you. thank you for coming out. a pleasure for me to be here. , want to do a couple of things two or three things. world,book publishing there is what is called the front matter. everything that you see before the book actually begins, before chapter one. how would include the table of contents, it forward or a preface or introduction of some sort, dedications and the like. i want to give you some of the front matter of the book. which is not quite a forward, but my reasoning with respect to the book and the process that unfolded in doing the book.

it has been a long time -- i won't spend a long time doing that. i want to make some comments about the actual content of the why in outline for you think guns made the civil rights movement possible. and then i will sit down with rex and pursue that conversation and finally take questions from you i'll in the audience -- from you in the audience. that is a lot to do in an hour or so. , in some ways, my thermination to address question of how the southern freedom movement is portrayed. i have long been dissatisfied with what might be called the canon with regards to the

southern freedom movement. , when i began this book, sort of neatly and with a great deal of irony, put the me.n in perspective for martinboils down to standing up and the white folks seeing the light and saving the day. that, more or less, is my complaint about much of the narrative. there is a newer body of scholarship emerging, younger historian emily crosby, leslie hogan, they were here yesterday to represent that newer approach. these are all scholars, which i am not. i am a journalist, i am a

reporter, not a scholar. i lean heavily on my experiences and the scholarship of scholars. this was all pioneered by richard kluger with his work on the 1954 supreme court decision and charles payne's works on mississippi. emergingroughly slowly a better scholarship, sensitive scholarship. as part of this discussion, what book wasy driving this my dissatisfaction with how the narrative of the scylla rights movement is presented in general . this is ironic because as a working reporter, which i've been ever since i left the

south, i've i have mainly been a foreign affairs reporter. i covered africa, wars, i bounced all over the world, partly within pr and for 20 years, with national geographic and for 20ith npr, years, with national geographic. bob moses, who was here me to help himd with a book, which is available "radical equations are ."or book my story on charlie's . after the book was published, i brought the book to middle school, the principal of the middle school had given me help. it is in mr. evers old

neighborhood -- medgar evers's old neighborhood in mississippi. i was getting ready to go up to the delta and i was sitting on the steps of the school with these middle school kids and i guy into what i called old mode and decided to engage these kids in a discussion about fannie lou hamer. i asked them, does anybody know, can anybody tell me something about her? knew anythinghem about her. my right came and i got up and i pointed at the library and i explained that she was really

important, not just to mississippi's movement, to the southern freedom movement and you needed to know something about her. the kind of old guy lecture, you know? and then i ended those remarks by saying, i knew her and i was getting ready to tell them a fannie lou hamer story i was certain would engage them. so they would all show up when i got back. , one ofaid, i knew her these kids, he must've been 13 years old, he leapt to his feet and said, you were alive back then? [laughter] got stuck on the idea of me knowing somebody whose name was chiseled in the front of the library. ongue.my t

i just laughed to myself. it occurred to me, here is a history,ld, and the which, to me, it is recent history, is so distant from him that he could not imagine that he is sitting on the steps of knewchool with someone who the actors in this history. i occurred to me that maybe ought to turn my attention as a addressing some of this history in writing. i shifted gears and i have in 2001- and that was done foreigny not

affairs writing and reporting anymore. i sometimes miss it, but i do not do it. i have totally turned my attention to writing about the southern movement. the one part of the problem and the one part of the front matter that is -- that i want to tell you -- that is reflected in this book is the need to figure out how to make the history itself real. people feelng connected to the history. if you read the book, you will see there is a lot of stories in here. book is analysis, but the is built around stories, most of whostories are about people

are not famous and not well .nown she wound up making molotov cocktails in her kitchen sink when the clan was coming to attack her farm. a farmer people like in holmes county, mississippi, who when he drove the knight rifle, who with his the attacking his home, first thing out of his mouth was, i wasn't being non-and nonviolence, i was just protecting my family. you could see that these farmers and these people in the south

did not see any contradiction between saying they are part of a nonviolent movement, but also keeping their rifles and pistols ordy or on the coffee table in the drawer. trying to tell this story in a way that young people can view it and understand it and in a way that grown-ups can get something out of it. another important influence in terms of telling these kinds of stories, my commitment to , a verythese stories important part of the front matter is the influence of a person who should be much better baker, she wase newspaper to us because she was er to use was ms. bakle

