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takes you to museums and historic places to learn what artifacts reveal about american history. recently, american history tv sat down with senator lamar alexander to talk about his early campaigns and relationships with presidents from richard nixon to bill clinton. he recalled his walk across tennessee as part of his successful 1978 gubernatorial campaign. he shared the stories behind political mementos in this washington, d.c., senate office. senator alexander: my walk across tennessee was in 1978. i began on january 26. i walked east until march 1. the big three foot snowstorm. i remember that. turned around and headed west to memphis. it took me until july 6. 1000 miles. i shook 1000 hands a day and spent every weeknight with someone whom i did not know. i grew up in the great smokies. our scout troop, every weekend we would be in the mountains.

i love the outdoors. so do most tennesseans. we have more people with hunting and fishing licenses than vote in republican primaries. when i ran for governor in 1974, i lost. my wife said, "you'll lose again if you run the way you did the first time," because i was just going around in my blue suit. when i was thinking about how i run a campaign that puts me in touch with people, walking across the state sounded like fun to me. so i got four young men from the university of tennessee band and a flat bed truck. we had a thing called alexander's washboard band. the truck could follow me along. we would set it up. they would get up and play music. a crowd would gather. sometimes i would play the trombone with the band. then we would go on to the next place.

that was the tone of the campaign. it was a throwback to the campaign from 60 years ago. so, i walked across the state, 1000 miles. spent the night every night was -- with someone in their homes. went home on weekends, saturday and sunday, and go right back to the same place. people would give me walking sticks as a symbol of my walk. the first day was january 26 1978, and it was so cold and it there was so much snow and ice as i stood there on my parents 's front porch that the trombone player's slide froze in the band i had with me. and so i just took off walking. i think my parents were probably pretty embarrassed. they raised me to be a respectable young man. i was standing on their front porch announcing i was going to walk 1000 miles across tennessee. so, i would shake hands. i try to shake 1000 hands a day. usually we would plan ahead and

maybe i would stop and have lunch with certain people. by late afternoon, if the weather got better, i would get to a town and i would have a family to stay with. it might be the local farm bureau head or just someone from the community. i might go to their kids' softball game, have dinner with them in their home. then they would invite some of their friends over for the evening. by that time, i was pretty tired and i would go to sleep about 9:00 and get up the next morning, go to a factory. i went to one factory where all the women who were working there admired my red, white plaid shirt. turns out that is where they made the shirt. it was the levi factory. they made the shirts in that factory. when i decided to walk across the state, had to think about, well, what am i going to wear? you do not walk across the state in a blue suit. so i talked about it. and i had this red and black plaid shirt in my closet, and i went down to an army surplus

store in nashville and bought a dozen more because i would not want to wear the same one every day. then as i walked across the state, i began to auction them off to raise money for the campaign. i knew i was doing better by the time i got to middle tennessee around nashville, one of those shirts went for $500. i thought i might have a chance to win this. wanted to save the boots. i do not know where the other one is spirit i think it is in -- i don't know where the other one is. i think it is in the museum in appalachia in tennessee. they were boots from ll bean. i wore out two pairs of boots on the 1000 mile trip. it took me from january 26 until july 6 in memphis when it was over 100 degrees. i would carry around brochures in my left hand and pass the

m out to people. i was not paying attention. it was in newport, tennessee still cold -- probably february. and i walked right in front of a pickup truck and it knocked me over. if i had not had boots on, i would've broken my ankle. the lady got out and looked at me and she realized who i was and she said "oh, my gosh. it had to happen in newport." i took two or three days off. then i went right back to that spot. i always put an x down where i stopped because people suspected i was taking rides. i go back to the x, walk 10 or 12 miles, put down another x, spend the night, keep going. when i was governor, and if i would get kind of stuffy as governors get sometimes my staff , would say, ok put your shirt on and go back out and walk with people. even today, we have an annual mule day parade the first saturday of the year in columbia, tennessee. there might be 100,000 people there. i wear my red and black shirt.

