**Martha:** Okay. You all think about it. I'm gonna let my very good
friend, Glen Eskew. I met Glen about four years ago. I was a part of a
seminar and Glen was our- our master scholar. And I was just enthralled
with him and then I forgot his real name, I was just enthralled and I
thought, "Oh my goodness, this is the smartest man I've ever seen." He
knows so much. But he is my very, very good friend. I think I've told
you all that for the last three summers, I've done it, because of Glen.
Because of him and meeting him, I- I- I decided this has to continue and
I started at Stoney because of him. But he's my good friend. Make him
feel welcome. Okay? And you all- you've got your notebooks and your
pens. You're gonna take notes. I think you're gonna be fascinated with
this man. Dwight.

**Dwight**: Everything Martha says about Glen is true. Uh.. this- this
seminar has been a bit like wide- riding the crest of a wave. I mean,
we're taking advantage of opportunities, we're meeting with people that
we probably never in our life would otherwise have a chance to meet
with. Uh.. they're gonna be gathered tonight and then you'll have a
chance to talk with some the people at the supper if you go to that. But
it's been true through the whole weekend. And so we need some way to
kind of pull things back into focus periodically and Glen is our
opportunity to kind of pull things in every once in awhile and make
connections between some of the people that we're meeting, some of the
things that we're doing. Uhm.. so this- this is an opportunity to- that
makes it better- makes us better able to take advantage of the opp-
opportunities that are all around us, last weekend and this weekend.
Uhm.. but Glen is an Associate Professor of History at Georgia State
University. Uhm.. he's been writing about the Civil Rights Movement for
years. Uhm.. the- the book that he is known for, which is somewhere in
transit and you will get sooner or later, uhm.. is But for Birmingham.
It's a study of Birmingham as kind of the central event or the- the
turning point in the Civil Rights Movement. A lot of focus on Reverend
Shuttlesworth but also branching out to cover all of the stuff that's
going on during the Civil Rights uh.. Movement, at that time. And that's
the time just immediately before we start coming into Selma. Birmingham
was uh.. in 1963, then we passed the Voting Rights- the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, then we had Selma, and then we passed the Voting Rights Act of
1965. And so Birmingham is- is this kind of turning point. But uhm..
he's- he's good all the way across the board but one of the things that
we've talked about a little bit is issues of class, of those economic
issues that we still haven't fully addressed, and this is one of the-
the kind of central issues in the book, But for Birmingham. And so Glen,
we'll turn it over to you and let you do everything for us.

**Glen Eskew:** \<laughs\> Well thanks Dwight. Uh.. and thank you for
uh.. being here this afternoon. I look forward to spending a couple of
days with you. I'm delighted with the opportunity of participating in
this, uh.. and also of getting to meet you. And so uh.. please let me
ask you, while uh.. I go on talking about history and- and the Civil
Rights Movement and uh.. try to relate some of these larger events uh..
to social change, I hope if you've got questions that you'll raise your
hand or interject and uh.. please ask them uh.. so that we can discuss
it. Uh.. I did get kind of a large uh.. order here. The subject for my
afternoon talk is the modern Civil Rights Movement which is kind of
broad and sweeping. Uh.. and uh.. I understand that, gosh, you all
didn't get the readings that you were assigned, so you haven't done your
homework. Is that right? Rotten luck isn't it? Uh.. \<laughs\>. That's
what my students at Georgia State say too when they uh.. haven't been
able to get their readings done. Uhm.. I want to begin with uh.. just
some general uh.. kind of a sweeping analysis of where the Civil Rights
Movement might have come from. A problem? No. Uh.. the uhm.. why did
folks end up here, in- in Dallas County? Let's begin by looking at just
the whole uh.. connection of history and what brings us here to Selma
uh.. in 2004. Why did all these folks move into this area, in the 1820's
and '30's?

**Woman 1:** Cotton.

**Glen Eskew:** To grow cotton. Thank you. Uh.. cotton uh.. was king,
right? Uh.. this was the great frontier. Uh.. were there people here
before these folks started movin' in to grow cotton?

**Woman 2:** The Indians.

**Glen Eskew:** Sure, there were Indians. We call 'em Creek Indians.
Uh.. in fact, one of the sites on the uh.. historic trail between Selma
and Montgomery is uh.. near the site of the Battle of Holy Ground where
one of the major fights takes place between Creeks and settlers uh.. as
uh.. whites moving in uh.. take this land and then bring it under
cultivation. Okay? Uh.. cotton of course though was the reason for the
uh.. vast influx of black and white people into Dallas County. Uh.. and
that's important I think because what it also underscores is that uh..
the south, in Alabama and Dallas County, uh.. were en- uh.. people in
the south were engaged in agricultural production. They were engaged in
the growing of cotton. So the south's political economy was one premised
on agriculture. Any of you ever grown cotton? Well good. Do you want to
say anything about it Miss McKellars? Uh.. is it a easy plant to grow?

Miss McKellars: No, and it's not easy to pick, even by hand, and I hope
I never see any more.

**Glen Eskew:** Absolutely. I passed one field of cotton on my drive
over this morning from Atlanta. Cotton was a labor intensive crop. It
took a great deal of work to be able to grow the crop and then to pick
the crop and harvest it. It was a very profitable crop if you sold it at
the right time in the world market. But the folks who tended to make the
money from the selling of the cotton weren't the folks who did the labor
to grow it. And so you end up with a system of agriculture that exploits
people, exploits them uh.. for their labor, for their ability to grow
cotton. That system of agriculture lasted roughly from when settlement
begins in this area of Alabama- uh.. 1819 or so- uh.. until the collapse
of the cotton economy in the 1930's. So if we look at cotton remaining,
we can say through the 1930's. Uh.. and then by the 1960's we begin to
see a new kind of political economy begin to emerge, uh.. in Dallas
County, in the black belt of Alabama. What do people do today? Are they
still growing cotton?

**Woman 3:** Yes.

**Glen Eskew:** There is some cotton that's still grown, uh.. through
mechanization now. We've got big tractors and uh.. mechanical cotton
pickers, uh.. and that's uh.. still a crop that's grown in some areas.
But what else are people doing with the land?

**Woman 4:** Soybeans.

**Glen Eskew:** They're raising other crops- road crops like soybeans.
What else?

**Woman 5:** They're selling it for malls.

**Glen Eskew:** \<clears throat\> Selling it for malls and subdivisions
too. What about cows? Have you ever noticed any of the cows around this
area?

