THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS 4/28/98 SESSION 2 PAGE 1 SESSION 2

Transcription

1 PAGE 1 ELAINE JONES: All right, ladies and gentlemen, we only have an hour left and we have much to discuss. As it is, we have to give you an abbreviated version. So let s get started, if we might. I'm pleased to announce that Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg has joined us and is in the audience and we welcome her among us. [applause] All right, now at this point we need to move forward and discuss the escalation of tensions in Birmingham with the jailing of Dr. King and the eruptions and demonstrations which followed. But before we do that, while Dorothy s thinking about how to tell us about that concisely, [laughter] I'm going to ask Tony to just We spoke about this issue of the new mayor and how he defeated Bull Connor for mayor. We had this so-called new leadership which people were hopeful about. And I wanted Tony to tell us a few words about that while Dorothy s getting her thoughts together. TONY LEWIS: Well, there's a certain confusion, ladies and gentlemen, because there had been this election in which Bull Connor, the police chief, and I guess Haynes was the mayor, had been defeated. But then as the months went on and as we got into the demonstrations, Bull Connor was still there with his police dogs and his fire hoses, so why was he there? The answer was that he said it wasn t a legal election and there was a whole series of lawsuits and litigation about who was the mayor and who was the police chief. And for a while, there were two city

2 PAGE 2 governments in Birmingham. And Connor, despite Burke s optimistic assumption that the new people might be 20 percent good, or 20 percent moderate BURKE MARSHALL: Ten. MR. LEWIS: Oh, ten? Only ten. [laughter] Sorry about the exaggeration. MS. JONES: Speaking of optimism. MR. LEWIS: But, in fact, they didn't get to do much because Connor and Haynes were still there doing their worst. MS. JONES: Okay, fine. Thank you, Tony. Dorothy, just tell us a little, bring us to April and May in Birmingham, if you will? DOROTHY COTTON: I hear you really wanting to get a sense of how there was this cauldron of seething activity going on in Birmingham. And it s a little bit frustrating, because people want to know sort of, kind of in a packaged kind of way how the civil rights movement happened. And it was a long, ongoing struggle. When we say the civil rights struggle, that's exactly what it was, a struggle. And any time you start a big, massive action, work had been going on for weeks, months and sometimes years before there was a big action, say, like the Selma to Montgomery march, for example.

3 PAGE 3 And I hope that you really can understand that though we're talking about it and given, you know, two and five minutes to talk about it, that all of it, it was a long, ongoing struggle. Now, just caucusing with Elaine there a minute, she mentioned Dr. King s arrest in Birmingham at the time he produced the letter from the Birmingham city jail. I can envision us sitting in, again, Room 30 of A.G. Gaston Motel and our 16 th Street Church was full of mostly young people, schools were out. It s like Easter week coming up, and it was Good Friday. And what the 30 or so of us staff people and local Birmingham people were struggling over in that Room 30 was whether Dr. King should lead the march. Now, see the church just across the street full of people and people were going over there singing songs, doing little sermonettes while we were trying to make up our mind what we would do, whether we would Because we d been told not to march. And you're always under an injunction. I have to tell you that one of our lawyers said, You can t march because you're going to get in trouble. Chauncey Etheridge, one of our lawyers, said that. And Dr. King said, Chauncey, we've been in trouble since we were born, and it s our business to get in trouble and it s your business to get us out of trouble. [laughter] MS. JONES: Right, exactly. MS. COTTON: So I thought you d like that. MS. JONES: And so?

4 PAGE 4 MS. COTTON: Chauncey Etheridge gave that message to Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg. MS. JONES: Right. MS. COTTON: So see the people sitting there now and that church full and people were running from the church saying, What are you all going to do? Are we going to lead the people out of that church on this march that we're told not to do? And in all of this arguing, Dr. King -- as was his decisive style -- sat fairly quiet while the rest of us argued: Wyatt Walker, Andrew Young, local business people, community people on that advisory committee. And eventually, after what seemed like hours of negotiating and arguing, Dr. King stood up, went into the adjoining room and came back out with his denim jacket on. Now, he didn't wear denim, it wasn't the in thing in those days. We were wearing denim because there was a massive boycott downtown. Black folk buy clothes at Easter time, that's when families get new clothes. But we had on the boycott MS. JONES: We were learning, we're learning. MS. COTTON: [laughter] We were. The message was don t buy new clothes for Easter. Not only that, wear the oldest clothes you could find. So Dr. King had his denim, and a lot of us were in denim who d never wore denim before. We were surprised when the fancy folks from Vassar and all the fancy schools up north came down that they would wear denim sometimes in our churches. We were really kind of insulted because we didn't You know, denim was something you

