meals went -- that's what

the bigindustrialists were called. and just had their cocktails. >> what was wrong with that? >> for me? >> yeah. >> i loved it there. >> what's wrong with it now? >> i don't know why he was o offended about what i wrote about it. i think i said that the mountain brook club members sort o disdained the birmingham country club members. i said it was the difference between -- the difference betwn the two clubs was the difference between kiwanias which ran the city and rotary, which owned it. i don't know what problem he has with that, but it seems to be true to me. >> but you did describe the fact that the clubs have black waiters. what was their relationship with the members and what happened in the mountain brook club the d of the bombing? >> well, the mountain brook club waiters were, you know, it was the sort of classic paternalistic members of the family. like members of the family relationship. and they got a lot of perks, you

ow, fr legal advice. my uncle freely gave of legal advice to club waiters and also the african-american family that worked for our family and for his family growing up, so it was sort of, you know, the classic genteel relationship that enabled segregationists to feel ok about it because they had, a, genuine relationships with black people, and also they had relationships that are civil and kind. so they -- that was the way they were able to overlook the systemic butality of the system itself. >> if you went to the mountain brook club tay, what would you see compared to hat you saw in 1963? . >> well, you know, i went down there when i was down there, and people couldn't believe i showed my face. >> how long did you stay, by the way? >> i stayed for a few hour, but it was abingo night, so it was a lot of families so they didn't

know me or didn't care bout the book. but the waiters were glad to see me. >> did you do this after or before you wrote the book? >> i would go back there usually every time i was writing the book, but no, when the book came out and i was on the book tour down there, i went down there to pay a visit. >> do they all know who you were? . the waiter >> did you talk to them? >> i interviewed a number of the waiters, oh, yeah, so yeah, they recognized me. >> what was the reaction when you went to birminghamand had the book in hand and went to the bookstores? how muchf a to did you do there? >> an extensive tour and i did a lot of right-wing talk shows, too. the reaction is fascinating. i would say the typical reaction is -- and this sort of sums up birmingham is why -- why do you want to drag that up again after 38years. i mean, why do people care about birmingham? the people -- why people in

birmingham haven't just quite gotten this was the most important place and the most important story in american history perhaps. so finally i came up with an answer, which was, would you question why people would want to read about gettysburg. this is the gettysburg of the civil war. this is the turning-point battle. and i think finally, you know, people are beginning to accept that it's just not going to go away. this is history that was made here, and that people are always going to be interested in it. the other reaction i had gotten has been shock that all this went on. i mean tracin all the sources of the system back to the new deal and the labor movement and the anti-labor resistance and stuff, which i think has just been a big shock to a lot of people. >> in the acknowledgments, you say my family richard roen and lucy and ibell were my

companions on this journey. and th made my life complete. my inlaws. your husband? what does he do? >> is a writer of mystery novels, and nonfiction. and he has also worked in television. >> where do all therosens live? >> the rosens are in chicago. >> and yor family? where do you live now. >> manhattan island, new york. >> besides writing the book, what do you do on a fulltime basis? >> i hate t say it, but i wrote the book on a fulltime basis. i raised my daughters, and i have written for the "new york times" for years and occasionally done journalism, but this really kept me busy. >> lucy is 12 and is bell is nine. >> what do they think of all this? >> of course my older daughter calls me a loser and crackhead, and whatever is a popular expression of contempt.

my younger daughter thinks that people will recoize me on the street now. they kind of took the two extreme positions. >> do they have any relationship with your father or mther? >> oh, yeah. yeah >> all this come up at the family get togethers? >> not really. i mean they sort of -- they have been fascinated with my father, too. they haven't been able to quite figure him out because he is not the typical grandfather. i'm not sure they really know exactly what's in here yet. >> you went with your father -- i want to get the rigt place here. velmus. you have this in the epilogue ain, a transcript. what happened there? >> well, velmus was the beer joint my father went to after work for many years. so in the course of doing research, i found that one of the benefits of doing research with him was that i really re-established a with him,

because i had this al tier yor reason to expose myself to him that may have been once painful. i accompanied him to the beer joint, and just listened to the guys talk about, you know, use the "n" word and talk about yankees and, you know, the same old stuff. >> there's a little exchange that says somebody says you are writing a book about birmingham. one man said, tell them what it's about, papa said to you. it's mostly about 1963, you said. and then your father said, it's about the anythinger movement. what did you do when he said that it's about the nigger movement? >> probably -- you mean did i correct him or anything? >> yeh. when you go back there and he talks that way, do you correct him? >> i did for a long time, during my 20's. i spent my 20's trying to change him, and then i guess i spent the 30's and 40's trying to understand him.

