dr. king and i might do a book on jackie kennedy. anyone else? thank you very much. [applause] .. >> that was james swanson, author of "the president has been shot" from the 2013 southern festival of books. ..

is generally not a conservative thing. journalism tends to draw to be fair to say people are more liberal. >> bad news is good for cartoonists because it gives us paula of fodder but i would rather work harder and have less bad news and no we are going in the right direction and i think we are not going in the right direction. i feel like it is the real calling for me to get my opinions out there. >> this weekend on c-span is not not all fun and games for

editorial cartoonists. here wyatt and:00 eastern. c-span2's booktv, the life of outlaw jesse james and the infamous james younger game tonight at 7:45. on c-span3's american history tv four decades after watergate a look and nixon and the saturday night massacre sunday afternoon at 1:00. next on booktv, fred gray, the attorney for rosa parks recount his career and involvement in the civil rights movement. this is all little over an hour. >> to each of you who have come this evening i want to thank you for coming. i recognize the fact there are many places you could be other

than here but you elected to come and i hope you won't be too disappointed once we finish here this evening. let me acknowledge the presence of my wife, carol, who is with me and her daughter, june, and somewhere in the audience my former preacher from tuskegee who lives here and his daughter. he came to us as our preacher two days after she was born. now she is a student here at georgia state and i am appreciative to them. there may be other persons here. i met one lady who bought a copy of the first edition of "bus ride to justice" and it was in 1995 and she had it and i had autographed it and we are glad she is here and i put a note on it and said she has to get a

current edition because a lot of things have happened since 1995. the nine old men inside were not waiting for me as i walked up the steps of the united states supreme court on a warm may morning in 1959, but i was waiting for them. i and those i represented had been waiting for several centuries. those are the beginning words of chapter one of "bus ride to

justice". i expressed the feelings that i had as i was going to argue my first case in the united states supreme court even though i had other cases and had won other cases in that court without oral argument. that was in the case where at one time the city limits of tuskegee, alabama, where 85% of the population is african-american, had difficulty in getting registered to vote and when we finally were able to get a few people registered to vote they passed a state law changing the city limits of tuskegee, excluding the sensually all the blacks and leaving all the whites in comments and then they say we didn't discriminate against you, didn't deny you the right to

vote, and it is just that you don't live in the city. you can go to the county election, the state election, the federal election, but the supreme court changed all that. one other thing i didn't mention, very appreciative of c-span for being here. within the last two weeks, being involved in two programs they have seen fit to cover on the 24 of august, the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of schools in alabama, the same time there was one of the marches going on in washington. as a result of that case, 50 years ago it was the first integration of any schools in

the state. that is the reason we are here today. what is "bus ride to justice"? particularly the revised edition of the told you something about. is the autobiography of fred gray, whoever he is. but you will find it is more than that. it is a history of the civil rights movement as it began in montgomery, alabama, in december of 1955, spread it throughout the state, throughout the country. the perfect went around the world, almost every civil rights event that has occurred since

1955, to some degree, you can trace a great deal of it back to montgomery, alabama. so "bus ride to justice" gives you a real history of the civil rights movement and to a lesser degree that shows the role that fred gray played in the civil rights movement as it developed as it spread a round world. today, you read about the marches and the speeches and read about and see on television the demonstrations and all of those things, on spreading the word and motivating people to do

things, lawyers have almost been completely forgotten about in the civil rights movement. you know about dr. king, you know about mrs. potts, beautiful song and as you came up today. rosa parks's attorney, who is he? nobody knows who they is. tell you something a little bit about who is fred gray and how in the world did i get involved in the civil rights movement. you have many people involved in the civil rights movement. many of them get involved for different reasons. and i think i will share with you how i became involved in the

movement. i was born in the middle of the depression, december 14th, 1930, in a few months of being 83. in montgomery, alabama, the cradle of the confederacy, and i was born on the west side of town, washington park, what you would consider the ghetto. and nothing good was supposed to come out of that part of the city of montgomery. i am the youngest of five children, my father died when i was 2 and my mother had very little formal education, but she is 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

price first in your life, 2, stay in school and get a good education, and free, 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 weren't many things that black boy from montgomery, alabama, could do paula deron two provisions of black young man could enter and considered a well-respected profession and you know what they are? one was what? to be a what? a teacher. and the other was what? to be a preacher.

