but most of the people who founded, for example, sclc, owe lowery -- joe lowery, c.k. vivian, they died recently. sncc others were involved in, that organization is no longer there. but there are young people who are leading on college are campuses as that group in the student nonviolent coordinating committee. and i think we should not look for a single person to be the leader anymore because there's no one in the world who can say, well, we have one leader for white folk or one leader for the brits. and that's where we are x. if that's a good thing, because it means that we've made progress. harris: wow. that is so uplifting and such an informed and positive way to look at all of this, because it is a sign of progress that we can look in the psalm direction but not have -- in the same direction but not have to be the same, everybody not having to follow the same pattern because of the progress that's been made. before i let you go, i do want to say that the family of john lewis has just crossed the bridge. we were waiting for those big vehicles and the big motor coac

but most of the people who founded, for example, sclc, owe lowery -- joe lowery, c.k.ncc others were involved in, that organization is no longer there. but there are young people who are leading on college are campuses as that group in the student nonviolent coordinating committee. and i think we should not look for a single person to be the leader anymore because there's no one in the world who can say, well, we have one leader for white folk or one leader for the brits. and that's where we are x. if that's a good thing, because it means that we've made progress. harris: wow. that is so uplifting and such an informed and positive way to look at all of this, because it is a sign of progress that we can look in the psalm direction but not have -- in the same direction but not have to be the same, everybody not having to follow the same pattern because of the progress that's been made. before i let you go, i do want to say that the family of john lewis has just crossed the bridge. we were waiting for those big vehicles and the big motor coaches, congressman cleaver, to c

and it is notable that as a student activist, the sclc which dr.was not initially involved in the efforts in dallas county, not initially involved in selma but came in later on. the beating of john lewis was pivotal in that it dramatized once again the violence that african-americans were facing in the south for the simple act of seeking to register to vote. in those days, it was so bad that there was an injunction in place for many, many months and maybe years that prevented a civil rights meeting from taking place. this was out and out oppression of the worst kind. you can't meet. you can't register to vote. so when dr. king got involved it was against the backdrop of moving in and bringing sclc on board because there had been so much resistance. and the events of bloody sunday and campaign in alabama prompted president johnson to introduce the voting rights act. importantly people should recognize that the right to vote was contained in the original drafts of the civil rights act of '64, but it was deleted because johnson felt he couldn't pass i

that the picture of lyndon johnson is on the day the voting act was signed which came about because sclc sniced ambassador was there, within a great bout of controversy wirth the movement itself one of the things important to remember and he would want us to remember is none of this was easy it feels a little bit like a fable now, the movement. the images are so iconic they're beautiful. the cause, so just but it was hard. be and it is hard. and the lesson of lewis is as he put it you have to open yourself up to what he sometimes called the spirit of history. and to him, the spirit of history was rooted in the gospel it was rooted in the story of jesus, the sermon on the mount, the tactics came from gandhi, leaders like howard thurman and others had learned the tactics of non-violence from the experience in india. they brought them to the american south men like james lawson, women like ella baker, who was instrumental in the founding of snic there was this great cloud of witnesses, and john lewis walked point. >> well, he also in that arc of his role had to make a very tough choice in 2

>> this is the same president who would have been on the other side of sclc.ve been on the other side of sncc. he would have been on the other side of dr. king. let's think about that right now. a lot of people who want to quote dr. king don't understand he was a radical revolutionary, right? someone who was fighting for the rights of sanitation workers and labor workers when he was killed on april 4th, 1968. so this president's ignorance of history and the bar that we've come to, jim, this is such a low bar that my twin at 18 months old can probably jump over it to be president of the united states. >> and it's language in a presidential race we haven't heard since george wallace, right? you've got to go back 50 years. bakari sellers, thanks very much. >> thank you, jim. >>> just ahead, another step in the country's reckoning with racism and how remarkable it is, because that step was taken in the former capital of the confederacy. apps are used everywhere... except work. why is that? is it because people love filling out forms? maybe they like checking with