i kind of retired by then -- by then i definitely retired from the role of trying to reform him. i just decided it wasn't my job or my mission. >> you say for the ext hour at vellmas, i was treated to comments like, you know as far as i am conrned, you can take all the niggers and put tem in a boat and ship them back to africa. you know what? send the jews after them. i think niggers are all right and everybody should own one or two or three of them. people in the beer joint said that to you. >> they were talking to each other and just kind or -- >> did they know you were wring a book? >> oh, yeah, i think i may have been taking notes while they were writing. that was one of the ways i ws able to be present in that, that i knew that i was not -- i was not part of it really. >> can you figure out why people want to talk that way today? >> these people were people who were socioeconomically marginal, and they --

>> soshe economically marginal. >> on the edge. >> they were on the edge. >> this is what makes them feel good. and that's why the -- the klansmen were the sort of dregs of the society because they were, a, the most threatened by ingration because their jobs might -- they might lose jobs actually to black people if they weren't systemically discriminated against. and also because it was their way of feeling important, that they were better than somebody. i think it's called the narscism of small differences. the closer you are together, t more you make of the tiny differences. >> you say your family has a connection to a man named robert welsh. >> oh, yeah. robert welsh was the founder of the john birch society, and as it turned out, he was my grandfather's roommate at

harvard law school. he introduced my randfather and grandmother to each other. >> what is that society, the john birch society? >> it was this super conservative, anti-communist organization which was supposedly an educational organization to alert people to e communist myths around the corner about to take over america. and it became sort of the respectable altenative for a lot of the segregationists in birmingham to join after, you know, they certainly wouldn't be in the klan. and if they wanted to organize, they would often be part of the john birch society because that was socially acceptable. >> later on in the epilogue you say, they didn't believe in russian domination ofhe united states and the hierarchy of the union. they believed everybody was responsible for what they did, for their own actions. i always thought that erybody

is responsible for their own actions. if their actions ain't too good, they may need to do a little bit more praying. who is saying that? >> that's my father trying to kind of explain why he believed what he did and why he wasart of the resistance. he now says tt he had nothing against black people and there's -- there's a lot of stuff in the book about his true relationships with black people. he spent a nightn jail once on behalf of some country club waiters because he had seen a rload of white people run a red light and hit this carload of black waiters from the country club. he told the police what had happened and the white kids who hit the car, the waiters car, challenged them to a fight. they had a fight, and it was my father and uncle who went to jail for them. so he did have, you know, a complicated relationship with blacks. he had real intimacy with some black people, and he would always say now it was because he thought the civil rights

movement was under the influence of communists. that's why he felt like he had to get involved. >> any change in birmingham between 1963 and 2001? >> oh, i mean you just can't conceive of what it was like in 1963. i mean the change has been just incredible, a to me one of the great lessons of this is that, you know, people always said that even if you -- you can't legislate hearts and minds. people are people. human nature is human nature. and you can't get rid of the system overnight. but guess what? they did. it was amazingly peaceful. that is not to say that birmingham is not still a segregated society. >> is the mountain brook club, by the way, integrated? >> >> i don't think that it is. i think my uncull was desgnated to bring -- i think my uncle was designated to the bring black guest as a member. >> what about the birmingham country club? >> possibly. it possibly is. remember the whole controversy

during the pga tournament that there was a country club in birmingham had had to undergo emergency desegregation in order to host the tournament. that sort of put the country clubs on the spot and got a lot of scrambling for a qualified black member. >> i think this is the photograph, one early otographs that you talk about, is this one right here. tell us what that is about. >> that was sort of the classic movement picture of the birmingham demonstrations. that was a police zog attacking a -- that was a police dog attacking a teenar named walter gadson. and it was that photograph that president kennedy saw and he said it made him sick. it sort of galvanized the country behind this legislation to abolish segregation. i compare i.d. to uncle tom's -- i compare t to "uncle tom's cabin" because it told the truth about segregation, but there was a lot of misleadingdetails. for example, walter gadson wasn't a demonstrator. he was playing hookky and was

one of the bystanders. he wasn't participating in the movement. >> you also resurface someone from the book that we don't hear from much. this picture rig here. chuck morgan. who was he? wheris he? >> chuck was one of theheros of the book. a young turk lawyer in birmingham and some people in washington may remember him as the -- he was the head of the aclu for a while, a sort of flamboyant lawyer who went from doing civil rights law to the other side. he started representing establishment firms, but he -- >> when did he do that, by the way? >> in the 1980's. >> where does he live now? >> in florida. he is retired. he's -- he was a very flamboyant, liberal guy who -- his claim to fame in birmingham about which he ended up writing a book was that after the church was bombed, he gave a speech to a young -- something called the young mens business club in which he blamed the entire

