resisting arrest and hangs herself in her cell. eight tragic and unexpected result, but that whole exchange we saw, which goes on and on and it,we only saw a snippet of that was the kind of -- when i first saw that online, that was when i realized what i wanted to write about, because if you break that exchange down, moment by moment, you see multiple failures of understanding, of empathy, of a million things. announcer 2: sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q and a. tv, on american history civil rights activists discuss their experiences as part of the 1960's black freedom movement. panelists talk about race relations in modern times and

how lessons learned in the 1960's might be applied today. the discussion was part of association of african-american museums annual conference. [applause] it is a rare occasion where you get to be in the presence of the people who have sat you on the shoulders of. yous a rare occasion when get to praise and give honor to the people that have literally created a path so you can be on that path. me, this will be an emotional panel. i will try to get through these questions without bawling my eyes out. toare taught in this country honor our soldiers. taught to protect our

soldiers. i want to remind the audience that these are our soldiers. [applause] while i grew up reading about each and every one of these panthers, the lack party, the black arts movement, thatld never have imagined i would be pointed on a movement such as mine that would call us terrorists. that would make us enemies of the state. nobody, unless you have had that experience, understands what that does to your spirit, to your body, to the people around you. taken the last six years

of this iteration of our black liberation movement to go back and either read, listen to you talk, it is more than an honor. it is a historical moment to be on stage with you. .'m going to start with you [applause] often, people try to put us in a box. you are only lack, only woman, only artist, only activist, but you are all those things and so much more. these are not separate events. the civil rights movement, the black power movement, the black arts movement. you integrated those in your toe and i would love for you tell this audience your own experience and reveal how these movements have overlapped.

also talk about why it is necessary that we do not box ourselves. i just wanted to say, i --n't know before i came [inaudible] your mic. >> hello. >> it is on now. i just wanted to say that at some point, we have learned you can't have a conference without -- there will be something that comes out of this conference that will help our young children. i hope you make a statement or try to do something, otherwise

we are dislocated. the other thing is, a woman who was a great writer and cultural morrison -- i want to read something i wrote about her, if i may. i want you to see that we are not separated from each other. if you have not read toni morrison, i am going to follow you around. [laughter] and tell you why. toniis when i introduced on may the 12th. you said die. that may be the meaning of life, but we do language. that may be the measure of our lives. my dear sister, toni morrison, how you do this thing called life, which is the measure of our lives.

how you capture our words, untangle this language, send words up. how you open up the sorcery of language, on the wonder of words. ourpturing the wings of most sacred vows. listen, you say. bend. is around the bring us into the flash of rain and laughter called paradise. beloved, aeye, mercy, god help the child. we commandeered your words and they become a river, moving against winter, repelling icewater, on knees at confession. our bodies are tattooed forever with your quick silver tongue and we are one, alive, apart

from the elasticity of the bed. sister,comes, my dear breathing in your eyes of silk and i remember your words. don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. and a stitch that unravels fear. prose stagefor this called home, where men and women, shipwrecked, graveyard memories, suddenly on their feet, walked back home. their hearts still searching for a gust of life as they dress their limbs in starched bones. i put on my eyes, my dear sister. the eyelash of your memory.

where there is always a small trickle called home. [applause] i love the sisters who formed this organization. my first encounter with them was in new york city with a bunch of people when they saw me did not like that i was there, because of my politics. ,e got off to a bad start because they asked, who is financing you? everybody in the audience said, whoa. but that is what we did. we had involved ourselves with so many other people and when we find out who was financing people, we had to back out. it was a negative thing i did.

so is like, tell me now know how to move. here inatched them move this country and around the world and i leaned back, and said, that is good, are bad. welcome to this arena. called activism. i saveena called, how do not only america but the world? , tos an honor to be here understand what people are doing , and clear out things. i just want to say, i forgot what you asked me, by guess you wanted me to say something about what many of us have done. you know. i said in the interview earlier that we watch a great deal what people were doing and i was coming out of a place called hunter college when we watched

the brothers and sisters who sat in at the counters and we were so moved by that, but we were a group in college that were observing it. then they told me when i got ready to graduate that i did not have all my credits, because i had cut classes, on purpose, because you got in, i couldn't see me. i was no place to be seen. i was completely out of my head and they said, you can't graduate. you will have to make up these credits, or you can appeal, and i said, give me the form and they did and they said, the reasons why what happened, and i put down discrimination in red. they got rid of me. they got me out of hunter college, because it was a time of movement. the people who watched us knew that that was moving on up to a