**Woman 5:** No.

**Glen Eskew:** Seen some cows? Any of you ever been on a dairy farm or
worked on a beef cattle farm, been around cows in your life? To just
thump the cows, is that all? Uh yeah.. cows. Uh.. if you shift from
cotton production of that pasture to the raising of cows, uh.. do you
need a large labor force to- to raise those cows? You really don't. If
you turn that land into land for the growing of pine trees, do you need
a large labor force for the raising of the trees? No you don't. So
suddenly what happens to all those folks who are out there working in
the cotton fields? \<clears throat\> They're outta luck. Right? And
increasingly they were outta jobs. Uh.. they moved into town. They came
to places like Selma. Uh.. they moved into the cities. Or they went
further away. They went to Detroit. They went to Philadelphia. They went
to New York, Chicago. Uh.. so then in other words, what we're looking at
is the sweep here of a large uh.. evolution of the south's economy. Uh..
and consequently then, we're looking at the ramifications of that, uh..
as far as it concerned the people who lived in that area. Let's back up
a minute more. Because there was a event that occurred and Selma likes
to tout it. Uh.. the Civil- the Civil War that took place uh.. in 1861
to 1865. \<clears throat\> That Civil War- uh.. a uh.. big bloody
conflagration between uh.. the south- white uh.. plantation owners but
also Yeoman farmers, folks who owned those slaves- 2/3 of the white
population owned those slaves uh.. in the Antibellum period- and
northerners over control of the Federal Government. Uh.. and what
happened to that confederacy that rose up and uh.. sought its
independence in the history of the south? Well, theoretically, by war
it's defeated. And in the aftermath of the war, we find Union forces
moving into this area, into Dallas County. In fact, there's a bit of a
skirmish that takes place here and Nathan Bedford Forrest, who later
will found the Ku Klux Klan but at this time was a Cavalry leader in the
confederacy. Uh.. Forrest is def- he's run out of town by the Union
Calvary under a- a General named Wilson. So there's even a battle that
takes place in this area. But at the same time, what we find in the
aftermath of the Civil War with the defeat of the Confederacy is an end
to slavery. \<clears throat\> And that end to slavery opened up all
kinds of opportunities. We call that period of opportunity,
reconstruction. \<clears throat\> And it's here in reconstruction that
we begin to see uh.. the effort to fulfill that promise, that all men,
and by extension and time women, were created equal, and to give
everyone the opportunity to be citizens in the United States of America.
And that was one of the outcomes of the defeat of the Confederacy and
the reincorporation of the south back into the Union was this effort to
create a true America in which all men, and in time women, were created
equal. And so we get coming out of uh.. reconstruction this effort uh..
to create a biracial society. Uh.. and that will lead to uh.. dramatic
changes in the way government operated. Uh.. we know of it as the 14^th^
and the 15^th^ Amendments to the Constitution. And these Amendments were
all about giving black folk access to the system as citizens voting
within a democracy. The 14^th^ is a bit broader than that but the 15^th^
was quite specific about uh.. protecting civil rights for voting. And
there were debates over equal access uh.. as consumers uh.. that will
briefly exist and then be defeated and- and ruled unconstitutional. Uh..
but this question of voting rights uh.. will be put into law during the
era of reconstruction when the 14^th^ and then the 15^th^ Amendments to
the Constitution are ratified. But the significance of this is very
important. If suddenly former slaves who had been forced into the cotton
fields to raise cotton for a master who owned the land were now equal
citizens in a democracy and able to vote, they wouldn't be voting for
the master and they wouldn't be protecting his interests in government.
And so what we find coming out of reconstruction is resistance. Those
Confederates who rode with Forrest didn't disappear with defeat. They
remained behind. And soon they remerge in the Ku Klux Klan and other
vigilante groups uh.. to force African Americans out of the political
system, to return to white supremacy\...- white supremacy by denying
those uh.. voting rights and in effect any effort to try to achieve
larger civil rights. And so then in short we get with reconstruction a
failed revolution. We get an effort to uh.. change the society and allow
for racial equality that is subverted and ultimately defeated, with the
promise denied. And that's a legacy that doesn't go away. It remains
under the surface. Uh.. and it's a legacy that ultimately will be uh..
brought back to the surface uh.. when uh.. change comes about in the
1930's through the 1960's. So if we see reconstruction failed and if
you've\-- have they gone to the Voting Rights Museum yet- Nashville?
Okay, good. Well then you've seen in the- in the hall there- they've got
wonderful exhibits that show uh.. the uhm.. whole reconstruction era and
the black political leaders who emerged from this era, uh.. and indeed
throughout the south, uh.. to gain access to the system and to uh.. as
the historian, W.E.B. Dubois would put it, black reconstruction to
reform the system to make it better. And yet when we find uh.. the Ku
Klux Klan in the defense of white supremacy, these folks being forced
out of the political system, then ultimately we'll take steps backwards.
One thing remains consistent throughout- the Antebellum Period into the
Postbellum Period. And that one thing that remained consistent was the
growing of cotton. And so what we're looking at then is a political
economy that doesn't change. What we're looking at then is a world in
which landowners uh.. who may no longer own their labor as slaves are
able to control their labor through sharecropping. And at the same time
we're looking at uh.. black folk who had been slaves now are still bound
to the land as sharecroppers, raising cotton, even though they're free.
And that system continues to exist and function into the 20^th^ Century,
at the same time uh.. as the Supreme Court rules against the Civil
Rights Act of 1875. As the uh.. 14^th^ and 15^th^ Amendments to the
Constitution are generally ignored uh.. throughout the deep south, uh..
we see uh.. the southern resistance to that uh.. revolutionary
experience of reconstruction being overturned uh.. with a court decision
known as Plessy versus Ferguson, in 18- whoops- 1896. Now did you read
about Plessy in your reader? I know you've got this Challenge of
Diversity and you've had some other materials. Uh.. what does Plessy do,
the Plessy decision in 1896? Yeah?

Brandon: Separate but equal.

**Glen Eskew:** Excellent Brandon. Separate but equal. And where's the
case coming from, do you recall? That's alright. Go ahead.

Brandon: It's- well, I mean, I know what it's about, kind of.