i walk in the parade. my rule of thumb is -- walk in parades. if it is the mule day parade walk at the front. it affected everything about my political career. i do not think i would've been elected without it. because it gave me personality or a story that people paid attention to. it also came after i had it lost a race. it was kind of like a penance. throughout history, there are walks by people, i was saying -- i apologize for having lost the race last time. i'm working harder. but the best thing it did was it really put me in touch with people. if you stay in homes, you eat dinner around the table, sleep in their beds, go to their son 's softball game, you are not just making stuff up. you know that people that you're going to serve. and during my eight years as governor, so many times, if an

issue came up about whether to have stricter standard against criminals who use firearms in crimes, i can still remember stopping by a store that had been robbed a week earlier, and the woman who ran the store was still afraid. she kept the door locked. how are you going to operate a grocery store with the door locked? that stuck in my mind. and so did lots of other things about the walk. i can still see the people i met a long time ago. and remember the homes i stayed in. even today, i see second and third generations of families with whom i stayed in 1978. there is a family bible in the office. i have been sworn on several several times. first, on an early swearing-in when the democrats pushed my predecessor out of office in

1979. my wife remembered to take the bible. three times as united states senator. it goes back to about 1868. my great, great grandfather fought in the civil war, in our part of tennessee, in the mountain park, they fought with the union, most of them. they were -- they became lincoln republicans. people would ask my grandfather his politics and he said "i am a republican. i fought to save the union, and i vote like i shot." i was elected governor by the landslide of three votes. you have this wonderful program by the american legion. the auxiliary still goes on. i see every summer the boys and girls who are juniors, rising seniors in high school come by. the boys' state governor makes an inaugural address.

and one of the sponsors told me that he had a copy of it. i was afraid to see what i had said. i was a little surprised to be reminded of the right to work law. i am not sure why i came up with that except that was a big issue in tennessee in the 1950's and the 1960's. but the other thing was it proposed abolishing the ku klux klan. and this was the same year that president eisenhower sent troops into integrate central high school in little rock. it was a year after governor clement in tennessee had sent the national guard in to help integrate clinton high school in tennessee. so, at that time, boys state was still segregated. there were not any african american boys at boys state in tennessee. so it was all white. so, looking back, to talk about abolishing the ku klux klan in

1950 72 and -- 1957 to an all white boys state was something that i'm proud to be reminded of, frankly. reporter: and there is a letter from howard baker in your office thanking you for your participation. senator alexander: it is his father. congressman howard baker. it was my first visit to washington. i was at boys nation. and i did not know where to find him. i went over to the lunch line at the house of representatives and i asked some people which one is congressman baker? they pointed him out. i went over to talk to him. he took me to lunch and i realized he could not get rid of me. and then he wrote me that nice note. i'll always remember that. my father had taken me to the courthouse when i was 10 years old to meet this congressman baker. i remember when i left, i thought i probably met the most respected man i was ever likely

to meet other than my father and the preacher. so i was brought up to respect men and women who were a part of public life. howard baker's family asked me to give the eulogy at his funeral last year, which i was grateful to do. i started with one of my favorite stories from 1960 that i'd always heard. everett dirks and his father-in-law was speaking at the illinois state fair, and howard, a student, was sitting at the back of the podium with dirksen's daughter, whom howard had married. dirksen was trying to explain why the voters should elect nixon over kennedy. he said all they can say about jack kennedy is he served on a pt boat in world war ii. he turned around to howard baker and said my son-in-law, howard baker, jr. served on a pt boat

in world war ii. and i have never heard anyone seriously suggest he was qualified to serve in any public office. six years later, he was in the united states senator. a few years later, he was the majority leader of the senate. i met him in 1966. i was a law clerk for a judge in washington. i'd admired howard baker. at that time, we had a one-party system, all democratic in tennessee. he was an attractive young man. his father had been our congressman. i volunteered to work on his senate campaign in 1966. i never heard from him. i was visiting my hometown at easter break, and i got an appointment and volunteered for his campaign. and eventually he paid me and he won. so, he brought me to washington. and i came to this very office in january of 1967. as his legislative assistant. reporter: now that you occupy his offices, you must think

about the history made here. senator alexander: i caught up with francis collins, the head of the national institute of health and he laughed. he said the call waiting name said al gore. i mean, i actually have the same telephone number in the same office that howard baker had in 1967. al gore had the same office. fred thompson had the same office. some things do not change except the senators. reporter: there are quite a number of photographs in your office of the area's presidents -- in your office with various presidents from lyndon johnson to barack obama. tell us about richard nixon. what do you remember about him? senator alexander: i remember how private, focused intelligent he was. i had just by stroke of providence, i was the aide to bryce harlow, who was his first appointee. so i literally sat in the west wing in the office of the vice president.