and, called new york city i am here because of that movement. because of the brothers and sisters sitting on the stage. they began to inform us as to what was going on not only in the south, but what was going on, and the bravery they inspired us with. , they are not prepared. he thought we are so hip. they are not prepared to protect themselves, but they had the protection of being correct. they had the protection of being righteous. they had the protection of women and men who taught them and gave them the shield of information, of what it was and what it meant to go out into the valley is, to go out, to inform and teach and to drive out in the midnight

hours in cars with no lights to get away and come home. we saw them as heroes. i tell these young people, you read these comic books about heroes. they need to make comic books about these brothers and sisters. it [applause] note pseudo-heroic stuff, but men and women who faced death. they didn't say a little magic word. they were saying the words of truth and progress. we need to teach our children, and i am hoping you will make these books about these brave ,en and women, who faced death looked at it, pushed it back and said, we are here. we aren't leaving. we are going to change this bloody south, which will change the rest of the world.

and so, we are grateful and when we northuse had to do something, we looked at that and understood. it gave us teeth. outave us the heart to go into those places we lived and to go up against the police. us at somee toward point when we were trying to go and open up the electrical union of new york city. that happened to us in a place called new york city and what that meant. i didn't mean to take up the but i'm i will stop, just saying, it is a joy to be here and i hope you understand what it means to see the continuation of us. to imagine the

continuation of you in the same way. somebody asked me recently on idiot box -- on the television program, how did you survive? and i said it hit me one day that i had to reimagine myself. you can't keep doing the same things year after year. after 10 years, you have to stop and i had to reimagine me on this american landscape in order to survive, to go and come up toh new ideas, or at least hone the ideas i had before. and that reimagining of yourself is a saving grace, my brothers and sisters, because it makes you go on and investigate other things, what this is truly about. it makes you learn more. it makes you sit back and take time out. don't say that.

many of you know that i would curse people out and think nothing of it. it, but we have got m-f's at this point. you better call them out. [applause] replace them and challenge them, people. call them by their names. that is one of their names we should call them by. thank you. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you. i will pass it over to you, mr. bob moses. in the american consciousness believe that the movement started in 1954 with round versus board and ended with the assassination of king. while many of us who have been following this movement, been in

it,read about it, studied know that it is much more expansive. i would love to hear you talk about your own personal development and consciousness and the work you have done and continue to do for us. >> hello? can you hear me? >> it is not on. >> it's on. if the sound person just turns it up. they are going to fire you! [laughter] be careful. >> how is everybody? so, i like to think a lot about whatovement we were in and was at the heart of it.

come to settle on the preamble. because the sit in kids and the freedom riders, and the and theppers mississippi freedom democratic party crowd, they were all thinking not that they were citizens of georgia and alabama louisiana,ippi and they were thinking that they and citizens of the country that it actually meant something. that national citizenship actually meant something.

so, when the 1787 constitution reached virginia, patrick henry said, who gave them the right to say we the people? saidought they should have , we the citizens of the several states. but they didn't. and at the heart of it is an issue that is here now in this day, with ice and rounding up undocumented people. is,he heart of his question we are documented as citizens of the several states. we the people are undocumented.

thateople who signed couldn't document themselves. there was no country. to document themselves. they were a group of on documented people. as soon as they said we the people, they could have said we the citizens. but that would have led to a very different country. of the preamble and what it means in its original statement, that it was property men who owned , and then of course, the problem was article four section two paragraph three.

itself outlines a group of constitutional people who own and establish the constitution. article four, section two, paragraph three delineates a very different group of constitutional people. , as constitutional property. the first group of undocumented people. along, the country goes for three quarters of a century is the africans, their job to document themselves. insurgent runaway slaves. war over this issue of

undocumented people, africans. we come out of that and we americanst, african just africannger people. but they are not quite citizens. circular 3591. you should google it. , decemberey general circular.ssues a it says that the state attorney general should stop prosecuting

as such and prosecute a different form of slavery. indentured servitude. five days before, the country had been invaded. president roosevelt figured out ,hat he needed young black men and so he ordered his attorney processto stop this that had been going on for almost three quarters of a century. put africans in jail. incarcerationass of slaves.

