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tv   BOOK TV  CSPAN  March 20, 2016 9:56am-12:01pm EDT

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>> i think the story of the obama administration has done just the untrammeled expansion of the newest minister has stated the agency's, the federal government as a whole. one look at the media, sometimes pc, piney signs here and there, lots of cases collected in this book it that the rest are it is just how large the government has grown over the last seven years that we might see it in cases like the obama cares -- it. we might see in the bailouts, here and there. it is a story and almost every area today.
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>> as i got for is the end of the book, there is one story that had to be rich and i didn't want to write about it. i didn't feel a need to write about it. i felt very self-conscious writing about it, but it was about 9/11. if i did not write about it, there would've been a big hole in the book. when i started writing about it, it was like the first couple of days i don't remember much. it is all kind of a blur to me. even when i hook up with guys with me at the time, they say the same thing like they remember something very vividly. i have no recollection. i remember something very vividly they can't remember. so for all of us, the first couple of days with kind of a
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blur. after that, and i was working 12 hours on, 12 hours off for the next two months. my unit was in the detective bureau, so we got assigned and our job was to remain in. i could write about what i saw and what we did. those are people's families, family members and i couldn't write about it. but i think i wrote about my feelings and how i dealt with it and i think you get a pretty good picture about what happened. you might find it hard to believe, but there was one fun is to worry about 9/11. you might find it hard to believe, but i was assigned to the morgue and my friends 80-year-old mother calls my house. nobody had heard from me in weeks. i was down there every day. so my friends 80-year-old mother called my wife and then how was even doing? did she go stephen in the
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morgue. [laughter] and she was a little harder. , but she got not much. she is like themselves are it. my wife is like no, it's okay. a lot of wives don't know where there has been far. [laughter] at least i know where he is. [laughter] from there the story gets a little blurry. we don't know how it read, but it spread. there is this one bar in "jersey shore" that i used to hang out at and i knew all the guys there. and they heard that i was in the morgue. none of them knew my wife and to find out what the arrangements were going to be. they figured they would just hear about it sooner or later. this goes on. after two months i get a couple days off and i'm like i need a.
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i walk in the front door and it was like they saw a ghost. >> welcome to montgomery, alabama on booktv, located on the alabama river and a population of just over 200,000 making it the second largest city in the state.
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>> we show you a house that was the turning point for scott and zelda. you come to the fitzgerald museum, you're going to find out he's not the genius that can come up with everything on his own. he needed a partner, he needed someone to give him a life full enough of ideas that he could write the great american novels. that woman was zelda sayer. >> but first, we speak with fred gray about his book, "bus ride to justice," as well as learning about his role as an attorney in the civil rights movement. >> in the heart of the deep south, montgomery's traditional pattern of segregation touched
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all forms of the city's life, a long frustration which erupted when a colored seamstress riding in a bus refused segregated seating. from this incident grew a protest movement headed by dr. king, then an obscure pastor of a baptist church in montgomery. the protest took the form of a boycott of the city's buses. >> i think that the history, and if you look at the cases that i have handled since the montgomery bus boycott involving voterrer registration -- voter registration, involving announcement, involving jury discrimination, involving desegregating all the buses and education and voter registration, it tells -- and i represented the persons in this city in demonstrations, the
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freedom rides, the selma to montgomery march. all of those things contributed toward the passage of the voting rights act of 1965 and helped to change the landscape of america. we sit here in montgomery, alabama, and we're sitting right across the street from the federal building where i filed most of my cases that did, that are recorded in "bus ride to justice." and when i was growing up in this city, which is the cradle of the confederacy where jefferson davis took the oath of office as president of the confederacy, in the '40s and '50s -- and i lived on the west side of town which was the side of town that nothing good could come out of, basically, the ghetto area of montgomery -- there were two basic professions that young african-american
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males would be considered well respected. one is a preacher and two is a teacher. and you did both of them on the segregated basis. i had gone when i was quite early, they say i baptized cats and dogs, so i was sent to a boarding school in nashville, tennessee, when i was 12 to learn how to become a preacher. and i did all my high school work after going to elementary school in montgomery. i went to high school in nashville, to the nashville christian institute. and the president of that school who was one of our pioneer preachers decided he needed to do two things for the school. one, it was a private church school, so you had to raise money and, two, he had to solicit students. so i was selected by him to be
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one of his boy preachers who would travel with him all over the southeast and the southwest raising funds and recruiting students. when i finished there, i knew a little something about preaching. so i made a secret commitment that i kept secret for about 40 years, and that is i was not only going to be a preacher, but i was going to become a lawyer. you know any lawyers, but i understood lawyers rendered service, and they could help to solve the problems, and everything was completely session redated at the time. segregated at the time. so my commitment was finish alabama state, enroll in somebody's law school someplace. don't even apply to the university of alabama, because i knew they wouldn't accept me. finish law school, come back to alabama, take the bar exam, become a lawyer and destroy
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everything segregated i could find. the book talks about rosa parks, and it talks about dr. king and all these other persons, but those were not my first case. my first civil rights case was the case of claudette carlton, a 15-year-old girl who lived in a part of montgomery that's called king hill. it's the northeast part of the city. and at that time, there were only about three streets up there in that section surrounded by white people where these black people live. and these children had to use the public school system to take a bus downtown, then go to booker t. washington high school which was the black, segregated school at that time. one day, on march 2,1955, nine months before mrs. rosa parks did what she did, claudette was coming from school.
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she had to change buses downtown. when she got on the bus going out to king hill where she lived, more white people than usual got on the bus. she was not seated in one of the ten seats, but when they fill all the white seats up, the bus driver asked her -- she was sitting in the first section, the first seats where there were blacks -- asked her to get up. and she told her that she had paid her money, she wasn't sitting in the white section, and she didn't get up. as a result of that, she was arrested, her parents called mr. nixon, mr. nixon contacted me, and i represented her before judge hill in the juvenile court of montgomery county in the early spring of 1955. that was my first civil rights case. >> let me ask this question. what do colored people now want
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to gain by pressing the segregation fight at this time? what immediate results do you hope to achieve? >> well, we hope to achieve equal rights for any human being -- [inaudible] >> what do you think the prospects are for achieving that goal? >> i think we'll be successful if we continue. >> how long do you think it would take? >> i haven't an idea how long. >> i became involved with mrs. parks because two or three things. one, she was a very good friend with e.d. nixon. she was the secretary to the montgomery branch of the naacp. she was the youth director of that branch. i was interested in civil rights cases and had met her when i was in college before i even went to law school, so i knew of her interest. and i was young too, so i wasn't
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too far removed from the youngsters she was dealing with. so i knew her, and she encouraged me to become a lawyer and, of course, once i became a lawyer, she knew what church, our church was only about three blocks from where she lived. but even more importantly, she worked downtown montgomery at a department store which was a block and a half from where my office was located. so each day, five days a week during our lunch hour, she would usually walk from her place up to my office. i wasn't that busy, and we would talk about things. we'd talk about youth, we'd talk about the problems on the buses. after claudette carvin had been arrested, we talked about claudette's situation, and we had done what we could for her. while we didn't file a lawsuit
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at that time, we began to keep a record of it. and every day we would meet, and we would talk, and we would talk about what type of person and what a person should do if they were asked to get up to give their seat to a white person. so she was well prepared and was willing to do whatever needed to be done to end segregation on the buses. so it was a logical thing for us to talk. and even on december 1,1955, the day of her arrest, we met as we had for lunch, and i had told her that i was going to be out of town that afternoon. and when i got back in town, i had phone calls from her, i had a lot of messages from my secretary telling me that mrs. parks had been arrested. and when i returned her calls, she asked me to come to her
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house and talk with her about her case. i went, talked with her. she told me that she -- what had taken place. her case -- this was on a thursday evening. her case was set for monday, and she wanted me to represent her in that case. i told her that i would, and i also told her that not only would we take care of that case, but we need to now do whatever it takes so that we won't have this problem again. [inaudible] was a teacher at alabama state. she had had a bad experience on the bus in 1948. she is now president of the women's political council which was a black organization of educated women, basically those who taught at alabama state. and she had come to the aid of claudette carvin when she was
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arrested, and so had i, and so had event d. nixon. so -- e.d. nixon. so i knew that we were interested in doing something permanently. so when i talked to mr. nixon, mr. nixon was a planning man. i said, mr. nixon, let me go and talk to joanne robinson, see what she thinks and see what we can do about permanently getting the community involved. one, we've got to get the message out. and there were more people that go to church on sunday mornings where you had more black people together and announcements could be made. so we need to get the black preachers involved. we can get them involved and they make an announcement at their church so that the people will stay off the bus on monday, that will be fine. that was no problem because we knew all of the black preachers. so we'll do that.
