professor, tracy campbell, talked about 1942 soldier voting act which provided absentee voting for soldiers fighting in world war ii. his talk is followed by the co-author of the race beat and director of the journalism program at emory university. he discusses the 1948 murder of isaiah nixon, who was killed after voting in georgia's democratic primary election. this is part of a symposium hosted by the university of the south in sew aranee, tennessee. this discussion is about 90 minutes. >> good morning, everyone. good morning again. thank you for joining our second session today. my name is woody register. i teach in the history program here. i also am the director of the project on slavery, race and

reconciliation. the institution's endeavor to understand not only its particular history but slavery and slavery's legacies, but also the obligations that history has bequeathed to us. it's my pleasure today to introduce our two speakers in order of their appearance. first up this morning is professor tracy campbell at the department of history at the university of kentucky. he has a remarkable record of teaching and scholarship on the political and social history of the united states in the 20th century. before arriving at kentucky, he taught at morris hill and union colleges. since he's been in kentucky, he's been recognized not only for his scholarship but especially for his skill as a

classroom teacher. he's the author of five books including his 2013 study of the gateway arch in st. louis. perhaps directly related to today if his 2005 work, deliver the vote. surely, this is a book that we need to take up today if not for the first time, then even a second time. at present, he is hard at work on a history of the year 1942, america's year of peril, the meaning of which will become clearer to us. our second panelist is a pulitzer prize winning author hank clibnoff. a graduate of washington university in st. louis and the school of journalism at northwestern. he worked for the "boston globe," the philadelphia inquirer and atlanta's jufrl -- journal constitution. the book he coauthored won the pulitzer prize for history that

year. the "new york times" described the race beat. no doubt this book needs to be read or re-read today. the professor has directed the georgia civil rights cold case projects. his talk today reflects the work of his journalistic career and leadership of the cold case

project. the whites only primary's last gasp, how it played out on the unyielding soil of georgia. please join me in welcoming this morning for their insights and reflections on the history of voting in the united states. professor campbell. [ applause ]. >> thank you. thank you, woody, for that very

kind introduction. and thanks to the university of the south for inviting me to such a timely and really remarkable gathering and to you for your kind hospitality, to tanner potts for making the trains run on time. we really appreciate it. i'm going to talk about a snapshot this morning, but i think it's a pretty revealing snapshot of the united states in a particular year, in a particular moment. the premise is straightforward. if you want to understand the realities of voting rights, it's important to observe those rights when the counted is under

stress. just as individuals and families can undergo stress or trauma, so can countries. those moments expose a person's inherent strengths and flaws quite like nothing else. things tend to rise to the surface under that kind of pressure. in the 20th century that stress was never greater than in the year following the attack on pearl harbor and america's entry into world war ii in 1942. the way that the country debates voting rights that year in wartime, it conducts a national election. it tells us a good deal about the fragile nature of american democracy and the way in which the 15th amendment was negated for millions of people at a crucial moment. there is a collective narrative about 1942. i think we sometimes read history backward. we know we're going to win the war, so we kind of gloss over some things.

if we're going to look at 1942, i think it's helpful to try to ups it on its own terms. after a little bit of early panic and worry the nation came together, built a massive production miracle. we cast partisan and sectional differences aside. once the allies turned back the japanese and landed in north africa, ultimate victory was in sight. unity was the common theme, led in tom brokaw's words, the greatest generation any society has ever produced, end of quote. i think, though, if we're going to understand 1942, we also have to see a different reality. this is a series of paintings by thomas hart benton done in 1942 in reaction to pearl harbor.

he called about eight of these paintings america's year of peril, 1942. this one is similar to so many other themes of what was possible. this is a time in which the federal government is selling insurance policies against attack and people a as far inland as iowa and indiana are buying these policies to make sure they're protects. at a time when some within the government worried that we might lose the war or that areas along the coasts or well inland could be subject to many more attacks and the time in which one former president called upon the nation to give franklin roosevelt dictatorial powers. i want to focus on two moments that happened in the fall of

1942 that i think are particularly instructive. one occurred in september. as congress considered an issue that seems on its face a rather straightforward matter without any ulterior political motives. with the upcoming elections approaching, congress debates a bill that would allow soldiers to vote away from home via absentee ballot. by this time in september over 4 number americans were serving in the military and all of them would not be home at their precinct on election day. what better way to display america's character than by -- legislators had the support of veterans groups and of course families of soldiers. yet, when the representative of the third district of tennessee

inserted an amendment that waved the poll tax requirement for son-in-laws from eight southern states. the matter exposed one of the fault lines of american politics. if the poll tax could be weighed in this one specific circumstance, some worried that it would be used as a wedge and outlaw other elections. that was a threat to many white southerners who felt that elections were purely local affairs and such intrusions were unconstitutional assaults on society. they actually said these things. if there's one thing about the 40 we're glad about, they just said it. there's no code. he said it was an attempt to

cater to the soldier vote at the expense of the foundation of our democracy, end of quote. now, since reconstruction, poll taxes were among some of the most effective ways along with violence and literacy tests in the white primary of keeping african-americans from voting. here's a poll tax receipt from texas. i believe it's 1.75. if you missed a primary election, you'd have to make up for it a third time. you'd never get by without paying them. they were in effect in eight states. the poll tax kept out 11 million people from voting. by 1940 it's estimated approximately 3% of african-americans in the south were registered to vote.

poll taxes also kept poor whites from voting. while 66% of adults in non poll tax states voted in 1940, about 24% voted in those eight poll tax states. they skewed the whole idea of representative democracy. glenda gilmore notes that in 1940 edward cox had been elected to his cede by 5,000 votes while a washington state representative won his seat with 147,000. through their iron grip on voting rights, southern democrats were elected time and time again. here's a cartoon about the poll tax. if you can make out some of the figures, they might look somewhat familiar because this is dr. seuss, who was a cartoonist who worked a lot with a periodical called pm.

but their iron grip on voting rights, southern democrats were elected time and time again. in 1942 as we go to war, southerners chair 7 of the 10 most powerful committees including agriculture, appropriations, and rules. no one in the house was more opposed to this amended soldier voting act than mississippi's john rankin. in waiving the poll tax, he saw dangerous elements approaching. he said this was part of a long rain communistic program to change our form of government. that it would take out of the hands of white americans the ability to control elections and give them to certain irresponsible elements that are constantly trying to stir up trouble.