because she was 57 years old. read to you something from her on history and understanding history that i hope will help you understand what i mean. i could take the next hour and elaborates on her life, not just her importance -- her importance southern christian leadership conference, organizing local branches of the naacp in the 1940's, when she was director of branches. that is another book i will do at some point. she did say this about history that is crucial to understanding written.book was she says, in order for us, as

poor and oppressed people, to become a part of a society that is meaningful, the system on which we now exist has to be radically changed. that means we will have to learn to think in radical terms i use the term radical in its original meaning, getting down to an understanding of the root cause. it means facing a system that does not lend itself to your needs in devising the means by which you change that system. that is easier said than done. one of the things that has to be faced is in the process of wanting to change the system, how much of we got to do to find out who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going? i am saying to you, as you must say, that in order to see where

we are going, we not only must remember where we have been, but we must understand where we have been. is at the core of the reasoning for doing this book and at the core of why i turned my attention from foreign toairs as a working reporter writing about the southern freedom movement of the 1950's and 1960's. , let me say bygs way of critiquing -- one of the problems i have with the southern of the movement, the way it is presented, is what is left out. one of the first things i learned as a working reporter is news is shaped more by what is

left out than by any bias that is put in. we can recognize bias if we see account orspaper magazine account or television news report. if something has been left out happened,'t know it we cannot confront it. it often shapes our opinion. one of my criticisms, for instance, right now, we are up of the50th anniversary mississippi freedom summer of 1964. noticedhe things i have , and i noticed this last year with the celebrations around the 50th anniversary of the march on of theton of 1963, one things i have noticed and have criticized is these events are per trade -- portrayed as if they happened out of nowhere.

they are not connected to anything. we do not know any of the history that leads up to why did this march on washington happen, what was the thinking and people kept about this march on washington? -- in people's heads about this march on washington? one of the interesting things i have noticed, and i admire a lot of the scholarship that has been , i began to think about this book and one of the questions that occurred to me, because i am thinking this nonviolent stuff will get you killed. the question that occurred to me and should have been a question to anybody writing about the movement, but it does not appear in any of the books, how did he get its name in the first place? was there a naming committee?

-- somebody stand up and say it does not exist in the literature. it is always one of the first likeions i ask of people charlie jones and people who are there. in raising the question, it opens up a whole area of discussion, a discussion about nonviolence that took place in the 1960's sounding conference -- the 1960 founding conference. in at lunching counters and they do not have much grounding in nonviolence. only the nashville students really had any grounding in nonviolence. how did all of these other students make their way to nonviolence? how committed were they?

i've discussed this at length in the book and built it around the discussion of coming up with a -- ifstudent nonviolent you did not have much commitment to not i -- nonviolence, how did you come up with that name? the thinking of movement people, people in the freedom, it is the most noticeable absence in the historiography. we get the events, we know there was a montgomery bus boy, a we knowcourt decision, there were protests in birmingham, alabama, we know there was a 1964 mississippi freedom summer.

what is the thinking? can you really understand the movement without understanding the thinking? to the extent that many historians describe the thinking, they describe what they thought we were thinking. nobody ever asked us what we were thinking. were you there? they go on to tell me what i was thinking. this is -- this is an old problem. i want to read you a section from the book that comes from frederick douglass's autobiography. his 1855-- autobiography. in that autobiography, frederick douglass complained that william lloyd garrison and other influential in -- influential white abolitionists thought

there -- thought his intellectual growth weakened their cause. "ier escaping from slavery, was reading and thinking for g." if he did not have the ,lantation manor of speech people will not ever believe you were a slave. it is best that you not appear to learned. -- too learned. give us the facts, we will take care of the philosophy. uss problem is still with when it comes to the history and that is a lot -- i say in the introduction that the thinking -- itedom will put people

will form the intellectual spine of this book. i know the events. i do not have to talk about -- two people in mississippi about what happened during the freedom fromr, but i want to know any number of people, what i want to know is what really thinking? -- what were you thinking? why were you thinking that? it is important to understand in approaching this book that it is spine, thectual intellectual spine of this book is the thinking of movement people, which is what is really most often left out of the traditional narrative. before sitting down with rex,