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secondly, we concluded that if we're going to tell people to stay off of the buses, we need to have somebody to serve as a spokesman for 'em. everybody can't talk. and the question is, who should that person be? now, normally e.d. nixon had the largest following of people, but there was another man in town named rufus lewis. rufus lewis lived on the east side of town. he was an educated man, had been a coach at alabama state, and he had -- he was only interested in one aspect of civil rights. that was getting people registered to vote, getting people elected and holding them responsible to the people once they got elected. he had a nightclub, and the name of his nightclub was the citizens club. and in order for you to get in that club, you had to be a registered voter.
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so we knew about them. so between those two, who are we going to get? joanne said, well, i tell you who, we need both of them. we were afraid if we get e.d. nixon, we'd lose some of rufus lewis people, if we get rufus lewis as spokesman, we'd lose some of e.d. nixon's people. so she said why don't we get my pastor? dr. martin luther king. hasn't been here long, but there's one thing he can do, he can move people with words. i said, well, that's the man we need. i said, that's fine. so we decided that what we would do, one, ask people to stay off of the buses for a day; two, we would end up -- joanne said as soon as i get through here, i'm going to go and get some leaflets made out. then we assigned each of us
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responsibilities to talking to certain people and carrying out certain responsibilities so that there could be an official meeting called. and when the official meeting was called, exactly what we had planned in jo anne's living room took place. dr. martin luther king jr. was selected to be the spokesman at a part of the official meeting when he was not even present. mr. rufus lewis was selected as chairman of the transportation committee. mr. e.d. nixon was selected as the treasurer, and the young lawyer just out of law school was selected as the lawyer for the movement in charge of the legal activities. and when the trial took place, i knew we were going to lose the case and was gonna have to appeal it. and after the appeal and after the official meeting and when they met at hope street baptist
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church for the mass meeting and when dr. king spoke, joanne and i and mr. nixon realized that what we had planned in joanne's living room was the right thing, and the rest of it's history. that's how i became involved in it, and that's how the montgomery bus boycott got started. there were about between 40 and 50,000 african-americans in montgomery, and many of them used the public transportation system. and those who used it stayed off of the buses, those who didn't use it cooperated and helped to transport people, and for, what? 382 days we stayed off of the buses until we could form a non-segregated basis, and that was really the beginning of the civil rights movement and, even equally as important, it was an introduction of dr. martin
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luther king to the city, to the state, to the nation, to the world. >> and now a literary tour of montgomery, alabama, with the help of our local cable partner, charter communications. we spoke with steve flowers to learn how past alabama governors have shaped the state's politics. >> you know, we've had in the south a unique political history. if you go around the entire south, louisiana had the longs, huey long and earl long. georgia had thal imagines. mississippi --al -- mississippi had strom new monday. i would have to say we can say and put our two colorful characters up against theirs in the form of big jim folsom and george wallace. both of them had an impact.
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our modern governors, not the first one of them have had any kind of a legacy to leave. but big jim fought the legislature going back to alabama being an agrarian state. we were a rural state, and everybody farmed. and so there were small farmers. and everybody on dirt roads. and if you're a farmer living on a dirt road and it rains a lot, you can't get your crops to the market. so big jim paved what he called farm-to-market be roads. he was a country man's candidate. he was the little man's big friend. and the country folks loved him. and i can make a speech right now in a rural appropriately club in alabama and tell them big jim stories, and they'll roll in the aisles laughing at them. but at the end of the day, when i get through speak, i have some old guy come up to me and tell
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me, he says, flowers, if big jim folsom was running for governor right now, i'd vote for him. he paved my granddaddy's road in rural geneva county or something. which tells me another interesting story. when big jim was running for congress as a young man, he was campaigning on a dirt road in rural part of geneva county. and he got on that road, and he got big, big -- [inaudible] with this old farm couple. people used to drink butter milk in the country, and big jim, he drank two quarts of buttermilk with that old couple. he got barefooted -- he used to love to get barefooted with his size 17 shoes and drink buttermilk. and after a while the farmer said, boy, i want to tell you something, if you ever get to be recollected something, i -- elected something, i want to ask you a favor. big jim said, anything you want. he says, i want you to pave my
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job if you get to be something someday. i can't get my crops to the market. and big jim, 20 years later as the governor of alabama, that's the first road he paved. he named it the buttermilk road. we're talking about in the 1940s and '50s, a man who stood 6-9. and if you put the word "uninhibited" in the dictionary, you could put bug -- big jim's picture right by it. i think the best story that epitomizes big jim's uninhibitedness, big jim had a penchant for alcohol. they say he stayed drunk pretty much his second term. matter of fact, the governor's got to sign several things. and they'd say about every two weeks he'd be sober, and they'd run around the capitol saying, sober day. one day alabama during this era was one of the biggest textile manufacturing states in the entire united states.
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most towns had a textile mill. a lot of towns were built around the textile industry. it was us and south carolina were the biggest textile states in the country. and so the american textile manufacturers' association was meeting in montgomery. and big jim was governor. and he was supposed to welcome them to the capitol. and somebody had written big jim a real nice speech to give to the textile manufacturers. this was all from new york and everything. and old big jim had not seen the speech. and someone had him the speech as he got to the room. he'd been down in mobile for a week or two with his friends, he had not seen the speech. he got to reading this speech, and he said -- i want to welcome y'all to alabama today. we got 400,000 people employed in the textile industry. it means one out of every six jobs -- i'll be damned. i didn't know that. [laughter] and threw the speech up in the
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air, said all y'all don't want to hear about that stuff, y'all want to hear about big jim -- and big jim would go to the courthouse stairses, and really and truly, he would tell those farmers in his overalls, you know big jim's going to steal a little bit, but i ain't gonna steal as much as the rest of them are. alabama was one of the most progressive states in america. you could put our congressional delegation's voting record, and you could put the new york delegation's voting record, and it'd be identical. you know what it was? the southerners loved roosevelt and the new deal. the new deal helped the deep south. you take that tennessee valley area of our state of alabama, it was one of the poorest appalachian state areas of the country. the new deal, the tennessee valley, transformed that area to one of the richest places in the country. now huntsville and red stone arsenal has the highest per capita income and the highest
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education level of any city its size in the united states because of red stone arsenal. but having said that, we had ten congressmen, and they all were new dealers. they were bought into the new deal, and alabama's congressional delegation brought home the bacon like you ain't never seen. what changed the politics was when the race issue came to fruition in the mid 1950s with the brown v. board of education decision, and the south was determined to resist integration. so our politicians moved from being progressive-based, they were based on liberal, progressive issues that were good for their people, they became race baiters just to get elected. and wallace came from that mold. wallace, in his heart, came from that new deal era. he was a progressive populist just like big jim was. but he became a race baiter because that was the way to get elected. >> but in the name of the greatest people that have ever
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trod this earth, i draw the line in the dust -- [inaudible] before the feet of tyranny, and i say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever. [cheers and applause] >> during my lifetime god sat down and said i'm fixing to make the greatest politician the state of alabama's ever going to see. josh wallace -- george wallace was born with a memory for names that i don't think anybody can cultivate. you know, politicians are able to cultivate that trait which is, you know, indispensable. to be able to remember someone's name. wallace was born, god sat down and gave him a memory that he could go into a group of people and speak to them tender years later and remember they met. the stories abound all over the state that he would just meet someone in 1958, the first time
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he ran for governor, and see them ten years later and say i met you at a fish fry in 1958, how's your wife susie? he would have met 100,000 people. but he had a memory for names. but i knew wallace very well because i had been a page in the legislature when i was 12 years old to. wallace was in his first term as governor, this was 1963. and i add met him as a young page. and he never forgot that day, and he and i -- he knew me very well. and then 20 years later i became his representative in the legislature. i had all of pike county and the part of barber county where he was from was in my district. so i became wallace, i was a friend in the legislature, and we became -- so i saw a lot of intimate stories close to wallace which i animate in the book. and he had become a different man from those fiery day in thes in the 1960s. -- in the 1960s. most people don't realize this, but in 1982, the year he came
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back and won his last term as governor, he won for one reason. you know what that was? african-americans elected him governor. most people don't know that. he won with the african-american vote. he would not have won. most white voters were tired of wallace. they were tired of his rhetoric, knew he had not been real governor. he'd worn out his welcome. he went down here to dexter avenue king church, dr. king's church, very famous church, in his wheelchair. because the assassination bullet, he and his body had been riddled six times by an assassination attempt in maryland. most people would have died, but he survived that six bullets to his body, but his body was completely paralyzed from the waist down. he didn't have any feeling, and he was on pain pills a lot. he probably took 6-10 pain pills a day which made him somewhat incohoornt.