your -- your property was valuable. war, what you did was round them up by the tens of thousands, young , and put themans in the coal mines for the industrialization of the country , then came world war ii, and we realized-- the country that it needed young african-american men, so we had that circular. google it sometime. circular 3591. sense leads us into the civil rights movement. movement took place against

the backdrop of a planet wide effort by colonial people for political voice. country after world war ii, and we had a civil rights movement. measure, african-americans here got a measure of political importance. i was on the witness stand in the spring of 1963. kennedy is still president. bobby kennedy is the attorney general. assistantall is the attorney general. we had been greasing gunned

outside of greenwood on our way to greenville. decided to travis had caught the bullet. there were three of us in the front of the car. when they decided to converge on greenwood in response, be raised people,r food, we told straight up, the reason you don't have your federal commodities is because of politics. so if you want some of this political food here, you have to go down and register to vote. they arrested the field secretaries and he filed suit against the city and had our cases removed to the federal

district court. sharecroppers over to andcourthouse in greenville they sent a lawyer in the federal district judge just had one question. is snked to know, why taking in illiterates to vote. was thepper education subtext of that. education is education that says you have been reassigned work, so you get the education that is best for the work which you have been assigned. , it was ation now

planet wide movement of colonial people that led us into the right to vote, it is the transition on the planet from industrial to information age technology which has led us into education. and the preamble. that the preamble to everyach right down , as ain the country citizen of the country, right now for purposes of education, we are citizens of the states.

we need to establish just as we as aor voting, education right -- a constitutional right in this country. so, we need to take on the , we need to use the preamble as a tool. we held a meeting in washington at the congress just this past july 18. our first meeting, asking the direct to have a constitutional federal involvement and investment in education.

and we are going to work to develop a we the people movement , to make that happen. this transition from industrial to information age technology is not going to last forever. the sharecroppers we were serfs ofith where the the industrial age. serfs of therowing information age in our cities. not and iny have education for the 21st century. what they are getting is sharecropper education. and education which prepares

them for the work of the 20th century. .e have to wake up thank you. [applause] thank you, thank you. we're recording this, right? [laughter] >> thank you. huggins, this is together and el this is a question for you where at the impact of supremacy and not just the white supremacy of the past, but the white supremacy of today, up against, what we're facing and i want to hear reflections on the ways --

response that the black power movement had to the white supremacy movement of the past what you're seeing as a now.onse to white supremacy >> just a few areas of right?ons, [laughter] >> hello, everyone. hello. >> before patrice and everyone, i ask i say anything, can something of everyone gathered send love that you they were dren as if your own like right now, do, however you express love in the form of a wish and good thoughts, a anything, lessing, can we just take a moment where we're quiet.

yesterday little girl said on the news, put your heart there. becauseu for doing that they are our children. fathers andhers and grandmothers and aunties and room, you got he children in your life, yeah. so it's heinous what is

happening. goes beyond calling, giving it a name. cruel won't do. -- there must be somewhereome language o describe the heartbreaking daily moment to moment things. to ask that we not normalize it. [applause] kind of so any supremacy is based on the it's an education. you have been educated to

are the center f, i don't know, the universe and that anything that can test supreme stance is an enemy , i having lived through that good way, i have come test that there are people to raise their children believe that they are better than, perhaps because of their it just r and i say like that. it almost doesn't matter after traveling the globe what might look like

and who might be wearing it, but lighter and lighter is always better. something i've had to obviously lot, not that there is something wrong with skin color that anybody has, in society onsidered a privilege, why not do good with it. [applause] why not take that goodness to the people who make a difference make the decisions and do something about it. and an irate atholic nun once told me, you can write a damn letter!

can do is right, you anything right where you are with the people that you're ith, the skin that you're in and the body you've been given, us, do each of something. hat is the antidote to normalizing. so that skin color is part of supremacy or any kind of and then gender and being able-bodied i like to at this time and then your citizenship citizenship, your sexual of these n, all things, all of these minute hings compared to the magnificence of a human heart.