**Glen Eskew:** A- a fellow named Homer Plessy in Louisiana uh.. wants
to ride on a streetcar, and they've just passed a law saying if you're
black, you gotta sit in the back of the streetcar. And Plessy says, "I
don't wanna sit in the back of the streetcar. I paid the same price for
a ticket that the white guy paid. Why can't I sit in the front?" Uh..
and the courts ruled that as long as the accommodations are equal, they
can be separated by race. And that streetcar protest that Plessy engages
in in Louisiana is repeated across the south. You find it in Savannah
Georgia and elsewhere. It takes off all over the country as African
Americans, uh.. people of color, resist being segregated, resist this
separate but equal idea, demanding equal access to the system. That uh..
separation by race ultimately will lead to extreme discrimination by
race, so that the system operates in the interest of whites, uh.. at the
expense of blacks. And we find uh.. as a result of this uh.. the
governments uh.. tend to favor uh.. their white electorates uh.. and the
money that's expended in the school systems uh.. could be as much as
\$10.00 for every white pupil for every \$1.00 spent for black pupils-
uh.. that kind of extremism uh.. that was grounded in a defense of white
supremacy uh.. that comes about and is accepted in law because of the
Supreme Court ruling of Plessy versus Ferguson. Now I understand you all
have raised this question of uh.. Malcolm X and Dr. King and
assimilation into the system versus separatism from the system. Is that
right? Or you've kind of discussed it a little bit. Uh.. let me suggest
that those ideas were being thought about in this era too. Uh.. you have
folks who advocate assimilation. And you have folks who are advocating
separation. Uh.. perhaps the greatest uh.. advocate of assimilation in
the 19^th^ Century was a fellow named Frederick Douglas. And uh..
Frederick Douglas had been born a slave. He escaped slavery, uh..
becomes a free man, moves to the north, uh.. publishes a newspaper
advocating abolition, an end to slavery. Uh.. slavery is overthrown in
the Civil War. Uh.. Douglas will be appointed uh.. Ambassador to Haiti
uh.. from the United States Government. Uh.. he will continue to speak
out, but always advocating assimilation into the system, a- a end to
discrimination, an equal access within the system for black and white.
There's another guy though uh.. who by the turn of the century is
beginning to express a kind of separatism, a fellow by the name of
Booker T. Washington. I do believe ya all came across uh.. Dr.
Washington when you were at Tuskegee, didn't you?

**Woman 6:** Yes.

**Glen Eskew:** So you've- you've uh.. learned a bit about uh.. Booker
T. Washington there. What did he advocate? What did he promote?

**Woman 6:** He promoted improvement in the black race from within the
race.

**Glen Eskew:** Okay.

**Woman 6:** Pull yourself up with your bootstraps from slavery.

**Glen Eskew:** Very good. Very good.

**Woman 6:** Draw criticism of \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.

**Glen Eskew:** Exactly. Uh.. he- he advocated that uh.. we draw within.
And so he begins to express a kind of black nationalism. Have you heard
that language before- black nationalism? Uh.. Booker T. Washington is a
big exponent of black nationalism. Uh.. he creates the National Negro
Businessmen's League- a group of black businessmen promoting uh.. their
interest in common as a way of building black capital. Have you heard
that concept before? Uh.. as a way to promote the black community from
within. But Booker T. Washington was also criticized. He gave a very
famous speech in Atlanta in 1895 in which he said uh.. we can be as uh-
uh.. common as the fingers on the hand, yet as separate too uh.. as the
fingers themselves. Uh.. his idea was we can work within the white man's
world but we don't have to demand uh.. equality with the white man to do
it. We can separate ourselves from it, working within it when necessary
but also withdrawing from it. And consequently Washington was criticized
uh.. by a variety of people including uh.. a scholar, uh.. a black uh..
Ph.D. from Harvard University by the name of W.E.B. Dubois. Dubois uh..
comes about around the same time as Washington uh.. is at his height,
uh.. about the turn of the century, and Dubois uh.. had been raised in
the north, he uh.. had been educated in the north and in Europe. Uh..
and then he took a job down at Fisk University and at Fisk he begins to
come in contact with rural southern blacks and to admire and respect
their culture and society. And then he'll work at Atlanta University for
a good while. Uh.. and Dubois uh.. is an early advocate of assimilation
through the activities of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People. Have you ever heard of the NAACP? Of course. And
where do you know it from? In what context?

**Woman 7:** Dr. King.

**Glen Eskew:** Well uh.. King, he was a member. But uh..- yeah, go
ahead Brandon.

Brandon: Do you mean like the context as in- it was an interracial
organization during the Civil Rights Movement?

**Glen Eskew:** Well very good. Yeah. It was. It was started as an
interracial organization by descendents of abolitionists who were
responding to Plessy versus Ferguson. They were saying, "We're not going
to allow our government to promote this kind of separation. Instead,
we're going to martial our resources and advocate assimilation." Uh..
and black folk tend to run the thing. They've got white supporters who
are in it too, uh.. in these early years. A fellow named Walter White, a
black guy from Atlanta, will become Executive Director. And W.E.B.
Dubois will for many years publish uh.. the newspaper for the NAACP.
It's called The Crisis. Uh.. one thing the NAACP will do in its early
years is emphasize lynching and the lynching of black people in the
south and the horrific uh.. act of lynching as a uh.. defense by a white
community to reinforce uh.. white supremacy as a- as a cultural
phenomenon, as a uh.. a brutal act to uh.. exert authority and at the
same time reinforce segregation within the society. Uh.. lynchings uh..
skyrocket uh.. from the period 1880 to about 1900 and then they begin to
taper down some. And it's at the height of that lynching that we've got
Booker T. Washington saying, "Look, we don't have to live with white
people- I mean, we can be separate." And my response would be, I- I can
understand why he would come up with that kind of logic. Who would want
to live with white folks when you're likely uh.. if you cross a line
with them, to get lynched? And it's important because by withdrawing,
what Washington does, is begin to create these black institutions that
reinforce the creation of a black middle class. And you've seen at
Tuskegee the significance of how that black community itself there is
able to do so much, uh.. from uh.. creating its own uh.. institute.
There's a university, uh.. hospitals, uh.. the- in Tuskegee, the Airmen
Project that comes about in World War II which demonstrates uh.. African
Americans can fly planes and not only fly them, they can uh.. protect
white pilots on these runs into Europe. A great war record. They never
lost a single uh.. plane on a convoy. Uh.. so Washington's message kinda
reinforces that ability within separatism. But it wasn't the ultimate
objective in race reform uh.. because that tended to fall back on this
idea of assimilation. At the same time, we've got the legacy of Plessy.
And then we also see dramatic change taking place. I suggest to you
cotton began to collapse in the 1930's and is pretty much played out as
a large scale agricultural system by the 1960's. Uh.. what else happens
in the 1930's? There's a big climatic event- anybody recall?

