Martin Luther King, Jr: All people should obey
just laws, but I would also say
that an unjust law is no law at all.
Wallace: I say segregation now,
segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.
America is not living up to its dream of liberty
and justice for all.
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.
We're willing to be beaten for democracy.
They'd give anything in the world
if we had trouble here.
Reporter: Would you be willing to go on a demonstration again?
Unidentified boy: Yes, sir.
We want our freedom and we want it now.
Reporter: Open hostility
towards the Civil Rights demonstrators.
This is the wrong way.
♪ (The Sixties theme, Composer Blake Neely) ♪
Allen C Thompson: We talk about it here
as a separation of the races,
customs and traditions that have been built up
over the last 100 years that
have proved for the best interest for both,
the colored and the white people.
It was almost 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation,
and America is still rigidly and racially segregated.
Taylor Branch: Black people couldn't vote in the south,
they couldn't even go into the public libraries,
the public libraries were segregated,
the churches were segregated.
(gospel singing)
Reporter: We are in Atlanta, Georgia
in the Ebenezer Baptist Church
where a father and son are the co-pastors.
Martin Luther King, Jr: Frankly, as others have said
I don't know what the future holds,
but I know who holds the future.
And this is our hope,
this is that something that keeps us going.
Branch: Martin Luther King was
immensely frustrated by the end of the 1950s
'cause he had become famous,
he's preaching all over the country,
he knows that's his gift,
but he says people cry at my sermons,
and then the next morning it's still segregated.
C.T. Vivian: Martin King called about 50 ministers
from across the south
to start a non-violent movement.
The understanding of teaching nonviolence
was clear that there wasn't anybody
that could teach it like Jim Lawson.
Dr. Clayborne Carson: James Lawson's been to India
and comes back with this storehouse of Gandhian tactics.
Rev. James Lawson: Martin King said come to Nashville now,
we need you now,
so I went to Nashville and organized other people.
Lawson: Now tonight we have
a most important business to try to accomplish,
and that is to try to
have one major role-playing experience,
which sort of tries to set the stage
for an actual demonstration, for an actual sit-in.
When you talk about the Civil Rights movement in the 60s
people often talk about Selma, and Birmingham,
and Montgomery, but the incubator of it all
was Nashville, Tennessee where James Lawson started teaching
his classes on non-violence.
In an act of beating him...
Teaching people like John Lewis,
and James Bevel, and Diane Nash
how to not swing back if somebody hits you
in the head with a nightstick.
- Nigger. - Nigger!
Diane Nash: We actually practiced sitting in.
Some took the role of students
who were sitting at a lunch counter,
and others took the role of white thugs.
We were practicing how to remain non-violent
even in the face of violence.
David Garrow: There had been other sit ins
in those early months of 1960,
but no one is centrally organizing or coordinating this
like the student group from Nashville.
It was on February the 13th
when we had the very first sit-in in Nashville.
I took my seat at the counter,
I asked a waitress for a hamburger and a Coke.
Dan T. Carter: Those students sit down at a lunch counter,
asking to be served, knowing
full well that it's against the law.
We were prepared to be arrested and to go to jail.
And if necessary stay in jail.
Lewis: It was a moving feeling within me
that I was sitting there demanding a God given right.
I could no longer be satisfied or
go along with an evil system.
Branch: The big surprise for them
was that they weren't arrested.
They sat there all day.
And they realized that white people were flummoxed.
Reporter: The new tactic came as a surprise,
creating bewilderment and confusion
in the white communities,
and even among the Negroes themselves.
James J. Kilpatrick: When this disciplined platoon
comes in to a store,
occupies all the seats at the lunch counter,
they refuse to move on the request of the store owner,
they put on a boorish exhibition
of what seems to be plain bad manners
in crashing into a place where they are not welcome.
I'd submit to you, sir,
it comes with singularly poor grace
for their spokesman to then charge
the store owner with bad behavior.
Mr. Kilpatrick, I think on this point
you would have to agree with me
that all people should obey just laws,
but I would also say that an unjust law
is no law at all.
And when we find an unjust law
I think we have a moral obligation
to take a stand against it.
Reporter: During the weeks after the sit-ins began
opposition in the white communities
of the south solidified.
And the first signs of violence appeared.
(yelling)
Unidentified Cop: They're telling a man came out
and said that there was a fight on the inside.
There was a bunch of colored boys and girls
on the stools at the counters,
so I instructed the men to put them...
Place them under arrest.
Reporter: On February 27th
80 Nashville students were arrested
out of over 300
who were participating in the sit-ins that day.
As the students were confronted with a
choice of paying the $50 fine,
or spending over a month in jail,
each of them chose jail.
I felt free. I felt liberated. I felt like I had crossed over.
Diane Nash: While we were in jail,
black women got on the phone
and organized an economic withdrawal.
Unidentified Man: The Negro has a terrific purchasing power,
so the merchants of course was
feeling the pinch
'cause they were definitely not coming downtown
to spend that money.
Lewis: The next day in Nashville, Tennessee
in the morning newspaper had a headline,
Mayor Favors Desegregation.
It was a great victory for the Movement
and for the city of Nashville.
