NON-VIOLENCE AND THE QUEST FOR CIVIL RIGHTS 3/30/03 PAGE 1

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1 PAGE 1 JOHN SHATTUCK: Good afternoon and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Library. I m John Shattuck, the CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation. And on behalf of myself and Deborah Leff, the Library s Director, we are delighted to welcome you here on this very rainy afternoon but on a wonderful subject and to thank the sponsors of our Forums at the outset, Fleet Financial, the Lowell Institute, Boston Capital, The Boston Globe, WBUR, and boston.com. And I d also like to give special thanks to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Open Society Institute for making possible our Forum Series ongoing Seeking Common Ground: Civil Rights and Human Rights, of which this afternoon s Forum is a part. Let me also urge those of you who have not recently been to the museum to see its extraordinary human rights exhibit. And you can pick up coupons on the way out of the Forum this afternoon that will entitle you to get in at a reduced rate for coming here to the Forum. At a time when our world is so fractured by war and hatred, the Kennedy Library this afternoon is deeply proud and honored to be able to honor a woman who, along with her peers, attempted to change the world as she experienced it through disciplined means of non-violence. Diane Nash, whom I will introduce in a moment, was an associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, chairwoman of the student movement that led to

2 PAGE 2 desegregated lunch counters in Nashville, a leader of the Freedom Rides, and a developer of the strategy used in Selma, Alabama to push for the right to vote, which eventually resulted in the Voting Rights Act. In 1959, as a student at Fisk University, Diane Nash enrolled in the Reverend James Lawson s workshops (and you will meet him in a moment as well) on nonviolence. She and her peers courageously used nonviolent methods to integrate the lunch counters in Nashville, the first city in the south to desegregate those establishments. Before going further, let s watch two brief excerpts from the award winning documentary film Eyes on the Prize, based on the book by Juan Williams, who will be introduced also in a moment, about the crucial moment in history that we will be talking about this afternoon. The first clip will focus on the beginning of the Nashville sit-ins and the second on their conclusion. [FILM CLIP] SHATTUCK: Diane Nash s role did not end in Nashville. She continued as a leader of later confrontations with segregation and was jailed while pregnant in Jackson, Mississippi, and in Rockville, South Carolina. In our Library archives is the telegram sent to President Kennedy when Diane Nash was in jail. It reads, Dear Sir: It is an American right to demonstrate inhumanities without fear of imprisonment. My daughter, Diane Nash, has been in prison in Rockville, South Carolina for merely asking to buy a cup

3 PAGE 3 of coffee. How can we call ourselves a free nation when such injustices exist? As an American taxpayer and veteran, I beg you to do all in your power to release these students and cure America of this cancerous lesion. Signed, Dr. Leon Nash. In his landmark book The Children, David Halberstan describes the courage of Diane Nash and seven other young, black college students who risked their lives at the lunch counters at Nashville, along the highways, and in the bus terminals of the Freedom Rides, and in their attempts to register black voters in Klan strongholds in Alabama and Mississippi. Today, there is a plaque on the steps of Nashville City Hall, where Diane Nash confronted Mayor Ben West on April 19, And it bears the words from the book of Joshua, and I quote, And the people shouted with a great shout so that the wall fell down. Of the many speeches that day, Halberstan writes that, Perhaps the most moving was given by Diane Nash. She had not spoken so much for herself, but for all her colleagues in the movement. And perhaps even more for all those who had gone before and who never had been given a chance to speak or who had never been listened to. Diane, could you come forward at this moment, please? [APPLAUSE] SHATTUCK: Diane Nash, the Kennedy Library honors you today as a Distinguished American, the highest kind of praise that we can give at this

4 PAGE 4 Library. For the voice that you have given to the struggle of African Americans to be treated equally under the laws of our nation, for the vision you demonstrated to change our country s history through nonviolence, and for your extraordinary acts of courage that helped bring down the walls that once divided us as a people, let me present to you the very special gift that we want to make you from the Library of President Kennedy, which is inscribed, Distinguished American Award, Presented to Diane Nash, John F. Kennedy Library, March 30, [APPLAUSE] DIANE NASH: This award belongs to thousands of remarkable Americans who participated in the nonviolent movement of the 1960s and who deserve it as much as I do. On behalf of all of them, and of myself, I thank you. [APPLAUSE] NASH: I m also thankful because some people who are very important to me are here today to help me share in the pleasure of this honor. I would like for you to meet my son, Douglas Neville(?). [APPLAUSE] NASH: And my life-long friend since our freshman year in college, who is now a professor of history, Dr. Dorothy Drinkard-Hawkshawe.

5 PAGE 5 [APPLAUSE] NASH: I am a lucky woman. I was in the right place at the right time. I was a student at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee in the fall of That was when Reverend James Lawson was giving weekly workshops in the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence. I got an excellent education in nonviolence. And because of that I have led a very different kind of life than I otherwise would have led. And I like the life that I m living. Many, many of the things that I will say this afternoon about nonviolence are things that Jim Lawson taught me. He has been a friend and mentor for many, many years. I m one of those Americans that gets choked up and feels my tear ducts begin to fill up when I think of some of the basic things American, like democracy, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the love and wisdom and the courage of the Founding Fathers and Mothers. The Founding Mothers are not mentioned so often. But I know that with the statesmen of the caliber of the Founding Fathers, there were thoughtful, committed women near them. I believe many of those great ideas came from the Founding Mothers. They may not have been at the official meetings, but some of those ideas emerged and were developed at least in the pillow talk.

