so what happened? they pushed and pushed and what happened, shea? he retaliated. and how did he retaliate? with police dogs and fire hoses. yeah, kareem? >> they came with king issuing the young kids. the idea of the radical and the militants. and even malcolmx was, like, disagreeing with that along with the president. >> right, what did malcolmx say? >> he was like the children are too young to even participate. >> the children were too young to participate. >> and a man doesn't make children do his work for him, right? a real man doesn't have children go out there in front of him. yeah, katie? >> i think it was martin luther king that said if the children can accept god and, like, decide their faith, then they're old enough to be able to stand up. >> what's interesting is that king had to be talked into it.

that was actually his lieutenant, james bevel. bevel was this sort of always slightly nutty, way out there, really brilliant tactician and theorist of nonviolence. and you saw him on eyes on the prize. he's the one who pushed martin luther king. everybody had to push king. he thought deeply, but he also had to be pushed. he said to bevel, you've got to be kidding me. we can't do that. we can't do that. bevel wore him down. bevel wore him down and the cameras were starting to leave. now, is that manipulative on the part of the civil rights movement? to do something that the cameras would like? what do you think about that? are they jusbl >> no, i feel like it wasn't exposure. they needed people to be interested. >> why? why do you think they needed that? >> because they needed people to realize what's actually happening in the south and,

like, the impact of segregation. >> they needed people where to realize that? >> all over the country. >> all over the country. especially in the north where it was really easy to ignore. yeah? >> the other countries were getting liberated. countries in africa and asia that were become independent. >> so if they were looking into the u.s. -- >> so they were willing to play to the world to use world public -- the public opinion of people around the world as well as in the united states as additional pressure on the system in birmingham. that's a gutsy thing to do, isn't it? it's a very gutsy -- yeah, katie? >> i think that's also why kennedy was pretty reluctant and didn't want all of these things to be happening because it had other -- like everyone else in the world would view us.

>> well, he didn't want -- yeah, he didn't want the civil rights activists doing what they were doing anyway. he tried to talk people out of doing the freedom rides because he was going to go meet with crews khrushchev in vienna. it makes the u.s. look bad. you know, the front page of pravda, you know, which was the party organ of the communist party of the soviet union covered the birmingham struggle. and the soviets were real they supported lots of independent movements that the united states did not always support so much. and so they made hay out of this. they really -- they loved being able to embarrass the united states. and that's one of the reasons why king got called a communist. because what he was doing was in some ways supporting communist criticism of the united states. he was never a communist. he was never even close to being a communist. he was always critical of communists.

but he was willing to embarrass his own government for not doing anything about civil rights. and john f. kennedy had plenty to be embarrassed about, although, as you pointed out, king was ambitious, right, trying to get the government of the united states to act on these matters. they needed publicity. it's too easy not to look at how badly people are being treated far away. or, frankly, seven blocks away in hartford. there's tremendous poverty in this city. and, right now, we're in a gorgeous classroom, right? and everybody's got enough to eat and everybody's got good clothing and everybody is in this nice, private university and you have the luxury of studying the history of the civil rights movement and not very far away, people are tremendously poor in this city, which is one of the poorest cities in the united states. and it's easier not to look at it.

it's hard to look at it all of the time. it's even easier to not look at stuff that's a thousand miles away below the mason dixon line where people talk about down south, i don't want go there, that's dixie. so these folks in these african americans in the deep south had a tremendous barrier to overcome. and they used -- they needed media desperately. did it work? it worked. they finally got their confrontation. and it was on the front page of newspapers all over the world. and they got the negotiation. and they got agreements to hire african americans in stores to serve african americans in lunch counters.

it seems like small potato, doesn't it? they had to go through all of that just to get a few people hired in stores? it's amazing, isn't it? that's what king refers to in the letter which you've read now about how it's sort of odd that the nations of africa and asia are moving toward independence with jet-like speed while we go at a horse and buggy pace to get what? do you remember? a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. that's right. a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. exactly. so, ready to look at the letter? good. let's get the screen down and then we'll look at both letters. this is great.

unlike the other classroom, this one has the screen attached to the on button. it will take a minute or so to warm up. >> let's see if i can get to what we want here. so, since you have looked at this open letter before, what were you struck by. >> i was just struck that it was clergymen that attacked king because everyone was opposing him at that time. it wasn't just people who were outside the church. it wasn't just a certain group of people. it seemed everyone was attacking him when he was going in the movement. >> what do you know about these eight clergymen? >> they were white? >> they were all white. >> it seemed like they had a lot of credentials.