The economic boycott was withdrawn,
and Nashville became the first major city
in the south to permit whites and Negroes
to eat together in public places.
Dr. Clayborne: That remarkable group
that Lawson brought together in Nashville,
they became a cadre.
Nash: We all applauded,
and here is a situation that, that turned out right.
The ideas that they promoted
very quickly spread across the region
and across the nation.
Chet Huntley: The sit-in movement
that has challenged certain fundamental concepts of law,
and is shaking the regional traditions in the south
in an entirely new way.
Garrow: King is extremely pleased
with the emergence of the student sit-in movement
in early 1960.
There were sit ins in Atlanta
where Dr. King is living by that time.
King himself gets arrested in one at Rich's Department Store.
King is kept in jail when everyone else is released.
And that's when it got involved in the presidential campaign.
Garrow: John Kennedy, the Presidential candidate
calls Mrs. King to express his concern,
very unexpected public gesture.
Within 24 hours Robert Kennedy
called that judge and asked that
he let King out of jail.
Next thing we knew is 'Daddy' King
had gone public and had said
I was against having a Catholic for President,
but if he can wipe the tears from my daughter-in-law's eyes
I have the courage to vote for Kennedy for President,
and I have a suitcase full of votes.
Ray Moore: Dr. King, have you heard anything
from Vice President Nixon, or any of his supporters?
Martin Luther King, Jr: I've been confined
and I haven't talked with anybody
from Washington, or from the campaign.
Do you know of any efforts made on behalf of the Kennedy group?
Well I understand that
the Kennedy group did make definite contacts,
and did a great deal to make my release possible.
Branch: It turned out that, that phone call was
given credit for Kennedy's victory
in one of the closest elections in modern history.
Wofford: King said I hope that at last we have a President
with the intelligence to understand this problem,
I'm convinced that he has that understanding,
and now we'll have to see what his passion leads him to do.
But what together we can do...
Reeves: Kennedy, in his inaugural speech
did not have a single mention of the domestic issue.
Harris Wofford said all these people out there,
and particularly black people, who voted for you,
and you've gotta give them something.
What they did then was add two words
talking about freedom and human rights
abroad and at home.
That was the only mention.
Dallek: Kennedy's administration
is trying to keep a lid on the Civil Rights issue,
and Civil Rights activists are determined to push ahead.
Reporter: Brave blacks and whites
rode into the deep south together
on Greyhound and Trailways buses
to challenge segregation as Freedom Riders.
The freedom ride started with two buses,
13 people going from Washington D.C. to New Orleans.
Roberts: The concept of the freedom rides
was to show that desegregation laws
were not being enforced in the south.
Cox: Even though the law demands
that a passenger can ride interstate
and participate in lunchroom waiting rooms
and bathrooms that even though law says this
everyone cannot, particularly the Negro.
Patterson: They're buying tickets from town to town
and getting off in each town,
going into waiting rooms, restaurants, cafes,
which are traditionally segregated
in such a manner as to enrage them and
to provoke them into acts of violence.
That's what they're doing.
Blankenheim: We were aboard a
Greyhound bus going to Birmingham.
We were surrounded by a mob who followed us out of Anniston
for about four miles until one of our tires went flat,
and finally threw a bomb into the bus.
The bus filled very rapidly with black smoke.
Meanwhile, when the Trailways bus
got to Birmingham it was even worse.
Smith: They dragged about six of the passengers out,
both Negro and white, they took them into corridors and alleys
and began beating them, began hitting them with lead pipes,
they knocked one man, a white man down at my feet,
and they beat him and kicked him
until his face was a bloody red pulp.
Freedom Riders who were severely beaten
could not continue.
The Nashville Movement decided
that we had to take up the freedom ride
where it had left off.
Groups will be dispatched...
Vivian: Diane Nash said the line that made the difference.
She said we will not allow
violence to destroy nonviolence.
This was the test.
Ten of the kids said we will go tonight,
and that's the stuff that makes you free.
That's the stuff that is freedom.
A group of them got on a bus in Birmingham.
When the bus pulled into the Montgomery station
John Lewis could see hundreds of whites
headed towards them with baseball bats, bricks, rocks.
An angry mob just came out of nowhere.
They started beating the Freedom Riders.
I was hit with a wooden crate,
beaten, left lying in a pool of blood.
Reporter: Before police finally broke up the crowd
with teargas they beat and injured at least 20 persons.
Garrow: After the riders are attacked and brutally beaten
the Freedom Riders essentially become trapped in
Ralph Abernathy's First Baptist Church.
Diane Nash: The church was surrounded,
and people were setting fire to cars.
That is a very dangerous situation outside.
No one, but no one could leave the church.
Garrow: Dr. King had gone over to Montgomery
from Atlanta to lend support to the Freedom Riders.
And so King too, along with the riders,
is trapped at this church.
Now it's very easy for us
to get angry and bitter, and even violent
in a moment like this but I think this is a testing point.
I hope that we will remain calm,
as we have done in so many touchy,
difficult moments, and I know we're gonna do it.
Lewis: Martin Luther King, Jr placed a call to Robert Kennedy
and said to the Attorney General
something must be done.
We are planning during
the course of this afternoon to send in
several hundred more U.S. Marshals
from around the country to help and assist.