this book went through several incarnations in my own thinking. originally, i was going to -- this is going to be a book about world culture in the south. in world guns fit culture. culture.out world it is not that because i have neither the time nor money to dig into such, to do such a project would've taken twice as long as it took to do this book and it took a little over two years to do this book. ,t occurred to me along the way as i am thinking about how to and thingsis book,

story -- an interesting story to fromis how activists nonviolent organizations with varying degrees of commitment to nonviolence confronted the culture of guns that you find in the world -- in the south. in the south, guns are a part of the culture. black or white, people used guns to go hunting, to put food on the table. people are very poor in many places and they use guns to keep varmints out of the garden. and yes they use guns for self-defense. severestsee the discrepancy in race. black's almost always use guns for self-defense, to protect themselves from the ku klux klan or something like that.

whites would also use guns for aggressive actions against black people who they felt were challenging white supremacy. a radical difference in the two approaches. one of the stories i tell him , tobook is -- to explain give people a sense of guns rural southern culture, the first place i ever worked in mississippi was the little tiny town. the town only had 1100 people. shortly after misses hamer tried to adjust her to vote, knight riders came through shooting of the black community. the mayor of the town had me arrested for doing the shooting. he said the voter registration effort was failing and i had done this shooting to generate failingy for this

campaign. he handed me over to the town council. he sits me next to a police dog in the back of the car. he lets me go the next morning. it was an attempt to intimidate. within the context of having arrested me, if he confiscated the shotgun of the man i was staying with, joe mcdonald, 76ers old. when i got back, he is now worried about not having his gun. he needed it for just what i said, he had me, charles, three of us staring -- staying with them and you would go out every morning and shoot game to put food on the table. without his shotgun, he did not see a way to feed us. what was he going to do without his gun? i told him he had a right to his

gun and he asked me if i was certain about that. the united states constitution, we had a history book, i came back and i read the second amendment to him. said, it is inn the united states constitution. write. could not read or to fold over the page of the book and then took the book from me. we forgot about it. noticedor so later, we he was not around. we asked his wife, where is mr. joe? she says, he went to get his gun. you said it was all right. [laughter] now we are scared because our

fear is -- and this was a continuing fear in the organizing work that people would get hurt or killed because they are doing something that you asked them to do. voter registration or whatever will stop -- or whatever. the worry was that he was going to say, give me my gun back thomas and he would wound up getting shot. he had gone to the mayor's office. andtopped us at gunpoint tried to run us out of town. we were worried that mr. joe was going to get killed. but then we hear the rattle of his old truck and there is mr. joe driving back from downtown. we rush out and say, what happened? i went down there and i told the mayor, i've come to get my gun. said i dide mayor

not have a right to my gun. he is sitting in the truck. book, i i brought the held them up and i told the mayor, this book says i do. and the mayor gave him the gun back. truck,tepped out of the the image is burned in my brain, holding the shotgun, a 22 shotgun up above his head with a big smile on his face. demand isimportant going down to the courthouse and trying to register to vote. it tells you something about the relationship of organizers to people who supported them in these communities, like joe mcdonald. it tells you something about gun newure because the mayor the joe mcdonald is not going to

take his little 22 shotgun and get in his raggedy old truck and drive around town shooting into houses. he knew this 76 rolled the man was not going to -- 76 year old man was not going to do that. culture, the mayor did not have a problem with joe mc donald having a shotgun. that is part of the culture. it is like going down to the hardware store and getting some groscrews. the book tries to show that and what it meant for people like and evend organizers organizers from martin luther to find themselves in this culture, especially since we were inevitably identified --

we were either identified as the nonviolence, that is because of the six cans. sit-ind. s. or we were known as the freedom writers. they're like the idea that we are prepared to fight and help against white supremacy, which is why they could say with their shotguns and pistols, and pistols, they were part of the nonviolent movement. kept maybe half a dozen guns in his house, all saw himself as part of the nonviolent movements. he sat up in the bay window of his house with his rifle saw himself as part of a nonviolent movement. that is the other important point. i will give you two examples and