end of quote. rankin's arguments against the bill failed to win over a majority of his house colleagues, who passed the bill on september 9th. he called the bill nothing more than a scheme to abolish state governments and add aed that the next step quote will be to abolish congress. end of quote. remind you, they actually said this. the senate passed the bill and vote. tim connolly of texas and lister hill of alabama said that in the process of approving the measure, the senate had ruptured constitutional processes. opponents of the bill understood the political implications of denying soldiers the right to vote and were reluctant to wage a full scale filibuster. they had to take their medicine at this particular moment. president roosevelt signed it into law on september 16th,

which required the war and navy department to distribute postal cards to members of the armed forces who could then request a ballot from their state, and this cumbersome process, though, really meant it was too late to be fully operational on election day coming up in just 48 days, but the poll tax debate is not quite over. i'll get it to in just a moment. so if we go to the election itself, the roosevelt administration in the fall of 1942 has reason to worry. in a previous congressional election in world war i in 1918, republicans had won five senate seats and 25 house seats to take control of both houses. throughout 1942, voters were frustrated with a lot of things, the slow pace of the war, gas and food rationing, higher

taxes, and congressional inaction on inflation. congress had moved swiftly early in the year to give themselves pensions, which produced another widespread outcry and a quick reversal just weeks later. so while fdr himself might not have been on the ballot, it was kind of becoming a referendum of sorts, and to his handling and the administration's handling of the war. some worried that fdr might use his war-time powers to cancel the election altogether. so with all that was at stake, "life" magazine predicted the november elections might be among the most fateful in u.s. history, end of quote. in a gallup poll taken on the eve of the 1942 election, showed americans favored democrats about 52-48.

but on election night, republicans shocked many observers by picking up 43 house seats, 9 senate seats, making it the greatest gain by the opposition party in midterm elections since 1918. and you can see the majorities in both houses, how they shrunk. particularly in the house where 267 to 165 spread was changed to a pair 222-209 margin. with a switch of seven democrats in the house, republicans could defeat any administration measure. consequently, the power of the reactionary southern bloc increased. and house members like john rankin and martin deese were elected to their house without any opposition. among the newly elected senators was mississippi's james eastland, a wealthy plantation owner who had become one of the leading opponent of voting rights for the next 30 years. he was among eight southern democrats in the senate who won their general election without facing any opposition. now, the results of the 1942

elections were often interpreted in sweeping terms. the chicago tribune, which of course, hated roosevelt, said, quote, the people of this land have turned back the most terrible threat which has confronted them in their national history. end of quote. "time" magazine was blunt in its appraisal. no one can say even in the retrospect of history exactly when one political movement dies and another is born, but anyone who looked at the election last week could see that franklin roosevelt's new deal was fixed, end of quote. the gop's success in 23 states with a combined electoral college vote of 321 votes felt potential disaster for fdr or for anyone else who might be thinking of running on the democratic ticket in 1944. i think interpreting the election in such sweeping terms missed another point. the election witnessed the lowest turnout, 33.9%, for a congressional race in the 20th

century. lower than even the 2014 congressional election. although a soldier voting act of '42 had been passed in september, allowing soldiers to vote, only 28,000 actually could vote, less than 1% of those serving overseas. so interpreting what the american people thought or felt about 1942 is hard to get at from the election results. but regardless of the turnout, the election had immediate consequences. two remaining agencies from the new deal, the wpa and ccc were quickly abolished. efforts to expand social security and medical insurance were thwarted, yet the political wins that were not necessarily reflected in the election, i think, hide some underlying impulses. for example, in a poll taken by fortune magazine, in november,

the outlines of what some people hope for after the war provides a glimpse that i don't think a lot of americans understand. 74% of americans polled said they thought the government should collect enough taxes after the war to provide medical care for anyone who needed it. 3 out of 4. 67% wanted enough -- the government to provide jobs for people if they were willing and able to work in case of a recession. and maybe even most astonishing, 31.9%, almost 1 out of 3, believe that after the war, there should be a law limiting the amount of money an individual could earn. and that was similar to what roosevelt was proposing a $25,000 limit on incomes in 1942, which was also very popular. when asked, quote, do you think some form of socialism would be a good thing or a bad thing, 25% said it would be good. 34% weren't quite sure yet. so that's one moment. the second moment when voting rights, i think, are exposed

came after the election. when the senate convened a bill, convened to consider a house bill that had been sponsored by representative lee guyer, a california democrat, who had died in 1941. but had sponsored this bill many months beforehand to end poll taxes altogether in federal elections. although the bill faced solid opposition from southern democrats who said the war, quote, waged war against the white people of the southern states, it passed the house. when it came to the senate, it faced a filibuster. this time, after the election, without soldiers involved, southerners were ready to launch a filibuster. and the filibuster was led by many people, including theodore bilbo of mississippi and richard russell of georgia. together with other southern senators, they brought the senate to a standstill for seven days in november of 1942. as endless quorum calls were demanded as well as complete readings of the journal. bilbo made it clear, quote, if

this poll tax bill passes, the next step will be an effort to remove the registration qualifications and then the education qualifications. once that was done, bilbo said we will have no way of preventing negroes from voting, end of quote. richard russell defended reconstruction and the history of race relations in his state, saying, quote, any fire-minded man who studies the history of the last 75 years would commend the south on the great work we have done, end of quote. so obviously, professor wouldn't consider you to be a fair-minded man in this respect. the impasse was -- here's another cartoon by dr. seuss about theodore bilbo.

the impasse in the senate reached a dramatic moment on saturday, november 14th. when majority leader alvin barkley on the left called for a quorum and ordered when some southerns left the hall their arrest, and one of those missing and was deeply offended by barkley's maneuver was tennessee's kenneth mckellar. who came back to the floor and said, being called a filibusterer holds no terror for me. adding he would work to his last breath and with every means, quote, to defeat this iniquitous measure. when barkley asserted that the southerners who had fled the chambers resembled the exodus from egypt, mckellar said, well, quote, our so-called leader is leading us straight into the republican party.