but sclc had a particular idea about the civil rights movement. as i said before, they had this idea they were going to completely transform american society, and sncc didn't buy it. sncc didn't buy into that, and one of the things that sncc was critical of, was sclc would come in organize public , demonstrations and then almost immediately after the public demonstrations would begin, they would go behind closed doors and negotiate a settlement. sncc said no to that. sncc said, we are going to confront racism where it is, we are not going to negotiate with anybody. we're going to fight until we win this particular campaign. thirdly, sncc saw its role, or the sncc leadership saw their role as assisting local leaders rather than dominating a local campaign. again, a contrast for martin luther king. with marlin martin luther king, there is a local campaign going on and local leaders would ask him to come in. he and sncc will fly in, and they will take over the movement. they will make all of the decisions. the sncc people were just the opposite. they

and that night, if you recall, there were some challenges going on, some flicks between students and sclc jr. up until that point, martin luther king jr. had been advocating going to jail but he had never been to jail. and it was that -- it was that weekend that that conversation took place. we went into a meeting around ome out of that room until 4:00 the next morning. i was transformed in five or six hours. i've never been the same since. and john and i went on to meet our sponsors in the movement. he met lillian, they got married. i met emily in jail. we got married. they were both librarians and they became great friends. and some of my fondest memories was listening to emily, at least her end of the conversation, with lillian. and sometimes they expressed their disagreements with how we were conducting ourselves. so, john and i got to be fast friends and it was sealed because our wives became such good friends. >> it's doubly a tragedy his death happens at this time in our history because, "a," because of the pandemic, he is not going to get the kind of sendoff that previous leaders

the representative organizations were sncc, or the student nonviolent coordinating committee, the sclc, the southern christian leadership conference, the national association for the advancement of colored people, or the naacp, and core, the congress of racial equality. those together constituted cofo. >> and you had earlier talked about how from the perspective of the average white mississippi segregationist, they would have all been one broad mix. >> all one. that's right. that is true. >> i'm very interested in, we can't do it justice because we'll just here have time for a summary, but talk about first your experience in graduate school, particularly say in iowa, and then moved to the broader question of your work as a scientist. iowa,ither: first year at i was of course the only african-american student in the department. there were a couple of asian, indian students, in the department. i did well academically. a graduatened to be teaching assistant in a very large course. it was called "life science." it was actually the introductory level, biology course. and we had two responsi

you could not be sncc a representative of sncc because sncc disagreed with the strategy of sclc.alcolm was present. sncc organizers were challenging the basic strategygy. member, ththe they end up organizing and what would become the first iteration of the black panther party a year later, stokely carmichael will declare he no longer is going to say freedom now but say black power. john lewis was the chahair of sc from 1963 to 1966. he in effect was in some ways the leader of the radicalization of this student organization. and it broke his heart, amy, that he lost t to stokely carmichael as chairperson, that he had to walk away, but i it hs something g to do with his commitment to the philosophy of nonviolence. let me tell you this really quickly, we often n tell the sty of black power t the civil righs movement as if they arare wholly separate. when we look at sncc i look at the life of john lewis, we see that many of the people who cried black power were somome of the same young people who risk their lives nonviolently and in the bowels of the south. they confronted the terror

must rise to the occas n occasion, as it dids during the civil rights movement itself, through the sclc worked with closely. and it's really interesting that this would all be taking place today. john is an historian, but let me just share a couple of things. >> john lewis was a black lives matter activist before black lives matter was a hash toll. today is the 79th birthday of emmett till. and most of us believe that the modern civil rights movement kicked off after the death of emmett till. if emmett till had lived, he would be a year younger than john lewis who we are memorializing today. and when that movement kicked off, john stepped out there, he became a freedom rider. and then there was selma. and it's no longer metaphorical. history repeats itself, so we're really looking at parallels. so in this moment when the church and when the younger generation looks at what's going on and it seems so overwhelming, we went from ahmaud arbery to breonna taylor to george floyd, that's what was going on in 1965. february 4th, 1965. malcolm "x" stands with john lewis in selma and dies 15 late