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and it rise to him crying a lot. he would ask me to come down to his office and visit with him, and i might find him in the corner with a cigar in his mouth, he would tell me the same story like an old man in a nursing home. almost verbatim, he would say, steve, do you remember when you were a little boy? yes, sir, governor. i remember you were a page boy, yes, sir, governor, i remember. well, steve, you know, i was a page boy too. chauncey sparks made me a page when i was a little boy. and, you know, steve, the northern part of your county, you know, they're my kinfolks. i said, i know, governor. if he was kin to the fleming, he was also kin to hank williams because hank williams married one of those girls named fleming up there. anyway, he says, steve, jenny wallace, the librarian, she's my aunt, you know? she's an old maid. she's not been married -- like i
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know what an old maid was, you know? and he would tell me that same story over and over again. so he'd gotten to be a little senile prematurely because of those pain pills. he would call me and tell me one day it was the funniest thing, he'd tell me that story verbatim, and he called me six times that week to come off the floor of the house to visit with him, and i actually was voting on one of his bills. i told the person, the secretary who came to get me, the governor wants to see you with. i said, well, i'm actually voting on one of his bills, is there something substantive he wants to talk about? sure enough, i went down there, and he was sitting there, and there were five japanese industrialists sitting in the office. and they were going to locate a plant in huntsville. and i'm thinking, well, why am i down here? i guess wallace had run out of things to say to those industrialist, he says steve was a peach boy, we -- i'm kin to
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shepards and flemings in his county, and, you know, jenny wallace, the librarian, she's my aunt. and i thought, well, what do those poor japanese think? [laughter] are they going to locate a plant in huntsville or not? [laughter] i don't know why, but one day talking about that, he called me down there, and i had to hear the same story. shepherds and flemings and -- but he was also down there, and he had about five or six children and a bunch of grandchildren. usually you'd see pictures of grandchildren. and the reason, back to that king church encounter, the reason african-americans voted for him in '82 was he went down there, and he begged for forgiveness. he said i made a mistake, i'm sorry, i paid the ultimate price, i'm sitting here in a wheelchair, and i just want to tell y'all i'm sorry i did all that stuff. i thought wallace was the ultimate politician. i thought that was demagoguery,
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he was doing it because he wanted to be governor again. but this particular day after telling me the same story, i sat down, looked around his office, and there was only one picture on his desk, and it was a picture of an african-american girl, schoolgirl. and i said, governor, who is that little girl there? usually i thought you ought to have your grandchildren, he said, steve, that's a little schoolgirl from birmingham. she came down and told me she loved me, you know? and he started crying. ..
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they say a whole lot of the wildest voters now vote for troll. they were saying the same thing. he would say, he we go on "meet the press" and say you know, we will tell you what, the liberal wants to -- lays down in front of my car, beatniks with a longer, the first thing i'm going to do is run over and. that is kind of what trump the sanctity, kind of the same thing. i wrote the book several years ago. i want that era capped about politics. we had a colorful history. the south had a colorful histo history. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. this week and we're visiting montgomery, alabama, to talk with local authors and two of the city's literary sites would help of our local cop -- cable
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partner charter communications. next we speak with richard bailey who explores the history of alabama's political process after the civil war your. >> as i like to say, while black officeholders were members of the republican party, they were not carpetbaggers nor scalawags. rfid backers is a term in a derogatory term of course that people used to denote whites who came to the south from the north and usually the intent is to show these people as persons who came for political and personal gain. a scalawag is a southern white who was here before the civil war began, who became a member of the republican party. the book begins to first of all focus on a we call like migration, african-americans in alabama knowing they were free.
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what did they do? want a the first thing they did was to move to the nearest town, the nearest city. for those who did move, some remained obligations. i also talk about some of the things that why today to persuade african-americans that they really were not free. they should stay of the plantation. in rural areas in alabama, a majority of rural setting in 1865, in many instances african-americans who had been slaves, were persons remained obligations because they did not know they were free. everything in alabama are excellently. events are ex ord in march 1867 with the passage of some reconstruction acts in congress. one of the main differences between 1865, 1866 and 1867 is
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that black people, african-americans became enfranchised. they gain the right to vote. one of the biggest things that happen occurred on april 121867 when african-americans in that city marched up to the polling places and cast the ballot for the first time of all african-americans in the state of alabama in a moral election in that city that had never happened before -- may oral election. the first group of officeholders in alabama for registrars. one of the things the reconstruction act of 1867 and it was we have an election in alabama. we had to appoint african-americans and whites have been loyal to the federal government as registrars, and believe it or not there' there s quite a bit of opposition to these african-americans who serve as registrars and the state's first black officeholders.
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and then we had the constitutional convention in the fall of 1867. this is the first time we had lax who had served in a lawmaking capacity in the state of alabama. opposition of there. one of the things that really came out that african-americans saw clearly for the first time was that these republicans were not allies of black members of the party. if they were to the disadvantage of democrats and a general white population. they found that carpetbaggers and scalawags were not really their friends. yet they were members of the same political party, the republican party of alabama. just about every instance when black people, these black officeholders wanted to advance something that i would make a significant difference in their lives, white members of the party did one of two things.
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they said let's just allow a subsequent legislative body handle this issue, or they sided with white democrats. and you can just imagine the kind of depression that overwhelmed these black officeholders. they called themselves republicans, but they found out they could not rely on white members of the republican party to advance any issue that made a significant difference in the lives of former slaves. everything was contemptuous. they move forward as best they could. and what did happen was that you begin to notice factionalism in the republican party. in alabama, african-americans were either members of the spencer wang, that is congressman george spencer, or
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the warner win. the lack group adhere to thinking of george spencer, called them the spencer gang, a derogatory term, and jeremiah harrison led a group that followed warner. everything that happened in alabama followed along those lines. in fact, the warner and spencer, in my estimation and in my book, i hold responsible for everything that happened in reconstruction in alabama. in fact i'd go so far as to say that reconstruction would have materialized holy differently had the spencer wing of the party and the other wing of the party fund reasons to cooperate instead of fighting among
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themselves, mainly for patronage. george spencer wanted to determine who became patronage recipients in alabama, who became governor in alabama. he wanted to make certain everything in alabama followed along his line of thinking. the warner wing just disagreed with that. if democrats had just sat back and noticed how the republicans were fighting among themselves, they would have realized that the opposition was not as good as they could collectively. because they would've found out that reconstruction was basically a bad experience in the state of alabama. the republican party was not able to convince the general white population that the republican party was not here in alabama to work to the disadvantage of southern whites. democrats made certain that the average white person viewed the
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republican party as a party that had come south to punish the white south, to advance the cause of african-americans, especially out of the polls. but, with total disregard to southern whites. you are talking about a polarized society. that's what alabama was during reconstruction. some of the major achievements during that period occurred in public education. the constitution of 1868 provided for universal, free education. that is to say, any kid between the age of five and 21 was eligible to receive a public education for the first time in alabama history, regardless of race, color, anything. the first time that could happen. on july 18, 1867, thomas cooley who had been a slave, he and
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five other african-americans walked up to the courthouse and unincorporated the lincoln school of mary in the. that was significant because what thomas lee did was to sign his ask. for an individual who could not read or write, to be concerned about the masses being educated, that was powerful for 1867 -- sign his x. then you look at schools like alabama a&m. that was located in meridian built at the turn. with accounts of digital established that school was just powerful for that time period. and even whe when you talk brith alabama a&m, some people forget ruben jones which have been alabama legislature, and it was he who was the guiding spirit that undergirded the efforts of william h. council to establish alabama a&m.