barkley responded by saying, quote, this bill's passage would infranchise 200,000 white people, that's how he tried to sell the issue. poor tenet farmers who may not want to vote but will think a long time before paying $1.50 for that right when it might be needed to put shoes on their bare-foot children. the majority leader's efforts in this regard calls mckellar to withdraw his name from a letter he signed with several other senators urging president roosevelt to name -- nominate barkley to the supreme court. with a seat that had just been recently open by justice burns' resignation. the southern filibusterers knew that their actions might be seen as obstructionist by many, but not by their white constituents. when senator george norris of nebraska spoke out about the filibuster, an angry response time came to him from charles e. simons from texas. quote, you must not have very much to do instead of sticking your nose into the home affairs of states just about as capable of running their business as

your home state. simons urges senator morris to cease expending your energies on things that do not effect you. we can get along without your help or your gratuitous reform, end of quote. the sponsors of the poll tax bill hoped that the delaying tactics of a small minority of senators just days after american forces had landed in north africa might produce such outrage to intimidate them, but if anyone doubted the strength of the southern bloc, they needed to look no further than mississippi's walt doxey, who claimed, quote, we intend to keep control of our state and see that it always remains in the domination of anglo-saxon supremacy. on november 23rd, the senate failed to invoke cloture. and the poll tax bill was killed. barkley fumed against the tax which he said was, quote, a hangover from futilism. too many opposed the bill and

two many others were reluctant to invoke debate. america today is tasting the bitter fruits of a new secession, a rebellion against constitutional government by a handful of outlaws who have successfully defied the will of the people and a majority of the united states senate. of all quotes, this is my favorite. in reaction to that, theodore bilbo boasted, quote, i'm as much a soldier in the preservation of the american way and the american scheme of government as the boys who are fighting and dying on guadalcanal. launching the filibuster to keep african-americans voting made him as patriotic and as heroic as the boys fighting on the canal. as the filibuster indicated, black voting rights remained nonexistent in 1942. the military remained segregated.

we know about blood supplies that were segregated and also discrimination in hiring practices was supposed to be eliminated. little had really changed. during the congressional debate, representative lewis ludlow of indiana said, quote, what a travesty. negroes by the multiplied -- we're sending negroed by the multiplied thousands to the firing lines to die and fight for freedom. while telling them they shall have no part or parcel in freedom at home. now, the gop's november triumphs and the aftermath of the poll tax filibuster gave its party hope that the political winds were changing. the new republican party chair harrison spangler understood that the southern bloc constituted a formidable slice of the roosevelt coalition, and when the evidence supplied by the filibuster, also knew that these crucial players for those raised everything.

now, for anyone looking at evidence of the increasing dissatisfaction with the democratic party from one of its own, they need look no further than alabama governor frank dickson, an outspoken critic of the party and the president, a nephew of thomas dixon, author of the klansman, which birth of a nation was based on. and at the core of his righteous anger was the threat to white supremacy that had played out over the proceeding months over the poll tax. in defending them, dixon drew his line in the sand and said, quote, the federal government is now tampering with the one thing that we cannot permit, will not permit, whatever the price to ourselves. he said the social structure of the south has been built and can only endure on the principle of segregation. he said, quote, it implies separation of the races and then he talked about the politics of it. he said our problem in alabama is different from the problem in

any other section of the world. our negro population approaches 40% of the total. this percentage means the balance of power. in many alabama counties, there's 4 or 5 to 1. either white men control them or there will be a repetition of the banality of reconstruction, the ruin of the south, end of quote. the newspaper the afro american noted that for dixon, segregation was dearer than the four freedoms that the president said were at the heart of world war ii. six years later, dixon gave the keynote address at the state's rights convention or the dixiecrats, a block of former southerners who had -- former southern d. democrats who had bolted over civil rights and named strom thurmond as their presidential candidate. their actions didn't occur in a vacuum in 1948. their indignation had been fed many times on many occasions and was on open display for us in

1942. so i think in conclusion, and i want to do something a little different. is ask a question i think historians need to ask of students, students need to ask us. it's a two-word question, so what? what does this matter? what's the relevance. why is it significant? in 1942, the 15th amendment was nonexistent for millions of americans. so allow me to provide just one small example. in another decade, maybe, second lieutenant norma green might have been considered a hero, a several rights pioneer for what she did on an alabama bus in october of 1942, just as the soldier vote bill was being debated. instead, she was lucky she didn't die. she was an army nurse, stationed at tuskegee veterans

administration hospital, and had volunteered for overseas duty, serving united states military personnel. and she wanted to go shopping in montgomery, alabama. and when she tried to board a public bus, she was instructed to leave. when she refused, she was arrested. she was put in a police van where four officers beat her, broke her nose, robbed her, and then arrested her for disorderly conduct. she was later released when authorities learned that she was in fact in the military. but there were no charges filed against those who assaulted her, not even an apology. but the incident provoked a. philip randolph to write senator john h. bankhead of alabama, protesting the brutal assault that green had suffered and hoped that the senator would use

his authority to bring the culprits to justice. bankhead, who had urged george marshall not to bring any african-american soldiers to the south, didn't respond. he didn't respond because he didn't have to respond. he could ignore such assaults and the daily humiliations and injustices endured by alabama's african-american citizens whose nearly 1 million residents comprised over a third of the state's population without any worry of paying for it on election day. and in fact, he won re-election. he was one of those eight southern senators who won without any opposition. his silence coupled with the inaction against the montgomery authorities demonstrates why the poll tax was so central in maintaining the power and policies of people like bankhead, bilbo, russell, and why their successful filibuster

led bilbo to compare his actions to the boys dying on guadalcanal. for those fighting for civil rights in 1942, such as gordon blain hancock and benjamin mays and charles s. johnson, they understood as keenly as bilbo how the poll tax and the lack of voting rights was central to the maintenance of jim crow. on october 20th, just days after green's assault and arrest, they along with 54 other african-american leaders with the southern conference on race relations met in durham, north carolina, to discuss racial conditions in the south. and out of that meeting came the durham manifesto, a pioneering but largely kind of dismissed or forgotten document that stated out the war, quote, had sharpened racial disparities in the united states and especially in the south. the first item on their agenda, not surprisingly, was the matter of voting. quote, we regard the ballot as a

safeguard of democracy, they said. and called for the abolition of the poll tax and all, quote, forms of discriminatory practices. evasion of the law and intimidation of citizens seeking to exercise their right to franchise. they said, quote, in an hour of national peril, efforts are being made to defeat the negro first and the access powers later. considering the content of what was occurring in autumn of 1942, those civil rights leaders who met in durham understood that voting rights, 70 years after the 15th amendment, were a foundational demand in a society in which democracy did not exist in large part of the nation. thank you. [ applause ] >> don't make me follow him, please. that was great.