5 PAGE 5 wore in the fields. [laughter] But back to your point. I know better now, they re designer clothes now. But Dr. King stood up, put on his denim and came back in this room where all the staff and community people were arguing if should he lead the march. Or shouldn t he get north and try to ask folk who had money and who were our supporters to raise money to help bond all the people out there that were already in jail, thousands of them? And no exaggeration, talk about the seething cauldron of activity, and we knew he had made up his mind that he would walk out that door and he would go over to that church and he would lead those hundreds of people out. But you know really pretty much the rest of the story, because he was arrested before he even got into the church and the photograph with the policeman with his hand in the back of his trousers leading him to the paddy wagon, and so he was arrested. Incidentally, we all were kind of teary-eyed and we d made a circle in that room when he walked out and we sang, We Shall Overcome, the song that was the theme song of the movement now. So, again, let s talk a little bit about the young people who were now so involved. I mean, really young people and college aged people and there came a time with James Bevel and I doing training workshops there, we moved that citizenship training program into Birmingham talking to black folk about what it meant to be free and to un-brainwash ourselves and not to be victims anymore. I'm talking about some of the content of the training. And this was what was being said to the young people. People use the phrase that we used our children. And I hear it kind of spoken of kind of pejoratively when it s said that way. And that's not the case at

6 PAGE 6 all. There came a time when young people in Birmingham felt left out if they didn't get arrested and go to jail. It was the in thing to do. You haven t been to jail yet? People were trying to get arrested. Believe it or not, we also had a good time. You see some of the tears and you see the dogs and the fire hoses, but you should hear the singing, even the singing in the jails and the laughter and the joy of being about something serious at last. So I don't know how to tell you in any better way of the bonding that occurred and the energizing of people and the group of folk who had felt so down and out, not feeling that they were a part of something. And one college student in tears said in a meeting recently, Well, how did you all do it? Tell us how you did it? And Andrew said to me, Pray. He was at that meeting of Haley Farm with Marion Wright, had convened a group of folk, and said, You know, we ought to, in this meeting right here, we can help her. She s in tears saying, How did you do it, and why was it happening everywhere? And Andrew said, Let s sing that song, The Spirit is A-Moving All Over this Land. Well, the spirit You all never heard of that, no? MS. JONES: They want to hear you, they do, but that's all right. MS. COTTON: What? No, no, I'm just saying that's what I did really hear that. But that's what was happening. So we did, the spirit was a-moving all over the land. Old folk, I remember very elderly gentleman who when we finally realized, hey, we can go vote now, hopefully without getting killed this time, because now we got the Voting Rights bill, he was shaking on his cane saying at

7 PAGE 7 one demonstration -- I'm a little ahead of the story Dr. King, I have a right to lead this march. I get all choked up when I even see this man right now, walking and asking if he can lead the demonstration. But the spirit was a-moving all over that place and people wanted to be a part. And really, that's what was happening, everybody wanted to be a part. And I said earlier, when there was brutality it just made people work from a greater sense of resolve to change a situation that was clearly unjust. And people had heard about the nonviolence and Mahatma Gandhi and the salt march to the sea. And this was talked about in the workshops and we could use the power of our spirits and the presence of our bodies, and it was more powerful than weapons of violence. That's what was happening, that spirit was moving and everybody wanted to get And so the churches were, people were hanging from the rafters, and that is not an exaggeration, to get into those meetings to see what was going on and to become a part of it. It was a revival, in a real sense, of a whole people becoming new people and transforming themselves. Birmingham did that, I don't know why except the spirit was moving all over the land. [applause] MS. JONES: Thank you very much, Dorothy. MS. COTTON: You're welcome. JAMES HOOD: I think one of the other things that you need to keep in mind was the role of the churches. Ministers were not just preachers, they were leaders. And

8 PAGE 8 they were not just leaders of their own flock, they were leaders of community. And so I think when you hear people talk about churches, that's where the leadership came from. They were on the front line, they were in the trenches. They were a part of the actual strategy sessions of what was taking place. The other thing that I think you need to understand about Birmingham is that in the black community in Birmingham in the 1950s and 60s, there were two churches on every block, okay? And there were people in those two churches. And perhaps the two most important churches in Birmingham during the 60s, particularly in 1963, was the 16 th Street Baptist Church and the 2 nd Avenue Baptist Church, as well as the 6 th Avenue Baptist Church. Now, if you ask anybody in Birmingham, have they ever heard of a man by the name of Ruben Goodgame, okay, and Ruben Goodgame was the pastor of the 6 th Avenue Baptist Church. He was also a confidant of A. G. Gaston, who was the only multimillionaire in the state of Alabama, who was black. Much of the behind the scene monies to get people out of jail came from his money. He was in the funeral business, by the way, in case you don't know. MS. JONES: And that is a throwback to the movement in 1880s, 1890s, Madame C. J. Walker as the first African American millionaire, funded much of the movement that was going on then in African American communities. MS. COTTON: There's an error. It s important, it s important.