President Kennedy had called out the United States Marshals
to place the city of Montgomery under Marshal Law.
In this situation I want to make this announcement
that the city is now under Marshal Law,
and troops are on their way into Montgomery.
(cheering)
Patterson: Now the best thing for King and
all of the so-called Freedom Riders
is to return to their homes,
go back to their books,
and mind their own business.
Finally with federal intervention
the Freedom Riders were put on a bus and headed to Jackson.
We pull on into Jackson, the wagon was waiting for us.
You're under arrest for refusing to obey my order.
We didn't know it at the time, but the Kennedy's
had agreed that the Freedom Riders could be imprisoned.
Garrow: The Kennedy administration makes a deal
whereby the Mississippi police units
agree that there'll be no violence,
but the tradeoff is that every Freedom Rider
arriving in Jackson immediately will be arrested.
Schackne: Officials in Mississippi
think they found a legal way to circumvent desegregation.
Their method calling any defiance of segregation
a threat to the peace in an area
where popular feelings run so high.
The Freedom Riders included
James Bevel, John Lewis, James Lawson,
among others were sent to Parchman State Penitentiary.
Vivian: So this guy takes me back to the jail cell,
when prison doors slam it has an effect on you.
That sound you felt you would never get out again.
As soon as the agitators leave,
and get tired of trying to stir up trouble.
We're going back to the same old way of living
that's made our city such a wonderful place
in which to live.
Reporter: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor.
Well.
This attempt to stop the freedom rides
only served to fuel the flames
of the Civil Rights Movement.
I'd like to see the show of hands of those of you
who will be willing to continue
the freedom ride in the near future.
Let's see a show of hands please.
Freedom ride after freedom ride would come through,
they'd get arrested in Jackson,
they'd go to the Hines County Jail,
or the Jackson Jail, and then they would get moved to
Parchman Penitentiary.
Roberts: During the time they spent in prison a bond formed,
and they came out of prison more dedicated than ever,
and they began to fan out across the south.
TV Anchor: James H. Meredith, son of a cotton farmer,
grandson of a slave, and applicant for admission
to the University of Mississippi.
James, why do you want to enter the University of Mississippi?
Well, I think that
every citizen should have an opportunity to receive an
education in his own state,
I think he have an education... an opportunity
to receive the best possible education.
Robert Dallek: Mississippi Air Force veteran
James Meredith insists on being admitted
to the University of Mississippi,
and Ross Barnett the governor of the state,
he's not gonna let this happen.
I do hereby deny you admission to
the University of Mississippi.
And it becomes a crises.
Ross Barnett withdrew local police
and allowed the campus to turn into a kind of war zone.
Carter: Finally the Army arrives
from Memphis and comes rolling onto campus
and stops the riot at that point.
Kennedy: I deeply regret the fact
that any action by the executive branch
was necessary in this case.
But all other avenues and alternatives,
including persuasion and conciliation
had been tried and exhausted.
James Meredith went to school
at Ole Miss today, but his travels to
and from classes were not those of a regular student.
Go home nigger!
Bill Ryan: For everywhere that Meredith went
so did his escorts of federal marshals
and troops of the United States Army.
Huntley: There is no country where the violence
of Sunday and Monday has gone unreported.
For example, a bigger story
in the London Evening Standard
was the violence on the Mississippi campus.
The outburst of violence was described as
humiliating for American democracy,
and embarrassing for American prestige abroad.
I think my father and my uncle were originally focused
on those foreign policy issues
out of America's leadership in the globe,
and saw the Civil Rights Movement
in our country as kind of a distraction.
I think this is a charge before the President.
He must start now making moral decisions
rather than purely political decisions.
In the name of the greatest people
that have ever trod this Earth.
I draw the line in the dust
and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny
and I say segregation now,
segregation tomorrow,
and segregation forever.
Carter: George Wallace became
almost a mythic figure for white southerners,
and that speech in which he promised segregation forever
is the fullest expression of that commitment
to becoming the leader of the resistant white south.
I'm sorry, Mr. Wallace,
God has spoken to me.
That he wants freedom for his people.
It may even mean physical death,
but if it means that I will die
standing up for the freedom of my people.
God has spoken to me.
Naftali: King, very wisely, sees an opportunity
to give more exposure to the Civil Rights Movement,
and to prod the Kennedy administration.
Roberts: Martin Luther King decided
that they should have major demonstrations
only in areas that local
law enforcement would react violently.
Reporter: Do you think that you can keep
Birmingham in the present situation of segregation?
I may not be able to do it, but I'll die trying.
Reporter: Bull Connor has a well known identity
as one of the hardest hardliners
in defense of segregation.
He encouraged the hiring of Klans-men on his police force.
King is assuming that
Bull Connor is gonna provide the pictures
and the footage they need to outrage the country.
Reporter: Safety commissioner Bull Connor
used mass arrests, fire hoses,
police dogs to break up the demonstrations.
Branch: The demonstrations continued
for weeks. You got 12, 14, 20 adults
maximum per day marching, they're making no news, and
numbers were dwindling.
And the movement was on the brink of extinction
when Bevel from the Nashville movement comes along
and said I've got plenty of teenagers
in my youth workshops
who are willing to go to jail.