thank you. thank you for this conference, and to all who have participated in it, i just think this is fantastic, and i'm honored to be a part of it. this is a very solicitous place, and i noticed that at breakfast when tracy came down and i'm having a big breakfast and he get a cup of coffee. i said don't you need more fuel for the day? he kind of looked at me like we know each other that well that you can ask me this. and then a few minutes later, gloria comes down and she's eating breakfast but she's in a hurry because she's are got to get down there. he's saying, gloria, it's okay. watch your digestive system,

something like that. i thought, gosh, we already love each other and we've just met each other. i am hank klibanoff. i teach the cold cases project you're going to see now. i am told, i can control this. let me just show you one thing here. this is the website of the georgia civil rights cold cases project. in which undergraduate students, and it's only undergraduate students, though the law school has recently approached me with big plans. and we examine these unsolved, unpunished racially motivated murders that took place in georgia between roughly the end of world war ii to the late 1960s. and through the prism of these cases, we examine georgia history, southern history, and by ultimate extension, national history. each of these cases, it turns out, represents something different. we have the james frazier case, representing the man who was

killed in 1958 for driving a 1958 chevrolet impala. you know the narrative that can go with that. i won't go into that now. the case of a young man, a young man a.c. hall, 17 years old, killed in 1962 in macon, becomes a clear example of police overreaction. police poor training, and so on and so forth. and we have quite a few cases where there's an intersection that's very compelling that we're developing more on, having to do with the medical neglect that often accompanied the brutality cases, cases in which professional physicians who had an opportunity to extend or save the lives of african-americans who were the subject of brutality, failed to do so, and sometimes refused to do so. so, and i want to be clear, this is a project not aimed at the who done it, because we know who done it in most cases, and in most cases, they're all dead, though in one case we found someone who was still alive, and he died before we got to him. but the why. we're examining the why. there's big themes that link to

everything we're talking about here and things that you have talked about in the past conference and we'll talk about in future conferences that if the students just come away thinking they know more about who did it that really doesn't do them much good, i don't think. so today, we're going to be talking about the case of isaiah nixon, african-american man or farmer in montgomery county, georgia. i think i'll show it to you on a map in a few slides. about three hours south of atlanta. he was 28 years old. he was a father of six. he was a georgia voter. and he was a member of the naacp. but his story has roots in two other men i want you to meet. on the left is a man named lonnie smith. lonnie smith, as many of you will know, african-american man, living in texas, and wanted to

vote in the democratic party primary. in the early 1940s. and was willing to sue all the way to the united states supreme court to win the right to vote in the democratic party primary. now, this is particularly -- i want to say this for students who may not get the significance of that, of course, the south was, you know, one total bulwark of democratic party devotees and party members. the only republicans were african-americans, for the most part, and a few strange birds that we all grew up with here in the south. and my kind of birds, i might add. and so the kind of thing that a southern democratic party acolyte of a bilbo or gene talbott, who you'll meet, would say to an african-american, they would say you don't need to vote in the democratic primary. we let you vote in the big election, the general election. that's when the final decision is made, so you're going to get

your say here in the final election. and of course, the african-americans were smart enough to say, the general election is irrelevant. all decisions are made in the primary. that's when we want to vote. the united states supreme court, and the united states supreme court said to the democratic party down in texas, you are not a private club. and for the purposes of electing state office holders, you cannot exclude african-american voters. but they said, we are private. no, you're not. not when it comes to electing state officials. and so they struck down the texas law, and smith, april 3rd, 1944, becomes a seemingly the law of the land, except in georgia. which seems to want to resist all of these decisions. that and mississippi has its resistant, alabama, they all do. this is one of georgia's the state legislature runs if to session, looks at its law, feels they might be vulnerable, and they underline the word really, really a private club in state

law to try to establish that no, we are different. but about three months after the texas smith v. alright, a man named primis king, a barber, goes to the courthouse in columbus, georgia, to vote. and when he walked in, a detective grabbed him and said, what in the hell are you doing, nigger. he said i'm going to vote. he said ain't no niggers voting here today. that was enough. primus king went out and found himself a white lawyer, and the white lawyer had two questions. primus, do you really want to sue the democratic party? do you know what you're doing? and he did. and he did. and he took the case to court and he wins his case in georgia -- and mus muskogee county and

the state of georgia to allow blacks to vote. this causes enormous consternation among office holders in georgia. two stories come about, some may say they are apocryphal. i'm checking the provenance on one. the other is in the congressional record that theodore bilbo at this time, when asked how are we going to stop them from voting, and he gives a speech in which he says the only way to stop them from voting now is the night before. and when gene talmadge, who had been a three-term governor of georgia, when he's asked by the exalted cyclops of the ku klux klan, what are we going to do now? they can vote. gene purportedly, this is the one i haven't completely confirmed yet, writes on a piece of paper, tears off a piece of paper, and writes the word "pistols" and hands it to the exalted cyclops. that was the atmosphere that was in existence in the early 1940s. the supreme court decision on primus king comes down.

actually, the supreme court doesn't decide. the fifth circuit, a very courageous white federal judge in georgia upholds primus king's power to vote. and it gets upheld by the fifth u.s. circuit court of appeals and the supreme court doesn't even hear it. they're so emphatic, what didn't you get about smith v. alright, so they don't hear it. they hand down their decision that they're not going to hear it. in april of 1946. just before a georgia gubernatorial election in which eugene talmadge is seeking a fourth term. he's the old populous, the foghorn leghorn of our time, and he is -- and having started as a populist who was fundamentally supportive of the new deal, he has fallen off that wagon pretty seriously and is campaigning solely on a white supremacist platform, and i would like to go

to here, and let's try just a little sound, give you a little pressure of what old gene sounded like. >> at this point, i want to thank the atlanta general for coming out about two months ago and stating plainly that talmadge was the only candidate for governor in this race that was championing the restoration of a democratic white primary in georgia. my countrymen, when they said that. >> thunder. >> they told the truth and the whole truth. now, what do my opponents say? they say that it's the law and niggers will vote in the primary. this year, next wednesday.

and it stops right there. what do i say? i say it's the law this year, and many of the negroes will vote, the fewer the better, but i tell you this. if i'm the governor, they won't vote in our white primary the next four years. >> so that was in georgia. eugene talmadge is running. he wins. and he wins his fourth term. some of you know the story of what happened after that. it's quite an entertaining story. gene was a fully besotted man, and he suffered from deep alcoholism. and in december of 1946, before two things can happen, he dies. and the two things that didn't happen, the feds who were swarming the state, trying to find enough evidence to charge

him with voter suppression of black votes, are unable to bring enough evidence and indict him before he dies, and the other thing he's unable to do before he dies is take the oath of office. and it throws georgia into this turmoil because they don't have a governor. it's the first time in 1946 that georgia has actually elected a lieutenant governor. so the lieutenant governor says we just went through the whole process of establishing succession in the state. i become the governor now. and the incumbent governor said i'm not giving up the governor's office yet, not until we figure out what this is going to be. so they're both claiming it. talmadge forces were very wily. they had known gene was ill and they had arranged for enough voters in the state to cast write-in votes for gene's son herman, that herman came in second. okay. or close enough that there were enough members of the

legislature who were part of the talmadge machine that the legislature runs into session, and they say, by our light, herman talmadge ought to be governor. you have three people claiming to be governor. there's some fantastic footage on youtube if you ever want to see this in which herman talmadge takes control of the governor's mansion and of the state capitol and says i want to thank governor arnold for his fine service to the state, and i have called in the state highway patrol, and they have returned him to his home where we wish him the best of luck. it ultimately does get settled by the state supreme court, which is in fact lieutenant governor was correct, and he is going to be the governor. but we're going to set a special election in 1948. now we're going to focus on what happened in 1948. as you know, in 1948 is a very critical time. that's the three governors.

