tv The Rachel Maddow Show MSNBC July 27, 2013 3:00am-4:01am PDT
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anything that gives me some breathing room makes a difference. membership helps make the most of your cashflow. i'm nelson gutierrez of strictly bicycles and my money works as hard as i do. this is what membership is. this is what membership does. thanks, chris. thanks to you for tune anything. tonight's lead, devastated. that was the reaction from trayvon martin's mother when she heard the stunning admission from juror b-29 who said, "george zimmerman got away with murder." and today, two weeks after the verdict, sybrina martin's pain is still there. >> i stand before you through
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the grace of god. because as a mother sybrina couldn't do it. sybrina could not lose her baby. sybrina could not lose one of her children. i just ask you as a mother, as a grandmother, as an aunt, an uncle, a grandfather to wrap your mind around what has happened. because i speak to you as trayvon's mother. i'm just asking you to wrap your mind around that. wrap your mind around no prom for trayvon. no high school graduation for trayvon. no college for trayvon.
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no grandkids coming from trayvon. >> sybrina fulton's emotional words come as we hear more from juror b-29. she first voted that george zimmerman was guilty of second degree murder. but after hours of emotional debate inside the jury room, voted to acquit mr. zimmerman. >> george zimmerman got away with murder but you can't get away from god. at the end of the day he's going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with. >> what would you like to say to trayvon's parents? >> i would like to apologize, because i felt like i let them down. >> this juror's account takes them inside the jury room to the final decision to set george zimmerman free.
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how are you all doing tonight? they moved me fast. faith jenkins. i didn't get your last name. faith, let me ask you going to you first. what do you think first of all, of the words from the mother of trayvon martin? >> i think it reflects the emotional aspect of this case. you can also listen to the words of the juror and realize it was very emotional from the jurors. you're never going to separate emotion away from a murder trial where someone has died, technically in this case when you have a teenager. i can imagine trayvon's mother feeling a certain amount of pain when they believe george zimmerman had some culpability
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but under the law these jurors decided their hands were tied and they simply could not convict. >> let me go to you, zachary carter. you've been a prosecutor and a judge. what happens in a jury room? what happened here? what did you think in your professional mind? not emotionally, personally. when you heard this juror say he got away with murder? i felt he was guilty but i couldn't do it because of the law. professionally break that down for me. >> well, professionally, and that's the right term, first of all, she's not a lawyer and she's not speaking in lawyer terms. when she says her gut got away with murder, she's not using legal terminology. she's using the vernacular, people evaluating the situation without regard to the legal component. i understand how she felt george
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zimmerman, without regard to the legal requirements, was morally responsible for george zimmerman's death. what she describes is a struggle she has in reconciling the judge's instructions on the law with that gut sense that he was phorblly responsible for zimmerman's death. in the normal give and take of the process as part of any jury deliberatation, because of the judge's instruction that she had no choice but to vote that he was -- a judgment of not guilty even though she was herself conflicted about whether or not he was morally responsible for trayv trayvon's death. >> she kept talking about intent. was it vague on how you can or
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cannot use intent. >> i have the jury instructions. after more than 40 years of practice, three years of law school preceding that, it is very difficult to parse these instructions. and for a lay jury it would have been very difficult. some of the instructions are redundant. they are not necessarily in an order that would make it easy to understand. there are references to issues that have nothing to do with with the case. in my experience there are judges that follow the two categories with respect to giving jury instructions. they emphasize giving clear instructions to the jury so the jury understands in lay terms what is required of them in evaluating the evidence. judges are more concerned about the course of appeals and simply
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give a recitation of law to the jury. >> let me go to lisa blum. let me say this, judge, i stipulate to the court that lisa has been telling me all along the prosecution should have been stronger. so we stipulate that, lisa, before i let you beat me up on the beginning of the show. i stipulate that. now, let me show you two sound tracks, bites that come from the interviewer of the juror, and i want your reaction. this is this morning after it played. juror b-29. as she talks about the deliberations. >> tell us more the emotion during those nine hours on the initial vote of murder, second degree, no to get. what was going on in your heart or your mind? >> i was going to give them the hung jury. i was. i fought to the end. >> did you feel, for lack of a better word, bullied.
