attorney for rosa parks and the montgomery bus boycott case recounts his career and involvement in the movement. this is a little over an hour. ..

and somewhere in the audience is billy but let, a former preacher from tuskegee who now lives here and his daughter, jean nate. he came to us as our preacher to days after she was born. no she is a student here at georgia state, and i am upper shifted to them and maybe some other person's year. i met one lady who bought a copy of the first edition of bus ride to justice. it was in 1995. i had autographed it. i put a little note on it. she had to get the current edition because of live has happened since 1995.

men inside or not waiting for me as i walked out the white marble steps of the united states supreme court on all warm may morning in 1959. but i was waiting for them. i and those i represented have been waiting for several centuries. those are the beginning words of chapter one of bus ride to justice. i express the feelings that i had as i was doing so are you my first case in the united states supreme court even though i had other cases. add one other cases in that accord without oral arguments.

that was in the case of a million versus lightfoot. at one time the city the limits of tuskegee, alabama, where i live and where a 5% of the population is african-american and had difficulty in getting registered to vote. and when we finally were able to get a few people register to vote, they passed a state law changing the city limits, excluding potentially all of the blacks and leaving all the whites in. and then they say, we did not discriminate against you or deny you the right to vote. it is just that you don't live in the city. you can vote in the county election. you can vote in the state election. you can vote in the federal elections. but the supreme court changed all that. one other thing i did not

mention. we are also appreciative of c-span for being here today. in the last two weeks i have had the privilege of being involved in two programs that they have seen fit to cover. on the 24th of august in tuskegee we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of schools in alabama. this same time that there was one of the march is going on in washington. but as a result of that case, 50 years ago it was the first integration of any of the schools in that state. so i am appreciative that they are here today. >> what really is bus ride to justice? particularly the revised edition? it is the autobiography of fred

gray, however yes. but, you know, really, you will find it is more than that. it is the history of beautiful

sign as you came up today and what did say? rosa parks attorney. no one knows about who he is. so i guess i are to start off by telling you a little something about who fred gray is and then how in the world did i get involved in the civil rights movement. because you have many people who have become involved in the civil rights movement, and many of them have come -- become involved for many different reasons. i think there was share with you allied became involved in the movement. i was born in the middle of the depression, december 1419. in a few months will be 83. in montgomery, alabama, the cradle of the confederacy.

and i was born on the west side of town and park, what you would consider the get about. and nothing good was supposed to come out of that part of the city. i am the youngest of five children. my father died when i was to. my mother had very little formal education. but she was a very good christian woman, and she told us all, you can be anything you want to be if you do three things, one, keep christ first inning alive. two, stay in school and get a good education. three, stay out of trouble. don't get involved in the criminal-justice system. i tried to follow those

instructions and tried to instill in my four children those same basic principles. but as i was growing up there were not many things that a black boy in montgomery, alabama , could do in the late 40's and early fifties. there were two professions basically that a black cameraman could enter, and it was considered a well respected profession. you know what they are. one was what, to be a what? a teacher and the other was what? to be a preacher. that's right. to be a preacher and the teacher. and you did both of them on as segregated basis. so i decided i was going to be both. a preacher and a teacher.

my wife said may have to our church at the national christian institution, church of christ religious school. and apparently when i was 12 and we had a pioneer preacher and he would travel around to raise funds and solicit students. he took me with them. i was one of his for students on the strips. we traveled all over the southeast and parts of the southwest. when i finish school i went -- i knew a little something then about preachers. i went back home to alabama state, the historical black school in montgomery to learn how to be a teacher. and, of course, i told you, i lived on the west side of town, alabama state is on the southern town. it was, of course, segregated. we had to use city buses.