community for the crime. d he was essentially run out of town, as my father put it. he and my father were close friends growing up. >> did you talk to him about this book? >> oh, yeah, many times. >> what s his attitude? >> couldn't have been more pleased that the story was being told. >> you have a story -- it's just one of those things or incidences that happened during those days and may still happen about tom king who ran for mayor and the photograph. what was it? >> oh, yeah. this was one of the -- the bigamistries of birmingham politics. tom king was running for mayor against a man named art hanes who went on to fame as james segregationist candidate. tom king was chuck morgan's candidate. they were the liberals. bull connor -- tom king was

meeting with bull connor and one of art hanes operatives paid a black -- they let a back convict out of jail. paid him to go up to tom king and shake his hand. tom king, when i interviewed him, said he felt doom wash over him because the black man held his hand for, like, a good 10 seconds and walked away and they got a photograph of it. that was the ultimate taboo. >> what year? >> 1961. >> the prisoner was waiting somewhere in the hallway and walked down and shook his hand. >> right. grabbed it. normally, you know, a canny politician wouldn't have shaken hands, but he just stuck his hand out -- you know, mr. king, stuck his hand out, and it was that photograph that pretty much cost him the election for mayor. >> was the 19 years or were the 19 years worth it?

>> you know i have beenaazed at how quickly i went from, oh my gosh, you can't finisha book in 19 years to great achievement. great achievement. yeah, this has all been worth it, i have to say. >> in the reviews and in the time on the book tour, what is the best they have said about you and the worst they have said about you? does it ever hurt when they say the negative? >> on e ok our, well, i haven't gotten anything negative to my face. a klsman showed up at a book signing. i have had a few heart flutters. but mostly, you know, it must be the reaction that has been phenomenal. somebody on the right-wing talk shows would call up and say this should be required reading for everybody in birmingham. and one -- that was a white suburban matron called to say that. the next caller was a black person who said i know so many people in the book.

and this is just an amazing, you know, account of this sort of hidden history. >> your mom and dad haven't been married for years. has your mom read this? >> awe she hasn't read it, but she is the biggest p.r. agent who has taken it all over town and flaunts it. she is really proud. >> she hasn't read it at all? >> a lot of people in birmingham read the personal stuff to see, you know, to see about me and my family and possibly the people they grew up with. she -- i think she, i mean, she was maryed to him, so she knows what a perplexing character he is. and i think she understands why i did this. >> what's nexfor you? anothebook? >> i think so. i would like to get a political column. i feel competent writing columns that you can get out and see the next day. i'd like to do that for a while.

then i have a few other book ideas. >> like what? >> well, one of them would be about another city, but i think i have to wait for my kids to leave home to be able to do the research for that. i might turn to my mother's family in mississippi next. >> our guest is diane mcwhorter. this is th way the book looks, "carry me home." this pick was taken when and what is it? >> children bracing themselves against the fire hose spray, taken in may of 1963. >> in birmin

minutes. good evening. welcome. we are pleased you joined us this evening. we want to welcome our good friend's from c-span who are taping this. it will be broadcast on booktv. we have books for sale in the back. i'm sure the author will be happy to sign them. the doors are locked. you cannot leave until the books are sold. [laughter] martinmartin luther king often quoted the 19th century ab listist thomas parker said the arc of the

fifty years ago this very day, four young black college students walked in the tront door of the building down the stairs, they went over to a table and sat down and started to read. as one of them described to me later fake read. he was scared he was about to be arrested. the libraries were segregated. we had libraries for african-americans. the building was closed to blacks. they could not enter the building or use the collections here. those four students came in that day and sat down and did what you did at the library. they read for awhile. they knocked down wall. the next day more students from miles college came. they saturday down, they read, one of them went to the desk and

for a library card. on the next day the library board somewhat reluctantly voted, but bending to the arc of justice, the library board voted to desegregate the birmingham public library. it was one day before king was arrested and began writing the letter from birmingham jail. think about the building that 50 years ago tonight was closed to african-american now houses one of the finest research collections in existence on the civil rights movement. and the african-american experience. and it's not out -- out of that collection in part that the book we're going celebrate tonight has been researched and read here. we're pleased to have two authors with us tonight. first, we have jonathan reider, professor of sociology at columbia university, hey the author of "the word of the lord