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>> i don't know if i was bullied. i trust god that i wasn't bullied. >> do you feel your voice was heard? >> my voice was heard. i was the loudest. that's for sure. >> i was the loudest she said, lisa. and she almost made it a hung jury, she said. watch this. >> and you said earlier that you were the juror that could have made it a hung jury. >> oh, yes. i want trayvon's mom to know i'm hurting. and if she thought nobody cared about her son, i can speak for myself. i do care i couldn't do anything bit. and i felt like i let a lot of people down. and i'm thinking myself, did i go the right way or the wrong way. by the law and the way it was followed it was the way i went. but if i would have used my
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heart, i would have went hung jury. >> what do those two statements tell you what might happen in the jury room and what did or did not happen in the court during summation. >> the first juror named matty didn't have the strength or wherewithal to stand by the verdict that she wanted. what i'm seeing emerge is a real conversation between maddie and sybrina fulton. they have presumably not ever spoken directly to each other. but in television interviews, they are having this exchange. and they were watching last year skpafp to a real civil rights leader. she digs deep. she's a very powerful speaker. i'm more impressed every day and
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the woman she is growing into. >> i agree. faith, here we are confronted with a juror saying, no, it was what we were told that the law says. i felt he was guilty. two others felt he was guilty of manslaughter. we saw half the jury go in the room ready to convict him of something. half the jury goes for an acquittal. what happened? >> well, this is the example of the push and pull of the process. you go in, you're supposed to vote your sconce. her first gut reaction was second-degree murder. but after the discussions and the way they decide to term the evidence. they could srbg discredited george zimmerman's story completely the. but the way they interpreted the evidence and decided to apply it to the law, she said her hands
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were tied as a result of that. that is essentially what happened here. to the extent that this charge could have been presented in a plain and responsible fashion the entire system has responsibility for that. >> coming up, juror b-29 said zimmerman got away with murder. now calls to stand your ground law are getting louder. plus, why attorney general eric holder may be bringing his voting rights fight to north carolina. . and bill o'reilly continued the desperate approach to change
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the conversation on rap. to preaching about the black family. anything but race. >> the reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the african-american family. >> i'll show you what's behind the desperation. friend or foe, i want to know. e-mail me. it's coming up. when we made our commitment to the gulf, bp had two big goals: help the gulf recover and learn from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i can tell you - safety is at the heart of everything we do. we've added cutting-edge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a state-of-the-art monitoring center, where experts watch over all drilling activity twenty-four-seven.
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we're back with juror b29, making the red hot spotlight on the stand your ground law even hotter. today trayvon martin's mother spoke passionately about it. >> the absolutely worst telephone call you can receive as a parent is to know that your son, your son you will never kiss again, all because of a law, a law that has prevented the person who shot and killed my son to be held accountable and to pay for this awful crime. >> the stand your ground law gives you the right to kill if you feel threatened. and here is the key part.
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you have no duty to retreat. in the wake of juror b29, there is a lot of questions emerging, perhaps none bigger than the law itself. joining me is former prosecutor marcia clark. she is author of "killer ambition." and back with me are lisa bloom and faith jenkins. marcia, take a listen to what juror b29 said about the not guilty decision. >> how did you go from in nine hours from feeling he was guilty of second-degree murder to not guilty? >> it was hard. a lot of us wanted to find something bad, something that would connect to the law, because all six of us -- well, let's not speak for all six of us. well, for my myself, he is guilty because the evidence shows he is guilty. >> he is guilty of? >> killing trayvon martin. but we couldn't prove that intentionally he killed him.
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and that's that the law was read to me. >> now marcia, she talked about the way the law was read to her. isn't that a reference to the stand your ground's impact on jury instructions? >> you know what, reverend? i'm not so sure. when she said that the law required proof of an intentional killing, that's not the stand your ground law. that's the law that says -- that is required to show intent to kill for the purpose of either proving second-degree murder or manslaughter, for that matter. so what she is referring to isn't the stand your ground law. i believe the other juror previously who came out earlier did refer to the stand your ground law. and if that's the case for both jurors, if they were referring to that, then they would have to have already found factually that trayvon martin was the initial aggressor, because otherwise george zimmerman does not have a right to stand his ground. unless and until he first withdraws, tries to retreat, tries to stop the hostilities. and if trayvon martin then continued to fight back, that might be a different story.