wisdom of a human mind way the eloquent lyrical who remind us se poetry that we are all human instead of these race and gs like gender and da, da, da, da, da, da. i back to white supremacy, read an article yesterday, patrice, and it was an article like as written, a title "why young white men are so angry." i smiled when i read the title, but then i to the e it is speaking

killings, 250 and 251 these intentional ers, beings, 250 andn 2019.n so angry?ite men ecause they were told that regardless of anything else, at better than this one. beingen that supremacy is undermined by people standing up say, well, black lives matt matter. when i w up at a time

earliering some friends today when i was spit on and by two "little children" when i was a child, them, who was teaching them, who was the education. had, buthat education i what was theirs. to raise any ic can to believe that they death affirming. that's what it comes to. and death right now. when i was w, watching you on screen, i said i read your book -- read her book? it's called "when they call us a

terrorist." "when they call you a terrorist." i went back to sitting in a rison cell in solitary because i was a terrorist but that wasn't the name given me. panther given the black party was the greatest threat to security of the united states. 19 years old. age i think as i look back and bring some of that forward and i look nt in ard, i want a world which, and it might sound corny, children recognize the humanity in each other. 3-year-old ttle oesn't have to worry about, well, anything, except the

natural challenges of navigating the world as a human being. an age 6 or 7 ou'll be jacketed in public he will ot at age 10, be told that he is not of value and in body language. that he is walking down the my 13-year-old by ew and gets rolled up on a police car and asked if he can fits the d because he description of. description of my little nephew who says when you say something he can't hear, he says pardon me? it broke my heart, once again.

our hearts, people, are being lot, are they not? antidote that by active wherever we can. lives it won'tur or how where we worked much money we made, it will be we are with the people right around us. what are we doing that is a good doesn't make the news. about you were talking that earlier. it's just a kindness. just a loving thing. the black what panther party was really all about, what you got was bull

shit, about what we were doing feeding babies, educating to figure out g by, to get people educated about single cell anemia running trying to work and thepolice brutality counterintelligence program of pretty much wiped us from the inside. but i feel that it's important to be resilient so challenged, so we lose people. i'm not saying so what. say, aying what do they fall down seven times, get up eight. have to keep going. let me speak for myself.

going. to keep white supremacy is in the fabric. it's in the structure. of the the intention united states and that's hard to noe, but it is the truth and one in this room put it in place. don't get me wrong. you had nothing to do with the structures and the systems in place, but now you know. where i want to stop. [applause] that.nk you so much for reverend, this conference is roots of revolution, reaching back and pushing

forward. activists, what do you see the role of museums, erican cultural centers and paving of the way, especially under 45. light questions. [laughter] yes, the short answer is for all those institutions, cetera, is, the short answer is to present the of black struggle because tells a huge problem, i'll you one story. 'm a journalist, so all journalists have 50 stories. ago, almost 20 years go, i had done a book with bob moses here and i was bringing it

had helped me here in mississippi, one of whom was middle school a not very far from here, and as happens, brinkley middle directly across the hamer from the fanny lou public library. i'm sitting on the steps of that some of the students, i knew some of them at the and i pointed library and i asked them if anybody in the group would like rest of us who mrs. hamer was. and none of them could do that. and i was waiting for a ride which came, so when my ride i stood up to go to the car and pointed at the library i said, look, mrs. hamer was

extremely to the freedom struggle, not just in mississippi, but across the south. i have a hold on mr. hamer which i'll spare you. i said, if you're interested, when i come back, i can talk to her because i knew her. i knew her, one of hese kids, middle school kids leapt to his feet, stared at me and in words ment i will not forget said, "mr. cobb, you was alive back then? [laughter] > i understood it because i'm talking about somebody whose name is on a library and it is

for somebody to tell them about somebody whose is chiselled on the library that they knew that person. 'm sure they placed mrs. hamer with frederick douglass, all of hose people back then, not with -- and it was a kind of reminder about how ittle of the history of our struggle has reached down to the to whom the 21 st. century would belong to us. it changed me as a writer. then, i was a foreign affairs reporter. switched gears and writing increasingly about the south. question, this whole question of our history and our

has increasingly attention, what we call or some of us call history inside out as opposed to history from the top down. from the bottom up as opposed to history, you know, 1960's, the of the movement we were part of is most seen as a movement of mass spaces led by ic charismatic leaders. way the public understands the movement can be boiled down to one sentence. down, martin stood up saw the the white folks light and saved the day. [laughter]

of howhis whole question has derstand the movement increasingly occupied my attention. his whole question of how you present the movement from the people who the really made this movement and i most of my movement life in mississippi. the people who made this ovement were not charlie cobb who came down from washington, .c. or bob moses who came down from harlem, new york. it was made people like hollis sitting right over there. [applause] >> native mississippians who struggle and they had people like a story. i had no intention of working in

mississippi. i was just passing through to a one of the people met of the leaders of jackson mississippi, sittin movement, a guiott who awrence would later become chair of the democratic free arty but was then a college student, i think he had just when i toldom tulu, him i was on the way to a guiott nce in texas, leaned over me with total he said, again, you don't forget these moments. say you're going to a conference in, civil rights texas?nce in what's the point of doing that right here standing in mississippi, you know.