9 PAGE 9 MS. JONES: Okay. MS. COTTON: You ll see that by May 7 th demonstrators retaliate against police brutality in Birmingham. I don't know anything about demonstrators ever retaliating, do you? Again, so I don't know where that came from. And a lot of folk are writing about that powerful event that Vince Harden calls that great struggle to advance democracy in this country. And it s probably in somebody s book, the demonstrators retaliated. I didn't know anything about it, and I was there. MS. JONES: You do right to question what you read, and you do right. Thank you, Dorothy, we ll set that record straight. Let me ask you, Burke, Martin Luther King went in jail, he was jailed on Good Friday. And I think on Easter Monday a phone call was made to Washington, is that correct? From what I read, it read it in someone s book. Did you all get a phone call on Easter Monday about Martin Luther King being in jail down in Birmingham? Because he went in on that Friday, the 12 th, and didn't come out until the 20 th. So Justice played a role somehow. Can anyone tell me about that? If you don't know, that's all right because the call may not have come to you, sir, and it may not have come to you, Nick. PRATHIA HALL: There was always a sense of sort of embarrassment and a sense of awkwardness when Dr. King was in jail. You know, and he s doing things like producing the Letter from the Birmingham Jail, which is one of the greatest pieces of historical literature. If you haven t seen it, I urge you to read it.

10 PAGE 10 And he was responding to a group of clergymen who had written to say, Go home, you have no right to be here. He was really challenged by that. MS. JONES: Thank you. Now, let s move, quickly, since we're still in Alabama, we're coming over to Mississippi. But if anyone who has particular expertise about Mississippi wants to say something about Alabama, fine, because a struggle is a struggle, okay? So don t feel that compartmentalized. [laughter] But as we move to the integration of the University of Alabama, I think that Jim Hood and Nick Katzenbach can tell us quite a bit about that. You told us in your earlier remarks really what motivated you, Jim, but how was that experience, and what happened to you once you were admitted? And what impact has that had on you? MR. HOOD: Well, I think there are a couple of things. One of the things I need to tell you is there were three people supposedly involved in the University of Alabama integration. One of them you've not heard very much about and that person s name is Sandy English. There was supposed to be two of us, two males and one female who was Vivian. But Sandy, for some reason, chose not to join us and so we wound up being two. Now, one of the other things that I need to tell you also about the University of Alabama is the fact that in addition to Vivian and I, there was integration also at Huntsville, okay, which was a graduate student and he went to Huntsville without, I don't think, Nick, there was any marshals, were there? At Huntsville, he went to Huntsville without any problem at all. You know, and all of a sudden, we've got

11 PAGE 11 all the troops in Tuscaloosa and Huntsville ain t got nobody, and he goes to school the same day. NICHOLAS KATZENBACH: The next day. MR. HOOD: The next day. MR. KATZENBACH: Very important, it s very important. MR. HOOD: And I think that says something about what was happening in Alabama. But I think the other thing that's important about the University of Alabama is that George Wallace, out of all the governors who opposed integration, was the only one who chose to put his money where his mouth was. Everybody else did it from their office. He did it with his mouth and his body, so keep that in mind. Governor Faubus sat in his office and did his thing, okay? Governor Barnett sat in his office and did his thing. George came out of his office. MS. JONES: Does that make him better or worse? [laughter] MR. HOOD: Well, I want to point out the reason, though, because I think most people don t know why George did it. And since I'm writing this book about George, I ll tell you why George did it, okay? George did it because George made a deal with the Ku Klux Klan that he would come if they stayed away. That was the deal.

12 PAGE 12 MS. JONES: What? MR. HOOD: Okay? That was the deal. And so he came to keep them away. Now, for those of you who don t remember, in there was a riot at the University of Alabama when Autherine Lucy integrated the University. And they expelled her for her own safety. The Klan took over the campus. George Wallace was determined that was not going to happen again, and it didn't. So remember that. MS. JONES: We will! [laughter] You mind if we check a few other sources on that as well, Jim, okay? But, no, that's enlightening. I don't know where to go from that. MR. HOOD: Let me just suggest that those of you who've never seen, there's a movie out called The Human Factor and it s produced by Peter Williams of the British Broadcasting station. It is one of the few movies in which George Wallace explained the deal that he made with the Klan. Also, you have Robert Sheldon, who was the Grand Dragon, with whom the deal was made, who pointed out that if they had known that George was not going to do what he promised them that he was going to do, which was to go to jail on their behalf, then they would have come themselves. MS. COTTON: (inaudible)

13 PAGE 13 MS. JONES: Okay, Dorothy wants to know, her fellow panelists, how you felt once you were enrolled? MR. HOOD: Well, I felt very comfortable because prior to our going, Nick and John Doar had pretty well given us the assurance that they were going to do everything that they could, that we were not going to go through what Jim Meredith had gone through at Mississippi, what Harvey had gone through, Harvey Gant, for those of you who don t know, and what Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes had gone through. So we had a sense of belief that the government had learned something from those experiences. We also had the benefit of having met with all of the other people who had integrated institutions prior to us. We were the last, by the way. So we were kind of the last kids on the block, but we had the benefit not only of the government s experience, but we had the benefit of those who had been through it before. So we were a little bit better prepared than other people. MS. JONES: It shows you what Nick and Burke can do when they have a law to enforce. They had a court order at that point. So tell us about that, Nick? MR. KATZENBACH: Well, it really depends on having a very credulous audience. [laughter] Let me just follow up for a minute with what Jim said. I did not know about any deal that Wallace had made. But I think that President Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy did believe that George Wallace sincerely did not want violence to occur on the campus. The problem was no matter how