6 PAGE 6 The young women and men and the older ones, too, in the civil rights movement of the 1960s were American patriots in the truest sense of the words. We were working for equal rights, including the cornerstone of American democracy, the right to vote. When we were trying to get the right to vote, there were certain days when we knew that if we went to work that day, chances were great that we would be killed. I recall making myself late to work on several occasions when we were working in Alabama and Mississippi, because I needed 20 minutes to think and to decide whether getting the right to vote was worth losing my life. Each of these times, I decided that it was worth it. And so many of my colleagues did the same thing. Much of our conversations were about concepts like democracy, good government, citizenship, and responsibility. So, indeed, we were nonviolent patriots. There was no invention of the 20 th century more significant than the social invention of Mahatma Gandhi. The name of this afternoon s Forum is Nonviolence and the Quest for Civil Rights. And I want to talk to you about that word: nonviolence. The philosophy and strategy upon which the civil rights movement of the 60s was agapic energy. Now, I know some of you are thinking, Agapic energy, I never heard of that. And I m not surprised because I made it up. Back in the 1960s, when we tried to explain it to people we were always dissatisfied with the word nonviolence, because it did communicate the

7 PAGE 7 meaning that we wanted it to convey. Nonviolence -- that word does have a meaning. It means absence of violence. But we needed a term that encompassed much more than simply absence of violence. Also, nonviolence is a negative term and what we were talking about was a very positive and a very comprehensive phenomenon. The Hindi that Gandhi used was satyagraha, which means holding on to truth. You know, when scientific invention takes place it becomes necessary to coin new words. For instance, before electricity was discovered, there were no words in the English language to describe it. After its discovery, words and phrases such as watt, ampere, ohm, light bulb came into being so that we could talk about the new invention. And likewise when social invention takes place, it is necessary to coin words to express those concepts. But we really didn t have a word in English for the process that Gandhi developed. What Mahatma Gandhi invented was a way of waging war without weapons of violence -- waging war using love energy instead of the energy of violence. Let s look at Gandhi s accomplishment a little more deeply. The usual way that humankind wages warfare is by exerting violent energy against an opponent s body. It could be in the form of a bullet. And it s easy to see the energy that a bullet produces. Or, they could use artillery, bombs, nuclear bombs, any kind of many weapons. In your mind s eye, you can easily picture these weapons exerting violent energy on an opponent.

8 PAGE 8 You exert enough violent energy on someone s body, the bullet or the bomb or whatever you are using, will tear their veins and arteries and organs or crush them and therefore kill them. And again, that s how humankind usually carries out warfare. But love exerts energy also. When a parent sees his or her baby cry, parents love for the baby produces energy that makes the parent go into motion to do what s necessary to feed the baby. A sick child can cause a loving parent to stay up all night long or go to an all night pharmacy at 2 a.m. to take care of the child. And if the parent did not love the baby, the parent would just go to sleep and it would be too bad for the child. You may have read of instances where people get super human strength and have lifted heavy objects like automobiles or logs off a loved one. And you can probably think of other instances of love generating energy. Well, Gandhi developed a way that thousands and thousands of people in a coordinated, concerted manner can focus and exert their love energy on an opponent, instead of exerting violent energy, in order to bring about desired social change. You know, during the sit-ins, the fact that people in parts of the country outside the south cared that their fellow human beings, southern blacks, were being humiliated and unjustly discriminated against at lunch counters motivated them to picket and to refuse to shop at Woolworths and other offending chain stores in their own cities.

9 PAGE 9 So the energy of hundreds of thousands of people was focused and exerted on those corporations in order to right an injustice. And the effort was successful. Agapic energy is not just absence of violence. It is the use of a power. Agapic energy is not passive; it is active. Users of agapic energy are not pacifists. We are activists. Love energy, if properly applied, helps teach or heal the opponent or at least prevents the opponent from continuing to perpetrate oppression. So we needed a way for Gandhi s way of exerting love energy. There are three Greek words that mean love. There is filial love, which is love between a parent and child; eros, love between mates or sexual love; and agape, which means brotherly love of humankind. I use the Greek word agape or love of humankind. It is A-G-A-P-E. The adjective, then, would be agapic, A-G-A-P-I-C. So now we have the term agapic energy. As we have said, energy means power or force. We use that word constantly. Nuclear energy, natural gas energy and so forth. And agapic means love of humankind. So agapic energy is the energy of love of humankind or the power of love of humankind. So agapic energy, it is not a perfect term, but I think it is an improvement on the word nonviolence as far as conveying the concept. So from now on, this afternoon, when I use the term agapic energy instead of nonviolence, you will know what I mean. So, ladies and gentlemen, if you take one thing away from today s discussion, I d love for you to realize that agapic energy is not simply not