that is right. to be a preacher and be a teacher and both of them on a segregated basis because everything was segregated. so i decided i was going to be both, a preacher and the teacher. i went to our church school in national christian institute, the church of christ related school. and when i was 12, a preacher would travel around to solicit students and took me with him. i was one of his first students on those trips and we traveled all over the southeast to the southwest. when i finished school, i knew a little something about reaching. i went back home to alabama state, the historical black school in montgomery, to learn

how to be a teacher. and i told you i lived on the west side of town. alabama state is on the east side of town. it was segregated. we had to use the city buses. most of us didn't have automobiles like most people have today. it was during the time that i travelled on those buses and saw many of our people who were mistreated, i never had any problems but i saw other people who did and there were very few people in montgomery to did not have some sort of problem on the buses. are also realize at that time that everything in montgomerie was completely segregated based on race. and i realized something else.

particularly during my junior year. and that is if a person of color had action against a white person, i don't care how meritorious was, but there was very little likelihood that you could even get a lawyer who would hear the case and 2, that you would really get any justice. so i decided people not only needed to ultimately have their souls shaved, but they need to be able to endorse some of the constitutional rights that other people enjoy who are citizens and i made a secret commitment, and the best thing about that commitment other than the content itself was the fact that it was a secret. because if i had ever told it to

anybody, i would never have been able to do it. and it was very simple. i was going to finish college at alabama state, go to somebody's law school, go to the university of alabama law school because i knew they were not going to accept me and i didn't want to raise any sand and at that time, all of the southern states including alabama and georgia had a plan where to keep african-americans from attending white colleges and university, they would take, if a course was offered, at the white university college on a graduate professional level and not offer at the historical black school in alabama that was alabama

state, tuskegee, alabama a&m and hence ville the state would pay a portion of tuition room and board in our transportation costs. the bad part about it was on the reimbursement basis. had to tear it out before you can get it. the other part is i would go to somebody's law school or finish law school, come back to alabama, and destroy everything segregated i could find. can you imagine? in 1950, a black boy in the cradle of republican confederacy even thinking that way? i finished alabama state in may of 51, and rolled in western reserve university, cleveland,

september of 51, graduated in three years in june of 54, a few days after the supreme court ruled on the case of brown vs. board of education, stop by columbus in june just in case and took the ohio bar exam and then six weeks later took the alabama bar exam and in august of 1954, i was advised by both bar association that i had passed the bar exam first-time i took it. and on september 7th, september 8th, 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 represented rosa parks, and represented dr. king, but neither one of those was my first civil rights case. my first civil rights case was a 15-year-old girl named claude ed cotton who on march 2nd, 1955, nine months before rosa parks, did the same thing rosa parks did, and the same thing happened to her, she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a city bus in montgomery. and it was in downtown montgomerie too. if you take it in terms of distance probably within four blocks of each other.

i thought this was my opportunity now to begin to destroy everything segregated i could find. the civil rights fair in montgomery, when he was called by her parents, he recommended me and represented claudette and raised the fact, they wanted us to be declared delinquent and it is not the she is a delinquent but you are trying to enforce the segregation laws. the judge wouldn't listen. i raised the issue, the first case the first time i had raised the constitutional issue, almost one of the first cases i had period, but i lost it. he declared her to be a