Chris: The Great Depression.

**Glen Eskew:** Yeah. The Great Depression, Chris. Uh.. and the Great
Depression was a devastating thing. You'd be amazed. Over 1/4^th^ of the
people who lived in Birmingham in the 1930's were unemployed. Can you
imagine that kind of destitution? Being unemployed, unable to even get
food. And I understand you all learned a little bit about uh.. Virginia
Durr, the other day. Right? When- last week. A wonderful lady, uh.. grew
up a socialite in Birmingham, uh.. among the wealthy and the elite set,
over the mountain. And Virginia Durr was in the Junior League- one of
these private ladies social clubs. And she couldn't understand why
Barber's Dairy and these other dairies in Birmingham were dumping milk
down the sewers when people were hungry. And she began to realize that
there were just some things with the system that were wrong. And it
charged her and she got involved. Now from what I understand about your
reading last week, you all focused on Virginia Durr and her effort to
overthrow the poll tax. Right? Uh.. and Virginia Durr, she pops up again
in Montgomery in 1955/56 when her friend, Rosa Parks gets arrested.
Right? So Virginia was always there at just the right moment. But in the
'30s she begins to advocate in Washington, D.C. with Franklin D.
Roosevelt for reform. And she joins with other southern people who were
in Washington advocating change, because change was afoot in the region.
The old cotton economy, which had been premised on a kind of
paternalism, in which the white man ran everything and if you were black
you approached him with hat in hand and asked. Right? Expecting to get
nothing and then happy if you got something because it was a pretty
miserable existence and everybody was poor. Uh.. in the Great
Depression, that paternalism extended to the white folks too. In the
textile mills, even here down in Selma when you had whites working or in
Birmingham at Avondale where you got whites working in the mills, or
elsewhere where there's a kinda paternalistic culture. Well the whole
thing collapses and those whites in the mills are let go with their
jobs, just like black folks on the farms are told, "We don't need you
sharecropping any more. You can move." And suddenly the whole economy
begins to become unraveled. And had not uh.. World War II come about,
uh.. in 1941, and the buildup towards the war in '40 and '39, uh.. the
economy might never have been able to spend its way out of the
depression we were in. But the war changed things. It allowed
opportunity, and once that opportunity began with war, we begin to see
the south's political economy change. And that change was significant,
because it meant new opportunities. And those opportunities shifted away
from the old paternalism. Rather than being uh.. kept on a farm and
provided with food and never really paid a cash wage, suddenly with the
new uh.. political economy that emerges we see jobs- jobs that paid
cash. And by the '40's and '50's manufacturing plants pop up throughout
the south. And the future becomes one of getting a job, getting
employment, so that you can earn income. Now what're you gonna do with
income? What're you gonna do with wages?

**Man 1:** Spend it.

**Glen Eskew:** Spend it. Sure. Uh.. and if you spend it, then you're
promoting an entire economy. You're suddenly buying into things and you
get expansion and growth. You get new opportunities, new businesses, new
stores coming in. Right? Uh.. and that was the beginnings of the south's
consumer economy. Prior to this, there wasn't a lot of cash to buy stuff
with. Uh.. and oftentimes, you- you tended to be supplied with things
for credit. Alright. This is all key to our Civil Rights Movement,
because in the 1950's we begin to see black folks sayin', "We want
access to this system. We want a job. We want a job so we can be paid
wages. And we want wages so we can buy stuff. We wanna live in a better
house. We wanna live in a neighborhood that's got paved roads and
sidewalks and street lights." Right? And suddenly you get all these new
demands in the 1950's and you get folks uh.. trying to get access to the
system, wanting a job. Now you all are in school. Right? Why are you in
school?

**Woman 8:** To get an education.

**Glen Eskew:** To get an education. What're you gonna do with your
education, Miss Franchella?

Miss Franchella: I'm gonna take it to college and then gonna take it to
grad school so I can get me the highest degree possible and get me a
good payin' job.

**Glen Eskew:** You got the answer. That's it in a nutshell. Right?
That's the whole thing today. We want a job, and the way we want a job
is to get the best job that we know or think we can do. Right? And the
key is an education. And so you get through high school. Of course, it's
also the law so you're here because it's the law too. Right? Uh.. but
you get your high school education and you get into a good college. You
get your college education and then if you can and you want to, you go
on to grad school, which is a smart thing to do today, or the
professional schools. Right? Become a lawyer or a doctor or whatever.
And then you get out and you make that money. Well that's what folks
were thinkin' in the '50's. They said, "Look, we want a good job. We
want good wages." And to get the best job, they had to have a good
education. And they knew that the segregated system of education that
existed in the south was unequalled. And NAACP picks up on that real
quick. And that begins- and- whoops- at NAACP, it begins its challenge-
Plessy versus Ferguson- focusing on the very obvious situation of the
inequality in the school systems. And they use a variety of cases. We
know it as the Brown versus Topeka, in the Board of Education in Kansas,
but there's also the Clarington County case coming out of South
Carolina. A number of cases that all came down to the same point- racial
inequality, spending in the schools, gave you an inferior education as
far as compared to the white schools if you were stuck in the black one
because they didn't spend enough money for the quality of the education
that you were getting. So you get uh.. Brown versus Board\... in 1954.
Uh.. the Supreme Court ruling, "separate but equal" was inherently
unequal and therefore unconstitutional- illegal. You can't do it
anymore. And that's a turning point. It's a turning point. Because it
begins to set the precedent that will be followed uh.. with other
decisions, all designed to break down the system of segregation, the
system of separation that had been created to maintain white supremacy.
How do white folks respond to Brown? Yeah?

Chris: They don't pay any attention so they just keep on doing what they
were doing.

**Glen Eskew:** Very good- very good observation Chris. Yeah, to a
degree that's true. They say, "Well, the court", you know, "will never
integrate the schools." Right? Uh.. and they think with....

Carol: Well it said, "with all deliberate speed." And who knows what all
deliberate speed is.

**Glen Eskew:** Excellent Carol. Uh.. yes. The Supreme Court responds in
1955 on how to implement the Brown decision and they responded by
saying, "Well, with all deliberate speed." Well what does that mean?
Right? With all deliberate speed.