then i will sit down because they reflect different ways. one is from charles, who is philosophically committed to nonviolence. it was the guy who opened up southwest georgia. there are few people who believe more deeply in nonviolence then sherard. he told me mama dolly had this big shot gun. t -- ito talk her abou tried to talk her out of guarding me, but she said that she could take them in this world as well as bring them out of it. i did know nothing about the

shotgun. after he told me the story, is asked to do ever question -- i asked did you ever question your nonviolence? , and hef the people the only time i ever questioned my nonviolence was when i got married and when i had children. [laughter] >> so what did you do i asked him? what i did was get four big dogs. until all of my children were grown, and that is how he reconciled. important to know that charles sherard grew up in petersburg, virginia.

he was a city guy. hollis watkins grew up in the smallest blaze that i can imagine in mississippi. hollis told me that it is important but you see in a sense organizers have to confront and rural communities around weapons. boils down to one question. what is your obligation to people whose lives are endangered because they are responding to you? what is your obligation to those people? hollis says this, i was living with dave howard in holmes county, mississippi. i was living with dave howard and his wife, they farmed. realized after a few days they had set up a shift to protect me and the house.

his wife took a shift, and he took a shift. one shift was from dark until midnight, and the other from midnight to daybreak, . here i was living in their house, eating their food, and sleeping all night and this man and his wife, farmers, are up all night affecting the. -- protecting the. me. when i realized that i told him i would take a shift. he asked me if i knew how to use a gun. i said, yes sir. we do not use them in the movement, but i know how. >> but will you use a gun, he asked. if necessary. so he said take a look at these and see which one you like best. i think he was testing me. 30shows me the shotgun, a

ought six and 83030 winchester rifle. he said i could have them all. the executive director about this and he said you cannot do that, and i said i am already doing it. you find in the responses, and this is what really started to engage me, i said the story is that people really don't know int people are thinking these situations with guns. how are the people responding to the founding's to a deacons for the defense of justice? me to be ato movement story that is not the whole story, not most of the story, but how do they respond?

that seemed to me to be important, a piece of the story that has been left out of the history, and needs to be asked lord if you want to get deeper if youanding -- explored want to get deeper understanding. what i'm doing is the best i can to provide a deeper understanding of the movement. there, i went on longer than i should have. i get caught up in these stories. and i i can talk -- rex can talk./ thank you. [applause]

>> the first question i want to ask is where were you, how did you come up with it, and how did you settle on it? actually a is of aaction on the version gentlemantence by a who worked with us. -- shel quote is this , andartin luther king after he was introduced to reverend king the first thing he "this nonviolence stuff ain't no good, it will get you killed." that was the full quote.

it was too long for a book title so i contracted it to this nonviolence stuff will get you killed. the attribution him.rly belongs to >>? you talked about mr. joe and him getting his gun back. you also talked about the fact that one of the names you got was outside agitators. can you talk about trust and community? one brief comment about outside agitators. what you have to do as an organizer entering into these communities was are in the right to organize.

going into these communities, whether you're coming from washington dc or you were coming from from chisholm michigan, mississippi, you are bringing danger with you. already a regular part of life and people know in these communities way better than you how to manage life threatening danger. for centuries black people have doing this through wayreconstruction all the into the 1960's when we were working in the south. black people know about danger well but you were bringing a new danger into the community just by entering town. we were not there it two days before the mayor and a police itrol stopped us and said

know you are not from here, and you here to cause trouble. i am here to tell you to get out of town. and then he orders us into his police car. charles says why? and the mayor ways pistol -- waives the pistol at us and says the pistol says so. we got in the car. -- one ofjust danger the big differences between sit organizationsity is that the derringer is all the insureryou -- is all directed at you. i will sit at the lunch counter and if these people beat me up i will not fight back. isrural communities it collective punishment. you we you're in

there being targeted, it is everybody in the community. they're putting a bomb underneath the church or their driving through town shooting into homes. the dynamic of how they are going to respond to it will be different than if you were just sitting in, picketing, or engaging in a protest march. night theyle, in the shot up the community, they were wounded but had nothing to do with what we were doing. they were college students who had stopped to visit their grandparents before going onto jackson state college. they just happen to be in front of the window when the night writer shot at them. oft is a different kind danger then you're faced when you're sitting in, and you say .et them do that