most of us did not have automobiles, like most people have today. it was during the time that i travel on those buses and so many of our people were mistreated, i never had any problems. other people did. in very few people in montgomery here did not have some sort of problem on the buses. and i also realized at that time that everything in montgomery was completely segregated based upon race. and now realize something else am particularly during my junior year. and that is, if a person of color had a cause of action against a white person, i don't care how meritorious was, there was very little likelihood, one,

that you could even get a lawyer it would handle the case. too, that you would really get any justice. so i decided that people not only needed to ultimately have their souls saved, but they need to be able to enjoy some of the constitutional rights that other people enjoy. and i made a secret commitment. and the best thing about the commitment other than the contents itself was the fact that it was a secret who it could get to somebody, i would never ever been able to do it. it was very simple. i was going to finish college. i was going to go to some voters law school.

was not going to apply to the university of delaware law school because i knew there were not going to accept me and that did not want to raise. and at that time of the seven states including alabama and georgia had a plan where to keep african americans from attending though white colleges and universities, state-supported once, they would pay, if the courses offered at the white university of college on a graduate or professional level and not at the historical black schools. in alabama that was alabama state combusted to speak or alabama and them and then spilled. the state would pay a portion of our tuition, room, and port and transportation. so you would have some sort of

money. the bad part about it was on a reimbursable basis, so you had to pay it out before you could get it. in the other part of it to my go to somebody's lost cool, fresh law school, come back to alabama, take the alabama bar exam everything segregated that i could find. can you imagine, in 1950, a black boy in the cradle of the confederacy even thinking that way? welcome i finished alabama state in may of 51, and rolled and western arizona university in september of 51, graduated in three years in june of 54, a few days after the swim court had ruled on the case of brown versus the board of education.

stop by columbus engine just in case and took the ohio bar exam. and then six weeks later i took the alabama bar exam. and in august of 1954i was advised by both bar associations that i had passed the bar exam the first time a ticket. and on september the seventh, just a few anniversary dates ago , i was licensed to practice in alabama. now i am ready to begin destroying everything segregated that i can find. those of you who know anything about the civil rights movement know i've represented rosa parks and dr. king.

but neither one of those was my for civil rights case. my first civil rights case was a 15-year-old girl named claudette . on march 2nd 19559 months before rosa parks did the same staying mrs. rosa parks did and the same thing happened there. she was arrested. refusing to give upper seat. and it was in downtown montgomery. probably within four blocks of the seventh. segregative i could find. mr. civil rights in montgomery, when he was called by her parents in recommended me.

they wanted it to be declared a delinquent. it is not that she is a delinquent. what you're really trying to do is enforce the segregation laws. the judge would not listen. i raise the issue. the first case, the first time i raise the constitutional issue. almost one of the first cases i had. but i lost. he declared to be a delinquent and, plaister of us a revised provision. and i wanted to file hirsute than. our committee was not quite ready.

you have to be patient. but she did for mama courage. became a very active mover in the civil rights movement. her book is entitled a montgomery bus boy, published by the university of tennessee press. she is now dead. as a matter of fact, i am the only living who was involved in the detailed answer go planning of the montgomery bus boycott. and going to tell you about that we are going to end pretty soon, let you ask a few questions. you have to read about all of the rest of it in the book. i think it is important that i tell you about the history of

the montgomery bus boycott because many people know about it. many of the authors have written it don't really know the details about it. any of you who have been involved in any kind of politics whether a social club or surety are fraternity know that most decisions are made before the meeting occurs. but when the meeting took place. now, whether you realize it or not, that is exactly what happens. a teacher at alabama state. i knew her when i was in college there, had a bad experience on the buses and montgomery in

1948. and she had never forgotten about that experience. basically an empty bus, but i mean bus driver who wanted her to sit further back the way she was sitting. but she kept a record of everything that to place. she, mr. nixon, and fred gray came to the rescue we went and talked to the bus company officials, city officials, tend to have a bus boycott. they assured us it would happen more. from the time i opened my office until the day of misses park's arrest, almost every day five days a week this part to work as a seamstress in that department store a block and a half a mile office she would bring her lunch

of to my office and i would have my lunch. he would talk about conditions in montgomery. we talked about a plot that. we talked about the lack of recreational facilities. we talked about the and the quality and all the problems that we had, and she was the secretary to the montgomery branch of the naacp. she was also the use director of it. and there has been dead been involved in corporate to raise the scottsville boys who had been imprisoned for allegedly raped back in the early 30's. a person very much interested. we talked about the type of person. it's time was right to do whatever needed to be done, solve the problems, and we could think of no better person.