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but in order to have stand your ground be at all relevant, they have to find first that trayvon martin was the initial aggressor. >> and there was no evidence that i can recall that said that, because clearly there was contrary evidence. lisa, when the stand your ground wasn't invoked in the trial as part of the trial per se, but the law still had affected the jury instructions, in fact, in the jury instructions, it says, quote, if george zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful act and was attacked in any place where he had the right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground. that was what the judge read to the jury. >> right. and i was kind of surprised when i heard the judge read that jury instruction. there were some others that i also thought were completely irrelevant to the trial, like an instruction about an accident. i mean this shooting was not an accident.
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george zimmerman has concede all along that he intentionally took the gun from the holster, pointed it at trayvon martin and intentionally pulled the trigger. and yet there was an instruction about that in there. this is such an odd situation where the defense explicitly said before the trial stand your ground is not going to be part of this case. and that's because their defense was that george zimmerman was pinned down. >> right. >> unable to escape, even if he wanted. and yet there it is in the jury instruction. and here the jurors are talking about it afterwards. i think that the way stand your ground came in most of all was in george zimmerman's decision to get out of the car, knowing that he was carrying a concealed weapon. and remember, he got an a in the class where he was taught stand your ground and self-defense law. i think in his mind putting it all together, he was not afraid. he was going to follow trayvon martin who he assumed was a criminal, and he was doing that knowing that he was armed and knowing that the law would protect him. and it did. >> since stand your ground has
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been implemented, the language and the charge in the self-defense case has been changed. you see now the buzz words stand your ground being used in these charges, even though that defense is not being put forth at trial. >> and he had the words "stand your ground" was in the instruction." >> that's right. those key words were used. and the duty to retreat was not read to the jury. in fact, they heard there was no duty to retreat. because of the implementation of the law, the duty to retreat language not being read, which means jurors don't hear, you cannot use deadly force unless you exhausted other means of exhausted other means of escape or you made an attempt to get away. they did not hear that i'm still not sure what the impact would have been on the jury because george zimmerman's argument was i had no ability to get away. not that he had a way to actually retreat, but he had no ability to retreat that was his defense here. >> marcia, the right wing media is pushing back against criticism of stand your ground. watch this.
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>> the stand your ground law in florida was not a part of zimmerman's defense. >> news flash. stand your ground law didn't apply. >> the theme of his speech was let's stand up against stand your ground law which didn't even play a role here. >> stand your ground didn't even enter zimmerman's defense. >> stand your ground was never part of zimmerman's defense team in that trial. >> it didn't even become an issue in terms of this case. >> the stand your ground law was not a part of the zimmerman case. >> played no role in the actual trial. it was not something that the jury took into consideration. >> marcia, clearly there is almost like the talking points must have been handed out, because they're all trying to say there was no impact when i just read it was said by the judge and the jury instructions, the phrase was used. and clearly the self-defense instruction has been all changed because of stand your ground in that state. >> yes. i mean, there is no question that it became a part of the trial in the sense that the judge instructed the jury on it.
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the jury had it before them to consider. but it's also true that george zimmerman really didn't assert the stand your ground defense in this case. he, you know, he did say, really the defense was that trayvon martin threw the first punch and got him down, and then george zimmerman feared for his life. and there is no stand your ground involved in that, because stand your ground assumes that you can get away and you can retreat, but you don't have to. and that's where stand your ground really comes in. if george zimmerman had said you know what? he punched me in the nose and i was standing, i was about to run away and i thought screw that, i don't have to and he fought back, stand your ground then becomes an issue. but that wasn't the factual pattern asserted by the defense here. it's true that stand your ground legally speaking didn't apply. and even the way the jurors talk
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about their verdict, it doesn't seem it really applied to them. the funny thing about it is they keep saying the law required us, the law required us. but that's nonsense. the law itself does not require you to do anything. the fact you find require you to do something. and then the facts apply to the law dictate the verdict. but if you had not already found, jurors had not already found that trayvon martin was the aggressor basically that. >> couldn't have come up with this verdict. so to me, it's their way of dancing around the fact that they determined that trayvon martin threw the first punch and got george zimmerman down, essentially buying the defense, hook, line and sinker. >> i wish somebody had said what you just said at the trial. maybe the prosecutor. maybe the judge. >> hear hear. >> marcia clark, lisa bloom, faith jenkins, thank you for your time tonight. coming up, bill o'reilly spent all week avoiding the race conversation in america and preaching about negative stereotypes. we're going to have that conversation next. ♪
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country. and in the time since george zimmerman's acquittal, some right-wingers have gone into overdrive to push the most negative stereotypes of the african-american community for their own gain. the rush/hannity/o'reilly crowd, the unholy triumvirate, how they can make it okay for a man to shoot a teenager on his way home with candy and a cold drink. to many in the african-american community, the killing of that teenager is emblematic of a grossly unjust system of a thousand unequal steps from stop
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and frisk to disproportionate drug laws to racially motivated sentencing, including death sentences. that is the conversation the rush/hannity/o'reilly crowd don't want to have. instead, they are dancing as fast as they can to change the subject. >> 61 people died in chicago. and i have their names right here. >> the mini holocaust in chicago where hundreds of african-americans are murdered each year. >> that kind of crime, the crime that is happening in chicago we're not supposed to see. we're not supposed to talk about it. >> yes, the unholy three had discovered the epidemic of violence in chicago, which many of us in african-american community have been talking about for many months. better late than never, i guess. bill o'reilly has also been trying to make the black family the issue. >> the reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the african-american family.