14 PAGE 14 strong his belief, was he going to be able to accomplish that? Because at the same time he wanted no violence and would say no violence, he would make statements that could get people going, white segregationists going, so we weren t sure about that. The other thing to remember about the University of Alabama that I think was absolutely crucial was the fact that the President, Frank Rose, wanted the University integrated. And that was a very important thing. Once we got through George Wallace s show, he was determined that more blacks, more African Americans would be admitted and that the school would become integrated. And I think that was, again, a very important factor not present in the slightest degree at the University of Mississippi, and it had not been present before in the other integration attempts. So I think that was crucial. I would have liked it if George Wallace couldn t have had his show. [laughter] I would have preferred that, despite the fact that it probably put me on the map. But it would have been preferable, in my view, the other way, except for the fact that there would be no hope of George Wallace being able to keep people under control if he didn't have his show. That was the basic difficulty of that. MS. JONES: Well, some commentators have said his having that show helped catapult him into into presidential politics. MR. KATZENBACH: Yes, he s not the only unsuccessful candidate... (inaudible). [laughter]

15 PAGE 15 MS. JONES: Good answer. Tony, you had your hand up? Oh, I'm sorry Burke. MR. MARSHALL: Elaine MS. JONES: Nick, had you finished? I'm sorry. Nick, had you finished? MR. KATZENBACH: I said all I'm going to say at the moment. It depends very much on what Tony says. MS. JONES: I'm sorry, I ll come back to you, Jim. Go ahead, Tony? MR. LEWIS: Well, Nick, if you hadn't said it first, I was going to point out that George Wallace had made you famous. [laughter] Elaine, as you know, I have to leave early. MS. JONES: Yes, I do, and regrettably, we're sorry. MR. LEWIS: I'm sorry about that. But there was something I wanted to say before we entirely left Birmingham and the movement. And that is I guess it s very obvious, but maybe, because as I said earlier, people don t remember anymore or don t know about the past, it s necessary just to say a word about Dr. King and his belief in nonviolence.

16 PAGE 16 I think you've heard enough today from those who participated to understand how very difficult it was in human terms to be nonviolent under the provocations that human beings suffered in Birmingham and the rest of Alabama and Mississippi. [applause] Which of us could be nonviolent when people wanting nothing but the right to vote would be chain whipped, as we heard described, or killed, or whatever? And it was the extraordinary courage of Dr. King that enabled him to believe in and convey that belief and convince others that nonviolence, painfully difficult though it was, was likely to be the most effective method at bringing about change. But there was another factor in it. I think that's what distinguishes Dr. King, powerful and wonderful as many other leaders of the movement was, I think it s what distinguishes him and makes him, when I see a film of him talking, it just makes the hair stand on the back of my neck. But there was an element in it that we mustn t forget. Dr. King s theory that nonviolence would work depended entirely on his belief that Americans generally, those of us in the north that is, outside of the affected areas of the south, would dislike what we learned about the brutal and violent tactics of racism when we were confronted with it. Most Americans outside the south really were not familiar with the reality of segregation and discrimination, and they were confronted with it and didn't like it. They didn't like the pictures of those dogs, and they didn't like what they read about Sheriff Clark and the others. And it was that reaction of the public at large that helped to bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which did transform the American south in political terms.

17 PAGE 17 I was in Birmingham, as it happens, last week, and I will tell you Bull Connor couldn t in his most fervid imagination have imagined what Birmingham, Alabama is like today. [applause] So I want just one more word. You know Gandhi, on whose philosophy Dr. King based his, in a sense had the same bet. He bet that the British colonial institutions would not be able to withstand the demonstration of cruelty and discrimination. Now, Gandhism or Dr. King s philosophy, would not work with a Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler; they wouldn't care, opinion couldn't react. But we were lucky enough in this country to have an opinion that did react and to have a leader like Dr. King who understood the potential. MS. JONES: Thank you very much. [applause] Now, let s jump over to Mississippi for a few minutes. Myrlie and Ted and Burke, whoever wants to join in, because there are demonstrations and activities going on at the same time in Mississippi, and I know that there are discussions in Washington about this. I know the organization that I'm proud to serve, the Legal Defense Fund, the lawyers, Jack Greenberg and the lawyers in Alabama and Mississippi and, you know, got all these folks in jail and they're trying to defend them, the Freedom Riders. Now, at this time in Mississippi the sit-ins were going on and a lot of demonstrations across the country as well -- in Baltimore, Maryland, Atlanta, Georgia, across. But during this period, Myrlie, your husband initiated several