on the national stage. you have harry truman running for election in his own right for the first time. he's lost the support of the right because the dixiecrats. or he seems to be in danger of losing the entire south. indeed, he does not. and you have, because of henry wallace' break away, you have the left breaking away from him. he doesn't seem to have a chance. and on top of all this, what does he do? he becomes the first president of the united states to speak to the naacp, and he does it on the steps of the lincoln memorial, and there's a little sound here. there you go. he speaks slowly. >> it is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. recent events in the united states and abroad have made us

realize that it is more important today than ever before to insure that all americans enjoy these rights. when i say all americans, i mean all americans. [ applause ] >> clear code back then, okay. as we know, harry truman does get elected. how does this play out on the ground in georgia? which is not going to go along with this. they're going to resist, and they have been part of the walk-out at the democratic convention. let me just -- you don't need to see the map. let's go back to isaiah nixon. what my students do, they start out, here's their textbook. 234 pages of documents that we've gotten through the fbi freedom of information act request. okay.

and it's a lot of federal memos, a lot of back and forth. you develop a narrative, and what you find out, a lot more from here than you did from the news clips at the time, because it wasn't that widely covered, is what happens to isaiah nixon in 1948 when he's voting in the governor's race. now, and this was a time when the naacp in montgomery county was only about two years old. and it was growing. one record we have shows there were 84 black members of the naacp in a small county in montgomery county which had fewer than 3,000 people total. that was pretty good after one year. and that was pretty hopeful for them. they have decided that they're going to be supporting herman talmadge's running against the lieutenant governor. they're going to support herman talmadge's opponent, the lieutenant governor. melvin thompson, so they decide

to gather at the polling place in austin, georgia, among other polling places. as they're gathered, a group of black men on their morning, the sheriff elect sees the black men and summons one of them over. a man named john harris. and john harris walks over to the sheriff-elect's car where he is seated, and they talk. and then john harris goes back to this gaggle of black men who are waiting to go in and vote, and the black men say to john harris, well john, what did old claude say to you? and john harris says, he said that if i know what's good for me, i won't vote today. and they said, and what did you say to him? and john harris said, i told him that i came here to vote, and i reckon that's what i'm going to do. and john harris went ahead and voted. and so did dover carter, the head of the naacp, father of -- a farmer and father of ten children. and so did isaiah nixon, and all

three of them voted. john harris suffered from a threat. dover carter by that later that day, as he's shuttling other blacks to the polls, is stopped on the side of the road by two white men and so brutally beaten that he gets medical care, and within a very short period of time, he has picked up his entire family and moved them to philadelphia, pennsylvania. and then there's isaiah nixon. isaiah nixon was back at his farm later in the day, having voted. he had taken his wagon. he had a horse and a wagon to get him to the polls. and his mother, who owned the farm that they farmed on, 59 acres, begged him not to go. begged him not to go. she knew what would happen. he said i have to do this. i have to do this. and he went and voted. later that day, two white men -- two white men, jim a. and johnny johnson, showed up at his farm

and said they wanted to talk to him. they had guns. isaiah nixon knew them. he had grown up with them. and those of us who grew up in the southern culture can maybe understand this. as isaiah nixon's mother would say later, they had dinner at our table. they came in our house as boys, as kids. they played with isaiah. now they have shown up with guns, and they say, did you vote today? he said, well i did. so who did you vote for? and he said, well, i reckon i voted for that thompson fellow. they said come go with us. let's go for a ride. he said i'm not going for a ride. he knew what that meant. it did not mean death necessarily. it meant he was going to come back pretty badly beaten. and he said i'm not going to do it. and he stepped back. and when he steps back, jim a. johnson pulls out a gun and shoots him three times. his wife, isaiah nixon's wife sally, who by the way, is still alive, stood on the porch and

yelled, fall, isaiah. fall! and he wouldn't. or he couldn't. he falls to the ground ultimately, just the gravity of his dead weight, and sally, who is two weeks -- having just given birth to their youngest child, goes down, picks him up, drags him up the steps into the farmhouse, puts him into bed. and we know all of this from two primary sources. one is his daughter, dorothy, who was 6 years old at the time, who saw it all. and who we found, and i brought her to emory to meet with our students. and she's wonderful. mesmerizing. without trying -- she's very honest about what she doesn't remember. the other source we have, there's some newspaper clips at the time that i go -- yeah, but there's this. dover carter, after he's beaten

up, and he gets medical care, the next day he goes to the hospital where isaiah nixon is. and we don't know why, if he went to see nixon or he went for further treatment, we don't know. he had to go two counties away, lawrence county, to see him there. it was the nearest hospital that would accept blacks. and he hears the whole story from isaiah nixon about what happened that day. and he gets in his car and he drives not to the savannah fbi office, but he drives to the atlanta fbi office. and he just talks and talks and talks and tells them everything he knows about what his own experience, the day before and what he's heard from isaiah nixon. so there becomes this terrific document that delineates everything that happened. isaiah nixon on a second day in the hospital dies in claxton. and the sheriff is very clear that that's not the sheriff-elect i was talking to you before about. this is the current sheriff who

will soon go out of office because he was beaten by the sheriff-elect, and he says there was no doubt this is because he voted. isaiah nixon's family is traumatized. obviously, who wouldn't be? they get discovered by the pittsburgh courier, okay, and those of you who know the history of the black press know that ain't nothing. when you're discovered by the pittsburgh courier. this is the newspaper that, you know, one black american support for entry into world war ii along with the boys, you know, with their vv campaign. if it weren't for the pittsburgh courier, one could argue and some have, jackie robinson would not have made it into baseball. they played a monumental role in these things. when they adopted a family and built a crusade around them, it was huge. okay. and so they find the nixon family, and they begin writing about them.

and they follow them -- okay, so the family in very short order buries isaiah nixon. and then they flee. they flee to jacksonville, florida, where all those sally, isaiah's widow, is very upset. she said we didn't flee. we weren't in a hurry. we weren't afraid. but they were afraid. there's no other way to describe why they needed to get out there in a hurry. okay. so we learn as much as we can from all of these records. and then -- like i said, we bring dorothy nixon to the class. and my students want to go down there, and i want them to go down there. go to montgomery county, do the research, do what we can. we go, and only three of them can go on the particular day when we go down in november 20th, 2015. and we go to the courthouse, and we're doing a lot of searching. and this man shows up who i prearranged would show up, named james harris.