you have to earn the right to organize, and you do that by talking to people. on the front porch is coming you go to church with them, you go to the jew joint and drink beer, play basketball joint, and drink beer, play basketball. people want to know who you are. i call it the who are your people question. it was important for me to be able to say that my grandmother came from mississippi. those are important things. while, but ittle

is how these folks live and they do not take off the masked and begin to show their real phase until they are very comfortable masks and begin to show their real face until they are very comfortable with you. i had not even seen a cotton field until one day i decided i would go back out there and try to fix a cotton. that did not work. but everyone got a big laugh out of it. little things like that, you slowly build a relationship. people today do something about their lives, you are explaining your life,ut thei

they have never been to washington dc, or jackson, mississippi. you explain that life to organize and you pick up people slowly, they become comfortable with your presence, and decide worth trustingn this guy enough to try to do what he wants us to do. all. to register at we laugh about this sometimes, there is a lady named mrs. she ran what we would call a convenience store. every time we walked up the road passed her store she would yell out it is kind of hot in here, why don't you take a seat? let me go inside to get

something cold for your to drink? she never let us in the store. it occurred to us that she was afraid that if we were in the store the white people might think we were up to something in the store and burn out or blow up the store. this went on for weeks and weeks, and she was a gossip. she knew everything. , do not know how she knew it but she would give us warnings. i do not know how or network d, but she seemed to know everything going on in this town. breakthrough is one day we were coming up the road and she said sure -- the usual thing, and instead of saying

stay out here, she said why don't you go inside? mind that is one of our more significant breakthroughs in rural mississippi. about crazytalk negroes. you mentioned a man for madison county.- from madison you mentioned the regional council of negro leadership. quotes these people in think youecause i felt something different than crazy for them. but please help us to understand the mentality of mr. howard. >> that is what white people

called it. negroes, the more polite would say. him. jim, they called he would not step aside when the white people came down the sidewalk. tells is charles really dramatic. decatur, mississippi is a sawmill town. james was going to the sawmill commissary with a very young charles evers to pay a bill. could barely read or write, but he could do numbers in his head. itn he got a bill, he saw was not right and he told the clerk it was not right. the clerk said are you calling

me a liar? he starts to move back behind the counter where everyone knew the depth the dons -- he kept the guns. we'll james is standing next to thing of coke bottles, and he takes one out and shoves it at the clerk and tells them not to move. he orders charles to back out of the store, and he tells them to not run because some otherwise people were there and he said these people aren't nothing but cowards. and then he backed out holding the coat model -- coke bottle.

why did and the white people attack him -- did not the white people attack him? because they do a lot of dumb things, but they do not mess with crazy. [laughter] biography, his whites are not prepared to die for white supremacy. it boils down to that. if you show that you are not scared of them, then they will almost always, it almost every instance of self-defense and violence in the south that i , whether it is the group in tuscaloosa, alabama, all of

the places where there were actual gunfire between white mobs and night writers and black -- night riders and lack. people, back down. this gentleman was from austin, texas, and the cap like and when they came to attack after a klan rally, the word had gotten out so robert williams and a whole , not onlyhe people national but the al rifle is a she chapter --

association chapter. high and low,re and they clearly were not trying to kill the. m. .hey could have killed them they were trained world war ii and korean war veterans. they were not looking for self-defense, so they could have killed them. but they did not come with a consciously chose to fire above their heads or low. in see that repeated louisiana with the deacons for the defense of justice can we see that repeated in tuscaloosa, alabama, received repeated by individuals. there is nobody like mr. chen. armer. a small fir

he was a bootlegger, he ran a small nightclub, he was a lot of tough. -- a lot of stuff. he was the first man i ever saw with a pistol in a holster, tied down on his hip. he provided armed affection for the whole workers in madison county, mississippi. the project to direct or gave me the story about mr. chen. he had gone to court one day because one of his workers was forbrought before the judge some kind of traffic violation. on, chens was going walked in with his pistol on. saysudge look over and

coming you know you cannot come in here with that pistol. ,ut the sheriff is also there and everybody knew there was bad blood between the sheriff and mr. chen. so mr. chen looks over at the , and says if he has his pistol, i'm going to keep in mine. the judge intervened, and said let the good boys. let's put your pistols on the table over here. they look at each other and walk over the table and put the pistol on the table. everybody who worked in that county has a mr. chen story.