is upon me" has been a regular commentator and contributing editor to new republican. also with us is -- appeared surprise winning author -- birmingham, alabama. and the battle of the civil rights movement. which is just been released in a new updated paperback edition. she's the author of a "deremer she writes regularly for the "usa today." everyone join me in welcoming jonathan reider. [applause]

i should say not to add luster to my résume, to reassure i'm not a self-rich use northerner. i have written about white racism in brooklyn as well. the jews and italians in brooklyn again liberalism. let me say first off a certain humility is in order. for one thing, it's a tremendous delight to be here with diane, who is telling of "carry me home" is epic as the events in birmingham themselves or the epic quality that what people did in the town deserves. i can tell you, i don't want to be too gracious. buy my new book first. there's plenty of new stuff in the new edition. buy that too. there another reason for humility -- i couldn't have done "gospel of

freedom "without two special people. our host for the evening, jim baguette, many years ago first prepared my way in the book connor collection. you have no idea how long it took me to get used to the bull connor collection. you may be used to the phrase. i thank also the things that his institution, the birmingham public library has done in making this history alive. i need thank another gifting archivist laura anderson for similar kinds of -- my dependent ens, i must say. she was the one who first connected me to some of the realtively unknown tapes of dr. king. some of which the sound system doesn't fail us tonight. i'll play a little bit. if i had any ability in my book to bring alive the mass meetings with the sounds of king, king in

passive, king in majesty, king in bitterness, resentment. all the different sides of king, i owe those recordings and the man who donated them to the bcri, reverend c. herbert oliver. another great freedom fighter in birmingham who was fighting racism and segregation in 1948. i want to say what jim and laura what their institutions go is not logistical and practical, the words make it possible for us never to forget the courage and the blood and the sacrifice which america of born as a democracy. it's a sacred as well as a logistical which the duoresearch institutions do. as we know from a lot of other settings, if you're going avoid the past and understand something like never again, you have to know how to remember and

you can't remember sentimentally or dishonesty. jim and laura make it possibility. if there's any humility here. i'm going think of dr. king in birmingham in keeping with him, i have only written in history. the anemia birminghaming haim made the history. in rising up fifty years ago, they, and i should for the people in the room, you didn't make only history in birmingham. you helped make the nation anu. i'll come back to that. that ultimately is the meaning of the 50th years. we don't want to give to some notion that history was easy. we, proud in america. we don't honor whatever the

value and the institution and the decoration are by pretending it was the time of unfreedom in order congratulate ourselves we got to the promised land. i should add that part of the other -- i'll add quickly is in my other work on king i spent time with the foot soldiers. we know the famous people. there are all of those amazing colleagues of dr. king who went in to a dozen other places. people like reverend willie, and jt johnson. i never got a chance to meet james orange, i had the privilege of interviewing andrew some years ago that man of gentle defiance. he remind us it was the young people on the streets of birmingham who made flesh the theory that dr. king put forward until the letter for birmingham

jail when he talked about extremist for love and justice, it was worth all the people in the alabama christian movement for human rights and james orange and meatball and andrew and all of those young people we can't forget the history forget what they did as well. now in this audience i'm not going spend lot of time rehashing the dramatic detail of the freedom struggle. i need set the context before i get to the letter. i'll try to do it pretty quickly. when i'm done, i'm going makes it up with questions with jim and diane. we want to get those in the audience. what is that history? the legendary and the acm, hr, the mass meetings vibrating with a sound i'm on my way to -- [inaudible] defiant young people who stare down the diabolical connor.

connor losing it on may 3rd and the world owes him greatly as president kennedy once said, bobby ken day say it too, actually. that the movement owed connor for finally losing it and becoming a prop within the movement drama that would awaking, the nation. the eight clergy men who ended up criticizing king may not have liked tension, in fact within one day -- the next morning after the dog was biting that black young man, it was on the paper -- the front page of the "new york times." kennedy was sending assistant u.s. marshall. they were thinking we may not be able to avoid this as a moral issue. we may need to think about a civil rights issue all that have begins. american democracy wasn't

vanquished -- wasn't vindicated in birmingham but a start of movement in changed the world we live in. now, i'm not going say much. i'll say one sentence. king in the letter is talking about the gospel of freedom. i have brought the gospel of freedom like the eighth century bc -- or like paul going through the greek or roman world and answering the mas done began call. it's not just for the hometown. he's going tout preach it. he's preaching the gospel of freedom to the whites. dr. king knew there was a gospel of freedom for blacks and the mass meetings were about his convincing them that you must deliver yourself. god will not take you there simply because you pray and king back in march, before the demon strappingses got going is an ebb kneeser you hear him in the voice of god saying to moses. tell the children of israel to go forward.