we talked about it even on the day of her arrest. i told her that i was going to be out of town, and i was. when i got back was told that mrs. parks had been arrested. i know that mr. nixon had a gun and not a jail. a new destination was in town. we head so our rain is it that we would know when he was in or when he was out because if ever an opportunity cam, i knew that mrs. parks would do exactly what she did, as she knew exactly what to do and how to do it. we did not want her to stay in jail. after our talk at her house and she told me she want me to represent us and a 30, and then

left her house and went to mr. nixon's house. mr. civil-rights. he was a family friend, president of the branch of the n.a.a.c.p. he was fairly convinced that this is the time for us to do every are going to do thus solving the race problems. mr. nixon was not a man who knew how to plan. he was a man of action. i told them that i was going to go and leave his house. joanne was a planner she was the

one. ready to do something. for the next five hours we sat in her living room planned the montgomery bus boycott. there were several decisions that we reached. one, if we were going to ever solve the problems on the buses in montgomery, we must do it now secondly, if we're going to solve the, we want to do two things and also, i know that of some of the bear going to have to fire to file a federal suit to process. as we go through the process, how we will do it. well, number one, i am going to

write. this is what we need to do. we have to get the creature's because they have the ears of more people on sunday mornings than any other group. we have to get the black creatures involved. secondly, we're going to need somebody to serve a spokesman. everybody can talk for the group. someone is going to have to be designated. there were two persons in the community, one of which either one could have done well. nixon would have been a logical one. in the mail must surface los. not an educated man, but he was a pullman car. he knew a philip randolph, the black label leader and president of is a reunion.

only interested in one aspect of civil rights. that was people getting registered to vote and electing people to office. he had a club, the name of it was the citizens' club. and he says that in order to gain you had to be registered voter. and then, of course, you're going to need, if you're going to ask people to stay off the buses sometimes you have to have the transportation system and some money will need to be raised. and, of course, the last thing is if we are going to litigate, we're going to need a lawyer. the question is, who is going to be this lawyer. joanne said up front, i can tell you how we ought to get to be the spokesman.

number one, we need mr. nixon, and we need the ruperts louis folks. if either one of them is selected as the spokesman, we may lose some of the people. so why don't brief find a good person who can talk and convince people and then give these other two managers supporting roles. i will tell you we ought to get. martin luther king jr. having been in town for just over a year, never having been involved in civil rights activities, his first church, but he can move people by his words. and i told joanne, you know better than -- you know him better than i do. i have met him, but i don't know him. that's fine. i can tell you big positions for these other two men. nixon, he knows a philip randolph, a leader from the

york. make him treasurer. he will beat randolph to raise money in order to operate a transportation system as our litigation goes to the court system. well, what are we going to do with rufus list? well, we know about as well. there's another thing. he is married. co-owner of the largest film in town. her father had been co honor. and what to fuel homes have? automobiles. what do we need it people stay off of the buses? they need cars. he will be able to get his wives company, and that on mobility of a black companies. we can make him chairman of the

transportation committee. and the lawyers just out of law school, freddie great, he's going to do the legal work. we decided -- and endurance was one of the thing. a lot of meetings. i am going to do one thing. and we get done talking here tonight i am going to go and prepare a leaflet. i will make thousands of them. another black woman has been arrested. try will be on monday. buses during the day for child. as everybody to do that. assigned to each of those irresponsibility. we sent the word, got the word out about those three things happening. when the official meeting occurred in mount zion on a.m.