**Woman 8:** Again, they denied a solution.

**Glen Eskew:** Well, that's like- as Chris's saying. Yeah, you just
continue to do what you're doin'. And here in Alabama, for the most
part, schools remained segregated into the 1960's. I mean, there were
some token schools that were integrated in '63, '64. Uh.. but generally
speaking, you see a lot of schools resisting it until the late '60's.
Uh.. but that said, in some places, uh.. like in the black belt here in
Alabama, uh.. when school desegregation was beginning to come about,
whites responded by pulling out and creating segregation academies.
Right? Separate white schools. Uh.. which has left us today with this
continued legacy of the problem of separate educational systems, uh..
throughout the south. It's not just in Alabama. It's- it's in
Mississippi. It's in Georgia. It's elsewhere. But whites responded a
little uh.. more strong- uh.. stronger than that Chris. Uh.. it wasn't-
it wasn't just with the education. But there was a- there was a gut
reaction, by some whites, uh.. to the Supreme Court's ruling and that
was, "The court be damned. We're not gonna have segregation." And you
began to see whites organizing resistance movements. Now we all know
what group had resisted equal rights for blacks. Right? What group's
that? It fought 'em all along from the Civil War on.

**Man 2:** The Ku Klux Klan.

**Glen Eskew:** The Ku Klux Klan. Right. The KKK had been around for a
long time. Actually it had gone through three different transitions in
its history. Uh.. but there was a new group that came about called the
White Citizens' Council that was formed in 1954 in response to the Brown
decision. It starts in Mississippi, it spreads to Alabama. Uh.. and
those folks were determined to maintain segregation. And so we see a
whole effort called massive resistance by whites to prevent school
desegregation. Uh.. and it takes place in Virginia, in Georgia and
elsewhere. Legislators will pass laws sayin' the minutes the court
integrate a school, we're gonna shut it down. Blacks and whites aren't
gonna go to school together. And most famously is George Wallace of
Alabama who stood in the schoolhouse door and promised he would never
allow school desegregation.

**Woman 9:** Oh my gosh.

**Glen Eskew:** And then of course- well, in '57. Right. Of course,
Wallace will back down. But it's important because you- you're
absolutely right there Miss McKellars. Uh.. in 1957, this logic plays
out in Little Rock. And I don't think you've got any readings yet on
Little Rock but if you get uh.. My Soul is Rested, there are elements in
there of some of the Little Rock Nine and what was going on in Arkansas
where Governor Orville Faubus responds to this challenge of massive
resistance. And his response uh.. of massive resistance is to shut down
Central High School, the main school in Little Rock. When the Federal
Courts order it desegregated in 1957, he closes it. And suddenly people
in Little Rock and the government of Arkansas realize, if you close the
school, it's not just the black kids who aren't gettin' educated. It's
the white kids too. And suddenly that whole strategy of massive
resistance was demonstrated to be what an utter failure. It not only
uh.. prevents blacks from gettin' educated but the whites don't get
educated. So nobody's going to be getting these better paying jobs. Uh..
in Georgia when this plays out in 1961, it's the housewives who get so
upset because I guess it's in their thinking, "You mean my kids are
gonna be staying home now? Let's open the schools back up so we can kid-
send those kids to school." Right? Alright. So the white trajectory of
resistance then by '57 as far as massive resistance fails. At this
point, we've got uh.. black communities themselves organizing to demand
access. Now I realize that in this- The Challenge of Diversity, you've
read a bit about the general trajectory of the Civil Rights Movement.
Why does Rosa Parks sit on the bus? Go ahead, Deidre.

Deidre: She was tired.

**Glen Eskew:** She was tired. Where did she sit?

**Woman 10:** In the front of the seats.

**Glen Eskew:** Well she kinda sits in the middle.

**Woman 11:** In the middle.

**Glen Eskew:** And it's- it's that middle ambiguous ground. It was kind
of- it was- it was kinda the black section when she got on it but then
it becomes the white section but she's tired, and she just says, "I'm
not gonna get up." And she challenges the segregation ordinance. Equal
access to the system. And ultimately, as it plays out in Montgomery,
that's exactly what we discover. The Civil Rights Movement realizes as
it emerges under the Montgomery Improvement Association, here is a
chance to challenge the law for equal access to the system. And the
challenge went from simply demanding courteous treatment on the bus as a
consumer- "Look we're- we're consuming this right to ride on the bus.
You can be nice to us." To saying, "We demand the right to sit wherever
we choose on that bus. We demand equal access." And Montgomery is
significant for a variety of reasons, one of which is it's the first
time the entire black community mobilizes. And the whole thing mobilizes
for access to the system. Uh.. I believe you've got the memoir of
Reverend Grouts \[ph?\] and he'll- he'll talk as a white man from the
north coming into Montgomery and seeing what's taking place as the only
white member of the MIA. But you've also got in that Howell Raines
reader, My Soul is Rested, some wonderful narrative descriptions of the
black folk who were engaging in that protest in Montgomery. Uh.. "My
feets is tired but my soul is rested", says the woman who's walking on
the road because she's not riding in the bus, and it's second class
treatment. If Montgomery in '55- in '56 marks this community coming
together, it also demonstrates the emergence of charismatic leadership
uh.. in the Civil Rights era, most notably uh.. in the form of Martin
Luther King Junior. But we get other folks too like the Reverend Ralph
Abernathy. On another day, uh.. I'll talk about uh.. some of these
leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. I think we're gonna do that on
Sunday. Uh.. but for now uh.. let me just put up Dr. King as a uh..
advocate of assimilation, because what Dr. King will come to advocate is
assimilation into the system. Uh.. and with the Montgomery bus boycott-
'55, '56- the court case they filed will be pushing for assimilation
into the system, as equal citizens. First-class citizenship they called
it. Uh.. but the idea was to get rid of the discrimination altogether to
see implemented the Brown decision which addressed school segregation
implemented across the board for a variety of these uh.. subjects, uh..
be it uh.. access to public transportation, uh.. access uh.. in a
restaurant, uh.. whatever it might be. Uh.. access to the system- Dr.
King uh.. in Montgomery. Uhm.. what else does Montgomery tell us? What
can you do with the movement? What happens in Montgomery after they get
access to the system and they can ride on the bus? Where does it go?

**Woman 12:** They boycott.

**Glen Eskew:** Well they do. There- there's a- there is a boycott that
continues in Montgomery, yeah.

**Woman 12:** They were boycotting them through the middle '60's.

**Glen Eskew:** On and off, yes they were, yeah- because white
Montgomery continued to refuse a lot of aspects of the desegregation.
Alright, let me ask you a different question then. What was significant
about the way they went about protesting in Montgomery?