why are they wining? go forward and king said if he's got -- i can't do it all myself. so that is the other drama of black awakening within the meetings. i'll say less about that in the questions. we can come back to that. we have after much indecision the movement is not going well in those days of april 3rd through april 8, 9, 10, 11. on good friday in the early morning king decides to inviolate the junction and go jail. he would suffer with the saver your on the cross. how many times did he preach they could put you in jail and transform you to glory? but once in jail, the jail became a dungeon of dispond sincerity. king spiraled down to depression, panic, and lost his spirit as a freedom warrior.

then everything changed. he read the statement of eight white alabama clergymen criticizing him for being an extremist. it's untimely, the new mayor is going usher in a new day. why didn't you wait? suddenly king is propelling himself up that out of the valley up the mountain on a tide of indignation. so i want to start with what we think about the letter and where we get it wrong. yes, it's about injustice here. i'm here because of justice is here. it's universal. moral anger but anger. we, yes there's paul and saint august seen, but that is not where it begins. and understand the letter we need keep that in mind.

so the letter and the man comes rippling off the page of the letter is try to recreate it in my book gospel of freedom it's not driven by fancy philosophy. he's not a dreamer. that man in a letter has a glorious come complexity. the accelerate hard to get a handle of. it's not one thing. academics try to figure. they classify it a public letter this, that, formal rhetoric? there are the constant display of these incredible marijuanas. we know how furious king is at the ministers. for criticize -- they call me an extremist. he starts off my dear fellow clergymen, precious gentility.

when he's mad he says i'm dmointed. i hope you can see this patient men why is he wasting his time with white preachers we have an insurgency to run. we have the mass meetings. we have bailed and king is in a snit over the white clergy in a different way ct vivian said to me. it's what we expected because they were doing evil or comprising with evil. so we have that patient marijuanaly king. we have the professor king who lectures on the meeting of a moral law we have the tour guide king who takes white to the imminent recess of black vulnerability. when you have been humiliated. when your black brothers and sisters are lynched, when you have to explain to a 6-year-old

girl that his daughter, that yo lane data why she can't to go fun town been you live with a debilitating sense of nobodiness. when you think king is going explode in anger. taxable property black u. it's the collective people. when you, when you when you, 276 word sentence he suddenly pulls out of it like an airplane in a swoon and says, now turning back to the you maybe you will understand why we have it hard. that's that eerie tour that king takes a voyage in to the depth of the white christian soul. he focused on the christian glery. and said i have gone through the wonderful spiers of the white churches and wondered who worships there. who is their god? it sounds like a room naitding. but there is cold distance like

an anthropologist looking at it different. doesn't share the same god of king? who is their god. there's coldness there. masking the anger. there's the stay cottic after he spent paragraphs trying to say we're not reckless. i'm not an extremist. the more i thought about it, i am an extremist. gee us -- jesus was an extremist. ands up saying i don't care what you think of me.

minnesota anything else it becomes a relentless smack down of ordinary white people. we need to understand the radicalism of king's disappointment. ordinary white people who consider themselves decent but never binged with indignation over the fact of jim crow. and we know some of the white clergy and their children to this day felt wronged love your. not because it's the law, not because law and orders but because she and she are your brothers and sisters. be when king preaches that elsewhere he's the voice of saint paul saying this is blasphemy. the smack county of ordinary white people which includes the

kennedy administration that keeps saying wait as well. the eight clergymen. it's not that he's not answering them. but they perfectly distill all of this reluctance of a white nation that cannot, i'm quoting king, he say, i should have realized that the oppressed cannot understand the yearnings and longings of the oppressed. very powerful. we don't think of this king when we celebrate the dreamer as a tough chai'stizer. in the gospel freedom i try to show there's a transition when the first part is the dpip mat trying to persuade whites. appealing to the humanity. trying intellectual and manners. half way through it change. i must confess i've been

disappointed. the whole second half is a profit pro -- it's as if we are meeting king anew. it's the king that many african-americans who knew him from the mass meetings and preaching new the ambassador of brother hollywood turns out not to be a dreerm but a christian warrior. he didn't think many whites had much empathy or willingness to act on it for black people. he wasn't naive. i should have realized he said it's important thans few members of the 0 prezzive race can understand the deep -- the exodus sneaking in there.