10 PAGE 10 hitting back. You know, in a violent war, when they are training soldiers, there is that moment when they present the weapon to the new soldier. And there is a, Here is your weapon. People who practice agapic energy have something to use in order to bring about the change they want to bring about. They have a power. They have an energy. They have agapic energy. And with that I will conclude so that we can proceed with the Forum. [APPLAUSE] SHATTUCK: Thank you, Diane, for that inspiring, wonderful keynote to our discussion of this afternoon. I would now like to introduce our distinguished panel who will join Diane on stage just after I ve introduced them, starting with the Reverend James Lawson who you have heard about already. You have seen him, briefly. He was a close and early associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a participant in many of the direct action projects of the Southern Christian Leadership Council. In 1959, the Reverend Lawson organized a now-famous workshop on nonviolence in Nashville. And there he trained many leaders of the movement, including Diane Nash, John Lewis, Marion Barry, and James Bevel. He and his students created the model for the sit-ins that took place throughout the south. And they were later instrumental in founding the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

11 PAGE 11 James Lawson s commitment to nonviolence helped shape SNCC s early direction and set in motion the moral force of the civil rights movement. John Seigenthaler served in the Department of Justice as a key aid to Robert F. Kennedy, who sent him to Alabama as the chief US negotiator with the Alabama state government during those tumultuous days when the Freedom Rides were taking place in During that crisis, John was attacked by a mob of Klansmen when he attempted to assist the Freedom Riders. John Seigenthaler is now one of our country s, and has been for many years, most distinguished journalists, having served as an award-winning reporter and later chairman of the Nashville Tennessean and founding editorial director of USA Today. He is the founder of the First Amendment Center of Vanderbilt University and he chairs the Profile in Courage Award Committee of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. We are very fortunate to have as our moderator this afternoon one of our country s foremost and most skilled and perceptive reporters and journalists, Juan Williams who, of course, is the author of the book Eyes on the Prize, which later was turned into this wonderful movie. He is the senior correspondent for National Public Radio. Juan is well-known to all of us for his thoughtful and penetrating interviews, commentaries on All Things Considered and Talk of the Nation. He is the author of the critically acclaimed biography Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary. Before joining NPR, Juan was an editorial writer and White House reporter for The Washington Post and he now appears frequently on Nightline,

12 PAGE 12 Washington Week in Review, CNN s Crossfire, and many other television news programs. So please join me in welcoming with Diane Nash, Reverend James Lawson, John Seigenthaler, and Juan Williams to the Kennedy Library stage. [APPLAUSE] JUAN WILLIAMS: Thank you so much, John, and good afternoon to all of you here today. I ve got to start out by saying there are so many young people in the audience. In fact, I was passed a note that said there are people here from the early medical school selection program at Boston University School of Medicine. And I thought it appropriate to say, therefore, that that very polite, mild-mannered lady that you just heard deliver the keynote address is nothing like the character that I write about. The character that I write about is a woman who in the summer of 61, when you had buses filled with Freedom Riders going through the south and one bus bombed in Anniston, Alabama -- and John can tell you about this, because John was riding in front of these buses at different points. Jim can tell you about this, because he was very much in touch with what was taking place. That somehow as that bus was bombed and as later, as riders were later beaten in Montgomery, Alabama, word came to Diane Nash in Tennessee that this horror was taking place. And Diane Nash, superhero, decided that really the Freedom Rides could not end that way.

13 PAGE 13 And so for all you young people in the audience today, you should know, whenever you have a doubt in your mind as to whether or not you can make a difference, whether or not you have the power to make a stamp on human history, there was a college student, Diane Nash, who decided history was not going to be written in that manner as long as she was around. And so she got into a car with some friends and went to Alabama. And Jim, what did she say to people who were thinking, Maybe it s not such a smart move to get back on these buses? JAMES LAWSON: Well, I can t speak for Diane but I do know that by that time, we in the national movement had determined that we could not permit the Klan in Anniston and elsewhere in Alabama to stop the movement. The movement was a legitimate, historical moment and it had to go on. I happened to be away in Ohio at that time at the bedside of my mother. But Diane and I talked by phone about this. And we were in complete agreement, We must do it. It has to be done. There is no alternative. And I said, I ll be back and I will be on the bus as soon as I can get there. Which I did, shortly after a couple more days. So the whole idea then was that the explosion of violence should not be allowed to stop what was then a resurgence of activity, which we, some of us in the south, had been looking for as a way of continuing the campaign for change.