and he's going to show us how to get to the cemetery. okay. they know the cemetery where isaiah nixon was buried, but guess what. the family for 67 years has been unable to find his grave site. they know the cemetery. all they know is they buried him and they left. but they know that they bought a headstone, but they can't find it. maybe they didn't put it up. they don't know. others have gone there before to look for it. okay. and the family has been coming back for years and can't find it. it's just this hole in their heart that there's no place they can stop and play tribute and homage and respect to isaiah nixon. we go down there and meet mr. harris, james harris. and of course, the first question is, mr. harris, in all these fbi records, there's a man who's voted that day in defiance of the sheriff-elect named john harris. he says, that was my daddy. and he tells a fascinating story. that by the way, is layered with

complications because he likes claude sharp, the sheriff-elect. he said we didn't take that as a threat. we took it as a warning. that something is going down today. so it gets a little complicated. i don't want to spend too much time on that, but here the students are in the courthouse looking up records. right there, they're looking at old copies of the montgomery monitor, the weekly newspaper. it unveils nothing because of course they didn't cover the story. this is when a professor nearly dies on the spot. look at my student, getting up on the ladder, and as you can see, the ladder is not fully open. i'm like, lucy, get down from that thing. what? get down, fast. but she does get up there, and they're pulling these old ammo boxes that hold trifold records. all right, i'm going to move along here. so we go to -- mr. harris shows us how to get to the cemetery. you know, it's three miles --

it's 17 miles outside of the county seat and three miles on a dirt road. and as we're there, we're just killing time, nobody has found the grave site in 67 years. okay. and i say to mr. harris, your daddy was buried here, right? i knew he was. he said yeah. i said would you show me his grave site. the students are in awe of the cemetery and they're walking around, and i happen to have my iphone on. i'm not going to play it for you now. we would have to boost the sound. as mr. harris is taking me to his daddy's grave site, and all of a sudden you hear off to the side one of my students say i found it. we keep walking in deference to mr. harris, he's taking us to his daddy's grave site. then you hear ellie, one of my students, biology manger, wants to be a large animal vet, saying i think -- i think i found isaiah nixon's grave site. off to the side, she had seen a headstone that's been there forever.

and she says what she had not noticed -- what the family had never noticed is there was a slab of cement that came off the headstone that covered isaiah nixon. by the time the family felt it was safe to come back, it was overgrown with grass, mud, gnarly old trees. as she's standing there, the wind had blown the leaves in such a way that in the top left-hand corner, she could see an "i" and an "s." let me get it closer here. i-s-a-i -- she knew he died september 10th, and pretty soon, we're all on our hands and knees and trying to clear all this stuff out. we called his daughter.

you know, facetimed her, and she knew how to do. by the way, of the six kids that isaiah and sally nixon had, four of them went off and got full four-year college degrees. and three of them got advanced degrees, and dorothy had gone to famu nursing, and then gone to the university of maryland, got her masters in nursing and had been a psychiatric nurse all her life. so just coming out of poor montgomery county, it was -- and up against the odds. and then i just -- there's a closer. and then i'm going to close out here. that was november 20th, 2015. in january, dorothy was able to come up to the grave, to the cemetery. her daughter had basketball coaching institution, and she waited until the season was over because she went to every one of her daughter's games.

and for the first time, she saw her father's grave site since she was 6 years old. and she bent down and touched his name and just burst into tears. and buried her face in her son's chest, as anyone would. and then she had some remarks to make. so there's sound on this. it's a three-minute story. and then i'll conclude. >> the sound will get better.

>> it's just so awful. i have never seen it as evil -- to find everything they could about my parents. i could see it from the very first moment at emory university, your faces will always be in my mind. when i heard the video that hank sent, and then i heard, "i found it, i found it." it was amazing. they came here not to find daddy's grave but just to visit the site in which he was buried. and they found it.

that just shows you what a group of students they are. and they're rare. to even want to do this, i saw them all on their knees trying to clear off, and somebody saying, well, i found a bottle of water. i'll go get it. and clear off and thank you all. and the amount of information that you found, and i know you still have a lot to share with me. it is phenomenal. the whole thing, to me, is just surreal. it just is. and when you first called me, i had a lot -- still had a lot of anger, and i think i told you all i did. but after talking to your group,

some of that was released. and i want to let you know now, it's the anger that's completely gone. >> free. >> and thank you all for that and so forth. i can just resolve this. it's been settled. and then, looking at this, it's just unreal. i can't say anymore. >> thank you. >> except all that's coming in my mind is, thank you. thank you. thank you. >> she's now replaced the headstone with this. two final thoughts. one, shortly after this, this is from my iphone, we did have a

film, a video person there, but i didn't have time to -- i needed to get this up on our website really quickly. the "wall street journal" was there and they had a story coming up, and i had my daughter who does film editing, and i called her up in boston, and i said, i'm shipping y'all my iphone, can you help me edit this? so she did and we posted it on the website. it's a vimeo. and it had her name, i guess, and we e-mailed her as the person who did the editing and the posting on the vimeo vimand few days later, she says, dad, i've gotten an e-mail from a man who says, i am the nephew of the men who killed that man. who can i talk to? i said, wow. she said, dad, you've gotten me in too deep. so i did what i do. i turned it over to students who reached out to him. they said where do you live? he said jacksonville.

of all the lousy gin joints in the world, he's in the same city where dorothy lives. okay. well, i want you to know that he was calling because he knew none of this. and he is broken about it. broken up, broken hearted by what his uncles did. and he wanted to apologize. and so last february, i and some students and someone i'm working with on a public radio station on another way of presenting this, went down and met with him. and he did apologize. you know. i did say to you also that we don't teach the who done it. this is very much about students learning a lot. the two men who killed him later pleaded, what, self-defense, right. they say he pulled a gun. he didn't pull a gun on them. okay. so students write papers on the reliability of the self-defense alibi. the tendency of juries to think of, you know, to see black

criminality. why was there still all white juries 18 years after the scottsboro. whatever it would be, there's a lot of different themes that come into play here. the concentration of rural power, of power in sheriffs at the time. judicial conflicts of interest. the judge who presided over the trial turns out to be, we have speeches he gave, not only for gene talmadge, but herman talmadge in the same year as the trial. so it's pervasive with academic opportunities and pathways. so thank you for your attention. appreciate it. [ applause ] >> okay. thank you both. we have time for some questions, please. starting in the back here.