church on help st. the afternoon after her arrest, martin with the king jr. was elected to be the spokesman, and he was not present at the time it was elected. e. d. nixon was elected treasurer. rufus lewis was elected chairman of the church's petition committee. and the and lawyer just out of law school was selected to be the lawyer. that is what happened. and when the buses roll on monday very few, almost no black people or on the buses. and ran back to gain and hopes street baptist church said nine

and then related by the lawsuit integrated the buses, and we included in those budgets, cloud deck,. as a result of the montgomery bus boycott, a lot of other things happened. the n.a.a.c.p., the agitator's.

and after i had been selected to do the legal work, then i got scared, the left -- the best lawyers in the world. until then who love was. have been reading about it. i want to talk to you or your assistance. went to new york, met him. established a relationship with the n.a.a.c.p. in a legal defense fund that has existed from that third week in december of 1955 today. the first book signing i had for the -- for this edition was in may by the current female director counsel of the n.a.a.c.p. in washington.

now you know. a lot of activity that i told you about. i wanted to tell you and take the time out to do it in particularly since this has been an event for rosa parks lawyer, and that is exactly what it is, i want you to know that it is very important. but all of the other events, the city, the stand-in's, the freedom rides, montgomery or even the march on washington none of those things would have happened and the whole thing would be for naught. usually the auto you to other

things in a nonstop. as the. i believe, and this is the minister in part of me victims of. i think that the lord had a way of putting together a series of events and placing together various persons in one place and montgomery at a certain time that resulted in the beginning of the civil rights movement. the album bar association a october 1954. i spoke to the club, a club of senior black women who were interested in improving the conditions of blacks.

then that is a quote. i told those senior ladies it were old enough to be my mother and my grandmother, i told them and now is the time for us to integrate our schools and to destroy everything that we could find segregated. in for me to be telling those women that, but nobody criticized for. and those same women became very, very active in the movement. then they came to montgomery. nixon got him to come. he was talking about registration and voting. and then in october of 54 martin luther king jr. was installed.

also in october of 1955, mary louise smith, another teenager female was arrested under similar circumstances, we did not know about her case until after the bus boy, started. dec. first, rosa parks was arrested. i told you about the meeting did you and remington and i had to plan a session on december the fifth. that was the trial. the introduction of dr. king, to the nation into the world. and mrs. parks, and then that is a lawsuit that integrated. then after about 18 months the

lawyer permitted individuals to be in montgomery had a certain time, and you were able to put it altogether. we know about people like mrs. parks. we know about dr. king. we know about others. congressman lewis. consist at a conference with them, incidentally, i am the one, congressman lewis, john lewis as a teenager who wanted to go to school and away school in his hometown, church-state, and i met him at the bus station and introduced him to dr. martin luther king in 1958. that is his introduction to the civil rights movements. you know about those.

there are many others. if there had been no claw that and if she had not done what she did on the second of march 1956, mrs. rosa parks may not have done what she did on december december 1st 1956 -- 1955. and if she had not, she would not have been arrested on the first. the hope street baptist church. dr. king would not have been introduced to the community, to the statement to the nation, to the world. in the whole history of the sole rights movement may have been deferred there are many

individuals in the civil rights movement these faces never appear on television, his name is never appeared in france, but they are the ones who make it possible to do that. i am happy, and i am delighted that i was able to represent a lot of those people in breaking down vote loss not only for voting, but with recreations, with education, you name it, i probably filed more lawsuits than any other living lawyer the has resulted in changing things in this nation. and i am happy to be a part of it. even more important i think the history needs to be preserved. we decide to preserve it in two ways. one is i have written the story,

and if you want to know anything about the civil rights movement as it evolves, you will find it in basra for justice. and then secondly we have started in tuskegee, the tuskegee and civil rights were cultural center which is a museum. long before selma, long before montgomery, and long before birmingham, african americans in tuskegee were filing lawsuits for the right to vote. there were not concerned about people knowing about it, but we now have a museum there, and it is only 125 miles away from where you are down 85. you don't even have to stop for a red light between there and the tuskegee notice. and i think you will find it very interesting. i do have some brochures if you're interested i realize i've