I was on the phone constantly with Jim, with Diane,
and others about making it happen.
Garrow: There's an understandable reluctance
on King's part of organizing students to get arrested
when their parents are gonna be furious
for putting their children in the line of fire.
Finally it's King who makes the decision
to send the children into the streets.
Reporter: Will you use the hoses and dogs?
We will use the dogs if they start draw...
Drawing knives again, and throwing rocks.
We will use the hose if it becomes necessary
to stop the mob.
Reporter: Most of the pickets and the marchers
were juveniles instead of the adults
seen in previous protests.
Officers quickly moved in to make the arrests
under the direction of Commissioner Bull Connor.
Police overflowed juvenile hall
with the youthful demonstrators.
All kinds of vehicles had to
pressed into service to carry the Negroes,
cars, police paddy wagons,
and later in the day school buses.
The sheriff's department estimated
upwards of 400 had been arrested.
Instead of 14 adults you had 600 teenagers,
and then the next day a thousand,
and that's when the dogs and the fire hoses came out.
Of course what he was doing was exactly what the head of the
Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham wanted him to do,
to create the theater.
That was gonna be broadcast on national television
that would show just how bad things were in Birmingham.
Demonstrators attacked with water hoses
were as young as six, eight, nine years old.
Reporter: Why did you want to take part
in the demonstrations?
If all the colored folks get together and
take part in, in fighting for freedom
maybe they'll get some.
But if they don't they won't get nowhere.
Birmingham was a crucible
in which the soul of a nation was being forged.
Collingwood: The Negro drive for equality
gathered momentum this week.
The Supreme Court sanctioned sit-in demonstrations,
still another court removed the strongly segregationist
city government of Birmingham
dominated by Eugene "Bull" Connor.
Well all that I can say is that
I have enjoyed my 22 and a half years
as public safety commissioner in the City of Birmingham.
I don't believe I owe the taxpayers of
Birmingham anything.
They're going to owe me
almost two and a half years back pay.
Evers: Don't shop for anything on Capital Street.
These are the stores that help to support
the white citizens counsel.
Rather: Medgar Evers was
operating in and around Jackson, Mississippi,
Really the heart of resistance to desegregation.
The NBC networks affiliate
was notorious for featuring segregationist speeches.
It became such a problem
that Medgar Evers demanded equal time.
Carter: When the Jackson, Mississippi
television station found itself under threat from the FCC
they agreed to allow Medgar Evers
to go on television and make a statement
about the goals of the movement.
To many white Mississippians it was an outrage.
That's the first time a black man
had ever been allowed to appear on television in Mississippi.
Certainly to argue against segregation.
It made him in some ways a kind of marked man in Mississippi.
We'll be demonstrating here
until freedom comes to Negroes here in Jackson, Mississippi.
Our guest today on Meet the Press is
Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama.
This state is the only one in the country today
whose schools are completely segregated.
Next week the issue heads for a climax
when two Negro students will seek to enroll
at the University of Alabama.
Governor Wallace has been quoted as saying that
he will personally bar their entrance,
despite a federal court order and a threat of federal troops.
Don't you believe that
the Negroes in the south are human beings created by God?
Of course they are. I said so in my campaign address.
Do you think they should be discriminated?
For obvious reasons.
Can they be enrolled without the use of troops?
Well of course I...
We'll just have to wait and see exactly
what transpires on that occasion.
Reporter: At the center of this potential storm
are two young Negro students,
Vivian Malone and Jimmy Hood.
She's 20 years old and made the National Honor Society
when she attended a segregated high school
in her hometown of Mobile, Alabama.
He is also 20, was president of his class
in high school at Gadsden, Alabama,
and president of the student counsel.
What's the general feeling
around the campus concerning the agreement
to admit the Negro here this summer?
Well all the students that I've talked to
and my friends feel that there's not gonna be
any repeat of a Mississippi situation,
and there's not gonna be no violence.
Well I feel like it won't be as much trouble as,
you know, have been on other campuses.
But it will be bad news when the nigger comes in.
Mr. Smith?
Does the government plan to use
federal marshals if he does go through
with his last intention to prevent these
Negro students from entering?
I know there's a great opposition
in Alabama, and indeed in any state, to
federal marshals and federal troops.
And I would be very reluctant to see us reach that point.
You know, those Kennedy's
up there in Washington, that little old Bobby sox
and his brother the President,
they'd give anything in the world
if we had some trouble here.
Now George asked me to ask you that you do
him one favor.
Tell your friends when you leave here,
between now and Tuesday don't go up there, leave it alone.
They gonna handle this situation.
Governor Wallace has ordered
500 Alabama National Guardsmen into Tuscaloosa.
At the moment they are under his control.
It would require hardly more than
the flourish of a pen to convert their status
to federalized troops and place them
at the disposal of President Kennedy.
Reeves: National Guard units are
commanded by a governor unless
they're federalized and the President
becomes their Commander in Chief.
Kennedy had to make the decision of what to do next.
President Kennedy has done
some significant things in Civil Rights,
but at the same time
I must say that President Kennedy hasn't done enough.
And we must remind him that we elected him.
