alive after ernie and his schoolmates and other black youngsters in the south on freedom rides end up getting hedge whipped because they want decent education. and the president is nominating judges who you wouldn't jump over the moon to put on the bench if you were me. personally, i thought -- i worked for kennedy in the campaign and never supported a republican.

i am democrat all the way. when i got to washington, there was a sense that i had that many of the white guys who were in charge of running civil rights present company excluded -- [ laughter ] >> really weren't steeped deeply in it and how deep and nasty and hard and mean the racism in this country still was. and pretty words weren't going to fix it. that made it impossible for me to first of all continue as a lawyer who was going to make some money, which it turns out i didn't do, to my wife's unhappy

dismay. but you couldn't -- you couldn't live in this society, this heated racial society and not get in it. and get in it with force and effort. and i thought the kennedys were nice people for being so rich. but that they didn't really understand the depth, the americanism, and the awfulness of america's racial problems. there wasn't no quick thing to do.

some clever, oh, get mack. have mack bundy come in here and say something clever, and maybe we can figure out how to do this. that's not how you can do it. there was no way to do it but for people to get into the trough and go and use years and years and years, all of their lives to change it. and i would say that, though -- and there were -- you have to be honest about these things. this is not going to -- the next sentence is not going to be a very nice one. but it was really hard to get into -- try to get into civil rights and make it better. and get the administration to do more when you got the sense that you were moving around in several conglomerations.

of fairly arrogant white guys who -- many of them who never had anything to do with race at all until they got into the thing and were working. now harris was -- is -- you have my exculpation. you're not, you weren't. he was one of the white guys that people could go to early on in the president's term. he was the good guys. white house ralph dumbman. but there were a lot of guys who just wanted to be near the top.

and guys who didn't know a lot. so i got lucky. i made a contact inside the white house, ralph a duma. remember ralph? ralph, i would go with assistant to the president. a nice guy. he was in foreign aid, and ralph would come, or have me come, and we would talk about issues at the top of the foreign aid program. and then it always turned to race. and then i would -- then i would really argue hard and say the president needed to be pushed. and one of the things i used was the stroke of the pen. we believed it. where's the pen? what's he doing about it? and then you had the president when he's -- you remember that the president when he was campaigning had gone to alabama

and had seen the governor. his name was patterson. and the president-elect said, "oh, he is a man i can work with." well, thurgood marshall, a close friend of ours. i had grown up knowing him. he said to me what is the president saying that for? that man is a rat. he's just terrible. he is -- he's going to make such trouble in alabama. the president -- most feeling was not expressed that harshly. but it will feeling that his administration was feeling its way.

and that this -- the attorney general who was in charge of this stuff was being a tough guy and that's the administration was full of tough guys. was he tough enough was one of the things that people would ask of somebody as -- >> let me ask this question before i get sheryl into this conversation. you said something that's very important particularly after our first conversation, that's about the appointment of federal judges. where is eisenhower worked very carefully to make sure judges he put in place were pro civil rights to the extent of his ability. kennedy did not do that. as a sock to southerners he appointed segregationist judges. the impact of that, if you would. >> the impact of it was huge. so just to take one of the

judges he appoints harold cox in mississippi. harold cox was proposed to the eisenhower justice department as a judicial appointment and herbert bradl laughed when he heard harold cox's name. you can't possibly appoint this guy when kennedy comes in. harold cox gets appointed. cox was probably about the worst of the lot. because they can make his life unhappy also by blocking his legislation, by writing on federal administration, by depriving programs of money, and yeah, it's one of many instances

where it requires a little bit of confrontation, and the president and the attorney general shied away from that confrontation and appointed a number of segregationist judges in the south and this was very, very important. one thing that people don't understand that we understand the role of the judiciary in little rock, the role of the judiciary was always key in the civil rights movement, civil rights protesters get arrested. are they going to get out of jail? we're going to have a protest. will there be abinjunction against the protest. state courts want to enjoin a protest, are the federal courts going to act and in fact even as far back as the montgomery bus boycott who most people don't know is that in fact the federal judiciary helped save the montgomery bus boycott, they won the boycott because they filed a

lawsuit and got it in front of the federal judiciary and eventually the u.s. supreme court declared the alabama segregation statute unconstitutional. so federal judges were going to be key in whether or not the movement was going to succeed or fail in the south and the ken diadministration put a number of federal judges in who issued rulings that were rear to law. harold cox would speak in racial epithets from the bench, would refer to african-americans as monkeys from the bench and this was someone who kennedy put in and in fact the judges who the kennedys liked were the eisenhowers on the fifth circuit because when the district court judges ruled against them they had to go to the eisenhower judges in the fifth circuit to get basic constitutional rights for african americans in the

south so the federal judges were key. >> can i continue this, just on this road, because when you are sitting inside the government and you're seeing that, and it's your party and your president, you're in a terrible mess, and so you have to do what you have to do, taken is to point out to the president of the united states that they weren't responding to ernie green and his colleagues. you look at the picture of elizabeth eckford and that girl yelling at her and screaming with her face all in turmoil, rage, again you got to say, come