**Woman 13:** Peaceful.

**Glen Eskew:** Peaceful.

**Woman 13:** No resistance.

**Glen Eskew:** Hum?

**Woman 13:** The peaceful resistance.

**Glen Eskew:** Peaceful resistance. Okay, I like that. Peaceful
resistance What's another way to look at it?

**Man 3:** Non-violent.

**Glen Eskew:** Who said that?

**Man 3:** Non-violent protest.

**Glen Eskew:** Non-violent protest. Exactly. Non-violence.
Non-violence. Uh.. and that's exactly what we get coming out of
Montgomery as well is this lesson of non-violence and the ability, the
power of non-violence. Uh.. it was a significant strategic move on the
part of King and the other leaders in uh.. Montgomery in the MIA. Uh..
and it was also a reflection of the strategy that had been advocated by
a variety of liberal groups uh.. that were in and out of Montgomery
advising King and others and suggesting you might try this. James Farmer
and others uh- uhm.. who uh..- Bayard Ruston- who were concerned uh..
that this is a strategic uh.. stra- a strategy that civil rights
advocates might address- uh.. promote uh.. to achieve their objectives,
because there was the realization that the white folks can be brutally
violent in their defense of segregation. And we know. That's quite clear
in Montgomery when Dr. King's house is bombed, uh.. and other uh..
houses and churches are bombed in response to this demand for access to
the system. Uh.. so we get non-violence as a strategy, that's developed
in Montgomery. And out of Montgomery, the uh.. leadership having
achieved the desegregation of the buses uh.. will then create a regional
group. And this regional group was known as the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. Have you heard of the SCLC before? Shoot. Is it
still around?

**Woman 13:** Is it still around?

**Glen Eskew:** Yes it is. The SCLC. Uh.. Dr. King and others in the
Montgomery Improvement Association will move to Atlanta. King and then
Abernathy will both uh.. move to Atlanta. That was Dr. King's hometown
anyway, uh.. and he goes back to uh.. his family church where he'll
become an associate pastor, meanwhile running the SCLC offices right
there on Auburn Avenue, just down a little bit from his home church.
Uh.. SCLC will be promoting non-violence, will be promoting this
strategy to achieve assimilation into the system, to overthrow
segregation in all of its facets. And yet SCLC uh.. creating this
movement and trying to come to the aid of other civil rights efforts and
communities as they evolve. For there were other efforts in other towns.
There had been a bus protest in Baton Rouge in 1953. There will be
another demonstration in Tallahassee. Uh.. Birmingham has its first bus
boycott under Fred Shuttlesworth's leadership in 1956. So there appeared
to be a movement popping up across the deep south. And SCLC was there
trying to advise, uh.. to offer recommendations on how to embrace
non-violence as a strategy. And yet SCLC was completely caught off guard
in 1960 when some students began what was called the sit-in movement.
Have you read about the sit-ins? What a dramatic thing, huh? It was as
if suddenly a light clicked on and these folks said, "I'm not gonna take
it anymore." Right? "I'm not gonna accept discrimination. I'm not gonna
sit here and be denied my rights as a citizen in America." They caught
the SCLC completely off guard. 1960. Four black uh.. students uh.. in
North Carolina go into the Woolworths at Greensboro and they sit down at
the lunch counter and say, uh.. "We'd like to be served." And the uh..
waitress, a black woman, looks at 'em and says, "You know we don't serve
colored here." And they said, "Well, we're not leavin' till you serve
us." And they sat there all day. And then the store closed and the next
morning it reopened and more students came down and sat at that lunch
counter. And as fate would have it, Fred Suttlesworth was in Hot Point,
North Carolina and he- that day and he heard about it and he went
straight to Greensboro to find out what was going on. And Shuttlesworth
was pastor of the church in Birmingham and head of the movement in
Birmingham, and called down to Atlanta, to Dr. King, uh.. and Ella
Baker, who was running SCLC at the time. And he said, "Listen, this is
it. We gotta get on it." Because SCLC had been trying to promote
non-violence but it had kinda just been sitting there spinning its
wheels. And the students are the ones who re-invigorated the Civil
Rights Movement. They're the ones who went in and sat down and said,
"We're not gonna take this anymore." And that sit-in protest went from
Greensboro throughout North Carolina, down to South Carolina, into
Georgia, over to Alabama, into Mississippi. You found sit-ins taking
place throughout the south, as students said, "no longer." It was a new
way of thinking. And what'd they organize as?

**Woman 14:** SNCC.

**Glen Eskew:** SNCC.

**Woman 14:** Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.

**Glen Eskew:** Excellent. Uh.. after the sit-in protest, they organized
their own group called SNCC- S-N-C-C, uh.. the Student Non-violent
Coordinating Committee. And Ella Baker will advise them and suggest,
"You all need to stay separate from SCLC. Remain your own group and
promote your own form of democracy." But SNCC embraced non-violence just
like SCLC did. And SNCC, these students, young people, uh.. were the
ones who were the- uh.. had the clearest head of how they wanted to get
access to the system, they wanted to be consumers. But Ella Baker kept
emphasizing to 'em, "Listen. It's more than just a hamburger. It's
bigger than a hamburger. What you're asking for is not just access to
the system. What you're asking for is a piece of the pie." Right? And
that's kinda where the movement's still struggling because what we've
ended up with is access to the system. What we haven't quite gotten for
everybody is a piece of the pie. But getting access to the system was
important. Uh.. and as the rest of the movement will play out, we'll see
this taking place in the uh.. freedom rides in 1961, which you've read
about a bit, I understand. Uh.. when uh.. John Lewis and others would
get on the Greyhound and the Trail Ways buses, riding down from
Washington D.C., getting into Alabama, beaten up by the Ku Klux Klan in
Birmingham and then Anniston- in Aniston and Birmingham and Montgomery,
thrown in jail, but continued to ride, demanding an end to segregated
seating on the interstate transit, assimilation into the system. Uh..
and then we get that in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, uh.. when the Albany
movement erupts- again, a mass community. For the first time since
Montgomery, the entire community, the black community, mobilized
demanding assimilation, access to the system, an end to segregation. And
yet in Albany factions within the community- because the community's
divided. Not everybody agrees, white or black, in any community.
Factions within the community kept it somewhat uh.. at odds, uh.. and
the ultimate response in Albany will be a lot of folks got arrested and
not a lot was accomplished. Yeah, Miss Carol?

Miss Carol: Didn't the Albany uhm.. police chief meet non-violence with
non-violence?