14 PAGE 14 WILLIAMS: John you were, as I said, driving ahead as the representative of the Kennedy administration, watching what was taking place with the Freedom Riders. You saw the horrible violence, the bombing, Jim Peck being beaten so badly that he suffered brain damage. And then suddenly, here comes this young woman into the picture insisting that people from Greyhound get bus drivers even to drive these buses. What was going on? What did you see? JOHN SEIGENTHALER: What we all saw was a young woman, who was figuratively and literally the leader of this movement and was willing to put her mind and her heart and her action behind this effort. What I saw was Diane and her young peers saying, We are not going to let the violence at Anniston last Sunday overcome nonviolence. Nonviolence will win. And I was assigned at one point responsibility to call her and tell her to cut it off. I was with the Justice Department. And the Attorney General asked me, She s the leader. If you can just get her to stop. Bring them back. Tell them somebody is going to get killed. I called her and I told her that. She didn t laugh at me but she was long distance. I was in New Orleans and she was in Nashville. But in effect she said, We are like the tree by the water. We won t be moved. Violence is not going to overcome nonviolence. And don t tell me somebody will get killed. We all signed our wills last night. WILLIAMS: We all signed our wills.

15 PAGE 15 SEIGENTHALER: We all signed our wills last night. She knew. They knew they were walking into a possible death trap. When I told the Attorney General what she said, he was speechless, as I was. WILLIAMS: So, Diane, what did you say as you come up to these people who are petrified because they have seen one bus left a burning husk at Anniston. They have seen people hospitalized as a result of the terrible beating they suffered in the bus station in Montgomery. And here you are, a fresh-faced, college student, coming up with all these grand notions of nonviolence, social protest, and keeping the movement alive and not letting violence stop us here. We ve got to write our own history and not let history be determined by the violence of the segregation. What do you say to people who are scared and looking at you in wonderment as to what you are even doing here? NASH: Well, Juan, we were petrified also. You d have to be retarded to not realize that with the pictures of that bus burned and having seen Jim Peck and the other people from CORE who had been beaten so badly and not realize that death was certainly a possibility. But it was important not to let massive violence stop the Freedom Rides because the message would have been sent that whenever a nonviolent campaign begins, all you have to do to stop it is inflict massive violence.

16 PAGE 16 And I knew that if that was allowed to stand, we wouldn t have been able to have a movement about anything without a lot of people getting killed. So it was imperative that we continue. WILLIAMS: But, you know, again, I m so curious as to why people listened to you. Because here comes this, well, young lady, maybe to some a little girl, right? Now, you are starting to say to other people who have been involved in these Freedom Rides and who have endured this violence, You guys have really got to be tough. You ve got to be strong. You ve got to continue. And don t forget, this was very much a patriarchal movement. So here you are as a young woman, again. Why did they listen? LAWSON: Well, I want to say something about this because in Nashville we were not a patriarchal movement. NASH: Right. LAWSON: In Nashville, as we formed the movement in 59 and 60, we decided that the structure of the movement there would be a reflection of the kind of city we wanted to see emerge. So I think Diane was our first Central Committee chair, were you not? NASH: The third. LAWSON: Were you the third?

17 PAGE 17 NASH: You had two men who were chair persons, before me. LAWSON: And they were students. NASH: Yes, they were students. Each one held office for about a week. [Laughter.] LAWSON: Oh, is that what happened? NASH: They missed demonstrations and meetings and when they came back and we said, Where were you? And they said, We had been studying. And we thanked them kindly for their service for the past week but said that if we didn t have efficient officers somebody could get seriously injured or killed. And we couldn t have that. So then we elected another chairman. WILLIAMS: So how many friends did you take up to Alabama? NASH: You know I want to clear up something. I really was not the leader of that movement. There were 30 people on the Central Committee. And the Central Committee was the leader of that movement. I differentiate between what I call charismatic leadership versus functional leadership. In an organization there is leadership based on the work that needs to be done and that s functional leadership.

18 PAGE 18 But this charismatic leadership is this kind of ordained by God to be the leader, kind of thing. And I think that s destructive. SEIGENTHALER: I know she is very modest about that but, unfortunately, everybody in this audience saw her take on the mayor and put him down very effectively a few moments ago. She was the leader. She was the leader. NASH: But was functional. LAWSON: But it should be said that the Central Committee, the night of April the 19 th, the early morning when we gathered to talk about this, we decided to have a silent march down Jefferson, downtown to the mayor s office. And we sent him a telegram saying we were coming. And we said in Central Committee that C. T. Vivian and Diane Nash would be our spokespeople at the city hall. So Central Committee passed the labor around so that a wide variety had to become spokespeople in different demonstrations. So in that one, I remember very clearly that Diane and C.T. were the folk who were to talk to him. SEIGENTHALER: Could I just take a half minute to set the scene for that march you saw. Early that morning a bomb had blown off its foundation the home of a distinguished African American lawyer, Z. Alexander Looby. And the town was very tense. City Hall was very tense. And that silent

19 PAGE 19 march picked up support as it moved towards the downtown area -- a long march of a couple or three miles as I recall. And the thousands that gathered on that plaza that morning were there to protest not just what the city had not done in capitulating in the lunch counters. This act of violence had really brought these young people together. And it s hard to believe that students, like the ones you saw on that screen, like her, could shake the foundations of a town as profoundly as the bomb had shaken Mr. Looby s home. LAWSON: But they did. SEIGENTHALER: But they did. LAWSON: Those young people did. NASH: But it really was not hard to persuade people to continue the Freedom Ride or to take action. Actually, what I did was just find people where they were in Nashville. A lot of people were on dates and what have you. So we just got in the car and said, Have you seen so-and-so? And they said, Yeah. They went that way about 10 minutes ago. So we went and found members of the Central Committee and had a meeting and put it to them, Well, this is what s happened to the Freedom Ride and to CORE. What response shall we give? So it wasn t really talking to anyone, persuading anyone. Those were committed people. And since the Central Committee it has been an