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reverend jones and william h. council were neighbors. so you can see that kind of tie a relationship those two persons had. and these are just two instances of some things that happen in alabama regarding lack officeholders. you look at article 14 in the constitution. when a women married in alabama before 1868, or property became the property of her husband. with the constitution of 1868, that was no longer the case. in addition, when a woman marriage before 1868, whatever gets her husband held abroad into the marriage, became her debts also. and then article ii, you were not imprisoned in alabama for debts. so that constitution really democratize the state of alabama, and we can applaud
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those black officeholders for having a role in seeking that the rights of women were enlarged. so reconstruction wasn't a monolithic experience. whites benefited and blacks did, too. in 1883 the united states supreme court struck down the civil rights act of 1875. reconstruction was drawing to a close, and whatever rights, privileges that black people might've enjoyed, the supreme court began to speak and struck down those rights. and one of the things that grew out of reconstruction with a number of african-american oriented organizations that took up the slack for what reconstruction left undone. and many subsequent legislative bodies in alabama and across the nation took up the slack for what reconstruction did not do.
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let me give some examples. public transportation. when we get integrated public transportation or segregated transportation. rosa parks had to take care of that. we had integrated schools or a segregated school. the brown decision had to take of that. these two instances in the 20th century. reconstruction legislatures did not handle those because republicans refused to ally with black numbers of the party to significantly advance the cause of african-americans are. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. this week and we're in montgomery, alabama, with the help of our local cable partner charter communications. next week toward the archives and special collections unit at alabama state university to do books and manuscripts related to the civil rights movement. >> we are in the campus of alabama state university in
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montgomery, alabama. this is the levi watkins learning center and we are in the archives, but the levi watkins learning center is really the dean of the library of doctor janice franklin, envision it as a cultural learning place. some people are a bit confused because if he walk around the first floor you are not sure if you're in the labor or not. but with a number of exhibits and what one could do was to bring the archives alive, to bring history of institution and history of the area alive for our students, faculty staff, this is alone. we have a timeline downstairs that covers the totality of the alabama state experience from its origins in 1866 in mary in alabama all throughout one or 50 year history to today. we just have a number of exhibits that really speak to student, allow them to touch and
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hear the sounds of the past, to see the images and individuals that have walked these hallowed halls and have these really made impact on what is america today. so we have two primary storage areas. we are in our primary storage area and to have a secondary storage area. and so we've almost 200 collections in our holdings. we have an array of artwork, over 1000 be the items, and this could be wheel to wheel, cassettes, films, a variety of formats over 60 year period that are collected here. the collections we will look at today i chose because they really are some of our most impressive collections, but they tell an interconnected story. the story of a civil rights movement that really, that's
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centered copy of played out in areas parts of the world, various parts of the nation rather. but the research in montgomery and in alabama. yet the montgomery bus boycott's. you had the sit ins that occurred. started in north carolina but played out in montgomery and other parts of the state you had the cell coming march the good student protest movement. so you these episodes on several of the major civil rights episodes played out in montgomery and throughout alabama. and so we want to select a collection of spoke to his major episodes, that will give our patrons sort of an understanding of how the university that people associate with the university, have the materials represent in our collection really tell the story of the modern civil rights movement in very interesting, in tangible
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ways. we look at the robert and jean collection. the reverend camden when, in 1965. i guess are the parts of 1964 but was in montgomery in 1965 and had to make a decision that he and his wife prayed about whether to participate in the montgomery bus boycott. he was a white minister. he pastored at a black church but he made his decision pretty early on to participate, to support the bus boycott. he is also purchase the in a whole variety of human rights activities. and so that is represented in this collection. one of the more interesting elements of his collection is are these books. if you meet the reverend, he is still alive, if you make an
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appointment with them come he will take up this little book and you'll write down notes. at sometimes when he's out of the table take notes and so he started doing this in 1956. and so the bus boycott began in 1956. so these notes, little books start in the montgomery bus boycott and then carry on through. he was at the selma to montgomery march, at the march on washington. to all of these episodes, the people he met corruption in these books. so we have for instance, this one here, it's the first book. this is 1956, his book your edits interest because you turned to the first page, turn past the first page and the first agassi is in the book is the attorney fred gray. for chris one of the more politics the rights attorneys. he has his name, address and phone number to an extent he has
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is reverend dr. martin luther king. and so, in his book is replete with these type of individuals. easy tone shoes addressbook, i mean you turned to the dates, you will see that he was involved in albright up speaking engagements. on january 16, at 1:30 p.m. in the meeting in dr. king's office about the project. and so all throughout this book you see his encounters with history, his encounters and his activities and events, the events they participated in that really intersect the modern civil rights movement. and we think that this is an interesting dynamic, an interesting artifact to maintain at the archives. i think that a lot of this,
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just, there's a novelty aspect of it but also a very interesting way to observe history over time. and so another part of our collection, we of the montgomery improvement association papers. and in these papers we do see that the montgomery improvement association published this comic book, and it's a comic book that shows martin luther king, really depicts the bus boycott. we have a number of these copies so that you can see the visual way, it's set up like a typical comic book, and you can send the story of a bus boycott is told in pictorial comic book fashion. and so it's one of those, this is one of those items that i think is pretty interesting in the montgomery improvement association collection. then we have the e.d. nixon collection.