**Glen Eskew:** Yes he did. A fellow named Laurie Pritchard. And uh..
Laurie Pritchard had read Dr. King's uh.. book, Stride Toward Freedom,
his history of Montgomery, in which King, like Mahatma Ghandi in India,
was advocating a non-violent strategy. Uh.. but uh.. Laurie Pritchard
who was a police chief, the white chief in Albany in down- uh- uhm..
Doughtery County, while he's police chief in Albany, uh.. arrests uh..
the protestors and then arranges for them to be housed in neighboring
county jails so that he was always able to keep his jail uh.. facility
available for use, to process people through. And ultimately in Albany,
the strategy that SCLC had implemented of trying to fill the jail and
then pressure for change failed because they could never fill the jail.
In Birmingham, SCLC filled the jail. And that's why Birmingham succeeded
so well. Now it's a long story that I won't dwell on but the Birmingham
protest really began back when a local community organized in 1956 under
the charismatic leadership of the Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth.
Another one of these local black ministers, like uh.. T.J. Jemison uh..
or C.K. Steele in Tallahassee. There's a variety of 'em- uh.. Dr. King,
Abernathy- who pop up and start leading the community and are able to
express the hopes and aspirations of the folks within that community.
And we see uh.. that taking place in Birmingham under Shuttlesworth's
leadership but he had only been able to achieve limited gains, until in
the spring of 1963, in a massive demonstration, assisted by SCLC and Dr.
King, we see uh.. a huge uh.. climactic uh.. protest taking place. Now
have you read a little bit about Birmingham or have you seen The Eyes on
the Prize episodes? What one in Birmingham? What achieved the success in
Birmingham? To what can we attribute that? Who made the difference.

**Woman 15:** The students.

**Glen Eskew:** It's the students. Shuttlesworth's important and the
folks in his protest group, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human
Rights were key to keeping the movement going. But the group that
ultimately broke the back of segregation in Birmingham was students,
like you. They were the folks who at the very nadir, at the lowest point
in the demonstrations rose up and said, "We're gonna join this", despite
the wishes of their parents who told 'em to stay home. And they- they
are tipped off by a fellow named Tall Paul who's a DJ on WENN. And he
was tellin' 'em, "Okay kids, lets all meet down at 16^th^ Street 'cause
we're gonna walk today." And they go down there and they march and
suddenly you've got this mass crowd of students marching against Bull
Connor and his police force. Now Connor had tried to deflect this kind
of thing using police dogs which led to negative publicity, and then
turning on fire hoses, which was a way of non-violently, well
non-brutally? Well no, it was kinda brutal and it was kinda violent but
it didn't kill anybody. It wasn't shooting people. So Connor thought it
was okay. But from the perspective of President Kennedy and uh.. from
the perspective of Washington leaders, it was horrific. Uh.. it was uh..
brutal and unacceptable that these school children simply demanding
access to the system should get blasted, with a water hose. And so we
get President Kennedy sending in one of his advisors, an assistant, uh..
Attorney General for Civil Rights, down to Birmingham to negotiate a
peace to stop the demonstrations. And indeed, that's what Burt Marshall
and others will ultimately achieve. Coming out of Birmingham is uh.. a
negotiated accord that will end the demonstrations and uh.. lead to in
Congress the proposal of Civil Rights legislation known as the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. This is important. Because the Civil Rights Act
that's proposed coming out of Birmingham in the summer of 1963 and then
ratified by Congress following President Kennedy's assassination uh..
and then ratified in 1964 will open the system to African Americans, to
women, to give minorities equal access as consumers, equal access uh..
in hotels, in restaurants, uh.. any uh.. public accommodations. Equal
job opportunities in Title 7 that will come out of the Civil Rights Act
will mean that if you're black, you can't be denied a job just because
you're black or because you're a woman or because you're of some uh..
religious minority. Everybody, every American, has a right to the
fundamental access to the system. And that's what the Civil Rights Act
accomplished. And that changed the nature of race relations in America.
It made defenses of white supremacy and segregation unacceptable any
longer, and it put the power of the federal government in support of
racial equality. Uh.. and that's the watershed, that's the shift. And it
comes out of these demonstrations in Birmingham. It's what the folks are
hoping for when they march on Washington in August of 1963. And we hear
Dr. King so eloquently state in his I Have a Dream speech this desire
for assimilation into the American system. Indeed, he had already uh..
explained the logic of it and the theological background for it with his
Letter from Birmingham Jail. Did you get a chance to read the letter?
You can't find a better expression of the Civil Rights objectives than
in Letter from Birmingham Jail and the moralistic demands that were
being made by these protestors. And here we have the- the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the Federal government finally hearkening back to
reconstruction, going back to the 14^th^ and 15^th^ Amendments of the
Constitution- well 14^th^- Amendments of the Constitution and the Civil
Rights Act of 1875 and saying, "We will fulfill this promise by granting
access to the system." There was just one thing left out and that was
securing the voting right. It's not that it hadn't been intended in the
'64 Act, it just wasn't clearly stated. And we get that resistance. We
get that resistance immediately, like you had found with Brown. And so
we see the Civil Rights Movement continuing to struggle to get access to
voting rights as equal citizens, "first-class citizens" as Dr. King
would put it. And so we get protests in Mississippi in the summer of
1964, as college kids, black and white, descend on the south to demand
uh.. access to voting rights and to organize black folk who have never
been registered to vote- to register and vote. Have you been into the
Dallas County Courthouse yet? Okay, good. I think we're gonna get to go
back. Uh.. did you know a mere 50 years ago, if you were black, you did
not go in that courthouse? Did you know that? Did you know the only time
a black person ever was really brought into the courthouse in almost any
county in Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia was if they were being
brought in for trial because they had been arrested. You just didn't go.
What about registering the vote? How many of you are gonna register the
vote when you get to be 18, or are already registered? Anybody already
registered? Good. Good. Uh.. where do you go to get registered? The-
uh.. the Voter Registrar's office. Right? Now where is that?

**Woman 15:** The courthouse.

**Glen Eskew:** Yeah, it's in the courthouse. Is that the only place you
can go?

**Woman 16:** No. We register at our school.

**Glen Eskew:** Yeah. You can register at schools now. Where else can
you register? You can register online. You can vote online in Georgia.