only talked about rosa parks. i was motivated to do that. i had a whole list of things to tell you. but if you just remember that it started there and at all because the way things to come about, one must also know that this trial continues. i was in washington. was there yesterday. two weeks ago trying to get the congressional support to contact the attorney generals to intervene in the case in tuskegee, alabama where we have involved denial of voting rights , denial of civil rights, and denial of economic. they have learned to use our vote to develop economic and then when we developed the economic even they have a constitutional amendment been a

civil law is not that, so close it down. we still of the last to be hired in the first to be fired. we still in many instances have some real serious problems of education. we have a great deal of disparity in every aspect of american life. racism is still a problem. i told people that it is. there are two things we need to do. one is realize that it is still problem to it, it's not going to go away by itself work on a. and if it is going to be over ever you are going to have to have a plan and then you're going to have to execute the plan. that is what we did in montgomery. we had a problem. we have a plan. we execute the plan. it was the beginning of the civil-rights movement.

select the 44th president of the united states of america. thank you very much. [applause] >> a wonderful opportunity there has questions to someone who is there. raise your hand. the first question. over here. >> yes. what were you compensated by the n.a.a.c.p. all were they able to pay your legal fees to do their representation? maybe a personal question. what happened in most of the early civil rights cases.

now there was a formula used, and they did. not the total value of the service, but enough to survive on. it did not take as much in the early days. at the time -- nephew when one of these cases you get paid by the losing party. that was not the case then. you also have sometimes local groups who would raise some funds. that is just legal activities. >> thank you. >> those pictures new sitting in tables in their rooms. people who weren't really -- >> i have a hearing problem. >> i was picturing you as you were talking sitting in

conference rooms are in court rooms, face-to-face of people who were very opposed to you and trying to keep you from doing what you want to do and wondering what your source of strength were in the situations. >> what type of reprisals. >> personal source of strength when face-to-face with such obligations. >> the lawyer has a way of kind of helping gas have the strength of renewed. usually able to do it and you will find somebody to help the. it was at times i went back over the whole book, read it all, and

brought it up today. glad to do was go back and relive miles civil rights activities. and then i looked at three or four major. and i'm sure at the time i realized it, but over time you forget those things. you just have to really commit to something. he don't let physical things interfere. just keep going. yes, sir. >> i wanted to ask you a personal question about your own developments. use the law. it was not, in a prophetic vision, but believe that no one is above the law.

>> i really decided when i was a junior at alabama state and head of political science teacher his name was jean e. pierce and to have done a lot of research on voter registration and encourage me to be a lawyer. and he taught that the way to change things was through the legal system. and i wanted to name the title of a book. i wanted to name it changing the system by the system. but the editor decided bus route to justice when shorter and better command a think he's perfectly right. it was there nobody told him about.i saw mr. nixon, our persl friend. his wife went to the same church that i attended and sometimes stop my sun is go class, he was always trying inrs.

and that is what i decided. and even when it was back end of the my hand was lawyers render service, service to their clients, through the community, through the community's, the client, and to announce. anyway, it's in the book. >> yes. few pests the ohio bar. this is a time of the great migration. and so you went self. the pass the ohio bar. did you ever waver? kingdom gradually those problems behind and build a career and not go back to the segregation

and discrimination? >> never thought of it is that is why was there in the first place? i was there solely for the purpose of being able to go back to alabama and destroy everything segregated back find. i had a law school professor and adviser tried to advise me comices, fred, i think you can develop into a good lawyer. some good black lawyers. and he suggested i contact some of them. he thought i could get a job. i think tim for what he suggested, did not tell him with the plan was, but i told him that really help plan and my whole reason for coming was to go back to alabama. however, i was realistic enough to know, and i don't care how good or how for my paper was the

road for the alabama bar association, there was a good chance i may never pass it. so i stopped and took the ohio, just in case. >> i was born with the united states dedication of their own. raised still live there jim-crow life. i saw my parents living. impanel to read a few years ago, remember him. you know,.