Under a searing Alabama sun
that already has the temperature near 100 degrees
the waiting continues.
Governor George Wallace's direct confrontation
with federal authorities and two Negro students
at the University of Alabama
is now believed to be only a very short time away.
McGee: The two Negroes, Vivian Malone and Jimmy Hood
reportedly are en route
from Birmingham to the campus.
Governor Wallace purportedly about
ready to make his appearance on campus.
McWhorter: Coming into it nobody knows what's
gonna happen. The Justice Department doesn't know
what Wallace is gonna do, Wallace doesn't know
whether he's gonna be put in jail.
As governor and chief magistrate
of the State of Alabama
I deem it to be my solemn obligation
and duty to stand before you.
Representing the rights and sovereignty
of this state and its peoples.
And now being mindful of my duties
and responsibilities under the Constitution
of the United States
the Constitution of the State of Alabama,
and seeking to preserve and maintain
the peace and dignity of this state
and the individual freedoms of the citizens thereof
do hereby denounce, and forbid
this illegal and unwarranted action
by the central government.
Governor Wallace
I take it from that statement that
you are going to stand in that door
and that you are not going to carry out
the orders, is that correct?
I stand in front of this statement.
You stand up on that statement.
Governor, I am not interested in a show,
I don't know what the purpose of the show is.
I am interested in the orders of
these courts being enforced.
That is my only responsibility here.
The choice is yours.
I would ask you once again
to responsibly step aside.
Very well.
The students will remain on the campus.
Reporter: The Justice Department says
that the Negro students will be enrolled
some time today.
Diane McWhorter: After Ole Miss
the Kennedy's learned their lesson about negotiating
with a southern governor.
Kennedy just decides to go ahead
and federalize the guard.
He's not gonna play games anymore.
The National Guard General, Henry Graham,
goes up to Wallace, he says
it is my sad duty to tell you to step aside.
We shall now return to Montgomery
for the purpose of continuing this fight,
this Constitutional fight because we are winning.
Reporter: Governor Wallace moved away from the door,
and has left after being confronted with
about 150 federalized National Guardsmen.
Reporter: The United States Assistant Attorney General
Nicholas Katzenbach now all smiles
as the two Negro students
are to enter the registration building.
Wofford: Each time a big issue came up
the President and the Attorney General
did everything they could not
to have to get involved,
and it was after the encounter with Wallace
that the Civil Rights became top priority.
This is not a sectional issue.
Difficulties over segregation
and discrimination exist
in every city, in every state of the union,
but law alone cannot make men see right.
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.
It is as old as the Scriptures,
and is as clear as the American Constitution.
Jones: That was the first time
the President made the question of
ending racial segregation
not because its politically expedient to do so,
because it is morally right to do so.
Next week I shall ask
the Congress of the United States to act,
to make a commitment it has not
fully made in this century
to the proposition that race has no place
in American life or law.
It's his most eloquent speech
in some ways, most heartfelt speech.
And this nation
for all its hopes and all its boasts
will not be fully free
until all its citizens are free.
There's a kind of bitter irony in that.
Within hours afterwards
Medgar Evers comes homes
and his wife and children are up
because they want to tell him
about the President's wonderful speech.
Shortly after midnight
Medgar Evers stepped from his car in this driveway,
then Evers was murdered.
The fatal bullet was fired
from a vacant lot across the street from Evers home,
crashing through his body and through the window of his home.
He was 37.
Rather: It was a cold, cowardly ambush of him
at his home in front of his wife and children.
He said something about how far we still had to go
in reaching any semblance of social and civic justice.
We are going to Washington to urge the Congress to pass
strong Civil Rights legislation this year.
The nationwide response to the power of Alabama
supplies the energy that allows the march on Washington
to start coming together.
We will keep this
demonstration nonviolent, it will be peaceful,
it will be dignified, and disciplined.
And I think it will have a great impact.
In my judgment
there was perhaps only one man or woman in America
who could have put that march together,
and it was Bayard Rustin.
At any moment we need the cooperation of the best minds,
many of which are white as well as black.
Rustin was simply an organizational genius.
He was the best and the brightest.
Reporter: Do you feel that the President's
Civil Rights program is actually not needed?
I don't think it's needed,
and furthermore I think it's unconstitutional.
Garrow: Segregationist senators like
Strom Thurmond are attempting
to trumpet the fact
that Bayard is known to be gay
as a way to undercut the march.
Jones: There was an effort to block Rustin being selected,
and Martin King said
let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.
Dead silence.
"I recommend very strongly
Rustin be designated
as the director and chief of staff for the march. "
A. Philip Randolph says "I second that".
Unidentified Male: Freedom now movement hear me,
we are requesting all citizens
to move into Washington, to go by plane,
by car, bus, anyway that you can get there,
go to Washington.
Male: I'm gonna start on this side, pass them down.
The White House, the Washington Police Department,
the Defense Department were all drawing up these
tremendous contingency plans for mass violence.
If you have any questions
before you contact your captains for anything.
And they will take it from there.
The whole thing is an orderly march.
They came from all over America,
Negroes and whites,
housewives and Hollywood stars,
more than 200,000 of them
came to Washington this morning
in a kind of climax to a historic spring
and summer in the struggle for equal rights.