delinquent, placed her on unsupervised probation, but claudette, wanted to file her suit then but the community hadn't quite wanted to do it. you have to be patient and lawyers can't represent themselves in these cases. but she gave the moral courage because joanne robinson who later became the very active mover in the civil rights movement and had it written a book and her book is entitled to bus boycott and the women who started, published by the university press, she is now dead. as a matter of fact, i am the only living person who was involved in the detailed

interval planning of the boylston -- the bus boycott and i will tell you a little bit about that and end pretty soon and let you ask a few questions that you have to read about the rest of it in the book. it is important that i tell you about the history of the montgomery bus boycott because many people don't know about it. many of the authors who have written it don't really know the details about it. they know the official meeting but any of you who have been involved in any kind of politics, whether the social club or sorority, opportunity, political organization, know that most decisions are made before the meetings occur. there are some people somewhere interested in the result of the meeting who did what they needed to do so that when the meeting took place the result that they had preplanned occurred. with 3 you realize it or not

that is exactly what happened with the montgomery bus boycott. joanne robinson who was a teacher at alabama state and i knew her when i was in college, had a bad experience on the buses in montgomery in 1948. and she had never forgotten that experience. an empty bus but a mean bus driver who wanted her to sit further back from where she was sitting but she kept a record of everything that took place. shea, mr. nixon, and fred gray, came to the rescue of claudette. i represented her, we went and talked to the bus company officials and city officials and threaten to have a bus boycott. and assured us what happened to claudette would not happen again. from the time i opened my office

until the day of mrs. parks's a rest, almost every day, days a week, mrs. parks, who worked as a seamstress in a department store a block from my office doing her lunch hour she would bring her lunch to my office and i would have my lunch and we would talk about conditions in montgomery. we talked about claudette, we talked about the lack of recreational facilities, we talked about the inequality and all the problems that we had and she was secretary to the montgomerie branch of the naacp, she was also the youth director of it and her husband had been involved in helping to raise funds for the scottsboro boys who had been in prison for allegedly raped in the early 30s and so she was a person very

much interested and we talked about the type person -- whatever needed to be done to file the problem this and we could think of no better person, we talked about it and the day of the arrest. i told her i was going to be out of town and i was. when i got back i was told mrs. parks had been arrested. and i know that mr. nixon had gotten out of jail and was -- so arranged it that when he was out because of whenever an opportunity came i knew mrs. parks would do exactly what she did and she knew what to do and

how to do it but we didn't want her to stay in jail. after i talked with her at her house and she told me she wanted me to represent her, this was on thursday evening, the trial was monday morning at 8:30 in the city of montgomery, i left her house, to mr. nixon's house, mr. civil rights, family friend, president of the branch of the naacp, thoroughly convinced this was the time for us to do whatever we are going to do about the race problems and the bus problems. mr. nixon was not a man who did a lot of planning. he was the man of action. i told him i was going to go and

leave his house and go to joanne robinson's house because joanne was a planner and she had had a bad experience and she had the records of what had taken place and she was the one who had contacted city officials on claudette's case and she was ready to do something so i went to her house and for the next five hours, we sat in her living room and planned the montgomery bus boycott. decisions that we reached. if we were ever going to solve the problem of the buses in montgomery we must do it now. secondly, if we are going to solve it we want to do two things. we know they are going to convict us so it is going to be appealed. i told joann ultimately we will

file a federal suit to solve it but have to go through the process. and she said we need to do -- need to have people stay off of the buses while we go through the process. how are we going to do it? number one, i am going -- let's look at what we need to do. we have got to get the word out. we have got to get back preachers' because they have the years of most people on sunday morning than any other group so we have to get black preachers involved. secondly we need somebody to serve as spokesman. everybody can't talk for the group but someone has to be designated spokesman. there were two persons in the community, either one could have done it well, nixon would have