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the disintegration of the african-american family. when was the last time you saw a major civil rights organization trying to discourage african-american women from getting pregnant out of wedlock? >> so is bill o'reilly saying george zimmerman shot trayvon martin because trayvon was born out of wedlock, even though he wasn't? that's ridiculous, right? which is why i'm asking, what does any of that have to do with trayvon martin? he had loving parents. after watching their determined love for their son over the past year, there any doubt trayvon came from a strong home, a loving home? all of this is an effort to avoid addressing the urgent topic that something is fundamentally flawed with our justice system if laws like stand your ground allow a kid to be gunned down, but rush, hannity, o'reilly don't want to talk about that. and that's why they keep trying to change the conversation.
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not that bill o'reilly has a problem with racial stereotyping. >> very integrated, diverse audience. and they're hearing you. and i think that black people are going to feel that you're stereotyping them. >> yes. you have shown you don't care. bill o'reilly has long shown a deep ignorance of black culture. don't take my word for it. take his. >> the majority of blacks want money to spent to level a playing field, to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts and to provide better health care and education at government expense. >> so says the expert on the vast majority of what african-americans want. maybe bill o'reilly is worried history is passing him by. he suggested so himself on election night.
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>> to changing country, the demographics are changing. it's not a traditional america anymore. and there are 50% of the voting public who want stuff. they want things. and who is going to give them things? president obama. >> this is what bill o'reilly thinks about the black community. so how can he be expected to make any sense of the real problems facing the black community? would he even have a clue? we need a real conversation about justice in this country, not the same old right-wing divide and conquer garbage. bill o'reilly, the stuff has got to go. joining me now is goldie taylor and joe madison. thank you for being here. joe, what are o'reilly and the rest up to? >> well, they're up to
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diversion. that's exactly what it is. look, the far right, when you hear them talk, talk as if everything is personal responsibility, as if public policy has nothing to do with it. so take wall street for example. personal responsibility. people who drove wall street into the ground did what? turned to government, public policy, to help bail them out. and we did. so what they're trying to say is the problem with the black community is that they are pathological. they're pathological criminals. they're path logically ignorant. and therefore when it comes to public policy, that is the need to invest in the community. why bother? because they are just pathological. it is inherent. and that's really what is going
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on. number two, and finally, they are going -- look, women are ticked off because of abortion rights. hispanics are ticked off because of these draconian attitudes that the far right is preaching on radio. and blacks are ticked off. so now you have the possibility of three strong major demographic groups saying to each other we've got a common enemy. so what -- and they're afraid of this cohesiveness that could in fact come together. >> so they change the conversation. >> and so they change the conversation. but what they're trying to say is it's inherent. you can't help them if you wanted to.