18 PAGE 18 campaigns, the Woolworth lunch counter in Greenwood. Just give us a sense of that leading into this assassination? MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS: I thought you were going to tell me that I ve already talked about it, but thanks for giving me an opportunity. I ll try to repeat some of the things here. MS. JONES: You have, I know. That's all right. I can t jump over that today, okay. MS. EVERS-WILLIAMS: I would like to address just very briefly this nonviolence concept of Dr. King that you brought up, sir. There was a discussion that went on for years in Mississippi as to whether we should be nonviolent or not. It was a struggle. I speak to Medgar as a reference because he was the leader in Mississippi for a little over nine years. His attitude initially was one of not turning the other cheek, of not being nonviolent. He felt that the only way that his people could be free was to have highly strategic plans to strike back. Our son, our first child, was named Kenyatta long before it became the thing to name your children after an African leader. Burning spear is what it means. I link that in conjunction with what we've talked about the music and the church. Because it was Medgar s mother who said, That is not the way to go. Because there were plans, there were machine guns that were broken down in parts that were scattered throughout the state, particularly in the delta, and I often wondered how could it be that if parts of a machine gun were in three different locations, how

19 PAGE 19 would they ever get them back to one place where they could put it together and use it if necessary? I just want to point out it was not always the thought that it would be a nonviolent revolution. But it came to be that and people embraced it. But it was the church, it was the belief, it was the songs, it was the soul searching and Dr. King that finally brought, I think, many people in Mississippi to the fact that we should be nonviolent in our moves. Yes, there were demonstrations, demonstrations I ve talked about downtown -- don t buy gas where you can t use the restroom. The demonstrations where the mayor of Jackson had his Thompson tank which police stayed inside of that tank armed with their tear gas and their masks that they used on the students particularly. There were also those who, and I ve already mentioned this, who were thrown in the concentration camps. Elaine, if you would, just allow me one brief moment to read a telegram that Medgar sent to President Kennedy. MS. JONES: What's the date of that, Myrlie? MS. EVERS-WILLIAMS: June 1 st, The White House. Please, mistreatment of Negro children and their parents reported behind barbed wire confines of Jackson concentration camp. City, county and state law officers involved. Medical attention being denied. Injured in some cases. Urge immediate investigation by Justice Department agents of these denials of Constitutional rights to peaceful demonstrations and protests. And it s signed NAACP, Medgar Evers,

20 PAGE 20 field secretary, 1072 Lynch Street, Jackson, Mississippi. And Lynch Street was the street named for a very prominent legislator, but we also took it to mean something else, too, Lynch Street, and you can go from there. But it was difficult within the NAACP, which was predominant in Mississippi, to sanction marches. The national office did not want that to take place. And it was Medgar s persuasiveness of saying to Roy Wilkins, You must come on the scene. You must be on the scene to know what it s like, join us. And that was the first time that a leader of the NAACP had come to Mississippi -- and this was just about two weeks, I believe, before Medgar s death -- armed with picket signs, Medgar, Roy Wilkins and a host of others walking down the main street of Jackson, Mississippi which was captured by the news. Let me mention this, that the media was not always present in these demonstrations, particularly in the first part of the struggle in Mississippi. Let me say to you that they refused to cover any activities that we had. Any time a black person was on television, which was rare, the cameras went, or the screen went black. There was no definition as to what had happened, it just went black until that person was off and that was it. So the news media did not find what was happening in Mississippi as particularly sexy until much later on when we did have Birmingham, we had Dr. King and the others. So there's a great deal of what happened in terms of demonstrations there that were not captured by the media. Also, the local newspapers, particularly the largest one in the State of Mississippi at that time, would run a front page ad, and I'm calling it an ad, in the center of the

21 PAGE 21 front page with a black line around it, always calling for the blood of uppity Negroes in Mississippi who were challenging the system, who were demonstrating, and said that blood should flow red in the streets of Jackson and throughout the state. It was that kind of atmosphere in which the demonstrations, limited as they were in the beginning but began to increase toward June, that people were involved in and began to come out in massive numbers to be active. MS. JONES: All right. Eleven days after that telegram, Medgar Evers was assassinated. Ted, I want you, if you will, to discuss with us President Kennedy s reaction to the assassination of Medgar Evers and then go on from there to discuss the President s address to the nation and the new civil rights legislation, if you will. And then I want after that, Ed Williams will pick up and add his thoughts on that subject. TED SORENSEN: The President was horrified by the Evers assassination. The President knew about Medgar Evers and received the telegram to which Myrlie referred and had hoped that his speech the night before might somehow begin, start the country down a new path in which that kind of violence would not take place. Let me step back just a moment to put all of these events that we've been talking about in the President s perspective. Because during these months that have been under discussion here, there was a growing realization on the part of the President what had to be done and that a statutory basis for government intervention and protection was required. And then it was a matter of time in some ways, Elaine, comparable to decisions made within the last several months as to timing of what