been the logical one and then -- nixon was not an educated man. he knew randolph was a black labor leader and president of his labor union. and there was rufus lewis who had been at court in alabama state but was only interested in one aspect of civil rights and that was people getting registered to vote and he electing people to office. he had a club. the name of it was the citizens' club. and he said in order to get in, you had to be a registered voter. then, of course, we are going to need, if you ask people to stay off the buses you need the transportation system and some money to be raised and of course the last thing is if we are

going to litigate you need a lawyer so the question is who is going to be this lawyer. joanne said the upfront to fred, i can tell you who we ought to get to be the spokesman. number one we need mr. nixon's folks and we need rufous lewis's folks. if either one of them is selected spokesman we may lose some of their people so why don't we find a good person who can talk and convince people and give these other men good supporting roles. she said i tell you who we ought to get, my pastor, martin luther king jr. had been in town just a little over a year, never been involved in civil rights activities, this is his first church, but he can move people by his words. i told joanne, you know him

better than i do. i have met him but i don't know him. that is fine. i can tell you good positions for these other two men, nixon, he knows randolph, the labor leader in new york, make him treasurer. he will get randolph to raise money in order to operate a transportation system as litigation goes through the court system. what are we going to do with rufus louis? we know about his club but there is another thing about rufous louis, he is married to jewell clean -- clayton, cote owner of the largest steel home in town. her father had been co owner there. what do funeral homes have?

automobiles. what do we need if people are going to stay off the buses? they need some cars, he will get his wife's company and that funeral home will get other black companies, we can make the transportation committee and the lawyers just out of law school, fred gray, looked at the legal work. we decided, one other thing, fred, you believe in having a lot of meetings, i will do one thing. when we get through talking here tonight i am going to go and prepare a leaflet, make thousands of them and say another black woman has been arrested, the trial will be on monday, we will stay off of the buses during the day of the trial and ask everybody to do

that. we assign to each other certain responsibilities. we got the word out to others about those three things happening. when the official meeting occurred on hope street, the afternoon after her arrest, martin luther king jr. was selected to be the spokesman and he was not present at the time he was elected. nixon was elected treasurer, rufus lewis was selected chairman of the transportation committee and the young lawyer just out of law school, was selected to be the lawyer for the movement. that is what happened. when the buses rolled on monday,

very few, almost no black people were on those buses. when dr. king spoke to the group at hope street baptist church that night, everybody knew that we had made the right selection on the person we selected and the rest is history. involvement in representing rosa parks and dr. king and the persons involved in lawsuits and later filed a lawsuit on the second or third of february of 1956, at integrating the buses, we included in those, claudette carver. as a result of the montgomery bus boycott, you have a lot of

other things happen. the next year the attorney general of the state of alabama joined the naacp from doing business because they felt the naacp even though we formed a new organization were the agitators and after i had been selected to do vote legal work, we got scared and said i know they will have the best lawyers in the world and i heard about thurgood marshall. you know what i did? i had enough sense to get on the phone and call thurgood marshall in new york, told him who i was, had been reading about the bus boycott and said mr. marshall, i want to come up there and talk to you or your assistance. i need your help and we need your help. went to new york, met him, established a relationship with the naacp and the legal defense fund that has existed from that third week in december of 1955

to date. the first book signing i had for this edition was in may by the current female director counsel of the naacp in washington. now you know. there are a lot of other behind-the-scenes activities i haven't told you about but i wanted to tell you and take the time out to do it and particularly, tony, since this is billed as an event for rosa parks's lawyer and that is exactly what it is i want you to know it is that and it is very important, but all of the other events, it was the stand ins, the freedom rides, to

montgomerie, even the march on washington, had there been no montgomery bus boycott, none of those things would have happened and the whole thing would not have happened. i will tell you two other things and stop. i think. [laughter] >> i believe, this is the minister part of me that comes out, i think that the lord had a way of putting together a series of events and placing together various persons in one place in montgomerie at a certain time that resulted in the beginning of the civil rights movement. let me just give it to you. on september 8th, 1954, fred

gray was admitted to the alabama bar association. october 1954, i spoke to the club of senior black women interested in improving the conditions, robinson was a part of it, and in "bus ride to justice" there is a quote and i told those senior ladies who were old enough to be my mother or grandmother, i told them now is the time for us to integrate our schools and to destroy everything we could find segregated. and telling those women that but nobody criticized before it and those same women became very active in the movement.