The march on Washington was
probably the most joyous "protest" march
I've ever seen.
This turned out to be
a huge interracial gathering
that clearly did send a national message
that there was tremendous support
for racial equality.
I admired the people my age,
and I knew that
John Lewis was the...
The youngest speaker at the march.
As a student,
and as a participant in a national movement
I was ready to go.
I wanted to push.
I wanted us to stand up and speak up
and speak out.
We're tired of seeing our people
locked up in jail over and over again,
and then you holler be patient.
How long can we be patient?
We want our freedom and we want it now.
And I would never forget
the speech of Martin Luther King, Jr.
On that day Dr. King spoke out of his soul,
and he used that day
and the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
to preach a sermon
not just to America but to the world.
I am happy
to join with you today
in what will go down in history
as the greatest demonstration
for freedom in the history of our nation.
As he's speaking Mahalia Jackson
shouts to him tell them about the dream, Martin,
tell them about the dream.
And I see him take the written text,
and he slides it to the left side of the lectern,
looks out on the 350,000 people there,
and then he speaks.
I have a dream
that one day this nation will rise up,
live out the true meaning of it's creed.
We hold these truths to be self evident
that all men are created equal.
I have a dream
that my four little children
will one day live in a nation
where they will not be judged by
the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
Let freedom ring from every hill
and molehill of Mississippi,
from every mountainside,
let freedom ring and when this happens.
When we allow freedom ring,
when we let it ring
from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city
we will be able to feed up that day
when all of God's children,
black men and white men,
Jews and gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics
will be able to join hands
and sing in the way of the old Negro spiritual
free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty
we are free at last.
I don't think they quite anticipated
just how successful it would be.
It represents the Civil Rights Movement
in a kind of high watermark.
The momentum of change seems to be accelerating.
In the hearts of 21 million American Negroes
and untold millions of sympathetic whites
their beat tonight
the hope that the dream of Negro equality
was at last overtaking the reality of history.
In the immediate wake of the march
on Washington the Civil Rights Movement
has a national glow to it
that it never before had had.
But that glow tragically lasts hardly two weeks.
Reporter: The bombing of this Birmingham,
Alabama church claimed the lives
of four little girls attending Sunday School.
That was the church out of which
all the kids had marched in May,
so it was clearly a punishment.
We felt like we were involved
because if there had been no movement
chances are that bombing would not have taken place.
Kids were murdered
in Birmingham on a Sunday
and in Sunday School in a Christian nation,
and nobody cares.
White House Press Secretary
Malcolm Kilduff has just announced
that President Kennedy
died at approximately 1:00 Central standard time,
which is about 35 minutes ago,
- after being shot at - after being shot
- by an unknown assailant - by an unknown assailant
during a motorcade drive through downtown Dallas.
During a motorcade drive through downtown Dallas.
Reporter: What's your feeling right now?
I really couldn't say, really.
Right now I just don't know what to do.
I don't even know where to go, what to say.
There's nothing for me to say.
Reporter: It is said that the human mind
has a greater capacity
for remembering the pleasant than the unpleasant.
But today was a day that will
live in memory and in grief.
No words are strong enough
to express our determination
to continue the forward thrust
of America that he began.
Lyndon Johnson wasn't that widely
known to the country at large.
Johnson's aids say to him
in this speech don't fight for Civil Rights.
It's a noble cause, but it's a lost cause.
You know what Johnson says to them?
"Well what the hell's the presidency for then?"
No memorial oration or eulogy
could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory
than the earliest possible passage
of the Civil Rights Bill
for which he fought so long.
Johnson gets that
Civil Rights Bill moving in the first few weeks
after Kennedy's assassination.
Dixie crats led by Richard Russell
announced a filibuster.
That is they would continue to talk
and prevent the bill from coming forward
for a straight up or down vote.
This bill, which we feel
is a perversion of the American way of life,
and a great blow
at the right of dominion over private property
that has been the genesis of our greatness.
LBJ and his allies knew that they were short,
so thus began a 24/7 campaign.
He bullied, he cajoled,
he made deals in order to get
enough senators on board.
Surprisingly after a year
on Capitol Hill this bill is stronger
than the one President Kennedy first requested.
President Johnson should have the bill on his desk
by the Fourth of July.
We hope to send in to Mississippi,
to Selma, upwards of 1,000 teachers,
ministers, and students
to open up Mississippi to the country.
Freedom summer, an operation to flood the
State of Mississippi with volunteers,
white and black students.
We were there because we could assume that
if the white Mississippians mistreated us
the way they mistreated the black people
that would be a basis on which
to mobilize national opinion.
We will treat anyone
with great respect here in Mississippi,
but we will treat the people who come here,
these children, like any other back wood children
should be treated.
And here is the news.
There is some mystery and some fear
concerning three Civil Rights workers,
two whites from New York City,
and a Negro from Mississippi.
Police say they arrested the three men
for speeding yesterday,
but released them after they posted bond.
They have not been heard from since.
They paid the fine and I released them,
I escorted them to their car,
and that's the last time we saw any of them.
We got word
that Mickey, and Andy, and James had been arrested.