i absorbed this, all th wisdom from mr. harlow. i was not an advisor to president nixon, but i was around president nixon a lot. and i saw mr. harlow. what i remember about them is how far reaching he was at i have on my wall some notes he used in the congressional leadership meeting that he would have on tuesdays. where he described the environmental movement, which was developing in the united states in 1970 or 1971. president nixon was trying to explain the republican senators and congressmen that it was coming. that is when earth day was created. that is when the clean air and clean water acts were passed unanimously. president nixon was far ahead of his time in understanding the importance of the environment. his administration created the environmental protection agency,

which is one of the agencies republicans most detest because of its overreach. bill clinton is a gifted person. i know him very well. we were elected governor the same day in 1978. and he and hillary and honey my wife and i, would see each other often at conferences. we worked on the same problems -- on education, on roads, on healthy children, try to help our states move ahead. our family incomes in arkansas and tennessee were both low. i was chairman of the national governors and he was vice chairman. we worked a lot together. we stayed in touch. he's always been a good friend. he invited me, for example, when i was running for president against him, he invited me to the white house to a ceremony for john minor wisdom for whom i had been a law clerk because he knew how special judge wisdom was for me. so i have always liked bill clinton very much.

and enjoyed knowing him and hillary. what a tremendous individual. bob peter, who was his campaign manager and pollster, said he is probably the only man who is was elected president by being nice. he is also tough. of all the presidents as athletic as any with his world war ii stories. he would never brag about that. he was understated about that. and i think, what i liked about him is he was so comfortable in his own skin, so comfortable and in what he did. for example, as the berlin wall was coming down, some of his advisers were encouraging him to go dance on the wall and take credit for this great thing the united states had done. he was wise enough not to do that. because he knew that would force gorbachev to have to respond. he gave me a lot of freedom as education secretary to try to raise standards and encourage us to improve our schools community

by community rather than from washington. so i always have had and do have a great respect for h.w. bush. i think his presidency, as time goes on, will be valued much more highly then it even is today. if you had to pick two people, which i did when we had tennessee homecoming in 1986 which was a statewide celebration of the 3000 places in tennessee that people call home, i had to pick two people to be the cochairman of that who symbolized tennessee. and i picked minnie pearl and alex haley. they would not have been cochairman in california or new york or kentucky. they were tennessee. minnie wanted to be katharine hepburn but she had a better opportunity at the grand ole opry and she took it. and she was such a wonderful person. she lived next door to the governor's residence.

and people ran for governor to live next door to minnie pearl. alex haley sat at the foot of the steps of his grandparents as a boy. in the summertime, listening to his aunts tell stories of kunta kinte. that was his seventh generation ancestor. it was those stories that took him to gambia in his search for what became the story of "roots." he followed kunta kinte's capture. he was brought to annapolis. and that became the most celebrated television miniseries and best watched in the country's history at the time. and he came back to tennessee in the early 1980's, about the time i was governor, and we were good friends last 12 years of his life.

and i'll never forget a three-week cargo freighter trip i took with him. in 1987, i was writing a book. he invited me to go with him. he always rode on freighters because he was in the coast guard and you learn to write there. so he could isolate himself that way and write. he was a wonderful man. i was one of many speakers at his funeral in memphis when he died in 1992. >> senator alexander, thank you very much. senator alexander: thank you. >> you can watch this and other american artifacts programs any time by visiting our website at c-span.org/history. all weekend, american history tv is featuring the city of lincoln, nebraska. it is the oldest standing structure in lincoln.

it belonged to the first secretary of state in nebraska. together with our time warner cable partners, c-span city tour staff visited many sites celebrating lincoln's history. lincoln all weekend on american history tv. >> the university of nebraska state museum is located on the campus of the university of nebraska. it's one of the oldest natural history museums west of the mississippi. the gallery we are currently in is first peoples of the great plains. traditions shaped by land and sky. we are all familiar with the number of these tribes, whether it is the cheyenne, arapahoe pawnee, the sioux, the various subgroups. there are probably 20, 30 plus tribes that occupied the great plains.