and the black congressman came to montgomery, nixon got him to come and talking about registering and voting and in october of 54, martin luther king jr. on baptist church. also in october of mayor louise smith, another teenager female was arrested under similar circumstances but we didn't know about her case after the bus boycott started. december 1st rows of parked was arrested. i told you about the meeting we had in the planning session, on december 5th there was a trial, the introduction of dr. king to

the nation and world, and mrs. parks's trial. and brown versus gail was filed, the lawsuit integrated with us. the lord permitted individuals to be in montgomery and a certain time and we were able to put it all together. and we know about others and your own congressman lewis and -- washington attending the ceremony for the full girls who were killed and have a conference with him and incidentally i am the one who met congressman lewis, john lewis was a teenager who wanted to go to school in a white

school in his home town and i met him at the bus station and introduced him to dr. martin luther king in 1958 and that is his introduction to the civil rights movement. you know about those persons but you don't know about people like claudette carver and many others. if there had been no claudette carver who had not done what she did on the second of march in 1956, rosa parks may not have done what she did on december 1st, 1955, if she had not been arrested, there would be no trial, there would be no meeting at home street baptist

church. and in that community, the state, the nation and the world's, the whole history of the civil rights movement, and for claudette, there are many individuals in the civil rights movement whose face is never appear on television, whose names never appear in print, 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, not only thinking the world for voting but returns and recreation with farm subsidies. and more lawsuits than any other living lawyer that has resulted

in changing things. happy to be part of it. and history needs to be preserved. we decided to preserve it in two ways, one is i have written the story and because you want to know anything about the civil rights movement as it evolves from montgomery will find it in "bus ride to justice" and secondly we started in tuskegee, the tuskegee human and civil rights multi-cultural center which is the museum where long before montgomerie and long before birmingham, african-americans in tuskegee were filing lawsuits in the early 40s. we are not concerned about knowing from it, and only 125

miles away, not even stopping between a red light and the std exit and i think you will find it very interesting. i do have some books here if you are interested in it. i realize i have only talked about the rose of parks story. i was motivated to do that and had a whole list of things to tell you. if you just remembered that it started there and all these other things have come about but i also want us to note that the struggle continues. i was in washington, i was there yesterday and two week ago trying to to get the congressional support to contact the attorney general to intervene in the case in tuskegee, alabama where we have involved the denial of voting rights and civil rights and economic income, we have learned

to use our vote to develop economics, and when we develop the economics, the attorney-general of the state, the constitutional amendment to do what she did i said the lord is not that so close it down. we still are the last to be heard and the first to be beside. we still in many instances have serious problems with education. we have a great deal of disparity in every aspect of american life. so racism is a problem in this nation and i tell people it is a problem and three things we need to do, realize racism is still a problem because if we don't realize it we will never solve it. two it will never go away by itself. we are going to have to work on it.

if it is going to be over ever, you have to have a plan and have to execute the plan. that is what we did in montgomery. we have a problem, we have a plan, we executed the plan, it was the beginning of the civil rights movement. as a result of it and what took place we were instrumental in selecting the 40 fourth president of the united states of america, thank you very much. [applause] >> we have a wonderful opportunity to ask questions of someone who was fair. so please raise your hand and wait for the microphone and get the first question. the gentleman over here.