22 PAGE 22 issues should be presented to the U.S. Supreme Court for Affirmative Action. You sometimes are frustrated into going immediately for what you need. The President knew it was a matter of time, and he wanted to act. And the question was when would that time come? And let's give credit where credit is due: Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and Wyatt T. Walker and many people that have been mentioned here today, and all the demonstrators and students get tremendous credit for making that time, June 11 th, But I have to say that they were greatly aided by Bull Connor and Sheriff Jim Clark and Governor George C. Wallace, who demonstrated to the country as a whole the brutality of what was going on in the south. So the President, and I, and I think Attorney General Kennedy, were in the Oval Office as well, and watched Nick and Governor Wallace go through this performance on the University of Alabama that made it possible for Jim and Vivian Malone to enter. And the President turned around and said to me, Well, we have to give that speech tonight. Now, when he said that speech, he was talking about something that had been percolating in our minds and discussions for, I would say, months, perhaps only weeks. And the idea that we were going to suddenly give it in a couple of hours from now set me into some state of concern. It s not true -- I wish Tony Lewis were here to hear me -- it s not true, the President didn't have a complete text when he went on the air. Of course, I wouldn't be derelict in my duty and not make sure

23 PAGE 23 [laughter] that he wouldn't have a complete text. It s true he didn't have one five minutes before air time, but he did have a complete text. You saw in the little video that was played at the beginning the network announcer say, The President is going to speak about the admission of black students, Negro students, to the University of Alabama. That was only the first sentence of the speech. The rest of the speech was an unprecedented statement by the President of the United States that discrimination and segregation on the basis of race no longer had any place in American society, and that he was determined to send to the Congress the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in history, and that he was determined upon more than that as a moral issue, as he said, as a Constitutional issue, to see to it that second class citizenship on the basis of race no longer existed in this country. And I ve never been prouder of John F. Kennedy than I was at that moment. MS. JONES: And so one week after the assassination of Medgar Evers, the Hill got that bill, got their legislation. MR. SORENSEN: The Hill got the bill and it was widely predicted at the time that it had no chance whatsoever. We forget -- take a look at the list of who were the chairmen of the committees in Congress that had to consider that legislation. Every one of them was from the deep south, strongly opposed to this legislation. I'm sorry to say that when President Kennedy was elected in 1960, after civil rights legislation had failed in the summer of 1960, we lost 20 progressive democratic seats. And as a result, the so-called Dixiecrat Coalition, the conservative

24 PAGE 24 democrats from the south and the conservative republicans, really controlled the United States Congress and we knew we had an uphill fight on our hands. MS. JONES: Eddie, did you and Nick want to add anything to that? About the mood of Congress and the sense of the reluctance of some of maybe the northern democrats to support the bill and some of those issues? ED WILLIAMS: Well, Ted s right, that given the cast of characters in Congress at that time, the bill didn't stand much of a snowball s chance. But it did several things. It got the President on record in a very passionate and firm way in support of civil rights and this sent a powerful message to Dr. King and to people in the civil rights movement and those outside as well. And I think many of the concerns after that became how can we be helpful in mobilizing public opinion to get that Congress to be more receptive to civil rights legislation? The other thing that I recall from the and, of course, that legislation from the President did indeed set the table for the civil rights bill that was passed the following year. So the table was set by that effort. In addition to all of the factors that we've heard, and I think this discussion has been fascinating, particularly for someone who was not in the movement, but who had been fortunate enough to get to various positions of upward mobility so that I could observe things that were going on. And so much of what I'm hearing has really a lot of meat and substance to the things that we have read about, or to the things that some of us witnessed. But in addition to all of the factors that were taking place, I would just like to say there's another factor that we don t say very much about that I think weighed in to

25 PAGE 25 some extent on the White House. We're talking about a period in which the United States was involved in a protracted Cold War with the Soviet Union. And all of this activity, as painful as it was to us in this country, was an enormous embarrassment to the United States abroad. And there was some significant coverage overseas, particularly by some people who were not all that interested and supportive of the United States. And I think that's why, one reason why, the President, when he came into office, created this new initiative that I mentioned earlier to deal with these problems, racist problems, discriminatory problems that African diplomats were having to deal with. Remember that between the late 1950s and 62, colonialism was dying, had died. More and more African countries were getting to be independent. First thing they wanted to do was send an ambassador to Washington and one to the United Nations. And sometimes it was the same person. And to move back and forth, they drove up and down something called Route 50, which was one of the most racist truck routes, I think, or highways in the country. And they had all kinds of problems. And so this, too, was giving the Administration fits because after all, these people had a fantastic platform in the United Nations and they also had votes that we were concerned about. So this gets caught up also in the mixture of factors having to do with where we were at that time. MS. JONES: Thank you, Eddie. Let me fast forward if I might to August, the March on Washington. And I know there were some discussions within the Administration about what to do about all these people coming to Washington and