And there was no word
what had happened to them.
We believe that
all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty,
yet millions are being deprived of those blessings.
Not because of their own failures,
but because of the color of their skin.
We can understand without rancor or hatred
how this all happened,
but it cannot continue.
Our Constitution, foundation of our republic,
forbids it.
The principles of our freedom
forbid it.
And the law I will sign tonight
forbids it.
Reporter: Senator Hubert Humphrey has called
the Civil Rights Bill the greatest piece of
social legislation of our generation.
Go tell somebody on my staff
to make sure we get some more pens here.
Reporter: The Civil Rights Act of 1964
is not going to create instant brotherhood,
no one pretends that,
but the Attorney General gets new power
to bring suits against racial discrimination in voting,
in public accommodations, in education,
in employment.
If a court finds you guilty
of violating some part of the Civil Rights law,
and if you continue violating the law
you can be fined or put in jail
until you stop violating the law.
Reporter: The three Civil Rights workers
that disappeared in Mississippi
still have not been heard from.
At search has thus far
produced only one clue,
the burned-out station wagon in which
the three were last seen riding.
There is little hope that they are still alive.
Reporter: Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were found
shot to death in a grave
at the base of a recently built dam
just six miles from the City of Philadelphia.
Their bodies wrapped in plastic bags
numbered one, two and three,
were taken to the state medical center in
Jackson for identification and examination.
Reporter: The two white boys were shot
once each through the heart.
James Chaney, the black youth,
had been beaten with chains
until every bone in his body was broken.
Then he was shot three times.
The finding of the bodies
of the three Mississippi Civil Rights workers
is a saddening and shocking reminder
of the brutality of race hatred.
We naturally expect that those responsible
for these terrible murders
will be brought to justice.
I know they're gonna say not guilty
'cause no one saw them pull the trigger.
I'm tired of that.
Don't bow down anymore.
Hold your heads up.
We want our freedom now.
I don't want to go through this anymore.
I'm tired of funerals! Tired of it!
We've got to stand up.
Reporter: The arrests had started before dawn.
In all FBI men picked up 21 men,
included in the group were the chief law officers
of Neshoba County,
Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Deputy Cecil Price.
They were murdered by Ku Klux Klanmen
with the conspiratorial help of the local sheriff.
Reporter: Bond was set,
but less than a week later the accused
were set free, their bond lifted.
For James Chaney's mother
who attended that hearing it was a shock,
frustration, disappointment.
The legal answer to her son's murder seemed to her
as far away as ever.
I have the great honor
to hand over to you the insignia
of the Nobel Peace Prize,
and the gold medal.
Reporter: Some critics have charged
that the Nobel Peace Prize
was not appropriately given this year,
what's your reaction to that one?
Well first I should say that
I don't think the peace prize
was given to me personally,
and I don't accept it as a personal honor.
I think it is rather a tribute
to the wise restraint, and discipline,
and dignity with which Negroes
and white persons of goodwill have carried out
the whole struggle for Civil Rights.
Garrow: By the end of the 1964 Dr. King is aware that
the one major southern Civil Rights challenge
that had not been dealt with
in the 1964 Civil Rights Act was voter registration.
The bewildering hodgepodge
of election laws from state to state
prevents many from voting.
Boss controlled political machines
disfranchise others by downright fraud.
The Negro citizen may go to register
only to be told that the day is wrong,
or the hour is late, or the official in charge is absent.
There are five counties
in Mississippi, each at least 57 percent Negro
in which no Negroes at all are registered.
Today marks the beginning of a determined
organized mobilized campaign
to get the right to vote all over this state.
Martin Luther King chooses the City of Selma
because it has the worst record
of any southern city on black voting.
We will dramatize
this whole situation and seek to arouse
the conscience of the federal government
by marching by the thousands
on places of registration all over.
Garrow: Student protestors had already had a presence in Selma
going back to 1963,
but had found it exceptionally tough going
because the Dallas County Sheriff,
Jim Clark was an even tougher version
of Birmingham's Bull Connor.
The Registrar is not in session
this afternoon, as you were informed.
You came down to make a mockery
out of this courthouse.
This courthouse is a serious place of business,
you seemed to think you can take it for
just be a Disneyland or something on parade.
We have had numerous niggers
that couldn't read and write come down
and say that they were told to come,
and if they didn't come they would lose their
pensions from the welfare department,
or their social security,
or have their land confiscated
if they didn't show up to register to vote.
And when they came down they had no idea then
what they were supposed to do.
You are breaking the injunction
by not allowing these people
to come inside this courthouse and wait.
This courthouse does not belong to Sheriff Clark,
this courthouse belongs to the people of Dallas County
and these are the people of Dallas County,
and they have come to register.
And you know this within your
own heart Sheriff Clark.
Clark, he knew what he wanted to do to me,
but he couldn't do it in the open
'cause of all those cameras, right?
We have come to be here
because they are registering at this time, and...
Why don't you get out from in front of the camera and go on?
It's not a matter of being in front of the camera.
It's a matter of facing your sheriff,
and facing your judge,
we're willing to be beaten for democracy,
and you misuse democracy in the street.
You beat people bloody in order that
they will not have the privilege to vote.