when the night riders shot that his house, i am told, esther chen did not just fire back, he got in his car and chased them to a gas station. he served three years in prison for it. he was that kind of man. nobody, black or white, messed with mr. chen. arguably the most legendary of .ll the men and women with guns he probably is the most time.ary figure of the

the first verse and whose tries to throw some dynamite on my porch will not right tone to his mama again. >> what is the point you would like us to leave with about this balance on this dichotomy between violence and nonviolence , and how which made the movement? i think that the economy between violence and nonviolence is a false one. dichotomye violence is a false one. the average ursa, even if he or is not a violent person, the average person if they are

involved in the nonviolent movement see themselves as a nonviolent percent. they are a hand full of people identify as nonviolent. people are just people. i'm not sure protecting my family. -- i am just out here protecting my family. i had a wife and a daughter and i love my wife just like a white man loves his and i i will protect and die for mine just like a white man would. take awayant thing to is these are human beings, and their responses are human responses. it is simple to understand.

human beings try to protect loved ones as best they can. make very hardheaded choices about when to use a weapon and when not to use a weapon. we're are not talking here about the organization of guerrilla armies. we are not talking here about the organization of retaliatory violence. we're are talking about the responses to terrorism. -- the nighthe and shoot athrough your house, you have to be a scared man not to do something. these periods i am talking about is our experience in mississippi. many parts of the world and encounter the same kind of responses to violence and terror. that is extremely important because one of my history criticisms is that black people

are doing something unique. no. if you're a slave, then i do not care where you go. i do not care where you come from. inclined to revolt against your slavery. the best way to do that is a human response to oppression. people resist it as best they can. sometimes it is harder to resist oppression that it is the other times. but the human desire is to resist oppression. the other thing i want to say very quickly, although it is , is thatother book you have to understand this as an american story. why is there racism and white supremacy in the 1960's? because that is the way america was not.

built in its very founding when thomas jefferson wrote the declaration of independence. he did not mean black people, he had 200 african slaves. the lawtry both in cents was founded around white supremacy. it is an argument and a presentation by the chief -- justice why black people could not be citizens. it would endanger the security of the state he said. this is an 1857. 1857.

the whole decision is much more distinct than a single quote. andcountry was found illuminated 200 years after the country was founded in 1960. but the culture is still there. you get when you establish a slave society, you have to rationalize why you are doing it. you rationalize it by saying the speed only need slave labor in. inferior, they are helped i being enslaved -- by being enslaved. the culture and is much more difficult to remove than the law. laws notet rid of

prescribing segregation -- rid of laws, prescribing segregation. but it is a lot harder with a lot of the reaction with barack obama. harder to get rid of these people are inferior, that these people need to be kept in their place. that these people are ignorant and savages, etc. that is a problem that is still with us today but i am trying to ice and sometimes this cussing the founding of america -- and i spent some time in the front of my book discussing the founding of america. it seems to me you have to understand 17th and 18th century america.

virginia in particular. [laughter] >> my last question for you. yesterday we were at the madison ,enter and opening the website and there was a panel discussion there. .ou were there with bob moses at one point to begin to talk -- deade desk he had to this he had had to face 0-- he had had to face and he got very quiet. if you were to make a short statement about -- you mentioned a woman by the name of rendon and you talk about what the movement meant to them and how it changed to them. how would you answer that

question about what is good for charlie cobb and how it changed charlie cobb? >> that is a complicated question. certainly opening up a new world and new ways of thinking both about myself and the rolled around me. it just opened me up to that. to be in mississippi in early 1960 and 1962 is to see, especially for me growing up in springfield massachusetts and washington dc, there is just, it a world he did not know about that also did not even conceive of. new ways of thinking. noognizing that there is real link between intelligence and education for instance. cangnizing that courage