despite the dignity and refinement you can sense the controlled anger if we read it question miss it. for years i heard the word wait. it rings in the ear of every negro. kick is now speaking not under universal mankind but a black man. if pierces him as well. i want to start moving toward the end and we can develop some of these themes and others whenever they want to take it. i want to mention some amazing things that happened toward the end. at the end of the letter king observes even if the white church does not come to our aid,

i have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in birmingham. let's thought about. many of you know the history. he's still in jail. there's a little debate that he finish in a few days it's irrelevant. most is done. we edit our stuff. we're two weeks before d day. why is he confident? blacks had not risen up after he went to jail. and say we're going jail too. when was the confidence? we know the answer to this. it's king's faith in god. what he almost said to black and white audience he doesn't say at the end. the resurrection follows the

cruise fiction. he re-- in a sermon addressed to fellow clergymen. he refuses to share a spiritual thought with them. he has disdain and anger. he's not going to go there. it's rare that he didn't go. nor does he say have a black and white dream of kids holding hands together. he doesn't quote the exceptional american nation. that democracy is destined for america. there's a mystery here. you can go in to it more if you are interested or diane or jim is. unralphing is key to understanding king in a new way. i'll say that years before the

flowering of black pride, king was finding faith and love of his people. not just mankind but his people and the memory of the slain ancestors and the defiant grace in what he calls in the letter hoe shares it with white people. he didn't say for black audiences. the bottom vitality of our slave fore bearers. if we were able to survive the inexcusable cruelty of slavery, the setbacks in birmingham will not keep us back. i'll rev it at that for now. it's easy to see the lurch forward as inevitable.

as sing saw it america was a need in redemption not a redeemer nation. it's there in the mass meetings. it's there when he's preaching. that becomes clear from one of the most dramatic discovery of gospel in freedom. there's an alternative version of the letter. nobody knows about it that king preached two days after he gets out of jail. he repeats many of the line of the letter. it's far black audience. he's not trying to persuade them. he's using it to goad them on. it allows us to adding the sound back. we add the emotion that is there. you can hear the angry tremor in king's voice. we are through with segregation now henceforth and forever. it's the same voice you hear on may 3rd, the day after --

hours after connor use the hoses and the dogs and king said our black faces will stand up to connor's white tanks. it's a defiant christian king but a defiant king. bear with me. we'll see if it works. if it does, i'll do it. he's better than i am. i would rather he do it. [inaudible] [inaudible] pushed out of the -- [inaudible] [inaudible]

[inaudible] [cheering and applause] [inaudible] [inaudible] at the close of that spoken,

black verse of the letter, king imagines freedom bells ringing from every mountain in the united. from red mountain in alabama and he imagines the day that blacks were to be sing "my country 'tis of though, sweet land of liberty." i'll close with this thought. with this celebration of the american nation, after all as in a few months later, he repeats this. it's in anticipation of i have a dream. when he sings hardly. his pronouncement in that church the sacred church if america is to be a great land was a taunt. it wasn't create great land. if black were able to sing with new meaning, my country 'tis of though, if they were singing able to sing at all, king lists

a series of ifs. we will protest together and go to jail together. then we will be able to sing. in short, the nation most white americans thought they live in wouldn't exist until black people and especially the black people of birmingham helped create it. thank you. [applause] >> welcome back, i should say. i want to recognize a few people who are here who were and/or freedom riders. one is katherine berks brooks who was part of the second wave of freedom riders. she was part of the national student movement, and is now a

local icon. can you stand up? [applause] and is dpowg john still here? he was the u.s. attorney here in birmingham who prosecuted the bombers of the 16th street church in 2002 and 2001. [applause] i guess it seem to be my lot in life establish the birmingham narrative of great event. i'm going give a little context about the letter from the birmingham standpoint. it sort of feeds in to this-ism we're in the mist of.

yearning that the country feels -- explainer and the human resources facilitators. and probably if you don't know anything about the birmingham story you might think he wrote the letter from jail. people read and said that is great. what actually happened at the time was that the letter, which king's chief of staff had seen as a propaganda opportunity, actually. he couldn't get anybody interested in it. as if the letter was typed up and sent around. there's a copy in jim's archive in the birmingham police surveillance file.