a challenge and it's important to understand part of the internal dynamic of the movement has to do with the challenges that people made to one another within the black community. hamer inravel with mrs. the mississippi delta as she is talking to people, organizing really doingshe is is challenging because she is saying if i can try to register vote, you have no excuse, you know. challenging them and that really defines a lot of the it and as i understood experienced it in the south. there are two great in southern freedom movement for the movement that unfolding today.

a lot with eract people, young people who are black this movement for lives that has been unfolding now almost a decade. get f the things i try and them to see without insulting them, you know, and i will spare criticism of the black leaders who have insulted the young people who have made up movement. i can take another hour to talk about that. to get he things i try hem to see was at least the essons that we learned working here in mississippi or southwest or gia or central alabama the arkansas delta, all of these laces in the black belt south that were incredibly violent and

incredibly oppressive. to get them to see is to forging struggle is recognition of the strength that exists in black communities because if there is any single mississippi ed in was there was great strength, mississippi, to mississippi in my mind was the murder of by till.t, people, i eet these could go on and on, c.c. brian amsey moore, i could go on nd on with names that are egendary within the movement,

hartman turnbull who vanished rom the history, the ones that sed their strength, their desire for real freedom and took and as young 19-year-olds 20-year-olds and 20-year-olds, he was 26. old guy, [laughter] this is one of the ost important lessons as valuable today as it was ago.erday, 50 years and if you look and this is the ella baker taught us. if you look deep into the communities, you will find and that, not weakness trength will enable you to continue struggle.

once,t, ms. baker told me she says, and they're waiting for you charles, you know, they're waiting for you. have to go in there and make them and it doesn't take a great deal of effort as turns out. they made our way to us more than we made our way to them. it's one of the great, great that is valuable today f you want to talk about movement. you know, the tradition of the movement, i want to say this by all, israpping up after a tradition of community grassroots.t the that's an old tradition. it's not something that was 1960's. in the it was not something that was post-world war ii era. it goes all the way back to the

africans the first were offloaded on to american into this strange land and sold into slavery. believe me, they were not marching in protest on the blocks and they were not holding sittins at the dining room nor table seeking a seat at the table. doing?re they they were organizing struggles, revolt, sabotage, assassination. they were organizing. that tradition of community we encountered in the 1960's has been handed generation to generation and now we hand it to your generation, patrice. thank you. [applause]

thank you all so very much and thank you all for holding the space. want to ask that we do one more round of applause for our panelists. [applause] >> i'm going to, if you are able going to ask them to keep standing and close in we close off that everything, a chant from our our duty to fight for our freedom. >> it is our duty to fight for our freedom. is our duty to win. >> we must love each other and support each other. >> we must love each other and support each other.

>> we have nothing to lose but our chains. >> it is our duty to fight for our freedom. duty to fight for our freedom. >> it is our duty to win. our duty to win. >> we must love each other and support each other. >> we must love each other and each other. >> we have nothing to lose but our chains. lose butave nothing to our chains. >> it is our duty to fight for our freedom. >> it is our duty to win. >> it is our duty to win. must love each other and support each other. >> we have nothing to lose but our chains. lose but nothing to our chains. [applause] ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ is american history tv exploring our nation's past every weekend on c-span 3. "the n our weekly series

civil war." 1863 tullahomathe campaign in tennessee. t 8:00 p.m. eastern, it's lectures in history, emery aboutsity professor talks a class of anti-semitism in america and holocaust denial. p.m., reel america winds back the clock to feature of historic s campaigns. presidential nominee george mcgovern on the campaign followed by ronald reagan who ran for the 1968 republican party nomination. is what is coming up here t.v.erican history ext on the civil war, talking about the 1863 tullahoma campaign in tennessee. e argues that the power struggles between the confederate leaders and the army f tennessee resulted in their