20 PAGE 20 adjustment for me. Because when you are part of a group of people who you have confidence will put their bodies between you and harm, and when you would put yours between them and harm, that is a wonderful experience. They were very committed people. WILLIAMS: Tell us the end of the story, Diane. You go up there. You guys get on the buses. You find bus drivers to drive the buses because I imagine the bus drivers were scared too, and reluctant to drive. You insist that the state police protect the buses. You insist that the federal government also enforce its laws guaranteeing the right to interstate transportation on an integrated basis. And then the bus rides make their way into history and arrive at their destination in New Orleans. So what goes on on these buses? Are people frightened? NASH: I have to say, we were about to get on the bus and realized that we needed at least one of us to stay out to interpret what we were doing to the press, to the several cities who were involved, and to the government. And so we elected a coordinator and I was elected to do that. So I never actually got on the bus. And it was in that capacity that I talked to people from the Justice Department and what have you, and let them know what we were about to do. We did a number of things in the Nashville office. We thought it would be tragic if some one s life was in danger who was on the Freedom Ride and they tried to reach us and the line was busy. That was before call waiting.

21 PAGE 21 And so we installed a telephone that no one could use, that was just for people on the Freedom Rides who might get in trouble and need help. And we used that phone once in particular. We set up a 24-hour functional office so the press or anyone could call and get accurate information there. So the Freedom Ride did progress to Jackson, Mississippi. And there was no violence there, but the Freedom Riders were incarcerated for What did they get, 45 days? LAWSON: Sometimes it was 30, 45 days. NASH: Right. SEIGENTHALER: Some of them went to Parchman Prison. LAWSON: I went to Parchman Prison. SEIGENTHALER: The hellhole of the world. LAWSON: Torture chamber of the time. It still is [simultaneous conversation]. Well, I was on the first bus, actually, that went from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi. There were 13 of us. All of us, as I recall, were from the Nashville movement. We used the bus ride We did not do any of the negotiating about the National Guard. I think that came in large measure from the Justice Department. Because our group was of the

22 PAGE 22 mind that we were going to do this, even though we recognized that it could very well mean further bus burnings and explosions and death. The 13 of us on that bus included C.T. Vivian, as I remember, Bernard Lafayette. I can t recall who else. But there were 13 of us. We used the bus ride from Montgomery to Jackson as a school to analyze, first of all, what the situation was we were engaged in. And secondly, we organized our strategy for getting off the bus in Jackson, Mississippi. We paid very little attention to the National Guard and the state highway patrols of Alabama and Mississippi. We concentrated on our task. At one point, those 13 people said, We don t like all these National Guard people around here. So I was designated at the first stop to get off and tell the press that they could call off the National Guard and the state highway patrol because we felt that we were indeed a point people going into a dangerous situation. And if this was what was necessary for us to do it, then we would take the risk of doing it without them. WILLIAMS: Seems pretty silly. LAWSON: Yes, the pictures from that, still, I know resonate with the foolhardiness of this group of people. [Simultaneous conversation] LAWSON: was there not to protect you but to arrest you. That s right.

23 PAGE 23 NASH: I have a confession to make. We aren t always 100 percent purity level in terms of nonviolence. And when you made that statement, that we don t want the National Guard here, that was one time I disagreed with you. I was glad they were there because I thought it might mean that someone wouldn t get killed. LAWSON: Well, but you know, the interesting thing was, I don't know who instigated that discussion on the bus, but I became the mouthpiece for it. WILLIAMS: John, let me ask you, what was the government s role here as these people are putting themselves on the line. SEIGENTHALER: Well, I think you have to understand the position of the President and the Attorney General. First of all, John F. Kennedy in the 1960 campaign had done very well in the south. Many people forget that he carried North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, five states in all (I forget the other two) and was anxious to carry them again, was not anxious to have a National Guard confrontation with southern citizens as President Eisenhower had had in Little Rock. The Attorney General was anxious, if he could, to keep it in the courts and off the streets. In his first meeting with Dr. King, he suggested that if the movement would focus on voter registration, it might well change the nature

24 PAGE 24 of southern politics. That southern politicians, realizing that they were going to have to face massive votes by African Americans, as he told Dr. King, they won t be so fresh. Dr. King, I thought, was the ultimate idealist. He said, I know the FBI can t protect us. We don t have a national police force. Wally Brenton is going to head up the voter education project. But we must confront the evil of racism and segregation. We must confront this corruption wherever we find it. Help us when you can, how you can. So the last thing the Attorney General and President wanted to see were these demonstrations going on. And I think when that national movement, having had the experience of the sit-ins, then began to push with the second and third waves of Freedom Riders, by this time the administration had called out the marshals to Montgomery and had urged the National Guard in Mississippi to come out. I mean everything that the President and the Attorney General had hoped would not happen was now happening. So the administration was pushed into a position it didn t want to be in, understood the politics of it, understood, I think after Montgomery, the inhumanity of it, and it did what it did not want to do and that was rely on, first, marshals and then the Guard to provide protection, even though, as Jim says, they really didn t want it.