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e.d. nixon was a powerful force of nature. he was a pullman porter if he worked on the railroads, providing services to patrons. he was a labor organizer. he worked with a pullman porter, the association for the national cessation for the sleeping car porters are i know that i am misconstrued that name, but the porters who worked on the pullman porter core system, have a union, headed up by a. philip randolph and e.d. nixon worked on that union and worked with the union. he had encounters with eleanor roosevelt, a variety of really the history makings of the time that allowed him to reach beyond montgomery to gain support for my comment over the association. one of, so when the whole variety of pictures, and this is
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a lady in montgomery, maggie, whose housing project was named after. e.d. nixon worked at that housing project. you see this picture is a picture that e.d. nixon is with the sick and that's rosa parks to his left, in a meeting with some young people. and so again he had a very close relationship, e.d. nixon had a very close relationship with rosa parks. rosa parks served as his secretary in the state and local naacp. and so some of the artifacts of this collection represent her also. there's a person of a gentleman by the name of reverend richard boone, and reverend moon worked with the southern christian leadership conference. he was a graduate of alabama state university, and, the
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latter part of the 60 he start another organization called the alabama action committee. and so reverend richard boone worked with her for a while. he was out liaison into the civil rights community mental health is to garner collections. but he was a real important figure in the local civil rights movement. and so he donated his collection to alabama state. so we a mask or created an oversized the album with a number of newspapers part of this organization hel help to publish a newspaper so at some examples. he was arrested as a result of one of his protest activities. and so the paper, just like you had, free huey, free angela davis as relates to the black panther party. tim montgomery unit three reverend boone. he was incarcerated and accused
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of inciting riots. and so it eventually was exonerated, but he was a committed civil rights activist. he worked on a number of campaigns throughout the state and actually went to various, different states. but one of, a culinary to the artifact is another piece we have here. so while reverend boone was incarcerated, he wanted to write his story of his experience. and he did that on toilet paper. and so you see here we have that told the paper. we had a masters student who wrote a thesis on reverend boone, and she translate concetta roll out of this whole paper and she translated what it actually says. and swear that documentation also. but this collection is an
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interesting collection. it tells the local civil rights but i connected to the larger movement. we think about these materials, and to really give the blueprint of providing blueprint for the civil rights movement, the logistics of the civil rights movement, how it was executed. you see how the organization was greater and you see how it was structured. and i think it's informative for today's activists. i've had to do this with students who are interested in protest them come to the archive to understand student protests, how did the students organize themselves? what was their interaction with mentors? did they do any training? you know, how did execute these episodes? and so i think the collection
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serve us, it could certainly as strictly as a historical document for people interested in understanding the past that it could serve as a template for people who want to build on the movements of previous decades. >> during booktv's recent visit to montgomery we spoke with jeffrey benton, author of "respectable and disreputable," about leisure time in montgomery prior to the civil war. >> i have long been interested in history, but in school in a formal situation, the history for someone of my generation has generally been political history, economic, religious, that sort of thing. but as i grew older i became more and more interested in
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social history. so this book is called "respectable and disreputable." so it's about how people, before the civil war an antebellum america, behaved with their leisure time. in this city. then of respectability -- their respectability was the general term that described middle-class values. about these of hard work, self-sufficiency, moral behavior, education, religious observation and liberal democracy. all of that wen would together o save a person was respectable. and the middle class didn't really think that the elite or the lower classes would respectable. so this was their class prejudice that we are
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respectable and these others are not. and disreputable has to do with what they thought was not respectable, and it was a lot of it and eventually the middle-class bought into that. people that came your, because the territory, mississippi territory was established 200 is ago in 1816, and in the state 1819. they were all inflicted with a disease called alabama fever. and that disease was to get rich quick. the southerners were getting rich quick off of raising cotton with slave labor. and the northerners, there was a huge northern population here, we're getting rich quick actually richer than the cotton farmers, as merchants. so there was an enormous amount
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of money made here. in fact, in 1860, montgomery county, the county was larger than it is today, was the seventh largest slaveholding county in the country, and it was the largest exporter of cotton farm in london southern city. -- england. we are built in house built by germans although we never let him. a middle-class person. he was involved in making gaslighting for the city. so the gasworks, but it became the townhouse of a planning family. a georgian a family that was reached before the american revolution. the husband part of the family, the wise part of the family was the south carolina family. they owned plantations about 50 miles east of here and they came into town for several reasons. one was life on the plantation
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was incredibly lonely for the owners. of course may be neighboring plantations, families would visit, but it was generally a lonely existence. and so what they did was they came into town for social activities that were unavailab unavailable, the leisure activities of course that are available in down. the husband also had a political aspiration. and so they came into this down in the 1850s. they were rich. as you'll see in shots of the house, it's not a grand house it was really a middle-class house that was lived in for five or six years in the 1850s. and we are sitting out in the back parlor. you can see behind me the front parlor.
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so what will go on in this house, say, in the lady's sphere, the lady of the house is here pretty much all of the time, most outside activities were not acceptable for a respectable middle-class lady. so in the entrance hall there's a tray that calling cards would be left. so women often call on one another and talk. at doing what people done since the beginning of time, talking, but they're doing so in a setting that is rather elegant and polished, sophisticated. so there's a table behind me, a center table that's a tea set on it. ladies would come and talk. there's a square grand piano in the room. there's a violin in the room, but ladies could not play violin. ladies could not raise their arms about high. they were singed in. ladies played keyboard instruments. they played guitars. behind me in the front parlor,
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the former parlor for visitors, there's also a checkerboard. the famine in evening would sit in this room which is a more masculine room but more comfortable, older furniture. they can easily be open to the front parlor as you can see through the sliding doors. but they would read. there's a secretary bookcase over there with books around. they are is selling for the women. women often sewed not just for practical reasons but for recreational reasons, doing an embroidery and those sorts of things as well. that are representations in this room about the their leisure time. for example, here there is a print of a middle-class family gathering with children around the piano. here is a collection of shells
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which makes severa several stat. wanone is we can afford to go to the seashore. so it's a show off and away. but it also says we are interested in natural history. this was the science that was of interest to most educated people. the outdoor activities, the activities are primarily associate with men and associated with all classes would be gambling on anything you can imagine, on these sites, on knife fights -- fistfights -- horse racing, who'll. they played pool. they try to make it illegal but primarilycome in fact pretty much the gamblers until the city until the 1830s when the state legislature made the condition of montgomery getting a city charter rather than a town
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charter to get rid of the gamblers. they were driven out. they would you texas and they were massacred by santa anna. so that was before the alamo. so gambling by the rich, by the elite have been accepted to answer when these professional gamblers took over come the elite turned against. you would think that church would be an outdoor come and outside activity. and, in fact, many people in antebellum america went to church, but only one in five members, 20% of the american public were actually members of churches. it was very difficult to be a member of church. the strictures, the controls, the ballot shall not was extremely extensive and it was monitored and people were thrown out of church because they have brought discredit upon that
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particular church or denomination or about christianity itself. so the membership was very low. just in the teens or 20s, and people were routinely thrown out. but they went to hear the sermons. the sermons were sort of a form of entertainment. and so when the north the got rid of slavery, or with key would of slavery, they started becoming hypercritical about southern slavery. so southerners stopped going to the north and stop interfering with northern families and so forth. so they started going to the southern mountains and two springs. there were a dozen or so mineral springs in alabama. they would go into would be a place that they could hunt and fish and take the mineral water and dance and gamble and drink and so forth, and matchmaking. it was very important that class
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begin to solidify right before the civil war that elite families bowe bergdahl upper-class families started intermarrying. so that was a place they could do that. wind the cotton crop is coming in in the fall, money isn't being. they are having money, they had money when cotton was sold. they came back into town. and so at that time that's when religious denominations have their denominational meetings, political parties have their meetings. the legislature went into session, and that's when circuses, operas, theaters all started coming. that's when the state fair or kurd. and then there were all kinds of private parties as well -- occurred. this sort of adopted the mardi gras type activities. the mardi gras in the united states began in mobile and then spread to new orleans, but it
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can't appear but it wasn't associated with the carnival season right before ash wednesday and the beginning of lent. it was associate with new year's. so there was this extended period that was all sorts of activities, planners they come into town and take rentals for this season. so that was when the town was full and very active. so it went from thanksgiving, which was a national holiday for a very long time. it included christmas. alabama was the first state to make christmas a holiday, whereas in new england christmas was outlawed. it was pagan or associated with catholicism or certainly frivolous. so christmas became, was very important, and then new year's.
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and then they threw in andrew jackson who is very important for this area because he increased the size of the state terrifically when he succeeded in the indian more about then was taken and indians were shipped off to what is now arkansas and oklahoma. there was a hold of a set of activities, and this ties in respect to the respected within. the northerners are not just merchants. there was no public school system. they were private schools run by northern schoolmasters. and they formed societies like the franklin society, was the society for printers. it existed all over the country. there was the lyceum that were supposed to educate people on practical things. there was a society for young mechanics, a mechanics association.
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a mechanic then met a craftsman. they were talking about science and machinery and how to improve themselves. all of these have to do with self-improvement. that's what existed for. but in reality they quickly became a form of entertainment. so they would be lectures on pull the region, on the whole event, on mount vernon. of course, this was the period that mount vernon, george washington so bright outside of washington, was about to be demolished. so those a national outcry. this was a period of great nationalism. one of the leaders of the movement is william yancey who lived here. abraham lincoln said started the civil war. some southerners would think it was harriet beecher stowe and "uncle tom's cabin."