>> i have a methodological question for you. so i know that you said that you use as your primary sources for the class, fbi files and obviously some newspaper documents and other things like that. but where do you get the names in the first place? how do you find who to go looking for? >> well, the fbi documents will contain a lot of names. that's, you know, one way. then if you go deeper, we, you know, good lord, one of the most amazing things that's happened to academic researchers is the digitization of the naacp records. oh, my lord. what was that, three, four years ago? maybe it's been longer. but my students when we started doing this went through microfilm with a not very good finding aid. so that helps. and dover carter, you know, i went and met with, of his ten kids, who moved to philadelphia,

i went out to philadelphia and met with six of them. they're all in their 70s and 80s. and i peeled two of them off later and interviewed them again, and recently, we went down to the family reunion down there, and they all give you names. you know? i mean, i met james harris when i said to dorothy, you know, i just want you to know my students really want to go to the cemetery, and she says, well, you need to talk to james harris, and only -- and james harris, even though hooee's got different view or maybe because he's got a different view of the sheriff-elect, is fascinating to us and he's got a list of names and i got a call from a guy who's an attorney in athens who's from that town and knew all these characters and wants to help us. so, i mean, there's still, you know, where my heart races is with the prospect that somewhere out there, whoever was in the courtroom during the trial of the two men who were ultimately acquitted, there's a -- we

don't -- never said stenographer. court reporter doing whatever she did, and i just have this idea that, you know, even though she's died -- she's long since dead, that she turned over -- she had a big closet full of all of her notes from cases and, i mean, there was no transcript called up because there was no appeal. there was no appeal. it's rare there'd be a transcript. but she turned over the court reporting business to her daughter and she turned to her daughter and somewhere, there's an attic full of handwritten or punch ptape transcripts of this case and that we will some day find and get the testimony. i've only -- i need to knock on about 3,000 more homes, you know? >> i just want to say, those are two of the most powerful presentations at a conference i have ever seen. so i'm really grateful and impressed.

>> i'm grateful to the president, to the conference for not having me follow. thank you. >> those are amazing. i have a question for each other. each of. you tracy, the question for you is about political incentives. they were substanintroducing th to waive the poll ftax and barky was fighting against the filibuster from kentucky. is it because they have national aspirations? >> well, and also claude pepper from florida. i don't know if i mentioned him, was one who was sponsoring this as well. >> doesn't seem like they'd be the most obvious people to be leading the crusade. >> i don't know. you know, it's hard to talk about motivations. i would say with barkley, he turned it in terms of fairness. he wanted to make certain it wasn't about race. that's why he included what this

is doing to poor white people. but obviously, barkley had national ambitions. so did people like lyndon johnson. so, for students, you just can't broad, you know, with a broad brush, all southern politicians and think that they're all theodore bilbos or richard russells. it was a lot more complicated, which of course is what history usually is. that you just can't make this into a white or black kind of thing. it's a lot more complicated. i would just say in the short run. >> right. so, hank, i wanted to ask you about the fbi. so one of the things that's interesting, before and after world war ii, is that before world war ii, there probably wouldn't have been any federal investigation. after world war ii, there is. but i just want to know how seriously did the fbi take this? >> you know, you're going get mixed reviews on this. if you look, the pressure to do

more seems to be coming out of washington doj, not fbi. doj. from an assistant attorney general. where are we at, where are we at. it's being handled more out of the issavannah office rather th the atlanta office and that can make difference, as you know. there seems to be one assistant u.s. attorney in savannah who is the person who is saying, we should not get involved in this. we should not get involved because we will really mess up the state prosecution. that as soon as we go in and we big-foot, it will backfire, which may have been his cover too, because he's -- he later does something that is very -- that is hurtful. let me also say that when the -- when it -- the story lines about what happened to dover carter and what happened to isaiah nixon make their way in a memo that mentions the word "conspiracy" because the same people who beat up dover

carter and a couple of others who are all related by -- in the family, go out to isaiah nixon, the memo that goes up to hoover says that they think this is a conspiracy and these should be viewed jointly, which would elevate its importance at the federal level. hoover goes through the documents and deletes the word "conspiracy." and sends it back and says, you know, you got to -- if you want to go with a murder case, you can go with a murder case, but we're not doing these together. we haven't figured all that out, you know? and these -- and i'm very quick to say, you know, and great respect to my students. these are undergrads. and you know, planning to be large animal vets, you know? although, i will say, gosh, that student, ellie, this has changed her life. she is now -- she went and dead an internship at the carter center. and i didn't know how to change

a life until i was writing her recommendation, but she sent me her personal essay and just yesterday i got a text from her that she got a -- was it a 188 out of 190 on her lsat? she's 99th percentile. so, i don't think i answered all the question there. but anyway. >> a senator from tennessee ran for president unsuccessfully in '52 and '56, both, i think and was runner-up to stevenson at one point and he was a chief sponsor of the 1957, i might have the year off, first civil rights act so he had a consistent history in this regard. >> maybe he thought it was the right thing to do, you know? which is not out of the question. sometimes it's not just political implications. maybe you think, you know, we were talking last night about reconstruction. and these amendments. sometimes representative democracy comes down to good faith.

you know? it's easier to have an absolute monarchy to tell us what to do, but when we have to do this ourselves, sometimes it's just the right thing might not be what some people would want, but it's sometimes it's good faith. >> a factual question for professor campbell. do you have any information on the volume of the soldier vote in 1944? two years later. >> it was not very much. i can't -- i've been working on 1942, so i -- it wasn't great. let's put it that way. but it was certainly a little bit bigger than '42. '42 was just abysmal. 28,000. but it's easy to look up, i think. >> you know, one last thing, if i might, going back to michael's question. the fbi, after the trial, and the doj, are sending memos that say, now that it's over, we need to ascertain -- this is coming

out of washington -- we want you to ascertain, was it a bona fide trial? in other words, is there an opening for us now? if this wasn't a legit trial, you know, and based on the interviews with people, including the judge, and it turns out the assistant u.s. attorney in savannah, who says, it was a bona fide trial, i've been knowing this judge all my life, he is a fine, honorable man, he would never allow any miscarriage of justice in his courtroom, yada, yada yada, they all withdraw completely but a student of mine has found the speeches that the judge was giving in that same period of time on behalf of gene, before, and then herman talmadge, and so we have some work to do on that. >> i'm glad you mentioned "the pittsburgh courier." i actually write a column covering the supreme court in major legal issues for the black

press writ large, so thank you for that. but the question i have is about the response from the white community, because when the evers murder trial was opened the third time, i was approached with a question by the media, well, do you think that we should just let this lie, because why reopen these old wounds? what response have you received from -- general response from the white communities who have lived in these particular counties, have -- have the children who are the children of the -- those who perpetrated these crimes, living in the same county with the children who are the victims of the crimes, and what have you seen to be the response from that? >> you know, i worked on a project southwide with people like jerry mitchell from the "clarion-ledger" and down in