emerge from the most onyx back did places. jo mcdonald going down to get his shotgun back as i talked about. back to the plantation after she has tried to register to vote, being confronted by the plantation owner she has to application to register, and her saying i did not register for you but i registered for myself. fromcourage that is coming did laces. -- unexpected places. mississippi was wholly defined by the murder of emmett till. there was no place on earth or the entire universe that could

possibly be worse for a black worsen the mississippi. ,nd i got off that bus precisely because students in mississippi were sitting in. imagine, it is one thing for me to be sitting in on maryland, but it is a radically different proposition to be a student in mississippi sitting in. i wanted to see who these people were. if i had not known that they would not have hijacked me and kept me in mississippi for four years. that was a radical shift in my life. professionall and matter i have been working as a reporter for all of my life since leaving mississippi. one of the things you had to do in the south and in mississippi

was learned how to listen to people and learn how to speak to people. in places you did not know very much about or did not know anything about. ifse are invaluable skills you are a reporter as i have been. audience turn to the now. we have time for a couple of questions. we have two mics. i would like to hear more ker --josephine ban baker.lla baker -- and i will skip for reasons of time for reasons

of time are very long history in the 1940's and her work in new york. might be called the modern era of the civil rights movement. it was ms. baker who organized martin luther king's southern leadership conference. she became exact it of direct your -- the executive director because these preachers had a lot of trouble with a woman executive director, so she was temporary executive director. she helped to found the southern christian leadership conference. ms. eaker was one of the first adults to recognize the significance of those sit in.

there's a whole exchange she has re, aen her and doug moo young pastor, and james lawson who was in the process of training a group of students to sit in in a nashville, tennessee. she managed to get $800 to bring -- sit inse together mater.r at her almost lautea 122 200 anywhere from , in a students conference. what martin luther king wanted was a dude and arm to his organization. arm to his

organization. of mired in kind place at that time. what he wanted was a student arm. i was not at the meeting so i cannot speak to this from firsthand experience, so what i am telling you what i have been told. the stories vary. allvariation, they are meeting and these ministers were talking about which students they could convince to become part of sclc, and ms. baker stormed in and gave a how dare you sort of speech and broke it up. martin luther king asked to speak to the conference and second time, and at that second thethe students to become what toldm of sclc,

the students that they would have to commit to nonviolence as a way of life. the students were not prepared to do that. they were willing to use ctic,olence as a tac but it when it came to committing as a way of life, they were not ready. if you were not for that they would have agreed to become a student arm of sclc. it differs a little bit because he says i would have been suspicious of being part of any adult organization. talking 1960 after all, and i am asking these questions in 2011 and 2012.

excuse me, 2012 and 2013. there is a lot of latitude for the passage of time. remembers how the name actually came about. there are various theories. >> we will go to this gentleman. >> my question is, my father was one of the founders of the first chapter -- >> your father is a legendary figure. go ahead. >> in your observation, did you find that there became a culture of defense groups? the deacons was organized structure, but people sort of

created their own structure to protect their streets who were not part of the cans? deacons? and did you see the image overpowering the image of the civil rights group? the people who made things happen, the image of what these notple did, they think an in terms of where they were at or the image that people out of them. me do the first question first. cal, there were more lo

self-defense structures than there were a group like the deacons. look at they southern tradition of self, you can really see it rooted in neighborhoods or communities. protect the around communities. aroundly took shape protecting the black community of munro and union county. a number of communities had a self-defense group, and they were not like the deep end. deacons were a highly .tructured, and incorporated jonesboro words the first --

were the first group. and then around the very specific purpose, and this really distinguishes it from mississippi in southwest georgia around the purpose of affecting coal workers that were working into jonesboro, louisiana. guenwhile, the voters leaug was catching hell. it had no redeeming value. kkk's office was right across from the mayor's office. the coal workers came to your , and the sheriff showed up

and told them to get rid of them called thesister neighbors and they came over with guns. left, anderiff had that began a discussion about self-defense. they eventually formed the chapter, which is now the most prominent because not just of your dad but charles sims. there is a whole series of stories on the deacons in jimsiana and it focused on

brown, and there is a interest in the group. that is somewhat unique. group restricted itself to 15 members, -- 50 mem bers. they could not drink, they could going, theyhurch had to be veterans, and they did not want a name. exposure.ot want any they were created for the express purpose of protecting the sclc chapter in tuscaloosa, alabama. do not have anything like that in mississippi. you do not have anything like that in alabama, although the in birmingham

protected martin luther king with pistols all the time. you have communities arming themselves, relatives in alabama form in detroit and georgia. they were bringing in ammunition because the alabama gun store stopped selling ammunition to black people. . have a picture of the book so the story varies.