25 PAGE 25 WILLIAMS: And it cost, in terms of political support, especially among southern Democratic governors? SEIGENTHALER: John Patterson, who was the governor of Alabama who had supported Kennedy in 1960, was infuriated. He blamed the President and the Attorney General for sending in what he called outside agitators and rabble-rousers. He told me in a very hostile meeting that he was more popular in this country, not just in the south, than the President and that he has a drawer full of letters to prove it. And I think the other southern governors for the most part -- certainly, the governor of Mississippi -- felt exactly the same way. It was not a happy time for the administration because the best-laid plans now were being destroyed. On the other hand, the violence was not something that could be ignored. There had to be a reaction and the government did react, like I said, first with the marshals and then with the National Guard. LAWSON: And, of course, I think it has to be said, on the one side of the coin I feel that the President at the time and the Attorney General did what governments should do, namely, they should be responsible for maintaining the right for peaceful assembly and see to it that, to the extent they could, violence could be minimized. We in the black community were, therefore, very strongly attracted to John F. Kennedy and to Robert Kennedy because they did this.

26 PAGE 26 No other time in the history of the south had governors or presidents intervened to stop lynchings or the violence against the black folk. WILLIAMS: Well, wait a second. Eisenhower had in Little Rock. LAWSON: Yes, that s correct. SEIGENTHALER: But, you know, it could be said there, Governor Orville Faubus called out the National Guard to keep the black students from getting into the Central High School. And then Eisenhower called in the 101 st Airborne to deal with the Arkansas National Guard. So I mean it was that conflict I think that both the President and the Attorney General had hoped they could avoid. LAWSON: But the other thing that happened, too, in the 60s, there came a tremendous groundswell across the country of people from all walks of life who insisted that racism and segregation ought to be dealt with and resolved. That s how much of the legislation got passed, because civic people, political people, university people, unions, attorneys of all kinds became what Martin King called the coalition of conscience. In 63, 64, there was a period, within about 24 months of major legislation that had the government on the side of the quality of life for all the people.

27 PAGE 27 SEIGENTHALER: I remember Dr. King coming to Nashville to Vanderbilt and saying, To those of you who are white who would like to help us, but because of peer pressure or economic pressure or political pressure, cannot, let me tell you, we will liberate you. [simultaneous conversation] NASH: I have to admit that the Kennedy administration did help a lot. Not as much as they should have. For instance, with the Freedom Ride, legally blacks had a right to ride interstate buses in a desegregated fashion. And the administration I m sure was aware of that, but allowed Freedom Riders to spend 30 or 45 days in jail in Mississippi as a kind of a compromise, I think, with the state. WILLIAMS: Well, hang on, now, you need to explain that to some of the people here. It wasn t that people were arrested for riding on the bus in an integrated fashion. It was once they got off the bus, they entered into a segregated bus terminal facility. And they were arrested then for being integrated in this bus terminal facility. But I was also going to say, something else you should explain, you mentioned earlier that you had this separate phone set aside for emergencies and you only used it once. But you never told us what that one occasion was. NASH: Oh, the Freedom Riders were taken out of jail in Birmingham and were driven just across the state line into Tennessee.

28 PAGE 28 SEIGENTHALER: By Bull Connor. LAWSON: Right. NASH: Yes, Bull Connor, and dropped off in the dead of night in the middle of nowhere. They didn t know anyone that lived nearby or anything. They were terrified because they thought there was a clear possibility that when the police pulled off, the Klan would arrive and they might be lynched. And they found a telephone and called us for help, then. And of course, were able to get through immediately. SEIGENTHALER: They all got back to Birmingham. LAWSON: Yes, that s right. NASH: Leo Lillard left in a car to go and pick them up. And to this day no one can explain how he got there that fast. But he picked them up and they decided to go back to the Birmingham bus station. So it s like a stratagem of nonviolence is, We will wear you down and keep you off balance. And so within a remarkably short time, those Freedom Riders showed up again, right at that bus station. WILLIAMS: Let s flip this for just a little bit and go back in time and talk about the lunch counter sit-in, which is, again, something that, Jim, you know a great deal about because the workshop Diane mentioned when she

29 PAGE 29 described you as her mentor, was something that not only impacted a Diane Nash, but impacted a generation of young people. So, in this moment, as I recollect your biography, in this moment when we are engaged in war as a nation, I remember that you were a conscientious objector I believe to the war in Korea in the early 50s and chose to go to jail, is that right? LAWSON: Yes. I did not call myself a conscientious objector. I called myself, in the spirit of Jesus, a resistor of laws, which I considered tyrannical. And the conscription law and segregation law were the two sets of laws which I had chosen by 1949 as the laws I would not obey. So while I had registered for the draft act, I then unregistered myself by sending my cards back in 1949 or 50. So, in fact, that had happened before the Korean War. So I was picked up, then, after the Korean War started because I would not allow myself to be drafted. WILLIAMS: Your father was a Methodist minister? LAWSON: He was a Methodist pastor. WILLIAMS: Now, had your father encouraged you in this? LAWSON: Not really because when dad pastored in Anniston, Alabama, he carried a gun to be sure that he was going to be treated like a man, that he would be treated like a man. So he showed me the gun as a kid. He had it