on, the government i work for, come on and do something, and i would say it in words and ralph would say, write it roger. you know this stuff but i don't know this stuff. you write it. so i'm writing it and i decide break my career, write, break my career, write, and then i finally said to myself what you need to do. i said to myself what are you, a man or a bunch of -- you can't ask yourself that question if you're not ready to give the right answer, and i did give the right answer by my life and it came back from bob kennedy like a rock out of a thing thing you

knock down tanks with. it was really, it was really tough. he's green. he doesn't know what he's talking about. he'll certainly never get an appointment in this department as long as i'm attorney general. >> let me get charlene into this conversation, all right, okay. [ laughter ] >> i just want to say that that changed some stuff, and all i can, i'm trying to say in this that what the people on the street were doing and their demands and their pressure and enlightning and particularly the young people and you say you've

got to change things to respond to these people. i'll be quiet. [ applause ] the one-two combination of street versus court and kenneth told us what's happening legislatively, roger told us what's happening inside the administration as far as harris wolford told us the same thing and let me can explain who elizabeth eckford is, one of the students who was going to be a part of the desegregation of central high school along with ernie green and the rest. she's captured in the iconic photograph where there is a woman screaming at her and a mob behind her and she's trying to get on the bus by way of running us up to this point in time a wonderful book talking to both elizabeth eckford and the woman screaming at her. you should read that book.

the streets versus the court, what we have going on here are people who have become black history like charlene hunter-gault, and you've become a pivotal part of this story of pushing the kennedys toward looking and dealing with civil rights in a way to that point john f kennedy -- tell us the story. >> thank you, callie. i sort of like to pick up where roger left off because as i listen to what all of the people were talking about what was going on inside, i kept think being the young people in this audience, and i want to say to them that it was young people like you who changed the minds of the kennedys. those young people, i just did all this research for this book i'm going to promote in a few

minutes. [ laughter ] but i'm living with this now in a way i didn't live with it when i became the first black student at the university of georgia, but i was encouraged by what else was going on with the students in the movement. the president and the little rock nine and ruby bridges over in new orleans who was in a way more poignant than you guys. you were 11th and 12th grade. she was in the fifth and sixth grade and she had to walk through this mob -- first grade, and you know, we talked about the continuity of history. when barack obama was running for president, he went to selma and one of the things he said there was "i stand on the shoulders of giants," and i was so happy to hear him say that because as ernie said and others have said, black people have been struggling for equality since they were brought over here in chains, and it built and it built, and as i was writing

my book about the students who actually did change the minds of the kennedys, i had to go back to all of those people in the naacp and other organizations who had been quietly working since those guys came back home, including my father, who was in the truman army, who held the heads of black soldiers who were shot on the battlefield and yet they couldn't come back home even injured and enjoy any of the privileges of the other whites. so all of that had been going on and germinating and simmering so when these young people hit the streets starting in greensboro in 1960 when they sat in at the lunch counters, that unleashed young people all over the south and eventually in the north

because in order to get the attention of the kennedy administration they got white kids from the north to go and study non-violent protests in i think it was ohio and some of them went south to do sit-ins and demonstrations, et cetera. some of them were sent to washington because they were white and they thought that they could get the attention of the white administration, with a couple of exceptions here to protektd those young people demonstrating for equal rights in the south. all of this happened as i applied to the university of georgia. i don't think it was necessarily the school desegregation stuff at that point, when i entered in '61 it was the first successful desegregation of higher education at that point in the south and robert kennedy came to

my college, university of georgia in 1971, and the desegregation was given by a white judge, william boodle and kennedy came in may of '61 to speak at the law day ceremony, and by this time the consciousness of the administration had been raised to a certain extent and so the state representatives, none of the top officials of georgia would attend because they were afraid of what bobby kennedy would say. here i was one of two black students on a campus of 20,000 who had rioted when we went into the university, but that calmed down after three days. we didn't have to have ernie's troops come in. [ laughter ] so ken i did coming and i really want to hear what he has to say especially since all of these georgia laegtd tours were so

concerned about what he was going to say. so i spoke to a sympathetic professor, most of whom didn't speak to me at that point, but he did, and so he got me into the room, and sure enough, he started with the whole notion of the cold war. that was his context for saying that you have to obey the federal laws. and then -- and i wrote about this in my first book. i was sitting in the -- somewhere, you know, invisible, in the class, a room of maybe 200 or 300 students, and all of a sudden i heard -- bobby kennedy had talked about how the south had helped deliver his brother, and a few other things. i think i quoted part of the speech in my book. and then i heard him say, because i'm just sitting there saying, oh, this is very interesting, cold war, soviet union, communism, democracy, and

then he said, the graduation of charlayne hunter and hamilton holmes from this university will be a major step in our war against communism and the soviet union and communism. and i said, excuse me? at which point i was no longer invisible, because everybody turned around and looked at me in the room. and then he went on to articulate in the clearest terms, i think, that any federal official at that level had done to say, that the primacy of federal law will be supreme in this country. and you're going to have to obey the law, whether you like it or not. at which point there was sort of rumbling and mumbling. and when he finished, i think i was probably the only person who stood up, maybe hamilton holmes, the other black student. we were applauding wildly, and so i said to my professor, i