>> they did have a lot of credentials. and they were known as racial moderates. they were not the fire-breathing, klu klux klaners. they were racial moderates. one of them is -- let's see. let's go to the bottom. and let's look at the list of people who signed the letter. these are not just ordinary pastors, right? these are religious leaders. bishop of alabama, auxiliary bishop. either catholic or episcopalian there. bishop of the alabama west florida conference at the methodist church. here's a bishop of the episcopal diocese, so these must be the catholic bishop. and this must be the catholic bishop as well.

here we've got the presbyteri presbyterians. and here we've got someone who is a pastor in the first baptist church of birmingham, which i think we'll see a slide of in a little bit. and, also, we've got a rabbi, right? i bet you didn't know therals a. but there's enough jews to have a temple. and the one rabbi in town, you can bet it was the only rabbi in town, signs onto exactly the same letter. one of these fellows, because king even mentions it in the letter, it's -- i don't know whether it's -- i think it must be bishop carpenter, has already desegregated a catholic college in town. so these are the racial moderates. these are people that have in some ways taken brave stances with their own denominations

with their favor on some movement on civil rights. yet, let's look at their attitude. we don't have a long time to do this. but it's not a long letter. and this, by the way, was in the sunday paper. so this may help us understand some of what's in the letter. we are confronted by a series of demonstrations directed and led in part by outsiders. so that's one of the reasons why king is so stunned by the idea that he's an outsider when he get to his letter. we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and what's the other word? untimely. absolutely. unwise and untimely. then, they say that we think that there should be negotiation.

open and honest negotiation, as though somehow martin luther king is opposed to negotiation. so it's good context for the letter, right? you see what he's responding to. >> oh, here we go. we also point out that if we had cite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful, they don't contribute to the resolution of local problems. and then, at the end, they urge our own negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations. what do you think about that? eight white clergymen asking all the black folk in town to withdraw from the demonstrations? because they don't know what's best for it? what do you think about that? >> well, one thing i highlighted

that he said in his letter -- but he said that no one would be able to, like, understand segregation and going through it unless they felt like this thing of segregation. so these people haven't gone through it. so who are they to tell these white people who are fighting for their own natural liberties that they should stop. >> that's really very well put. where is that -- where is that line about unduly -- it's a great line, actually. it's on the second -- where is that line? those that have not felt unduly. the sting of segregation. do you have it? >> it's on the third page. >> it's on the third page. oh, here we go. perhaps it is easy. bottom of the second, first of the top, right? perhaps it is easy for those to say wait.

none of these gentlemen has felt the stinging dart of segregation. and neither had my predecessor at the university of hartford in 1963. the person teaching u.s. history who surely was white, surely was male, had never felt those darts, either. easy to ignore what life was like in the segregated south as to do anything about it. that's why they needed the media. that's why they needed project c for confrontation. anything else in this letter that you had read before? >> i just pointed out, like you did, the timing issue. everyone seems to have a problem with the timing. >> everyone had a problem with the timing, right? we're supposed to take our time, right? we're supposed to take our time. i want to show you one last

thing here before we get -- what's in the paragraph right above the one that i've highlighted? what's going on here? yeah, katie? >> law enforcement on how calm they've been through this entire thing. >> right, how calm the law enforcement had been. have they enforced the laws of segregation. yes? >> the thing that strikes me is, like, it says a continued attempt to protect our city from the violence. but these were nonviolent, like, protests and movements. so protecting the city for violence is really from the violence of the law enforcement. there are people who were violent. >> they're the only people who were violent. exactly. and i think we may want to go one step further which king does

in the letter, which we're just about to get to, which is that there is a violence in the laws of segregation. that does not involve billy clubs and fists and people getting kicked. but there's a violence in the daily humiliations and injustice of segregation that, as long as the cops are being called, everything is cool, right? no. everything is not cool. because at a certain point, something busts out and someone explodes a bomb. or someone gets lynched. or someone is murdered because these, sir, the sorts of things that happen. so let's go to the letter itself. and it's long. so we're not going to deal with the whole thing, obviously. so what strikes you, first off, about this letter?