30 PAGE 30 before I was born. But anyway, so we disagreed about that. But he supported when my brothers and I all took positions not to go to war. WILLIAMS: All the brothers said, No more war. LAWSON: That s right, at one time or another said this. WILLIAMS: At World War II and Korea? LAWSON: No, this is after World War II. I had three younger brothers. And we all said that we would not go to war. And my father s position was, Well, we tried to raise you in a family where Christianity, where Christ was important. So he said in the family discussions, We shouldn t be surprised that they take these positions. WILLIAMS: How long were you in prison? LAWSON: Thirteen months. WILLIAMS: And why were you released? LAWSON: Because suddenly, in 1952, the parole boards started, the federal parole boards started paroling a number of us who were draft resistors and releasing us from jail after we had served maybe a third of the term.

31 PAGE 31 WILLIAMS: And then you went off to India. LAWSON: And then I went off to India to be a campus minister and to coach basketball, track, football, and tennis. WILLIAMS: Not to learn about nonviolence. LAWSON: No. But I was studying Gandhi all the time, so one of the reasons I was glad I was offered a position in Nagpur, India, was because it would give me a chance to follow in the track of Gandhi and to meet some of the folk who were in the movement and to go to some of the places which had historic meaning. And I had a chance then to meet some of the philosophers of nonviolence and some of the followers. I also had a chance on two occasions where I met Prime Minister Nehru, who of course was one of the great activists of the country. WILLIAMS: And in the film clip that we saw, we saw you then directing these young people in workshops as to how to stage a lunch counter sit-in. Now is that something you learned in India? LAWSON: No, actually, I had learned that in the United States because by , the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Congress of Racial Equality had begun the process of desegregating lunch counters in places like Boston and Los Angeles and Springfield and Washington, D.C. So I followed that

32 PAGE 32 effort and I learned a lot from that. Then I had sat in myself, in my hometown, which refused service in the main street in a variety of places. WILLIAMS: This is in Ohio? LAWSON: This is in Ohio -- Masselin, Ohio. I had been experimenting with that myself at the end of the 40s. So I knew quite a bit about how it could happened, my own experience. So this was one of the things, then, that we were able to teach and impart. WILLIAMS: Well, when you came back from India, what did you first do? LAWSON: I went to the graduate school of theology at Oberlin, in Oberlin, Ohio. WILLIAMS: So when you are doing these workshops -- it s after you have your degree? LAWSON: No, I had not completed my degree. I had re-enrolled. I had dropped out of school and then re-enrolled at Vanderbilt in the fall of SEIGENTHALER: And it should be said, it should be said that because he directed those workshops and because he gave leadership to those sit-in demonstrators, those students, he was expelled from Vanderbilt University by the vote of the board of trustees. Many numbers of the divinity school

33 PAGE 33 faculty threatened to resign over that. The University reversed its position too late. Jim had gone off to Boston University where he got a degree. LAWSON: I finished. WILLIAMS: Tell me exactly. What I m trying to get at is, what is the genesis of these workshops? Why did you start giving these workshops? LAWSON: Because a number of people, including some who were in that clip, determined in the winter-spring of 59 that we were going to launch in Nashville the next step of desegregation. We didn t know what that was. But we did an analysis of all of the problems we thought were apparent in the black community with segregation. We talked about them. We brainstormed. And out of that came the decision: the first step should be to desegregate downtown Nashville. And a sit-in movement in lunch counters would be the way to get at that business. We were talking not simply about the lunch counters. We were talking about bringing down the White- Colored signs in restaurants and department stores and public buildings. So we were talking about the desegregation of the downtown area. So that was the project. The workshops were the first steps in the direction of launching that project. WILLIAMS: Diane, what was it like to be in those workshops?

34 PAGE 34 NASH: Well, I had been searching for an organization that was trying to do something about segregation because segregation was humiliating. WILLIAMS: Now, you were from Chicago. NASH: Yes. WILLIAMS: And your parents, what did they do? NASH: What did they do? WILLIAMS: For a living? NASH: For a living? I grew up with my mother and stepfather. He was a waiter on the dining car on the railroads, in the dining car. And my mom was a homemaker. WILLIAMS: So not activists by any means. NASH: By any means. WILLIAMS: And so, and then you said, you had this kind of internal drive, desire to find an organization that would confront segregation?