>> fred gray, we compensators by the naacp, where they able to pay your legal fees, may be a personal question? >> what happened in most of the early civil rights cases, the naacp had a formula they used and paid lawyers something. it was enough to survive on and didn't take as much in nearly days to survive and at that time, if you win one of the civil rights cases you get paid by the losing party but that was not the case then. and local groups raised some funds with legal activities. >> thank you. >> as you were talking, i was

picturing you sitting at tables and courtrooms face-to-face -- >> i am a little hearing problem and i can't quite see you. >> i was picturing you as you were sitting in conference rooms or court rooms face-to-face with people who were very opposed to you and trying to keep you from doing what you want to do and what were your sources of strength in those situations? >> what type of reprisals? >> personal sources of strength when faced with such opposition? >> the lord has a way of helping us to have the strength we need. we are willing to try to do something, it will usually be

able to do it and you'll find somebody to help. i found in my experience, at times i became more aware of this, i was updating bus ride to justice because i went over the whole book, read it all and brought it up to date but to go back and relive my whole civil rights activities and then i looked at three or four major cases that i had going on at the same time and i am sure i realize it but over time you forget those things but if you are really committed to something, you don't let physical things interfere with you if you try to keep going. yes, sir? >> i wanted to ask you a personal question about your own

development and you could use the law to leverage change. it was an e epiphany. you and nelson mandela believed you could put it to advantage. >> i really decided when i was a junior at alabama state, a political science teacher whose names was pierce, who had done a lot of research on voter registration and encouraged me to be a lawyer and he thought the way to change things was through the legal system and i wanted to name the title of the book changing the system by the system, they have an across the top. the editor decided "bus ride to justice" was shorter and better and probably right.

nobody told me about it but i just felt there was a need and i saw mr. nixon, who was my personal friend and his wife went to the same church i attended and taught my sunday school class, he was always trying to find lawyers and found out lawyers help people. that is when i decided even when i became the president, the scheme i had was boyars render service, service to their clients, to the community, and to the client, the community and who else? another one. it is in the book. yes, sir? >> you took the ohio house and this is the time of the greek

migration discussed in the book. and reserve law school. did you ever wavered? did you ever think i will leave those problems behind and build a career, successful life and not go back to the segregation and discrimination and hardship? >> never thought about that. that was why i 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 i could find. i have a was school professor and my adviser who tried to to advise me, he says i think you can develop into a good lawyer and they have good lawyers in cleveland and suggested i contact some of them. and fought i could get a job and thanked him for what he

suggested. and sell him what my plan was, i told him, the whole reason for coming was to go back to alabama. i was realistic enough to know that i don't know how good rapport my paper was the road for the alabama bar association, there was a good chance i would never pass it so i started with the ohio bar just in case. >> good to be in your presence. the bar association of american panama where the united states had an apartheid system and we were raised to live the jim-crow life in central america and our own country, and another way,

people in panama. a few years ago i travelled to sean hannity remember from georgia, we shall overcome but what you did, can't say enough for what you have done. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> i am an alabama girl. so i want to hear about how you stayed safe, and how much danger did you actually experience? in birmingham your house would have been bombed and your family would have been terrorized and all kinds of crazy things would have happened to you on the

basis of what you were doing. i haven't heard a whole lot about what happened to you. >> there are a couple things. central alabama, particularly central and eastern parts of the state, did not have as much violence as what occurred in birmingham. we did have during the bus boycott several homes were burned. dr. king's was. nobody got hurt. also in my personal case i was attacked once on the street.

it was not an attack on me because of anything i had done. it was a mistaken identity. the man thought he was attacking my law partner. i have always recognized the fact that there was danger. i did get all kinds of phone calls and you will see in the new edition to "bus ride to justice," i didn't know this until i was preparing the new addition and i got my file from the bar association, i didn't want to know what all they were trying to do because i felt it may have had an adverse effect on me. whatever it is, every time i get a complaint my answer, usually i get a lawyer to represent me and i came out all right but i found out the very first complaint