sort of like what happened with the black panther party later on, he began to get local groups springing up calling themselves deacons but had no affiliation with the deacons. they just picked up on the name. mississippi and a few other places. they were armed, but they were not chapters of the deacons for the defense of justice. there were 50 chapters across the south, but i do not know about those numbers. congratulations for a very enlightening discussion, and for the book. i would like very much your definition of radical. definition is would say.

>> addressing the root causes of the issues. have attempted to becausethe word radical it has a bad name in this town. thank you for that. i think you are well positioned with your experience and with this fantastic work on the south to sort of her haps bridge -- gap andbridge the go from the civil rights approachu.s. centric because in the

1960's there was a global dignity,of revolt for which was the independence movement in africa and the third world. it is very interesting because it raises the issue of the fact that we actually as human beings come from the same root. come from adam and eve so we are one family. is the question of cain and abel and the question of realizing the different cultures. revisiting our cultures them and mccain -- the cain side

abel sidey, and to bhthe of humanity. i would like you to address the issue of nonviolence as the intrinsic heart of a spiritual cultures thattain actually make people from a divine respect if peaceful -- perspective, peaceful. thank you. twoe need another hour or to really probe such a question. i'm going to resist. , asactually thinking about

a follow-up book to this to approach the question of in both the practicality and philosophy. in this book you will see that i regular basis in every chapter in the tension between nonviolence and self-defense. tension in the choices that people have to make. say in an afterword that i actually think that the most worthgacy considering today, given the growing coarseness of the society, given the violence that exists not only internally in

terms of the united states but worldwide might be nonviolence. skepticism inome the sense that the ideal is noble but the reporter in me quite seend does not how it works. i issue a challenge obliquely in the boat and in the afterword to the proponents of nonviolence as a way of life to take in communities and explore how that might work in a city like chicago where we see these all. awful statistics of violence in the black communities.

state prisons used a disproportionate number of lack minority -- black minority jailed for outrageous drug laws. eca high degree of prisoners reflecting people of heller killing other people of color -- you see a high degree of risk prisoners of color killing other people of color. if you want to bring up the issue and work around the issue of nonviolence in a city like chicago, how would you do that? when i was working on the book,

he said there has never been -- there has been a movement around issues, independents, both the voting rights, labor rights, but there has never been a movement around nine violence is not -- nonviolence and itself. to make nonviolence a part of the political conversation. to instill in communities the as a way ofiolence life. the is what seems to me work of people who were committed to nonviolence as a findf life should worthwhile attempting to do. as far as i can go in response to your comment.

>> thank you. we have one final question. from a silver rights worker in her own right -- civil rights worker in her own right. would you like to ask her a question? >> yes. udent in 1960, she participated in the sit in in jackson, mississippi. not only attending a historically black college but

participating in sit in with students from the college in 1960. that is enough. [laughter] in 1963. actually ,t was not an organized group it was my next-door neighbor after he dropped off folks in the city he got his buddies, and , armsere in woolworth's in case of protection. knowledge,earch and and the student sit in, was there much of this going on? >> i do not know. lonnie king was the only sit in told me any stories about being defended.

he was the chair of the atlanta student movement. obviously, he was a morehouse student as well. this a chair of a group like and they have their names and addresses in the newspaper. in the story came to them secondhand because he was out of town. came by and set out in front of his apartment. ,obody knew why they were there his immediate neighbor spotted down,o four of them came and went to the parking lot where the car was with the shotguns, and approach from four different directions.

he asked the driver what he was doing, what they were doing there. they said they were waiting for a friend. themonnie says he told maybe they should wait somewhere else, and they jetted out of there. the only story i heard of self-defense in terms of sick it ins. >> the book is called "this nonviolent stuff'll get you killed: how guns made the civil ," the movement possible author is charlie cobb junior. let's give him a hand. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] you're watching american

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