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he was one of the leaders in raising money and buying mount vernon for the public and preserving it. so hypnotists, dog shows, magic shows, all of these sorts of things came out of the so-called literary and scientific and professional societies. i find, as i mentioned in my talk, that queen victoria is seeing the same circus that place in antebellum montgomery, alabama. new yorkers and people in philadelphia come and i didn't mention it but in st. louis and new orleans and so forth are seeing the same actors, hearing the same operas that are here. they are all seeing barnum. barnum came here. they are all seeing the siamese twins. they came here. they are doing the same things. they are hearing some of the same lectures.
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so the are a lot of commonality in people, not just the commonality of human relations. of course, human relations are all over, but in their chosen activities that are the same. >> this weekend we are in montgomery, alabama, a couple of our local cable partner, charter communications. next, we visit the last home of "the great gatsby" author f. scott fitzgerald you. currently we are in the last four houses f. scott lived in the this is my come alabama in neighborhood called the old cloverdale which is registered in a national historic register places. the first thing you find that the house that was saved from demolition which is important to this couple average about five months the stop in 14 years. this house that we inhabit has been significantly expanded
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after f. scott and zelda to get to it was broken into apartments but we still use the dancers as amusing. you'll find artifacts that date back to the mid-19th century. zelda's grandparents, family bibles, baby shoes come odd assortment of books that come of books that come from the 19 change but issue the demos very fluid. as you continue on we you continue on we will take it all the way through the 1970s when scotty, their daughter, moved back to montgomery. she later the last 16 years of her life and everything in between. the things that are most important to us that we really treasure the most our erect artifacts from scott and zelda. we show you a house that was the turning point for scott and zelda. when they moved your come with photos of zelda right after she moved her sitting on top of her trunk. missiles like a princess a top her spoils of war. and this trunk sense of the
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address. when you move your the idea was to regroup in zelda had just gotten out of the hospital. what i said the hospital company the most from hospital in the world in switzerland to shipping diagnosed with as schizophrenic. when they cater she been told she is cured of schizophrenia. which is not possible and probably not her mental illness. so what this house was was a landing pa bed it was a regroupg as i've said stage, and it wasn't the sort of place where you're going to find scott and zelda engaging in domestic activities, if you will. it was the sort of place where they were going to be planting -- planning their next move. .com enters the story in 1918. short have to drop out of princeton because his grades were so bad that the administration wasn't going to let him stay on for another you get it was during world war i.
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when he came to montgomery, he was probably remembering some of the stories his father told him about how he had helped confederate spies state behind union lines in maryland during the civil war. southern girls, something fitzgerald was interested in since he considered himself in the he was from st. paul, a southerner. when you get serious 21. he has a rejected novel in his knapsack. he is a second lieutenant, bottom of accountable in a place where you stay was captured in which is no longer around to it was about two miles north of the capital in downtown montgomery. that was a cap that about 20,000 men came through between 1970-1918. as most historians know, the war ends in november 1980 so it gets you about six months before his opportunity to become heroes in battle ends. but during that time period he meets a young woman and the nature. there are two stories. we as amusing believe he met
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zelda at winter place which is a marvelous match in downtown montgomery, a lot of fancy parties used to have been there but the officers were invited. if you were a grunt in the army you are not going to be getting an invitation. there was an exchange between scott and zelda, a bit of a partition, and it ended with him saying let's meet at the montgomery country club next week and for the dance. anthat's what allegedly comes forth. scott and zelda at a country club dance in montgomery, alabama, really falling in love. followed the publication of his second novel, but beautiful and the dead, the couple needed new vistas so they moved to your. during this time period zelda's personality created a firestorm of interest in her because after scott's second novel she wrote a review of the novel which she said that he'd been pulling lines from her letters and diaries and using them as
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dialogue on his main characters. this ended up with zelda being declared queen of the flappers by first international magazine in 1923. that same summer they show up in france, spent a lot of time on the french riviera, especially in places aspect of this type of zelda finds out that being the world's first flapper does not increase it be with people like gertrude stein, maddox ford, cole porter, understanding way, edith wharton and a plethora of other very serious artist that are working in france were visiting france often doing this time period. so she begins painting. early pastorals our initial foray. these are by the way being done as scott decision because as a 28 year-old boy for "the great gatsby." fitzgerald believes the best option, the best vehicle for bringing her paintings to the public is to have a joint press
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run with the publication of his new novel, "the great gatsby" and zelda's first paintings being sold on exhibition and new york city. the problem is that scott's novel is not well received by the critics but it only sells 2000 copies and zelda's paintings are also rejected as being the work of an amateur playgirl sort of painter. attention and the marriage is a result of zelda's quickie painting professionally but continuing to do, to dedicate many hours to artwork at home. for example, in the museum, and these are from the collection at yale university, they are the earliest known paper dolls that zelda ever produced these were multimedia paper dolls and they were done as gifts for children or just for the own daughter to play with. however, the new it girl of
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america, by 1926-27 in the years following gatsby was no longer the flapper. it was the actress. and when they get to hollywood, scott tells zelda more or less you need to be more like women like lois moron who was a 17 year old girl when they met and already had a career in which she dedicated her artistic mind to making money. zelda does not find this very flattering. she has a huge fight with fitzgerald in which she burned all of the artwork she'd been producing in hollywood. and the couple very much tail between legs had to leave hollywood very, very soon after they arrived and move to a country house where hopefully they would be better at damage control in terms of their public reputations. as we continue we find out that zelda soon dedicates herself to
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ballet under the tutelage of a woman who went into prima ballerina in paris in the early 1920s and was now acting as an instructor. the relationship between them would be the equivalent of a modern celebrity such as miley cyrus retiring from her career in taking up the life of a professional athlete. today, modern scholars see this as the first major showing of zelda's bipolar nature. for the next two years zelda practiced ballet as if she wasn't in to be a prima ballerina. however, she was 28 when she begins this endeavor at the and two years later with a mental breakdown in paris in which she tries to take her own life. for the next 14 months she's at
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the clinic in switzerland, and after her time there she moved here to montgomery to this house that we are in. in switching they diagnosed her schizophrenic, and also pronounced virtue of schizophrenia. and when she moves to this house, the first thing she wants to do is write a novel about what happened with april in her late '20s who decided to become a ballerina. that's what she's working on in his house to she works on a very hard for about six weeks, writes the majority of the novel and when fitzgerald comes back from second to hollywood, he reads the novel and he becomes the major spat of their marriage. fitzgerald feeling that he is the one who was the novelist. he's the one who should get all the accolades writing, and zelda feeling that since she failed as a painter and failed as a ballerina, this was the last resort for her creativity. we are now in the great room or the receiving room of the house
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when scott and zelda to get their time he was very tumultuous battle because of zelda wanted to write a novel and scott having mixed feelings but also because her father died while she was living in this house, and fitzgerald was given a second contract job in hollywood, on which he initially turned down at seven hundred $50 a week but could not refuse the raise to $1200 a week by mgm studios. during that time zelda finishes her novel and then she had a second breakdown when scott gets back to montgomery, leading him to believe might come in and have decoded sheppard pratt hospital which was an annex of johns hopkins hospital in baltimore, maryland. that some are zelda finish a novel, and this photograph was taken of the famous couple shortly after novel was released. this was a two shot of scott and zelda comic picture that would've imposed for and expressions on the faces are unmistakable. there is an unhappiness in the
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marriage that is becoming difficult to overcome. fitzgerald looking nervous and zelda looking very unhappy she is the subject of attention to reason as these photographs are appearing beside regis of her novel which are basically calling her a great writer and a woman who's only been published because her husband is f. scott fitzgerald. after publication of the novel her mental health continued to deteriorate. for the rest of the '30s she spent over 90% of her waking hours in mental institutions leaving the great writer f. scott fitzgerald alone with his only child, a daughter by the way who is coming of age. in 1933 scott said scotty to boarding schools. scotty was going to be in boarding schools or in college until the day fitzgerald died in 1940. but fitzgerald was not a man to leave no vestige of family life behind. so he continued to work honestly