schfs a freefs campaign in georgia. he got out of jail too fast. he couldn't do it. at that point they couldn't get king -- it "new york times" magazine, you know, they couldn't get the assigning editor couldn't get it past the editor. so basically in this -- you see here which covered everything. there's only one page. and the reason is it made not one bit of difference at the title. the way i look at it is birmingham redeems anointed the letter. they said it's because of birmingham that now the sacred text in our democracy. i was interested in -- about how, you know, historians

have to write about something that has been on the story that the story that how am i going to come up with something new? i think the letter itself as well as the "i have a dream" speech have become part of reconciliation of myth. i'm reading the book and thinking this is john has really carved out the own angle and has to be the first commentator in history to refer to dr. king as a bad ass. i have to give it to you, john. tell me how -- it's, you know, i read the letter as a seething document. still fundamentally diplomatic. can you talk a little bit how partly listening the recordings and hearing him cut loose before the black church? >> the recording -- [inaudible] what i sphownd unknown

alternative version -- so much as the fact nobody -- [inaudible] nobody knew about it. and the fact everyone though you sense the seething in the words of the letter, it's just unmistakable when you hear it. but the other thing is in my last book, i had spent more than a decade cracking down recordings of dr. king and realize how much richness there was to the man that was left out of all the official narratives. scene so i have been discovering the other sides of king from talking to all the king's colleagues and tracking down again, the ordinary sermon. i had a sense of i already discovered how important black pride and, well, it wasn't a black nationalist. he wasn't so far away from many of the things that were radical people were arguing.

so hearing king both this preached version of the letter, but also more generally really changing my idea of what king the man was about. i taught the letter for twenty years. i kept seeing things that were in front of my eyes. it's only in the last couple of years they thought what is the meaning of the fact that he doesn't address the clergymen end spiritually. i can't find almost any other moment in which king doesn't end like that. and there's the text of work involved that involves both, again, the recordings c. herbert 09 vif. my re acquaintance with king.

if you know how the hear and read the letter from birmingham jail. it's all there. it's like meeting dr. king anew. you're a plover of sociology. how did you teach the letter during the twenty years of teaching it? >> i didn't teach that in a sociology course. i loved writing. i teach first-year writing seminar. i thought it was a great work. forget the substance for a minute. it's an amazing artistic establishment. we did a lot of looking at the text i took it out of the historical context. the anthropologists have a way of making everything proprietary. as an ethiopian an referred as white racial black lash in brooklyn. tell me about the -- i think of your birmingham.

it's something that comes out. a movement, the prison, and then the awakening. what a is the reaction you're getting. as you said, we're exposed to a "i have a dream" speech sermon on the -- you talk about the seething king. how did student respond to that. if u yo taught that. and how is the response to the book? >> well, i think the response has been really extraordinary so far. it comes on a number of levels. last week i was on tsh he was saying, you know, you have the tough king. of course, that is the letter king. not the dream king. and i said, no, no, no wait. if you listen to i have a dream, the king is there.

thing but that's in the first half. i said within no, it's in the second half too. if you know how to hear it. king i was a gene use at hiding and insinuating. he donees downtown anger in the second part book -- but look at the substance. he re-- preached version at 16th street baptist church at the end of dream he says we will be able to sing my country 'tis of though if we work together and protest together. so with king the stawns never varies. it's sometimes there in an insin situation in a hit. he's a jeeb use of adapting the tone to his intention. he wasn't yelling at the eight clergymen who made walker citied me his cup of endurance right

over. he wanted a civil rights bill. he didn't want to sort of chastise america mainly. suddenly the interracial groups that were meeting. the clergy not the eight clergy here one or two of them were perhaps over time responded. but there were rabbis and catholic priests and ministers who were joining in. king didn't want to kind of get in their face. because he was welcoming those allies. but it's still the toughness very much there. yes. i guess what you're saying, john, you haven't gotten any pushback for turning king in to wright? >> well, -- i'm kidding. >> it's a great question. because people, you know, my last book came on deion wrote a column on wright when she quoted

and he said, wright isn't martin luther king. we're not turning him in to that. neither is ryder. there is more than there in king that resonates with wright. if you read most of wrielgt's speeches which is something he also said. yes, i know diane can be a bad [ bleep ] as well. it's a good point that there is a long tradition in african-american theologies and preaching that has chastisement. there's the loving grace of the savior. they are all part of king. they are all there. the rebuke and the love. that's why ct said look he's telling them of the evil. that's what a preacher does in a prophet does because they can be redeemed. one way to think about it.

that's why the transition is a midpoint. when skinning basically done explaining, than to me is the most significant part. he gets all the reasonable part under the way. if you read from where he says i must confess my jewish and christian brothers and boom, it reminds you how complicated king's relationship to manners was. he was refined that never kept him from being tough didn't come out tough. when joseph put it to me once, he was a gentle spirit with a tough message. and vitamin sent's line as most of us know. king was an inconvenient hero. he meant to be increant, but america wants a convenient king who makes us feel good. >> let's transition to a more convenient season right now.