[laughter] >> so i want to hear about how you stay safe. and how much danger did you actually experience? in birmingham, of course the mayor house would have been bombed and your family would have been terrorized. all kind of crazy things are that happened see just on the basis of what your doing. i have not heard much about what happened to you. >> there were couple of things.

central alabama did not have as much violence has what occurred in birmingham. we did have during the bus boycott several homes bond. nixon's was, dr. king's was, but nobody got hurt. and also in my personal case i was attacked once and the street but it really was not an attack on me because of anything add-on it was a mistaken identity. and then the attacks my law partner. but i have always recognized

that there was danger, albeit all kinds of phone calls. you would see in the new addition to bus ride to justice, and i did not know this until i was preparing the new edition. and i got my file from the bar association to my did not want to know what all there were trying to do a certain points because i felt it may have had an adverse effect on me. i said, whenever it is a rigid magnetic complaint i answered in usually awarded a lawyer to represent me. that came out of right. i found out that the very first complaint against me by somebody complaining to the bar occur two days after rosa parks case on december the seventh 1955.

and it happened of what is now a senior statesman in our state here developed into a great person. and i even appointed that person to a very influential position when i was president of the state bar. i did not know about it at the time. it's interesting to note how people can change. if you read very carefully bus ride to justice you will find i mentioned that mentioned the person's name, and i won't mention it tonight. but there were a lot of complaints, and the number of complaints filed. another thing i wanted thank president jimmy carter. he nominated me to be a federal district judge in alabama. as a matter of fact, it would have been the judge should that myron thompson now has and the

one that frank johnson who was the judge to rule with the son many of our cases, but it developed after giving me up sendoff at the beginning of my hearings later to say in effect, he did not realize that that would be -- that people would consider him rewarding me for what i have -- all the trouble light caused during the civil rights. you can eat any other black lawyer to be the judge. just don't get fred graham. a chapter in the book on the judgeship that was not to be. you may find it interesting. you may even find some people in there you think a great deal of. for various reasons may have taken the position rather inconsistent with other work that they do. all of that is a part of the

process. you just have to go through it. >> arguing in front of the supreme court. >> it was -- you know, like everything else you do as a first-time, you are always somewhat nervous. we have been well-prepared because i argued along with robert carter it was thurgood marshall's system who later became a federal judge in the district of new york in man and. we had had had dry run of it with the group of the best lawyers in the country in preparation for a. and i was even able to get them to agree with me. even though i was the youngest guy there, i wanted to argue, they wanted to argue due process of law, but i wanted to argue due process and equal protection . the end of operation, an

outstanding black lawyer from chicago. i agree with fred. at think we ought to argue. but the interesting thing is, i only read the first paragraph. if you read the next couple of paragraphs it was say, as i went up those steps i had a briefcase in one hand and the madman of time on the other. and when i got to the court i talk to the clear in the marshalls. i ask them, nighter ready to stop my argument, i wanted them to put this up. it was a map of the city of tuskegee drawn to scale that had the old city amendments, square and the new city limits and had $0.28 all right there so you can see it. and before i could start my

argument did justice to we were afraid of city council, what is it biondi. i told them that this is a map of the city of tuskegee. it shows you what it used to be, what it is now, and now blacks have been executed. it goes all here to put in a white person and then go all the way down here to take up the black one. he said, no, where is tuskegee institute. tuskegee institute is the institution that booker t. washington was first president of the majority washington carver could most of his discoveries there. i pointed out where the tuskegee institute is. he said, no, tuskegee institute is in this city let's commission to? i said, it was in the city

limits. but this has taken it out. he said, tuskegee institute is not in the city limits of the city of tuskegee. i said, no. i think that one mike case. i think that the. [roll call] the case for me. >> can you hear me okay? >> yes. >> went to preserve the civil rights movement and your role in next, but i want to fast forward to today. what do you think would be the best avenue of attack? racism in america. so in order to attack racism in america or eradicate, a legal, economic, or education? >> i'm going to answer your

question. we will tell you what -- and that may lectures to law students around the country and some lawyers. i tell them that when i was coming along and when i decided that we had a problem with racism in alabama, did not ask anybody what to do or how to do it. in my own mind i came up with what i thought was a solution, and that was for me to become a lawyer. and that is warranted. ..