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on a stamp collection they had begun with her in 1920 when they were living in paris. in 1973 scotti wrote the preface for the collection of the last uncollected short stories that are father and mother had written. in the preface she listed the stamp collection as only one of five artifacts left in her possession that had belonged to her family. that is indicative of transients of this story. scott and zelda never making the plays that scotty could really call home. these stamps are taken from postcards and letters that fitzgerald had sent to the friends during the heady days of the 1920s when money was easy, short stories paid fitzgerald a lot of money and were easy to sell to them was able to travel at will. the 1930s were a much different ballgame for scott and zelda. that was one thing that remained true, and that was scott's dedication to maintaining our
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family life for scotty at a time period when her mother was nowhere to be found, when her mother was living 100% of her time in mental institutions, and fitzgerald are struggling to find work. as the '30s wore on, fitzgerald began to despair that zelda would ever be cured. and, indeed, she was never cured of her mental illness. however, his income was dropping after hospital bills are rising and also scotti's boarding school bills were breaking them. by 1936 he was $40,000 in debt and had nothing to show for it. so when hollywood came calling in 1937 for the third time and offered fitzgerald of $1000 a week contract, fitzgerald had no choice but to leave zelda behind in asheville, north carolina, in highland hospital and travel across the country to begin life anew as a 41 year-old man. he spent the next three and half years working in hollywood. during that time he had one film
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credit for a film called the three comrades. he had a girlfriend named sheila graham. she was every bit of his second wife but he would never divorced zelda. the relationship remained clandestine with only hollywood insiders and friends of them knowing about it. the night before he died they went to go see this movie. it was the only film of 1940 that the catholic decently put on the blacklist. it was an expert at brock is a funny film, and by all accounts fitzgerald enjoyed it immensely. however, when he stood up to leave the theater to get out of his seat experienced a fainting spell that is believed to have been a heart attack. it would've been his fourth heart attack of the year. sheila his golden want to call and amulets and that fitzgerald taken home. however, because that was the premiere of the movie and the theater that night was filled with a lister's and the highest-paid actors, fitzgerald
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did not want to be seen being carried out at the theater on a gurney. so he had sheila graham wait until the theater was empty and then helping to the car so that he could come. the next morning he woke up. they had brunch together and he died of a heart attack. he was 44. in the and, montgomery is the beginning and end of the fitzgerald story. it's when they met in 1918. it's whether title i found they were pregnant with her first child. it's whether you can when the wheels off the relationship, and off themselves. but more and more of what really seems to be a part of the story that visitors find the most poignant is that their daughter, a girl who grew up without a home, grew up on the road for the first 14 years of her life, and she needed a place to call home later on in her life, montgomery was where she landed. if you come to the fitzgerald
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museum you'll find out that f. scott fitzgerald was more than just a writer. he's not pitching that can come up with everything on his own. he needed a partner, someone to give him a life full of ideas that you could write the great american novels. that woman was zelda. montgomery by birth, and aristocratic by training and a woman that fitzgerald felt exemplified the spirit of an age in which they lived and a lot of them to be the great voice of an entirely new youth generation following the footsteps of world war i. >> during booktv's recent visit to the, alabama, we spoke with nimrod frazer who recounts the history of the 167th infantry regiment during world war i in his book "send the alabamians."
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>> the 167th u.s. infantry was made up of alabama soldiers. the alabama national guard was created in 1912, and a guy named bill screws were sent here to train that regiment and to build it up. so between 1912-1916 he built it up to 5000 men. he took them to the mexican border and, for advanced infantry training. these were mostly poor guys seeking adventure, most of these people have never been outside of the state of alabama. they knew they could go to the mexican border when that was announced and represent an opportunity for travel. it paid well for the times. they were given a uniform.
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it was pretty much a lark in the beginning and he became a very, very serious combat situation once they got to europe. >> president woodrow wilson episode appointed secretary of war newton baker received rather like the permission from the current mexican government to pursue the bandit leader. >> president wilson was an antiwar candidate in 1916, but he had supported the creation of the national guard. he saw the war in europe and was very afraid of our involvement in it. so the were basically several reasons for his committing us to the mexican border. what is the three guerrilla groups go one of most famous being led by, mexican by the name of poncho vela, trying to overthrow the democratic government of mexico. poncho cross over to new mexico
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and killed a bunch of americans. and when he did that it was the trigger point for wilson making the decision to send all of the army and all of the national guard to the mexican border for training. the regular army portion of it was led by general pershing, a one star general at that time, if he pursued villa into the heartland of mexico but without success. ..
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it goes from one side of the country to the other, and that is what president wilson and secretary baker wanted, representative division. so the war department been cherry picked the best for. and then they cherry picked the 5,000 soldiers for the best 3700. when they got to europe they were very welcome. you must realize, the british had sent a delegation to washington to seek president wilson and said, we want 75 battalions to put in the trenches under our experience leaders.
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the french sent a delegation to washington saying we want a fully trained division ago and our army. agreed but only to serve as americans under americans. they all need more training. they were considered to be not ready to fight. so they went immediately into training, january, february, march. there is theoretically a quiet zone that the germans
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were using to bring soldiers out of combat to let them rest, and the french were there opposing. the 42nd division soldiers were twinned with the french, and after they had been integrated to some extent after a week or so they operated alone under french officers, senior officers and then stay there for 110 days. and russia have been a dramatic change they had no stomach for the war. the freed up 62 regiments of germans who were then sent to the champagne, the western front. 55 miles from paris.
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the germans teed up a big, big offensive to take paris. the alabama regiment was put in between the rainbow division, put in between two french divisions on one of the key accesses to paris and fought extremely well and saved paris. if we had lost that battle, if paris had fallen, the fate of france and europe would have been sealed. the whole attitude of the french changed. the supreme commander was a french guy who commanded all of the allied troops in europe. he declared a counterattack, and the rainbow division was sent down, rested for three or four days, and then fought the hundred 67th which was sent by truck on
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the night of the 24th or 25th of july 1918, and then they went by foot for 6 mi. on the 26th of july they participated in an epic battle. it was the biggest bloodletting of alabama soldiers that had taken place since gettysburg. it was a tremendous loss of life. 163 alabama soldiers killed in aa foreign a half hour fight. a brutal fight. the screws were successful killing 480 germans. a bloody, bloody day. about 1,000 wounded. the battle, at a hell, a reinforced strong point with
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concrete bunkers and very experienced germans there. it was an extremely important place where the railroads supply lines crossed through. in the fall of that meant we would cut the vital supply lines that were connecting the north and south german armies. and we were successful there , and it was a great piece of machine gun work done by the 150 1st georgia machine gun battalion. they used indirect fire, fire from held 263 over the heads of the attacking soldiers and used a million rounds of machine gun ammunition, fired 30 minutes
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of uninterrupted fire and then stopped for 15 minutes and then raise the target and fired for 15 minutes more. it was an extremely creative piece of machine gun work that was supported by these assaulting instruments. it was a legendary success shared by the nation, but it was very important in alabama. it really meant that these country boys, all of whom were grandsons of confederates had aa part in saving freedom and democracy and distinguished themselves in europe alongside the regular army troops. they came home as heroes. the capitol grounds, this building here is located on the capitol grounds. the biggest assembly of people in alabama that we
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have ever had on the grounds of the capitol. 75,000 people who welcome that one regiment home. it was a hugely big outpouring, parades and possible and gadsden and aniston, montgomery, mobile. a huge outpouring of gratitude, but then it was all over. we are that we as americans. the confederacy into the modern world, that was the legacy of this regiment.
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they gave us pride that people on the street here knew that we were equal to the new york regiment. one of the largest national guard units in the united states. soldiering is an honored profession in the state. it is not looked down upon. volunteering for service is a big part of who we are. >> for more information on the recent visit to montgomery by book tv and the many other destinations go to c-span.org/cities tour. >> this is book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here is our prime time lineup.