>> king seems to be very polite. i know if i was responding to people attacking what i was doing, i would have been enraged. so i wouldn't have been as polite as he was. >> it's hard to be that polite, right? do you think he's really polite? what do you think? marris, you're in some ways emotionally least -- i think you feel least like martin luther king speaks for you, right? in certain ways? >> i wouldn't say that, no. >> you wouldn't say that? well, tell me, do you think he's polite in here? >> i do think he's polite. he's very calm and organized and how he organized and states his points. >> he is calm. he's super organized. does everybody think he's polite? i'm just wondering. >> i think he's just trying to be understanding. so you think he's going sort of a step towards them to try to understand them? >> yeah. >> yes, katie and then kareem?

>> i think there's an undertone -- i don't know if sarcasm is the right word. but i definitely don't think that his intentions are to be, like, understanding and, like, trying to -- >> so where do you see that in the tone, katie? >> well, when he talks about, like, waiting and then he goes and gives this long -- >> oh, the long sentence, yeah, we'll get to that sentence. but you think -- yeah, he's pretty worked up by the time he gets to that sentence. anybody else sort of feel anything in the tone that's a little less polite? kareem? i'm sorry, kareem had it first. >> i disagree with katie. what he's saying about sarcasm. he has, like, a very politically correct voice. >> what do you mean by correct? >> he's not just flat out saying, oh, these people and accusing -- going off, like, what you said. um, he's, like, kind of -- he has this underlying tone. >> of? >> very calm and --

>> he's very calm and collected. >> very calm and collected. >> maybe it's not that he's trying to understand the people who are opposing him and maybe he's trying to be understood. so he can go in a way that he would be accepted. you know if someone attacks you in response to attacking them, it's not going to get far. >> well, you know, it's interesting. a person wrote a whole book about the letter and mostly about the response to the letter. and it's about the guys he wrote to. almost all of them were devastated by the letter. they felt that they had gone a long way towards the civil rights movement. and, instead, the movement turned around, and, king, in particular, called them out and made them famous racists. and that all the risks they had were for nothing after that. and for the rest of their lives. they remembered -- they were the people. i was the guy that martin luther king naile

in letter for birmingham jail. so they didn't think it was nice. yeah? >> i felt like especially the part where he was talking about the long sentence, there's, like, a lot of impatience with it. i felt like he was trying to say that they had patience for so long and they try today be nonviolent and through all of their actions, they had been very patient. and for them to say you need to wait longer was ridiculous. so he was just -- he just felt like the need to express himself that way.>> i mean, i think you something. i want to put out a possibility. i know that he was stuck. that's what he says in the biography. they were criticg these were fellow clergy and they were criticizing him on religious grounds. for a teacher to b h and so they went after him, you know, these are religious people two, i think he's furious. and i think the fury only comes

but i think he's controlling the anger throughout the resofger t. so it feels to me, i have to say the more i read it, feels to me like a spring that's kind of pushed together and coiled up re only he's letting the energy out, as maris says, very controlled, very organized. very clear. you know, the words are all right. but i feel this kind of rage behind it. but he knoe because no one will pay attention to him. yeah, maris? >> i also don't think that he had any other option. at the time he was labelled as an extremist and for him to unleash the rage would play -- >> completely play into their stereotyping. >> he can't do it. i think he felt -- i can be wrong about this, you're welcome to disagree with me, i had a

feeling that he ltat he couldn' who he really was, so he took the kind of feelings that he had about being in jail, in solitary confinement, and frankly, the movement wasn't doing that well. the children's march hadn't happened when he's writing this letter, right? he's headed towards another defeat. and these guys are going to dance on his grave. and i think he's pretty upset about it. because there it looks like from inside the jail cell, it looks like theirs is the interpretation that's going to win out. not his. yeah. >> and like another thing with the waiting, it wasn't just them. it was -- i mean, even his own dad was like -- >> oh, that's right. >> and so when you have so many people telling you this, it's going to come out. i don't -- i think a lot of the things that he directed towards them were also indirectly directed towards other people like his father. like you can't tell me to wait. you for other generations and

like his own people were telling him -- >> i'm so glad you remembered that and brought it up, because it's true. people -- when he said that he was going to march, his father says to him, and he tried to get -- remember, he tried to get him to leave montgomery, right? he tried to get him out of the montgomery bus boycott. he was always saying you go home, you come home. you don't have to do tki he made his own peace and remember when king came to atlanta, he sort of made a deal that he wasn't going to make waves in atlanta because it would make too many waves for his old man. his own father didn't want martin luther king making trouble in his hometown. so in that hotel room, when king march, his own father, daddy king, says i don't know where you get that non-violence stuff. you must have got it from your mother. yeah. i think he's talking to his father and to all the people that have said no.