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so why waste money? and that plays on capitol hill. >> well, let me ask you this, goldie. it's interesting that cable's lecture in chief, let me call him, is criticizing the african-american community. considering i took him to dinner harlem. >> i remember. >> at sylvia's restaurant. >> absolutely. >> let me play for you what he said about -- this is him. i'm not quoting. this is bill oh really. >> there wasn't one person in sylvia's who was screaming m-fer, i want more iced tea. you know. >> please. >> it was like going into an italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun, and it wasn't any kind of craziness at all. >> i mean, he expected people to be in a restaurant, sylvia's restaurant in harlem, a family restaurant saying mf-er, i want some iced tea. what is o'reilly interested? is he just riling up his audience? >> i think he really is. there is a name for this. when you prey on the weaknesses of others, when you exploit those weaknesses for your personal gain, there is a word for it. it's pimping. it's pandering. and that's what he is after here there is a two-fold people for people like bill o'reilly and sean hasn't. >> the it's both economic and political. it pays off at the ballot box
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because it preys into a brand of white populism that runs itself in cycles and that drives them out to the polls. and this upcoming midterm election, they're hoping for it. and economically, it drives up ratings when you with prey on the fears of people. you can prey on their biases for intolerance, insecurities. when you can give them harbor to bring their fears to, that's what makes the cash register ring. >> all week we have heard the attacks on those who bring up issues of inequality. listen to this. >> all right. >> hustlers and the grievance industry have intimidated the so-called conversation, turning
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any valid criticism of african-american culture into charges of racial bias. >> the left does not want race problems to be solved. they want them exacerbated. two many people make money off of racial strife, and therefore they're always going to promote it. >> you actually think that we sit around in the democratic party and we want to have racial division? >> of course. >> i do. >> what was the strategy? obviously anybody in the right mind know there's is no money in standing around for justice and having marches and rallies and things that cost money. what is the strategy to accuse those that point out these instances of being racist themselves or being what all of the stuff they come with? >> i will call you what i am before you get a chance to call me that. that's really what this is. and, you know, this is amazing. when goldie was talking, i thought of another phrase we
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used to have. we used to call people like these folks drive-by shooters. in order, they would drive by a black community and shoot off their mouths about something they don't know much about. that's what they really are. and so they try -- and they're only experts to a small group of people. but you know, and i know, if they really are that concerned, tell you, why don't they do what you did with your show. why don't that they do what i do with my show, go into the community. they've got more resources than we've got. go into the community. do your show. you know that we don't just walk into a community and say he we are here. people call and say when are we going to come? we need your help. on the other hand, you get criticized if you don't help. and then on the other hand, you get called names, hustlers in industry, and if anybody's got an industry, it's the glenn becks that sell levis and books and the heritage foundation. please. >> we're going run out of time. i mean, a lot of personal attacks on a lot of us. i'm not concerned than. i'm in the public domain. but we really are talking about people's lives. >> that's right. >> there can be more trayvon martins if we don't deal with laws like stand your ground. i mean, this is very serious to
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me. goldie, there could be more incidents, there could be more jurors that are perplexed. when do we stop the distractions and the hogwash? that's why i'm not even addressing and getting defensive. when do we deal with the real issues? do we have to wait on the next mother to call me? >> well, what happens, reverend, when we have this kind of dangerous rhetoric out there, it informs the thinking of a person like george zimmerman where he begins to believe that people of color have an innate sinister nature to them. or it impacts the next young black man as he goes to seek a meaningful job opportunity or meaningful educational opportunity, or the young black mother who goes to get a meaningful health care opportunity. these are the kinds of things that inform our populace and keep us divided. our work, our daily work, and i got to tell you, it doesn't pay. our daily work is to get into our communities and make certain that they have the resources that they need to rebuild themselves and to survive, cope, make it and flourish. that is our job. when we find right-minded friends who can help news that
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effort, then we ought to wrap our arms around them. but at the end of the day, we cannot, cannot let this kind of rhetoric win. >> and we should address all of it. >> that's right. >> the good and the bad in our community and go forward, but keep our eye on the prize on all of it. goldie taylor and joe madison, thank you for your time tonight, and have a great weekend. >> you too. >> thank you, reverend sharpton. coming up next, we need to watch what is happening in north carolina. republicans are trying to make it harder for everyone to vote. but there is a plan. and before brown v the board of education, before the voting rights act, before affirmative action, something major happened on this day, 65 years ago that allowed all of that to happen. stay with us.
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on july 26th, 1948, president harry truman signed an executive order to end racial segregation in the u.s. armed forces. take a look at the headline that day. "president truman wipes out segregation in armed forces." black soldiers who fought and died for their country were now preparing for a different war here at home. what followed were the marches on washington, the voting rights act, and the end of the so-called era of separate but equal. and today we have our first african-american attorney general. and though we have much more work to do, we see progress every day in our first african-american president. but much progress was made possible by harry truman's executive order. joining me now is rawn james jr., the author of the new book "the double v: how wars, protest, and harry truman desegregated america's military." thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me, reverend sharpton.