have to meet this man. he said, come with us. afterwards at the reception, i was introduced to him, and he just -- you know, it was very sort of friendly, you know, nice to meet you. and i said, i like what you had to say about that communism thing. and he sort of smiled. and that was -- but that was in -- that was in 1961. up to that point, these young people, when john lewis left howard university on a trailways bus to go on the first freedom ride, he left his will behind. because he thought that there was a real possibility -- and he was right, he wasn't killed, but chaney and goodman were. and those young people left their wills behind. trying to get the attention of the federal government to get

these states to uphold the law, which went back to the boynton decision. and maybe even before. you lawyers can help me with this. it's in this book, but i can't remember all of that. the book. [ laughter ] but there had been decisions going back to the '40s that ruled out segregation on interstate commerce. but there was still segregation on the buses. the blacks still had the back seat. the freedom rides were aimed at forcing the federal government, not to create anything new, but to enforce the law. and it took these young people, fearless and ready to die, in order to get the attention of the federal government. and even once they did, i mean, there were little -- you can read about it in my book -- no, but it's true. because i did research that i

didn't even know in order to explain the role of young people in making america live up to its promise of equality for all. and we talk about martin luther king. martin luther king didn't start the movement. he was one of many. and it was -- you know, there were tensions between these young people in snvc student on violent coordinating committee, and the naacp. naacp was upset because when these young people would get arrested, they would have to go bail them out and pay the money, but they didn't want to listen to the naacp in terms of how they were doing things. because naacp was gradualists. important, because they were winning cases like the 1954 brown decision. but that was a slow process. these young people were saying, we've got to move faster. the 1954 supreme court decision said we're all separate and equal, with all deliberate speed. when i applied to university of

georgia in 1959, that was four years later, there was no deliberate to speed. these young people were saying, the time is now. martin luther king said the time is right to do right. and so they forced even king to be more militant. when king got arrested in atlanta, protesting with the students, it was -- he didn't plan to get arrested. but he did. >> the black people in atlanta didn't expect it either. >> but there were a lot of black older people. and you had these schisms. because you had courageous black people ho had been fighting for generations for equality. but you also had those who had been tormented and beaten and killed and all kinds of -- when they looked for goodman, chaney and schwerner and found them

some 40 days later in the river, in the process they found so many other black people who had been murdered and nobody even knew where they were. so things were going on, even before king and rosa parks, and they deserve all the credit. but all of those unknown giants on whose shoulders president -- then candidate obama said, there were nameless people fighting. but the young people in the south, in the '60s, were the ones who forced the kennedy administration to do what was right. and ultimately they did. >> so let me talk about what became a signal event of young people that pushed john f. kennedy to then get this civil rights legislation through. and you've mentioned the freedom riders and their incredible story. but i want to broaden out the question in this way. how did a man, who during his campaign, harris wofford, who said, praise the sit-ins you

referred to. he said, if you've got to go for freedom, sometimes you have to sit down. i'm paraphrasing his quote. how does he go from there to appointing segregationist judges, upsetting roger wilkins and being pushed, pushed, pushed until the freedom ride with the brutality visited upon those freedom riders really made him move to do something in terms of concrete legislation? >> in the first place, it isn't just the kennedys that had to be moved, public opinion had to be moved. southern legislators had to be removed or moved. and charlayne, i want to read the book. i'm sure i'll love it. >> oh, you will. >> i recommend you read it. >> you can buy her book. >> i will buy it. >> okay. [ laughter ] >> the documentary on american experience documentary that's

been shown and re-shown recently -- >> "the freedom riders" is by stanley nelson. you should see it. it's an excellent movie. >> kennedy did, after the first sit-ins, he sent a message saying, the new way -- you've shown that the new way to stand up for your rights is to sit down. now, why were -- did they make -- they rapidly learned the mississippi judge was a terrible mistake. i want to then say, charlayne brought onto the stage here robert kennedy. because he's a crucial part of all the questions we've asked so far. he called essentially all the signals on civil rights while his brother was alive. the president looked to him for civil rights. not to me at all in that sense, or to louie martin. he looked to his brother, robert. his brother, robert, by the way, liked very much dealing with the

uncle of roger wilkins, who -- when i went to see the uncle, head of the naacp -- >> roy wilkins. >> roy wilkins, he said, don't let it take you all the way to lbj. but he said, harris, if i'm honest, i will tell you that the one person who i think has fire in his belly, because of what he's seen in the south, to end it, is lyndon johnson. and then he said, but don't worry, he said, my wife is not only a roman catholic, but passionately in love with john kennedy, and she wouldn't sleep with me if i didn't support john kennedy. you can see why kennedy had an affinity toward roger's uncle. robert kennedy -- [ laughter ] robert kennedy, berth marshall