26 PAGE 26 how should this be managed. I want to hear from the Administration s perspective, then I ll talk to Prathia and Dorothy and Myrlie about the organizing and the planning. But whoever wants to pick that up, that's either Burke Marshall or Nick Katzenbach or Ted or Eddie? Don't be bashful. MR. MARSHALL: I'm sure there were varying views in the Administration. But as far as the Department of Justice is concerned, I think the President, I'm not speaking for all the Cabinet members, their purpose, clearly, in the summer of 1963 when this march was planned and was going to happen, was to make it successful. And the problem for an organizer, manager, a person that deals with the real world in a practical way, like Robert Kennedy, was to take care of the sort of infrastructure of a march in a way that the organizers of the march couldn t do. And that involved making sure what the police were going to do, making sure what roads were going to be closed, making sure there were plenty of public toilets, making sure that it could be a march that worked. I remember that I was told early in the summer about that march. Dick Gregory came to see me. Dick Gregory often came to see me at that time, still is a prominent black entertainer, but also a civil rights leader of some note. He came to see me and he said, Now, I know there are people around here that are worried about the march. But I ll tell you, it s going to be like a Sunday school picnic. And it was like a Sunday school picnic.

27 PAGE 27 Now, I may say that I'm talking about the attitude and the reception of the Administration, the executive branch. The Congress left town. The Congress thought that it was going to be some sort of a revolution, they didn't know what was going to happen with all these civil rights people thronging the mall and thronging the streets of Washington. So by and large, not all of them, but by and large, they sort of got out of town and wanted to not be around. MS. JONES: Nick, did you want to add anything to that? I see you, Ted. Nick, did you want to add anything? MR. KATZENBACH: Yes, I do want to add something. What I want to add to that is this. The Administration thought it was important, and I think it was looking over its shoulder at Congress to some extent, that that march demonstrate the purpose of the Civil Rights Act. It was important that the groups that were for civil rights be participating in that march. And it was an integrated march and a lot of that was Walter Ruther s efforts. Because that was going to be important, we thought, in terms of the Congress. It s also important to remember in terms of that legislation that we saw no way we were going to get civil rights legislation unless we could persuade the Republicans to come along. Not one by one, so to speak, but we had to get the chairman, the ranking minority member and the committees to do this, and those were Ed McCulloch and Dirksen.

28 PAGE 28 And finally, if I could just go back one minute and say one thing about the proposal on that legislation, it is true, as Ted says, that nobody thought There was a lot of publicity that it had no possibility. But at least it was my experience with John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy that they did not like to lose. And I think when that legislation went down there, Bobby Kennedy expected us to get it enacted. And that was what I thought my marching orders were, and I was determined that that was going to happen because I did not want to face Robert Kennedy if I could not make that succeed. And that's why I almost became an alcoholic in the back rooms. [laughter] MS. JONES: He said almost, everybody. Ted? MR. SORENSEN: Well, Nick is absolutely right. John F. Kennedy would not have sent any legislation to Congress merely for political, symbolic purposes, which is why he had not sent it before. To what may seem like a digression, let me tell you about the time that a pacifist group met with the President in the White House after telling him to disarm in the middle of the Cold War and so forth. They said, Well, I suppose we're just wasting your time, sorry to do that. And he said, No, this is not a waste of time. He said, The human heart works through systole and diastole, and that's what makes it beat. I'm getting all kinds of pressure from the other side to increase weapons expenditures every day. I appreciate getting some pressure from you. That's the way he felt about the demonstration. So many people have said that Kennedy was opposed to demonstrations and the civil rights effort. Not true at all.

29 PAGE 29 Kennedy wanted and needed that pressure, and he knew that if the March on Washington turned out to be a disaster and a free-for-all that would antagonize the Congress, that would be very bad for his effort. But if he knew it was the kind of constructive pressure on the Congress and education for the country that it turned out to be, it was a real blessing. MS. JONES: Okay. Prathia, Dorothy or Jim, you want to have anything to say about who was in the march? Who came? MS. COTTON: I just want to say, incidentally, that we got wind of the fact that we should keep the pressure on in terms of demonstrations. MS. JONES: Well, you did a good job. [laughter] MR. SORENSEN: We were hoping... (inaudible) was too much. MS. JONES: Ted, we knew that you all needed us out in the street. Eddie, would you tell us a word about the participants in the march? The broad array of organizations and groups that were there? MR. WILLIAMS: Well, Elaine, I was going to say that my role was to give money and show up, and I did both. [laughter] But it was a very broad cross section of people. I remember the buses kept coming and the labor movement had put together a great effort, organizations had put together a great effort. There were marshals all over the place. You could cut the tension in Washington with a knife,

30 PAGE 30 both in the white community and in the black community because there was the anxiety about something happened. If it wasn't the marchers, then some other outside force. And we heard about the marshaling of the military that the Administration had put forward, apparently troops across the river were ready to come in and seize or to do whatever. One of my vignettes from it is that that morning, I was sitting in the State Department and some of my white colleagues -- I had had very much conversation with them -- they kept coming by saying, Eddie, when are we going to go over to the Lincoln Memorial? When we going to go? So about noon, I and my white delegation [laughter] went over to the Lincoln Monument. I think they were anticipating trouble and hoping that I could be their ambassador of good will. MS. JONES: We just have a few more minutes. I have a couple of quick issues. One, I want a few words about the Birmingham bombing in September that was after the march. And Prathia and Myrlie will just give us some idea of the impact of that, in brief. And then after that, from each panelist, I want a real, I want a very short, two or three sentences, about the impact of your experiences and all that you have learned over the past, whatever it is, 35 years and what impact do you think it s had today, what you've taken from it and what you can use today, what lessons. Now, you can think about that while we get these two or three quick comments on Birmingham and the bombing. MS. HALL: I think we can say something about even the last, your last question in this. Because I think the ultimate impact is that we're still at it. And what