**Woman 17:** Shopping malls at times.

**Glen Eskew:** Shopping malls. Voter registration campaigns. Uh.. you
can register at- at churches, at grocery stores. It's almost hard not to
register to vote today, even though some people don't take advantage of
their rights of citizenship. In 1965, there was only one place to get
registered to vote and that was in the County Courthouse. And the County
Registrar would register you and it didn't matter how long the line got,
as people waited to get registered to vote, he would take- or she- would
take his time, working people through that line and when 5 o'clock came
he would lock the door and if you were still in line waitin', well that
was tough luck.

**Woman 18:** You still had to pay poll tax then too.

**Glen Eskew:** Well, there were poll taxes that you had to pay, which
has a long history in America, going back to the Colonial era, paying
for the privilege of voting. And ultimately we'll see that overturned so
that you didn't have to pay a poll tax. And there were interpretive
clauses that state constitutions had. I understand you've learned a
little bit about the Alabama 1901 Constitution, which we're still under-
right?- a mere five years after Plessy versus Ferguson. A conservative
document that's been amended and amended but designed to protect power
and interest of those who own things in this state. Well the poll tax
was designed to do the same thing and the interpretive clauses were
designed to do the same thing. And what that was, was designed to
prevent people from voting, even white folk, working class folk,
deliberately kept from registering to vote. And so we see then coming
out of this access to the system, demand of the movement, is also this
demand for access for the vote. And the NAACP will help lead that
challenge too, uh.. having func- focused on Brown until its decision was
reached in '54, we find the NAACP promoting voter registration
campaigns, to get folks registered to vote. And you'd have to learn to
pass a test to get registered to vote. There were all kinds of crazy
questions they would ask you like who runs the Board of Cosmetology?
Anybody of you know the State Cosmetologist for Alabama? You would not
be registered to vote today. Of course, what do you have to have to vote
today? Those of you who are about to turn 18, what do you have to do to
get to vote? What do you have to do to register? Do you know?

**Woman 19:** Fill out a register.

**Glen Eskew:** Do what? Fill out a- fill out a paper. Great. Yeah. You
fi- you fill out a piece of paper. Whadda you put down?

**Woman 19:** Your information.

**Glen Eskew:** Which is?

**Woman 19:** Date of birth, your name, and your Social Security number.

**Glen Eskew:** And your date of birth. It's very simple. Yeah. All you
have to do is show up with a picture ID saying who you are and where you
live, and they'll register, according to your county that you reside in.
And that's all it takes to get registered to vote today. That was not
the case in 1964 when people put their lives on the line in Mississippi
trying to encourage folks to register to vote. To actually be brave
enough to walk into that courthouse, look that County Registrar square
in the eye and say, "I want to register to vote." And that's what a
black woman by the name of Fannie Lou Hamer did. And Fannie Lou Hamer
was then registered. And the minute she got home, the landlord that she
lived on his property, he went to her and said, "Did you do that? Did
you go register to vote?" And she said, "Yes I did." "Well you can go
down there and undo that, or you can get off my land." Imagine how it
took resolve to challenge the law. And that was the case here in Selma,
in Dallas County, uh.. and surrounding counties in 1965 when SCLC would
come here and organize folks to register to vote, or to go into these
communities and tell people who have never been in that courthouse, it's
okay to go into that courthouse and say, "I wanna register to vote. This
is my right as a citizen in the United States of America." And we see
voting rights marches taking place, including one uh.. in Marion,
Alabama where a young black man by the name of Jimmy Lee Jackson will be
shot dead uh.. for wanting uh.. to register to vote. And then in
response to that, a guy named James Bevell who was a civil rights
advocate with uh.. SCLC will say, "We oughta take Jimmy Lee Jackson's
body and march from Selma to Montgomery and put it on the steps of the
capital and tell George Wallace we're not leaving till we get the right
to vote." And so we get a Selma to Montgomery march. And ya all are
privileged. You're privileged to get to be here in Selma this weekend
and participate in this reenactment of that bridge crossing that took
place here nearly what?- uh.. 40 years ago. Is it 30?

**Woman 20:** 39.

**Glen Eskew:** 39. Yeah, it's 39 this year. Uh.. and see John Lewis,
who was there, on that bloody Sunday and was brutally beaten uh.. by
Sheriff Jim Clark and his posse for asking for the right to vote. To
take that right so lightly today is simply to denigrate their activities
and their memories. So here we have then, in 1965 this demand for the
vote.. that culminates in this march from Selma to Montgomery with that
bloody Sunday on March 7^th^ when John Lewis, Josiah Williams, uh.. the
Webb sisters, are brutally beaten. Film footage of that, captured by the
evening news crews, was broadcast on television and it interrupted- on
one of the networks they were showing the movie Judgment at Nuremberg.
Any of you ever heard of Nuremberg? It's- it's a World War II Nazi
criminal war trials that the United States held after World War II about
the Holocaust and other uh.. outrages that the Nazis committed. And that
film was on TV that night and they stopped the film to show footage of
what had taken place in Selma- black folk demanding the right to vote,
being brutally beaten in the street. Teargas fired at citizens for
marching across the bridge. A little surprise when the President of the
United States, Lyndon B. Johnson, came on TV shortly thereafter and
said, "This is unacceptable in America. We will not have this any
longer. And we shall overcome." I believe you've got that speech and I
encourage you to read it in your reader. LBJ will propose before
Congress the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson is the same person who
was responsible for getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed through
Congress as a tribute to Kennedy. And here he is pushing the Voting
Rights Act in 1965. Okay. And that's why Selma is significant. Because
it's coming out of Selma and the black belt of Alabama that we get this
protest that leads to that legislation. And what that legislation
achieved is apparent to us today. You can see it in all of our
governmental structures, from the barest bones level down at the local
city council, all the way up to the halls of Congress. That's why John
Lewis comes back to Selma every year, to celebrate the triumph of the
vote as symbolized in the Selma protest to mar- uh.. to Montgomery with
the marching and the crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Uh.. that
Voting Rights Act uh.. by which the United States Government sent
federal registrars into southern counties to make sure that black folk
had equal access to the ballot and could get registered to vote, that
led to black political empowerment. That black political empowerment led
to the election of black folk, men and women, to office. And once in
office, then we see them as citizens engaging in the political system,
working to continue to open it up, uh.. working to try to extend a piece
of the pie to all of the citizens in Alabama, in Georgia, in Mississippi
and elsewhere. And that's what's changed our system. And that's, I
think, the purpose of uh.. this weekend, isn't it? Dwight? Uh.. any
questions about that sweeping overview? Of course, this new system is
not the old one. Any of you all plan on growin' cotton?

\#### End of Tape B8 \####