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that all happens tonight on c-span2 book tv. >> every day books are reviewed by publications throughout the country. here's a look at some recently reviewed books.
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he writes that at heart the book is a nerve-racking autobiography by a journalist on the front lines covering war and terrorism.
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here is former 1st lady laura bush who wrote the forward talking about her interest in working with afghan women. >> right after september 11 when the spotlight turned on afghanistan, american women including myself saw women who are marginalized, left out. the very idea of the government that would forbid half of its population from being educated was shocking to americans, american men
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and women. a lot of people started calling me. saying i want to do something. and one of my best friends from houston called and said, i used to be so glad i wasi was not in your shoes, but now i wish i were. you can do something. i can't. so right then we formed the us afghan women's council in various projects were thought of to support our sisters in afghanistan which was really the beginning of my interest of afghanistan and the women there. >> watch for these programs and more this weekend on book tv. >> we are joined by author luther campbell. here is the book. mr. campbell, what and where is liberty city? >> guest: about ten
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minutes away from here. fifty-eight and 10th avenue right in the heart of where i was raised at. martin luther king boulevard. >> host: what is it? >> guest: a historically black neighborhood. one in which black folks, when we 1st moved here everybody lived in overtown, and we eventually started moving to liberty city. so my dad, like i talk about in the book, was one of the 1st persons to purchase a home there. they did not know he was black. when he showed up he already had the deposit, but at the end of the day they were like, we did not know we were selling to a black guy.
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he was one of the 1st to move to liberty city. >> host: and the deposit went from 500 to 2500 overnight? >> guest: exactly. >> host: what is two live crew? >> guest: a group i eventually got into. i was a mobile dj around here in miami. the guys came, just like every other band that was struggling. eventually they said they want to do songs where we get paid. you know, i want you to do a song. they did this song called throw the deep. it was a great dance. eventually it went from that point to doing an album.
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>> host: rap music? >> guest: rap music. first hip-hop song done in the south. from they're we start and created hip-hop in the south >> host: what is the relationship between two live karen the supreme court? >> guest: well, two live crew ended up getting me in the supreme court in my case. it was something i think that was destined to happen because hip-hop at that period of time was under attack by you name it. you know, my friend, a federal judge here in broward county, everyone was after hip-hop. >> host: was it a first amendment case? >> guest: it was whether parity was protected by the first amendment. there were two cases.
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one, the one i went to the supreme court, the most important case was the one my lawyer got overturned in the 4th district court of appeals. the court of appeals where it was the obscenity case number with the music was considered obscene or not. judge gonzales originally said the music was obscene. we had to go back and get it overturned. >> host: at one point you write in your book that you are worth about a hundred million dollars. >> guest: yes. >> host: did the money come easy? >> guest: not really. it was tough. you know, just like biggie smalls song says, more money more problems, i tried to do the right thing and be smart.
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i try to get good attorneys is about my corporation, but most of those people that i put around me stole from me in my opinion. so it was difficult to make the money, but hard to keep the money. >> host: was your work is part of two live crew graphic? >> guest: my work was not graphic. the work of the other members could have been considered graphic, but i defend their right to free speech. when you listen to the record and lyrics come i was the producer so i take full responsibility. >> host: from your book, at the end of the day there is one simple reason why
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hip-hop historians and journalists don't give me the credit undo. it is because of uncle luke. >> guest: uncle luke, my mom and dad raised luther campbell. just like she raised my other four brothers. pretty much rocket scientist , comptroller's, me, you know, i was the young guy who looked around and heard those guys complaining about money, whether they were in the armed services and felt like they were being mistreated. particularly my 3rd oldest brother in the navy. i don't think he got any liens. i ended up from engaging becoming uncle luke.
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uncle luke was originally luke skywalker. >> host: to live. >> guest: then i was the dj. so i morphed in to being uncle luke. now i'm still uncle luke. everybody's uncle. the lookout for my committee and try to do the right thing for everyone locally. >> host: was uncle luke the stage persona? >> guest: absolutely. so luke on stage was a guy that gave the people what they wanted. you listen to a record. we felt it was our responsibility to give people what they want other than going to a concert for situation. on the records, you know, as
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the government pushed back more we pushed back more than the records got more graphic than we wanted them to become, but we were fighting for free speech. >> host: the fight was never really about the lyrics. it had been about the principle of fighting for the right to do the same thing white artists did without legal harassment censorship. >> guest: yes. at that particular time again being the 1st hip-hop label in the south, i looked at artists like the or skillet, you name it, dolomite, people like andrew dice clay, already affiliated with major record labels. they were not getting their records taken off the shelf.
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i look at it from the stand stand.of, i'm hip-hop artist and on my own company. i just say, look, if i have to take: money to fight for free speech, then i will do that. >> host: what are you doing today? >> guest: i coach high school football. i still have the record label, and we do quite a few musical jingles for commercials or movies, and i am just, helping my wife out with her nfl agency and restaurants. i am just happy. helping out the community. >> host: how did you get involved in being a defensive coordinator for a miami high school? >> guest: my passion has always been football. i ended up going to miami beach i think football. i always said i would go back to my youth program
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that i founded 25 years ago and would start coaching, and i did. now i have some great players in the nfl. going to be at the redskins. you name it. we haveit. we have had quite a few kids in the leak now. the most important one came out of my program, you know, i am happy about all of it. >> host: let's bring it all back to liberty city, your career, the trajectory, what you went through. what is your role now? >> guest: to try and -- it's to stay here and do everything i possibly can to help the people who do not
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have a voice. i look at politics, other than our black elected officials, they are owned by special interest groups that don't have the interest of the african-american people in south florida. my job is to stay here and fight, fight for them, fight for kids in schools, fight for jobs. the unemployment rate is horrible. every day is a challenge of taking property and putting up condos. so that is one of the reasons. happy i did not move to new york when i was successful in the music industry. >> host: you talk in your book about the fact that you ran for mayor.
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>> guest: yes. >> host: how did you do? >> guest: i came in 4th place with all the living voters. in south florida you have dead voters. you know, the living people i came in 1st place of the dead people i came in 4th. >> host: 11 percent of the vote overall. he also talked about how you look at it as one miami. has that in any way been achieved? >> guest: it has been a struggle. from the outside looking in, the people of miami want one miami. there is not a day goes by that friends don't come to me and say, what can we do to help the communities and schools. there is not a day that goes by.
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it is much more than politicians. putting money into their pocket. as of the ones who try to create the diversion. we are some great people here in miami. they want one miami. that will be my slogan going forward. >> host: in your book you talk about the fact that the explicit lyrics label that was put on a lot of problems and cds, you are partially responsible for that, but it was not put on until white kids started buying rap music. it was okay, you say, when black kids were buying it. >> guest: i talk about it in detail because i want people to know, what i was going through, i had to figure out why there was all
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this controversy. why everyone is coming after me. as i went on i started thinking. hip-hop is been around. now that is crossing over and rock 'n roll is being phased out and a lot of white kids are listening to the music, that is when the controversy came. that is when we ended up on tipper gore's list. the top ten bad guys. i just figured that is what it was about. when i looked at it i said, it is important to fight for this. hip-hop music a nothing but the modern age blues. different guys talking about their struggles in their
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committee commit nwa. a lot of kids right now today following suit. there are great stories in their that i talk about when black guys were getting shot and killed, and it is still happening today. the book is so important for people to read from a historical standpoint. >> host: explicit lyrics inside. here is the book. >> do you want to watch this program again? visit booktv.org to watch any program you see here online. you can also share any videos on our website by clicking a facebook, twitter, or share icons.
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book tv, since 1998 all the top nonfiction authors and books available at booktv.org. >> afterwards is next. we discuss race and the obama presidency. >> you are ahead of the curve. you created this book. who is barack obama when it comes to race? >> guest: a complicated human being. one of the smartest mende occupy the oval office who thinks about the issues of race. he wrote one of the extraordinary memoirs. he used the n-word profusely

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