31 PAGE 31 makes us show up for a panel such as this one? We're recruiting. We're hoping that somehow our conversations, our sharing, will inspire somebody to believe that we can do it again. [applause] In that regard, then, it is important for us not to romanticize the movement. And there have been a couple of efforts here, Myrlie spoke about the issue of violence. After all, we were working in southern rural communities where a part of the historical culture was to sleep with the rifle beside your bed. There were pressures, not only external pressures on the movement, but there were pressures within the movement. So that at the historic March on Washington, there were two drafts of the speech which John Lewis would give. And there was extraordinary pressure from the other civil rights organizations for John to modify his speech and to tone it down. And of course, that was a consistent pressure on SNCC: tone it down, tone it down. And there was some compromise in that regard. But I think it was not the whole church. It was churches and some church leaders. But there was always also a very conservative component of the church which not only did not respond because the fear of retaliation, but did not respond because it did not believe that this was the way to go. We ve always heard you don't mix religion and politics. And, yet, the mainstream of the African American church, like our African heritage, does not separate the religious and the political. And so this integration, this movement, this church movement that we saw in the modern civil rights movement did not grow up like a weed, it didn't just happen,

32 PAGE 32 but came out of a long stream of the African American religious heritage in which the religious and the political are integrated. MS. JONES: Myrlie, what do you think we get from all of this? MS. EVERS-WILLIAMS: I'm going to put in a couple of things that I tried to get in before. Yes, I know you're looking at your watch. But there are, usually in our lives, something that we feel very proud of, something that we regret. One of the things, and I have to say this, is that I met with President Kennedy the day that Medgar was buried at Arlington Cemetery, and he presented to me a draft copy of the Civil Rights Bill, and he autographed it for me and told me how much he appreciated everything that had happened that Medgar had done. Moving on to the march, I must say this, too, organizers felt that women should have a voice. It s the first time I think that kind of came out in the civil rights movement, okay? I was on my way trying to get through that crowd, to get there to speak. Daisy Bates spoke on my behalf, or spoke on behalf of all women. What did we learn from all of this? Is that you must believe in something. When you believe in something and hopefully it is good and right and just, you must be willing to persevere and pay a price, if necessary, to see that it comes about. And just because you have made some gains along the way does not necessarily say that the battle or the struggle is over. That you must always be alert, because if Americans look at where we are today, I think we're still asking ourselves the

33 PAGE 33 question, What is it that we want to be? Are we really ready to give everyone an equal opportunity? Is the playing field really level? And I think answers will come back no, because there are too many people struggling. It says to us that there is still a struggle in American society, and for all of those who feel that justice and equality should prevail, that opportunities should be there for all of us, we should not at this point in time simply look back on 1963, but gain energy, gain momentum, to do whatever we must do at this point in time to eliminate once and for all, all of the ills of that period. [applause] MS. JONES: Burke? Any concluding thoughts? MR. MARSHALL: Well, I don't know if this is a negative thing to say or not, but in 1963, in fact all the time that I was working in the Administration of President Kennedy and President Johnson after him, we were dealing, we the country, the Administration, with symbols. I mean, none of this, in a way, accomplished a revolution in race relations. Everything was a token. Now, tokens are important, of course, but we're talking about opposition to six children in a school, opposition to where you sat on a bus, opposition to being served a hamburger at a lunch counter, opposition to using a library on the same terms as other people. These matters, which defined the society in the southern states and at least typified the society throughout the country, were just steps that had to be taken against violent opposition and great political opposition, probably more than any of you could realize now that had to be taken. But as I think everybody realizes, they

34 PAGE 34 were just starts. I mean, everything that happened in 1963 were starts. The passage of the act that took place in 1964, which was President Kennedy s act, and I agree with Nick and Ted that despite the wisdom of the press and the wisdom of people that covered Congress, I thought that was inevitably going to be passed, regardless of the chairmanships of the committees and everything. But all of those matters were preliminary steps to a notion of an integrated society, a racially just society that we are still seeking. And so when I look around 35 years later, I say good, but I see that we're still seeking it. And the notion that it s over and done with and that there's no more job to be done by government programs as well as private programs that bring people in, especially black people, African Americans, into every segment of society and every piece of power, is nonsense. I think there's much to be done, and I regret greatly what I see going on in California and in the courts, including my subject matter at law school, the Supreme Court of the United States, that seems to rest on a premise that it s all over with. [applause] MS. JONES: Thank you. Jim? MR. HOOD: I guess my comments would be perhaps four things that I want to leave you with. One is MS. JONES: In a minute and a half.