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>> you called this the start of the civil rights movement. why? >> segregation in america's military was the first issue to unite all african-americans, regardless of class and regardless of in which state they lived. it was the first issue to unite all african-americans since emancipation. and this was because regardless of whether a man was a graduate of harvard law school as some african-americans were, or whether he was a share cropper in alabama with a second grade education, he was swept into the same brutally segregated american military. so there was no way that the new yorker could claim that that was a problem in the south. and there was no way that the poor southerners could say this was a problem of the bourgeois northerns. all african-americans were united with the struggle to desegregate america's military.
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>> give me an example. blacks that fought in world war i were in segregated barracks and segregated units. how was it different in world wore two? >> well, world war ii unfortunately it was very much of the same, which one big exception, and that is that there were more african-american officers during world war two. this is a direct result of the struggle that took place in world war i. the first chip away at the block was getting congress and the war department and the woodrow wilson administration to agree to commission african-american officers in the united states army. and this continued to a greater extent during world war two. >> how were soldiers being treated coming back from war? >> coming back from world war i, there was the red summer of 1919, and soldiers were lynched and attacked, often while still wearing their uniforms. >> they were still wearing their uniforms. they went and fought for the country abroad, came home and was lynched in their uniforms? >> wearing their uniforms, the naacp issued a statement at the time saying a colored man wearing his uniform is like waving a red flag before a bull to the southern reactionary. the southerners did not like it.
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many of the southern racist young white men would wait at train stations for african-americans departing, just like most southerners, white and black were departing at these train stations, still wearing these uniforms because these were the only clothing they had after being at war. >> tell me why harry truman was an unlikely hero of this. >> president truman was raised in what he described as a violently prejudiced southern family. and he certainly was an unlikely president to desegregate the military, except when one considers the fact that even as a united states senator, harry truman always had been attuned to the needs and the precarious situation in which african-americans found themselves through the 1930s and through the 1940s. he was largely dependent on african-american voters for his reelection to the senate. >> yeah. >> and without that reelection, he certainly would not have been chosen to be president roosevelt's vice presidential running mate.
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>> let me ask you this. i'm rung out of time. but tell us the story of isaac woodward, the black veteran returning home from the war. >> well, very briefly, isaac woodward was a technical sergeant in the army traveling home through south carolina after world war ii. and he asked the bus driver if he could please get off at the next stop so he could make a quick stop to the men's room. and the bus driver said boy, sit back down and stop talking to loudly. woodward said i'm a man and you will speak to me as a man. this was too much for the bus driver to bear. so when they pulled into the next town, the bus driver invited two police officers on board. they took mr. woodard off the bus and they began to beat him. and when he fought back, the sergeant took his nightstick, it was a sawed off nightstick and began to beat sergeant woodard in the eyeballs. he ruptured both of his eyeballs and then arrested him. sergeant woodard awoke in a jail cell the next day blind.
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and harry truman, when he learned of this in the oval office exclaimed my god, i had no idea it was as bad as that. if this is any point at which i would say president truman decided once and for all that he was going to desegregate america's military, i believe it was when he learned of the blinding of isaac woodard. >> and you know medgar evers was also a veteran who was killed fighting for the rights to vote in mississippi. rawn james jr., thank you for joining us. the book is called "double v." the most radical vote of suppression bill in the country is law because these kinds of things were fought. people that went and fought for the country abroad, and then had to come and fight for their rights at home. and some of us have it much better, but still have to continue that fight. when we made our commitment to the gulf, bp had two big goals:
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it's time for reply al. friend or foe, i want to know. we've got a lot of questions about voting in north carolina. one month after the voting rights act was gutted at the supreme court we are seeing the ugly move to block voters. it's being called the most radical voter suppression bill in the country. republicans in the statehouse sent it to the desk. it eliminates same-day voter registration, cuts the early voting period by a full week, stops the extension of polling hours even if there's long lines, increases the numbers of poll watchers, and even bans preregistration for 16 and 17-year-olds. but we will not back down, north carolina. attorney general eric holder has his eye on you, and we will be
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watching closely. we will with be monitoring north carolina. thanks for watching. "weekends with alex witt" starts right now. a new push for the middle class. more this morning from president obama on trying to even the economic playing field. a live report from the white house in a minute. a tale of two countries. how the north and south are marking 60 years since the end of the korean war today. what happened in the zimmerman jury room. the latest juror speaking out. what does your car insurance cost have to do with a college degree? the answer in a new report. good morning, everyone. welcome to "weekends with alex witt". president obama is
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