i think we should maybe read a little bit of the address to the moderate. -- the single page in my book about the letter pretty much dealing with his chastising of the moderate. i think that probably most of my -- i guess my biggest fear in terms of looking asking myself what i would have done back then is would i have been a moderate? the moderates don't do well in history. even the brave moderates who become liberals back then. somebody like david who really put a lot on the line. it you read -- , you know, went ton become mayor. he ousted bull connor from office. a young lawyer. if you read his quotes now from back then. he didn't look good. and yet he was really brave. and really progressive. i think i always wonder we know

he wouldn't have been in the clan or -- i always ask myself would i have had the courage act on a conviction that only going hurt me in order to maybe help somebody else? then be marginalized. there was a word for people in white people in the south who did speak out. it was called the -- so if you are going put yourself on the line, you're endangering yourself and joining the group. so that's maybe that's why his address to the moderate really got me. do you want to read a little bit of that? i do. i want to underline your point. i think it's essential. there's a tradition in white liberalism or not even liberalism. the enlightened folk to define themselves in opposition to the

red neck it's true in brooklyn, manhattan, or down here. there's a great statement that ralph has always made which is i always had great sympathy for the red knick and the wool hat. the second point that really, i think, diane makes. it's a prothreatic point which is none of can be smug or self-righteous. when he was mad, the northern liberal rabbi arrive on may 7 or 8th and walked down the 16th street baptist church. ..

fred shuttlesworth here's grafting complaining about how tough it is and they don't want to become visible in birmingham and they want to get into this and whiteside and here is a guy who has the courage to risk death taking way more risks and these people are complaining. he is supposed to sympathize with the whites who say go slow so these things are complicated and we need to be careful. that is what i think going back

to the text here and as many of you know, jim baggett has sponsored a reading that is spread -- of the letter that has spread across the country in the world which you should say something about pretty extraordinary. the far reaches of the world just like in europe. it's everywhere. andrew young said to me king preferred to speak rather than right and we all know that so if he could have delivered this he probably would have delivered it after all bad where is it? here we go. okay. this follows the section and i'm going to focus on his criticism first of the white moderate. he has not gotten to the white church.

listen to the portrait of the white moderate and he says lukewarm acceptance is harder than outright hatred. i have almost reached the conclusion that the great stumbling block is not the white citizens counselor of of the ku klux of the white moderate and here's the little portrait who is more devoted to order them to justice who prefers a negative speech which is the absence of tension to a positive which is the presence of justice who constantly says i agree with you but i cannot agree with your methods who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom who lived by an a mythical concept of time and constantly advises to wait for a more convenient season.

listen to passive/aggressive. i would hope that the white moderate would understand all of this. this is like what you would tell your kid. i'm very disappointed in you. i had hoped you would understand but i know you didn't. look what happens after he does that. the voice of the profit insinuates itself because not long after it he says we will have to repent in this generation not for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. human progress never rolls in on wheels and inevitability. now again we know what he said at 16th st. baptist church on april 22. we can add the sound back. he didn't say we will tell you to wait for a convenient season. he said wait for a more convenient season. that is all we have ever heard. so that is the critique of the white moderate and finally the white church that hides behind

stained-glass windows. he has now gone through this great trip. i have traveled. listen it's the gentile. i have traveled the length and breadth of alabama mississippi and all the other southern states in sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings i have looked at the beautiful churches with their lofty spirals going heavenward and impressive religious education buildings. over and over i found myself asking what kind of people worship? who is their god? where were their voices when the lips of governor barnett dripped with nullification. where were they when governor wallace gave a clarion call for violence and hatred? when bruised and weary men and women decided to rise from the dark into the complacency to the bright hills of creative protests?

and he has contrasted the church with the early christians and when he describes the christians it sounded like the foot soldiers. they went into town and were called outside agitators and extremists. because they were intoxicated by god and i will just read you one other aspect of the critique because now the preacher is back he writes, i have lost that great line but i will tell you what he says. oh how we have blemished the body of christ and king is saying maybe we have to get up on -- give up on the white equation. he is talking that talk but what he is saying is when he writes oh if you have heard king as i have when he preaches it once again it's oh oh how we have

limits the church of christ, the body of christ. that is what he says. they have been conformist and not courageous and therefore they are really guilty of spiritual malpractice and one other thing he says in criticizing the way of the moderate christian. i have longed to hear them. right here is where he said i have longed to hear them say love the black because he is your brother. it is tough. calling somebody lacking in ecclesia may not be insulting their mama but it's pretty tough. it's pretty tough when you're talking to your fellow christians. >> you make an important point in the book that when these moderates are appealing to the better nature of the self is not from the standpoint of justice. it's from the standpoint of law and order, that we should follow