35 PAGE 35 NASH: Well, when I got to Nashville, I had heard about segregation from my stepfather for one thing, because he had told us about how the white crewmembers on the train could stay at hotels but the blacks couldn t. And they had to find rooms in private homes to stay over night and that kind of thing. So I had heard about it. But when I got to Nashville, it was the first time I had experienced segregation personally. And emotionally, it affected me. WILLIAMS: What couldn t you do? NASH: Well, girlfriends and I couldn t go downtown and treat ourselves to a cheap lunch at the dime store, even, just to get off campus. And that was something I had learned to enjoy doing. If you went downtown in Nashville around the noon hour, blacks who worked in the downtown area would be sitting along the curbs at the alleys eating lunch that they had brought from home. Or you could purchase food but it had to be on a take-out basis. You couldn t sit down and eat. So sometimes they were eating food they had purchased on a take-out basis. And I hated that. That was humiliating. I also started feeling so limited, just being confined to a few restaurants and one movie theater that blacks could attend. SEIGENTHALER: If I could -- You know, Nashvillians, white Nashvillians later would say, Oh, we weren t as bad as Birmingham. We weren t as bad as Jackson, Mississippi. We weren t as bad as Atlanta, Georgia. If you lived in Nashville then, every place you needed or wanted

36 PAGE 36 to go -- hospital, restaurant, restroom, hotel, park, swimming pool, every place, public conveyance -- was segregated by race. It was as segregated as Johannesburg at the height of apartheid. That was the city into which Diane and these other students moved. NASH: So I started asking people in my classes and my dorms if they knew of any organization that was trying to combat segregation. And many, many people said they didn t know of one. And a few people asked me why I was trying to do that. Nothing was going to change and I was only going to get myself in trouble. And I had started thinking that Fisk students were apathetic. I did finally ask Paul LaPrad, an exchange student, if he knew of any organization. And he said, Yes. And he told me about the workshop and told me that I could come along with him the coming week. And that s what I did. But about the I tell people now to be very careful of deciding that students and young people are apathetic, because what happened is that a few months later, many of those same students that had told me that I shouldn t get involved were themselves sitting-in, marching, going to jail. And I think the difference is that when they got a vision that something could be done and when there was something specific that they could do, like be at Woolworths at 10:30 Tuesday morning and sit-in, they were more than willing to do it. So they weren t apathetic. It was that they didn t realize that something could be done.

37 PAGE 37 WILLIAMS: Jim, in fact, I ve heard it said that you called it not a silent generation but a waiting generation. LAWSON: Yes. WILLIAMS: What do you mean by that? LAWSON: Well, it s we adults that type every generation of young people as being apathetic. That s really our analysis. Young people do come into life as high school college people with certain idealism, certain hope for a better kind of future, a meaningful, an open future. And they are unchallenged. But when they are challenged with the possibility of something that they can do, I have found out across the years, then they will respond. Right now, across the United States, in almost every university, there are students who are working on the issue of war and peace and the Iraq war in particular. There are students who are working on anti-sweatshop campaigns. There are students who are concerned about environmental justice, environmental issues and problems. And it s because they are a product in many ways of the 1960s, because the 1960 sit-in campaign was the first national campaign across this country by a student generation. That alone has taught other student generations that they are not too young to be involved. When they have ideals and concerns, they can begin to walk in

38 PAGE 38 that way and make something happen, that would be [simultaneous conversation]. WILLIAMS: John, in fact, President Kennedy at one point says, Americans have shown a new way for themselves to stand up and that is by sitting down. PANELISTS: By sitting down [simultaneous conversation]. WILLIAMS: And so many people were alarmed that he had said this. Of course, later it plays into his hands in the 60 election after the famous call is made to Coretta Scott King, during the time of her husband s incarceration. And in fact, Mr. Kennedy ends up getting 60 plus percent of the black vote in that race, a very close election. Lots of African Americans thought that they had put him over the top. SEIGENTHALER: We did, indeed. And you know, I described earlier how it was as he sort of looked on the one hand at what had happened in 1960 in those states in the south and how he carried them. And I understand, I think, looking back on it (perhaps I do) how it felt to be on those buses and under threat and unable to count on your government to help. From our perspective, we were despised. I mean white segregationists came in short order to despise, damn, and condemn the Kennedy administration. There were all sorts of funny, some vulgar, jokes. One, Rub a dub-dub,

39 PAGE 39 three men in a tub, Jack, Bobby, Teddy. The tub sank. Who was saved? The country. I mean it was that sort of thing that you heard on a regular basis. And the hostility that John Patterson leveled at me that day only reflected the same sort of dialogue that was going on all across the south. LAWSON: And I think that that mean-spiritedness still is in the United States for many, many people. And I happen to personally think that the Iraq war and the whole business there has some of that meanness, the spiritual wickedness in the scenery that we Americans will not acknowledge. [APPLAUSE] NASH: Yes. The fact that many Americans put more value on an American life than they put on the life of someone that lives in a different country, Afghanistan, Iraq and what have you, indicates that racism is still alive and well in the United States because that is the same thing as racism, simply a new form. WILLIAMS: Well, let s go to the audience now and open a conversation to some of the people who have joined us here at the Kennedy Library. If you have a question, please come to one of the two microphones that are set up in the aisles. Let us know who you are. And if you could, really ask a question. Don t make a statement.