the life expectancies of whites are longer than black, the income -- and if you look at the the annual report to the president on the status of african-americans, they set out all of these various economic indexes. in each one of the instances, they will show you how the disparity between the races, instead of narrowing, it is widening. and that is frightening. all of it, i don't tell you is

raised. a great deal of it is. i think the case i'm talking about, now is a case, if we are successful, and it's an uphill battle. if we don't have the supreme court now, not the court of appeal, not the district of judges that we used to have in the '50s and the '60s. but we still have to go through the process. but the civil rights movement has never been a one facet movement. true enough, the demonstrations in the speeches is not really changed the landscape of america. but changes in the court ordered it to be done. judge johnson ended up, he knew he had george wallace on the other side, and if he didn't get the federal government to enforce his orders, they were

going run him out of the state. so he designated the government as a plaintiff in a lot of cases, and that was particularly true in our case of lee v. -- which desegregated the schools in the alabama and started out as a single school system in maitland county. he started to hold a private school movement. i decided if he could close one school down, then i could add him as a party as a -- the super supersurnt about to as a party. and ask them to desegregate everything in the state. they did it. the first time anything like that has happened. i think the law is one part of it. people say all the time, well, i see all of these out here. i have never seen you in the mark. -- march.

the only time you have seen me in one is the ceremonial one. i went to the montgomery march even though after i got the order beaten back on bloody sunday and filed the suit in less than 24 hours. we had an order to protect them instead of beating them. the march has helped, the speeches helped, but for those things and where they taken have place it would -- probably not have been -- if the montgomery march had not taken place, we probably wouldn't have had the voting rights act. you know a good thing that has come notwithstanding what the supreme court did. if you had not had these students with the city and demonstrations at lunch counter we may not have godden the public accommodation act. it takes all of these things. racism is so ingrained in this state. it's going take the state

government, of the the federal government, the county government, the social clubs, and churches for everybody to work on it. until such time we all desire we're going work on it and work on it hard, we're going still have a problem. because this nation has never really lived up to and tried to solve the race problem. i hope they will. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> the call for action, please join me in thanking him. [applause] it's been a wonderful evening. he teased you with a little bit of what is in his book "bus ride to justice "you'll have to get the book to know the rest of the story. this time you'll have an opportunity to have his

signature and personalization or whatever. join us in the lobby for the signing. let's thank him one more time. [applause] [inaudible conversations] booktv is on facebook. like us to interact with booktv guests and viewers. watch videos and get up to date information on events. facebook.com/booktv. why does it matter? it matters because world war ii literally shaped the world we live in today. it preserved -- it's easy to forget this, it sounds like a cliche, it preserved the world for democracy. world war i, which we're going mention in a moment, had the slogan that woodrow wilson

called making the world safe for democracy. didn't work out that way, what it did was make the world ready for yet another war. in this case, if the access had gained more momentum, they might well have snuffed out the largest democratic society in the world. that's one element of it. it also ended the depression. the new deal had failed to do that despite strenuous attempt. the start of large expenditure in may of 1940 is what finally started putting the depression to bed. from that point on, the economy grew by leaps and bounds, because of the war effort. and in doing that, it put a whole generation of unemployed americans back to work, and then some. a lot of people who had never worked. when we talk about sacrifice, which we will in a couple of

minutes, it's an ironic thing that the war made a lot of americans much better off than they had been in the past, if at all, because they had gone through -- a lot of them had gone through some very hard time. it created all kinds of modern institutions. everything from the tax system to social security, which was on the books then, but which was in effect nailed down during the war. it crazy -- created what we now call the industrial military complex, and it created literally the american military. if that is the way that this war turned out, nobody saw this pretty much at the beginning. that's where this story start. i want to make two or three basic points that really governs where the book went.