and he's way out there on a limb, right? he is so far out on a limb that he could be in the tomb. kareem, right? it is pretty staggering. he's way out there, and it's weighing heavily on his mind. absolutely. so you see how that outsider line is something that he really responds to, right? why am i in birmingham? and then he explains. he doesn't really allow the argument of outsiderness, and yet people do it over and over again. they always do it. they say our knee grows are just fine. our people are just fine. >> we don't need any outside agitators. they came on campus. people would say, our students are just fine. it's all the outsiders that come in and try to stir them up. everybody always blames the waves that get made on folks

thatom really think that people that they're living alongside would ever have these sorts ccerns. and yet, they do. they have a hard time saying them. that's what the white folks in montgomery learned. what else do you see in this letter that you want to talk about? >> i have something. what about when king talks about the two opposing forces in the negro community? >> oh, that's great, casey. where are we in that? where is that in the letter there? >> somewhere -- we saw in this video, we talked about it a little in the beginning. there's almost a slight divide going on in the community. that's more than just them not wanting king to interfere.

does anyone remember? >> where is that? what? >> who is he referring to? >> malcolm x and the nation of islam. >> what about the upper -- the wealthier black people, what about gaston? >> okay. here's the paragraph, right? >> yes. >> there's a lot of things going on. there's a lot of different issues. so what is he referring to? what is he talking about? these rifts that are coming along, because they're not all doing the same thing at the same time. you know, they all have different ideas, different opinions. >> he's talking about how some of the upper class black people were okay with secgation. it's not their business, as long as their business was getting along, and they weren't upsetting the white people, they could still make money and go on with their own lives, and they didn't see the struggles of the

lower class blacks who had to deal with segregation and weren't making as much money and living in poor conditions. >> so martin luther king is really willing to be upfront and speaking to his own community here as well as speaking to the white clergy people. so he's between these two -- and this comes in the context of being accused of being an extremist. so, one, that you just described, very nicely, a force of complacency, made up in part of negroes who as a result of long years of oppression are so drained of self-respect and a sense of somebodiness that they have adjusted to segregation, and in part of a few middle class negroes, who because of a degree of economic secure, after all there were black colleges, right, and because in some ways they profit by segregation -- how do you profit by segregation? you know? >> because black people can only

shop at your store, then you'll make more money than if they had more options. >> exactly. there are african-american beauty salon, barbershops, grocery stores, restaurants, funeral parlors, churches. i mean, if all churches are all integrated in birmingham, that means some of the black churches are going to have maybe fewer folks. less likely to happen, really, in the south. king once said -- i forget whether he says it here that the hour between 11:00 and 12:00 in the morning is the most segregated hour in america. and he was right. but, yeah, there's a whole black community that relies on black economic contributions basically for them to -- for them to live. same thing happened with black baseball, by the way. the negro leagues. the negro leagues which had supported hundreds of ballplayers and businesses when jackie robinson came into the major leagues, into the white

majors. african-americans went to go see white baseball. and it -- i mean, within a matter of half a dozen years, the negro leagues were basically finished because most african-american fans wanted to see their ballplayers playing in the white majors. and there are all kinds of ironies attached to that because there were relatively few black players in the white majors for many years. teams had a quota, you know, maybe two. they didn't have one at a time, generally two. if you really were, you know, getting with the program, you might have three. or four. but not more than that. then you'd be known as a black team. but african-americans, i mean, anybody -- you guys know a little bit of the jackie robinson story. you know he came up with the brooklyn dodgers. the brooklyn dodgers automatically became african-americans' favorite team in america. it didn't matter where they

lived, who they rooted for, what league they rooted for, they automatically rooted for the brooklyn dodgers. sang thing is happening here with integration, folks may not be doing as well. and here's the other force, right? bitterness and hatred becomes dangerously close, perilously close to advocating violence expressed in the various black nationalist groups springing up across the nation, the largest and best known being elijah muhammad's muslim movement which included malcolm x who was basically the most well-known minister of the nation of islam. >> what about the other side to this, the idea that many of the wealthier black citizens considered the members of the movement to be just making trouble? do you remember that? >> what do you think -- go ahead. good question, casey. what do you all think about that?