prisons are to keep us safe. whether they're going to rehabilitate the prisoner or deter future crime, i think those are really secondary concerns. great, if it happens. but the primary purpose of the prison system is for people who are not interested to keep society safe from the threats imposed by those folks. >> saturday night a little after 8:00, a race relations discussion. >> that's where it begins, because they get the job saying, well, and go, and do their job saying i'm protecting the public. their idea of the public are those who gave them their marching orders. >> mm-hm. >> and that's us. that's us who need to look at all of this. we talk about transparency. we need to look at those views and start using to engage themselves with our community. >> and sunday evening at 6:30, a discussion on media coverage of

muslims and how american muslims can join the national conversations. and at 9:00, young people from ayos the united kingdom gather in the house of commons to discuss issues important to them. >> this issue is so much more than buses, trains and expense. it leaves your people feeling disdained, deprived and disillusioned. as a child, i couldn't wait to experience a bus ride. when we grew up. blue steam trains lose their smiley faces. >> for our complete schedule go to c-span.org. up next, on american history tv, the life and legacy of stokely carmichael.

field secretary charles cobb joins the discussion. and as an organizer for the all-african peoples party. it's a little under two hours. good afternoon. i'm with the university of memphis, and welcome to the round table discussion, stokely car mike a his life and legacy. we thought this would be an appropriate moment to consider stokely carmichael. we're here in atlanta for the conference. it's an important locus. and carmichael's journey takes him through atlanta, educated at howard university, civil rights organizing in cambridge,

maryland. in mississippi during freedom summer. motherov moreover, we're at the 50th anniversary. in 1 t965, he helped organize t landmark black party in alabama. he was elected chairman of sncc. carmichael's journey would continue, organizing in atlanta and washington, d.c., his brief alliance with the black panthers, traveling the world, moving to guinea, changing his name to kwame tour ray and devoting his life to the people's revolutionary party. we've brought together a panel. we begin with charles e. cobb. he attend howard university and

got involved in organization against segregation. he was the architect of the freedom schools. he later helped found the drummond sphere book store. he worked as a journalist for npr, pbs. he's on the gateway project for sncc. he's the author of "no easy victories." "on the road to freedom" and most recently "this non-violent stuff will get you killed." hasan jeffries has a ph.d. from duke university. his interests include the black

power movement. he's at work on a new book called "stealing home." of thanks to dr. jeffries. third we'll have ashley farmer. she'll starting as an assistant professor in the african-american studies program in boston university. she has a ph.d. from harvard. her research interests include women's history, gender history and black feminism. she's the author of a book. and finally, chris johnson, from the university memphis with a ph.d. from yale university. his research includes race and gender. and afro -- he's at work on a

project on the itineraries of black revolutionaries of the 20th century world, including stokely carmichael. for the format of this round table, i've tailored a question based on their research. before we move on to the next question, we'll allow the panel members to chime in with input or questions or what have you. after the four questions, of course there's a lodgt of knowledge and interest in the audience, so we want to leave plenty of time for questions and comments from the audience members. mr. cobb, you worked for years alongside stokely carmichael. and you've since enjoyed a career as a journalist and scholar. what would you like the audience to know about him as a person and an influence on black freedom? >> the short answer to your question, it's stokely

carmichael as the organizer. can everybody hear me? the short answer to your question is really the way i think about stokely and the way i think people should think about stokely is as stokely carmichael, the organizer. you know, the tradition of the southern movement in particular that's most overlooked is the organizing tradition of the southern civil rights movement. digging in at the grassroots and organizing and mobilizing people to struggle for change. and although stokely left a prominence in the national sense around his shout-out of black power, it's really stokely cash mi -- carr michael, the organizer,

sncc, that needs to be most carefully considered and understood. some ways history has treated stokely as it's treated sncc in my view, poorly. completely defined him as this guy who, for no apparent reason shouted out black power, a message of hate that destroyed the redemptive movement of love and non-violence that forced stokely carmichael to define black struggle. that's really what stokely has been reduced to. and i'm happy to be sitting here next to hasan kwame jeffries who's written an important book. because in some ways by looking at lound county and stokely's work there, you get the clearest

picture of stokely, although i worked with stokely for years in mississippi. and i should, in short form, talk for a minute about how stokely got to lounds county. some of you will remember that in mississippi, the mississippi freedom democratic party mounted a challenge to the so-called regular democrats of mississippi. i call them the white supremacist democrats of mississippi. now that challenge was rejected by the democratic party national establishment. and stokely had played a major role in getting that party get organized, as did all of us who worked in mississippi. however, for its own reasons, the mississippi freedom democratic party decidedfb&(ñ de its, the rejection of its challenge by the national

democrats, to nonetheless campaign for the democratic party presidential ticket. hubert humphrey, lyndon johnson. stockily disagreed with that decision. but the organizer -- and a lot of us did, i should say in all honesty, but the organizer component of his life and our lives kicks in. the mississippi freedom democratic party was the party that the mississippians had organized. it was not his job or his mission to beat up on this local organization because he disagreed with their choice. you can't tell people in short that you have a right to make the decisions that affect your lives. and then turn around and say, because i disagree with you, i won't help you implement the

decisions you make that affect your life, rather, and this is the organizing, part of the organizing. stokely goes, rather than fight the nfdp, fostokely goes to lou county to begin building what he believes is necessary. lounds county, alabama. what does he think is necessary? he thinks an independent black police cal park prit cal party is necessary. and he begins to organize that, what would be the first black panther party was organized in lounds county, alabama, not in california. the organizer went to organize what he thought was important, not to fight people with whom he, whose choices he disagreed with, and i think that's an

important lesson today as, as groups like black lives matter or the dream defenders, the young activists today struggle from with how to move from protests, and being protesters and being organizers at the grassroots and sink roots -- the lessons of stokely's life, and i would include africa in this. the lesson of stokely's life is the lesson of the organizer. you know, and if you want to pay attention to stokely carmichael, then you have to pay attention to the choices he made as an organizer at the grassroots. that's the short version of my answer to your question. >> let me turn then to hasan

jeffries, because that leads naturally into the next question. in your book we see carmichael's leadership in developing the loupds county freedom organization. he talked about how this represented an evolution of carmichael's ideology. could you talk about that but also thousand shapes his police cal life -- political life going forward. >> as brother cobb was mentioning, this idea of remembering, understanding and studying stokely as an organizer. because he was very much a master organizer, and i think one of the great places or moments in his life through which to understand his understanding of organizing is what he does in lounds county, alabama between 1965 and 1966. i think it is a direct reflection of his political

thinking. it is also a moment in which he's able to put into practice not only his own individual thinking about organizing and about politics and what the future direction of black political politics, black politics ought to be, but also putting into practice the organizing philosophy of ella baker and applying it to electoral politics. i think one of the things -- to back up for a second, we do a great disservice to the memory, to the life of stokely carmichael kwame tu ray when we just look at him through the lens of the media caricature. through the media of the black and white, from a dashing, daring stokely carmichael before

kwame tour ray, full of rage, full of anger. and that's character tour. but that's nowhere near the full complexity of the person and it does a complete disservice to him and what he had done for black people.