against me by somebody complaining to the bar, occurred two days after rosa parks's case on december 7th, 1955, and it happened, what is now senior statesman in our safe developed into a great person. and a pointed that person to a very influential position when i was president of the state bar. i didn't know about it at the time. it is interesting to note how people unchanged but if you read very carefully "bus ride to justice" you will find i mention that and even mention the person's name and i won't mention, have to go through and sign it. there were a lot of complaints, any number of complaints filed

and another thing i want to 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 judgeship that madeleine thompson now has and the one that frank johnson, who was the judge who ruled with us on many of our cases, but it developed that we decided after giving me a glowing sendoff at the beginning of my hearings later to say in effect that he didn't realize people would consider him rewarding the for all the trouble i had caused the civil rights field so you can get any other black lawyer to be the judge, just don't get fred gray.

there is a chapter in the book on the judgeship that was not to be. you may find it interesting or find people who you think a great deal of, who for various reasons had taken the position rather inconsistent with other work that they do. that is part of the process and you just have to go through it. >> what was it like arguing in front of the supreme court? >> like everything else you do as a first time, you are always somewhat nervous. we had been well-prepared because i argued along with robert carter who was thurgood marshall's assistant to became a federal judge in the district of new york in man hadn't hattan , dry run with the best lawyers in

the country and even though i was the youngest guy there, they wanted to argue due process of law but i wanted to argue due process and equal protection on the other end of our preparation run, an outstanding black lawyer from chicago said i agree with fred, you should argue both of them. but the interesting thing is i only read the first paragraph to chapter i. if you read the next couple paragraphs, as i went up those steps, i had a briefcase in one hand and the map under my arm on the other. . when i got to the court i talked to the clerk and the marshall. and i asked when i get ready to start my argument i wanted them to put this up. it was a matter of the city of

tuskegee drawn to scale that had old city limits which was the square and the new city limits that had 28 sides, all right there so you could see it. .. the institution that booker t. washington and was vice-president of, george washington followed it.

and i've pointed out salt where the tuskegee institute is. he said, now, it's in the city limits of tuskegee, isn't it? i say, it was in the city limits. but this act has taken it out of the city limits. he said, tuskegee institute is not in the city limits of the city of tuskegee? he said it -- as said, no, sir, mr. justice. i think that one might case. i think that map won the case for me. i saw another end. >> i know the history of the civil rights movement and your role in it, but i want to fast forward to today. what do you think would be the best avenue of attack.

the allusion is that racism does not exist. in order to attack racism in america and legal, economic, educational double or a three-pronged approach? >> i'm going to answer your question by telling you what -- and nine may lectures to lusted surrounding 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. that is what i did, and i tell these young lawyers, all the electronic to vote -- of

electronic devices and knowledge you have, lot more tools than we have, you should be able to see these problems and find a way of solving. having said that, i alluded to two or three things. i think economic discrimination, at the disparity. you find a line between black and white. you have more influential african american and minorities. the life expectancies of weights are longer than black. the in come -- and a few looking at the urban league, it produced an annual report to the president on the status of african-americans, and they set out all of these various

economic indexes, and in each one of the instances they will show you how the disparity between the races instead of narrowing is widening. and that is frightening. it now, all of it is not race, but a great deal of it is. i think the case i'm talking about in macon county bell is a case, if we're successful, and it is an uphill battle because we don't have the supreme court now. that court of appeals, the district judges that we used to have in the 50's and 60's, but we still have to go through the process. the civil rights movement has never been a one facet movement. true enough the demonstrations and the speeches are not what really change the landscape of america.

what changes are those federal court orders. when the court ordered it to be done. and he knew he had george wallace on the other side. and if he did not get the federal government to enforce his orders they will run him out of the state. so he has designated the government in a lot of cases, and that was particularly true in our case of lee fee and make in which segregated all of pistols and alabama. it started out as a single school system and the governor decided to close it down rather than let it be integrated inserted all private school movement. i decided if he could close one's cooled down been active and him as a party at the state board of education as a party, i the superintendent is a party and ask the court to desegregate everything in this state