louisiana, and beforehand, came across that more in those cases than in hours. ours. several things come to mind. yes, it is -- you know, the most difficult thing for many of these families is that those who didn't move from those towns, as a woman from woodville, mississippi says. i had to live in this town every day crossing the street, seeing men who i knew killed my daddy. and we had to live here. and on the james frazier case, the guy killed in 1958 for driving the nice car, his -- his sister talked about how she was a waitress in a restaurant near the courthouse and the sheriff and the police would all come in there every day, and she was serving coffee to the men she knew killed her daddy. okay? and some people could move, but some couldn't. but it was -- so, from an african-american's perspective, this was a daily torture. and so, and there are people -- there's a white editor of a newspaper down in franklin county, mississippi, who we --

on the henry, charles moore case who says, why are you looking into this? that was a long time ago and we're getting along with our colored people now and all you're going to do is stir them up. and just so you -- you didn't ask for the benefit of what i think about that, but i'll tell you, first of all, doug jones, who prosecuted the go birmingham church murderers who hadn't been prosecuted in '77 and the fourth one died and of course it was now the democratic nominee for the senate against roy moore in alabama, he used to, when he would talk about his prosecution of the birmingham church bombings, people would ask him that and he would say, wait a second, and this was from osama bin laden was still alive, are you telling me that if 40 years from now, the marines find osama bin laden living in a cave and he's just bedraggled and he's a skeleton and struggling to get up and they've got him in chains, are you going to say, at

that point, come on, poor guy? can't we just let bygones be by gons? you're not. why would that response be any different? the other response that i give, and y'all tell me, i think i'm right, i hope i am, i say, you know, we're very contentious nation here. we're a nation of 50 sovereigns who, whether in fact or just in practice, we have different laws for everything, you know? whether it's, i don't know, driver's licenses or hunting seasons o r whatever it would be, we have different laws governing everything. we're contentious, but the one thing every state agrees on, all 50 states, is that there's no statute of limitations on murder. we are unanimous on that. we are unanimous in our belief that no one who commits murder should ever go to sleep at night without worrying that the next day, there could be a knock on their door and they could be discovered for a murder they thought had long since been forten. so whether -- doesn't matter if

you're for -- whether you're for or against it, that's the way it is right now, and so i say that to sort of say to people, so, we are in agreement on that, that there should be a price to pay, and it's the examination of these cases that leads to the payment of that price. which, by the way, is almost entirely, every single civil rights cold case that has been reinvestigated and reprosecuted, it's because of a journalist. not a single case -- and my friends who do the civil rights cold cases at syracuse law and northeastern law, they get like this and i say, but it's true. i can tell you that after alberto gonzalez developed his initiative in 2006, twic2007, ae was asked, do you have a list. he says, um, i'm going to get you one. and he goes to the southern poverty law center and their list was never intended for national publication and it's a messy list. they have the three kids who the

justice department has now adopted a list that has the three students killed at south carolina state in orangeburg in 1968 as being killed in orangeburg, georgia. there is none. the four people killed in monroe, georgia, they've got two being killed in monroe, georgia, two many louisiana, and i think they corrected it now because i wrote it in an op ed. and i never thought that the fbi was serious about anything other than closing the cases and trying to bring closure to the families, which is a good thing. >> one over here. >> okay. >> thank you so much for this presentation. i guess professor, i've got a methodological question as well. i'm struck by the -- an earlier question related to how difficult it can be to find these sorts of cases and the first thing that i thought -- the first thing that i thought was you could talk to any black

people over the age of 70 to find these cases. so i'm wondering about the tension between these cases as individual as being framed as sort of individual instances of violence. the tension between our propensity to think of individuals, right, to think of individual victims and individual perpetrators, that tension between that and larger institutional and political realities, right? this occurs, you know, context of jim crow and pervasive racial violence and stuff, so i was wondering, how do you navigate that dynamic in the project? >> it's tricky, but it's doable. i mean, from one perspective, a lot of it has to do with what -- because it's a -- and i did teach this for the several years with a professor of african-american studies and history, brett gadston, who has now since gone to northwestern and i taught it a few times on my own, and i'm teaching it on my own where it's heavily a

writing course and we're teaching how to write and we're teaching that if you're writing about james and you only write about james and you don't do the zoomout and you go back and pick up leon and his whole section of page after page of african-americans who were killed for prosperity, for their prosperity, in fact, specifically for driving nice cars, you're missing the point. and so, that becomes something that they have to study, and they have to incorporate into their papers. from the other side, from the, you know, side of the perpetrator, you know, i don't know what possessed me this year that for the first part of the first class, or maybe the second class, i had students go through an exercise and gave one group just the lyrics to -- and the song to bob dylan's song "only a pawn in their game," which was about the evers killing in which he portrays byron as just a pawn in the game of the white elite.

of course, he was part of the white elite. but i remember very clearly when william brad ford hue we're went into some -- mississippi after the till trial and he's interviewing the two lawyers who represented them, and he's writing memos to his editor and saying, these lawyers, they couldn't care less about them. they've done their job. they've done the job they wanted them to do. and i'm not trying to paint it as entirely that, but i do want them to know that everyone represents something much larger than just themselves in that. i mean, we're -- we're sorting through the difficulty of understanding why -- saying why jim a. and johnny johnson who grew up with isaiah nixon -- jim a. had referred to him as his best friend. pulled out a gun and kill him. and the family, the one thing that they sort of seek -- the family of the johnsons, seek refuge with is saying, well, they were bad drinkers. you know, they were known to get pretty drunk, and maybe they were just drunk that day.

you know, but we're not in full -- we're not fully understanding it, but we are in pursuit of it, and that matters, i think. i hope that -- does that come close to answering? okay. thank you. >> i'd like to thank our panelists for two very powerful and memorable presentations this morning. and thank -- speak for the audience, i learned so much, and i thank you for that. [ applause ] ♪ c-span's student cam. the tweets say it all. student cam in action. video editing and splicing for constitutional documentaries. this group showed us how it's done. two stellar interviews in one day. and these students asked some hard-hitting questions about immigration reform and the d.r.e.a.m. act. we're asking students to choose

a provision of the u.s. constitution and create a video illustrating why it's important. our competition is open to all middle school and high school students grades 6 through 12. $100,000 in cash prizes will be awarded. the grand prize of $5,000 will go to the student or team with the best overall entry. the deadline is january 18th. get contest details on our website at studentcam.org. american history tv is in the classroom with a lecture by university of kansas professor randal jelks. he taught a class about the role of african-american ministers in politics. his class is about an hour. >> good afternoon. let's try this again. good afternoon. all right. all right. so, i want to build on what we began to talk about last