the first -- excuse me, the first of these is that there's really two eras that we're talking about here, and they are very, very different. the first one, which we call preparedness, begins when hitler invaded poland in september of 1939 and goes to pearl hair bonn. -- harbor. that 27 months is the most difficult time. we aren't in the war. we don't want to be in the war. we want to, in many cases, pretended we have dog in with the war. i'll explain in a moment. as a result, it was very difficult to get america to start mobilizing it defenses. so this period is full of con -- conflicts, disputes, denials, and so forth. the second point is that one of the reasons why you have this

kind of difference is the legacy of world war i. the end of world war i left a very bad taste in americans' mouth. it didn't come out the way it was supposed to. the idealism got crushed. it ended up with a cynical treaty of versailles that set the stage for world world war ii. it did not -- there's a joke about we beat the germans in 1917, and they hardly bothered us since. they bothered us very much in the years to come. but more important for americans was how the war ended at home. number one, we sometimes forget this. on the tail end of the war came the worst epidemic in modern history, the great flu epidemic of 1918-' 19 which killed 20 million people worldwide and quite a number of americans.

that was sort of a side car. number two, the american economy had ramped up to produce armament for the war. ironically, most of the armaments never got in the war. when we got in the war in april of 1917, we used mostly european weapons. for example, we started billing -- building airplanes. not a single american airplane got in the war. not a single american tank got in the war. the hand grenades, the handguns, et. cetera we bought from the british. at that point, by 1918, was the largest armaments industry in the world. almost immediately after the arm armists and the end of the war, the government started can'ting contracts. when i say canceling i mean just like this. without warning, they pulled them. factories were left, you know, literally with production lines still half full.

thousands of workers were let go without warning. in a state like connecticut really felt this. it had so many of these kinds of plants, and companies were left with buildings, factory, plant they had built to produce armaments. well, they said, you have to do something for us. what are we going to do with the buildings and the machinery and so forth. at the very least, give us some kind of tax credit so we can carry these in case they rfer needed again. government wouldn't do it. the result was that in almost every case, these companies, everybody from remmington arms to you name it, simplier to down the factories. gutted them because they didn't want to carry the expense of them. the result was by the time you get to 1939, we have no armament industry. so when the war breaks out in

europe, we're in very pitiful shape. the u.s. army is something like 28th in the world. when it went on maneuvers in 1940, which were kind of a farce, "time" magazine said after looking at these, it appeared as if they might give a good battle to a group of boy scouts and not much more. all of this coupled with the scandals that emerged after the '20s and the '30s over munitions contracts, bankers they qop -- develop a whole idea which became popular that the war was brought on by the bankers and the munitions manufacturers simply for profits. that weighed very heavily. when it came time in the

1939-'40 period to talk about mobilizing preparedness, one of the themes was we're not going make another generation of instant millionaires. franklin roosevelt was very sensitive to this. he obviously had his conflict with the business community. he wasn't about to let that happen, but at the same time, he had to get this process moving. and so that was one of his many dilemma after the innovation of poland. you can watch this and other program online at booktv.org. the book tells a story. it tells a story of a nuclear weapons story that occurred in? christmas --??????? damascus, arkansas.????? i use it as looking at the??? management of the nuclear devic? invented in 1945.???????? and i hoped to remind readers

that these weapons are out there. they're still capable of being used, and there's probably no more important thing that our government does than manage them. because these are the most dangerous machines ever built, and i think the subject has fallen off the radar quite a bit since the end of a cold war. >> word you don't want to hear together. nuclear weapons and accidental debt -- detonation. "command and control "tonight at 9:00 part of booktv this weekend on c-span2. former senator cay -- kay bailey hutchison is next on booktv. she profiles numerous women in the state of texas. this is about 30 minutes. [applause] thank you verymu