I'm here to tell you tonight that the Mayor of this city,
the police commissioner of this city,
and everybody in the white power structure
of this city must take a responsibility
for everything that Jim Clark does in this community.
We're marching today to dramatize to the nation,
dramatize to the world
that hundreds and thousands of
Negro citizens of Alabama,
but particularly here in the Blytheville area
are denied the right to vote.
We intend to march to Montgomery
to send grievance to
Governor George C. Wallace.
Governor George Wallace
is the head of the Alabama State Patrol.
In tandem with his good buddy Sheriff Jim Clark,
thinks that what these marchers deserve
is a good beating.
When we arrive
at the highest point on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
down below we saw a sea of Alabama State Troopers.
Opposing the protestors was a force of
Alabama State Troopers,
Sheriff Clark, and then Clark's private army,
the so-called posse men.
We saw these men
putting on their gas masks.
They came toward us.
Unidentified Cop: It would be detrimental to your safety
to continue this march.
You're ordered to disperse,
go home, or go to your church.
This march will not continue.
Unidentified Cop: This is an unlawful assembly,
you have to disperse,
you are ordered to disperse.
I thought we were gonna be arrested.
The major said troopers advance.
They used electric cattle prods, bullwhips,
wooden clubs wrapped with barbed wire.
John Lewis: I was hit in the head
by a state trooper with a nightstick.
I thought I saw death.
I thought I was going to die.
Hey!
Schenkkan: Sheriff Clark and his volunteer army
the posse men sent
80 men, women and children into the hospital.
ABC broke in with this footage
that was now being called Bloody Sunday.
And white middle class Americans
sitting in their comfortable living rooms
suddenly had the whole racial ugly mess thrust
into their face.
It was a watershed moment in television,
a landmark moment in the Civil Rights movement.
For the first time since Birmingham
that footage sets off a national firestorm.
In our country we don't tolerate police by terror
taking the law into the own hands.
This is unacceptable, and just not American,
and I believe the time has come
for the President to step in.
Carter: The Pettus Bridge incident
is one of those seminal events that helped
create a political groundswell
for Lyndon Johnson to quickly,
and this time without nearly as much opposition
as the Civil Rights Act of '64,
to push through the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Speaker: The President of the United States
Reporter: Johnson feels that he needs to go
before the country
in a joint session of congress
about why this should be done.
I was in the home of a local family in Selma
with Dr. King, and we watched and listened to
President Johnson.
At times history and faith meet at a single time
to shape a turning point
in man's unending search for freedom.
So it was at Lexington and Concorde,
so it was a century ago at Appomattox,
so it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
There long suffering men and women
peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans.
Their cause must be our cause too
because it's not just Negroes,
but really it's all of us who must overcome
the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.
And we shall overcome.
John Lewis: To hear Lyndon Johnson,
the President of the United States,
use the theme song of the movement,
'we shall overcome', I looked at Dr. King,
tears came down his face, he started crying,
we all cried a little.
Dr. King decided that the only proper response to this
was to continue the march to Montgomery
and a court order forced the state of Alabama
to permit said march.
Johnson has just ruled
that we have a legal and Constitutional right
to march from Selma to Montgomery.
♪ Come and follow me ♪
♪ You know the master said ♪
♪ Don't wait until tomorrow ♪
♪ Or you may be dead ♪
♪ I was young and I wanted to play ♪
♪ Said I'd wait just one more day ♪
♪ Don't you know I would ♪
♪ No, I would ♪
Martin Luther King, Jr: Now to those
who said that we will get here
only over their dead bodies,
well all the world today knows that
we are here and we are standing
before the forces of power
in the State of Alabama saying
we ain't gonna let nobody turn us around.
I come to say to you this afternoon
however difficult the moment,
however frustrating the hour,
it will not be long
because truth will rise again.
How long? Not long.
Because no lie can live forever.
How long? Not long.
Because the arc of the moral universe is long,
but it bends towards justice.
How long? Not long.
Because my eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord.
Glory hallelujah,
Glory hallelujah.
Glory hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
In the summer of '65
Johnson gets that Voting Rights Bill passed.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Certainly the '64 Civil Rights Act
led to dramatic changes,
politically at least in the short run
the Voting Rights Act was even more dramatic.
This is an examination room
at the central post office in downtown Birmingham
where under the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965
federal officials are examining people
to determine their qualifications
to register and vote under the laws of Alabama.
Once the Voting Rights Act was passed
and people got the right to vote
they stopped sitting-in and started voting.
And that turned out to be much more effective.
Dallek: The number of blacks
who began voting across the south,
the number of black office holders
at the local level, at the state level,
at the congressional level,
one of the greatest changes in America society.
This is what James Meredith
intends to do for the next two weeks,
march along the highways of Mississippi,
a state where he is
one of the most hated men alive.
His purpose, Meredith hopes to
encourage unregistered Negroes along the way
to qualify as voters.
He also, by his very presence,
hopes to dispel some of the fear
Negroes have in the south.
In 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act
you'd a thought any thing was possible.
But then very quickly after that
things start to fall apart.
Meredith: I'm shot in the leg.
Roberts: As James Meredith was
walking along the highway
a gunman stepped out of the woods
and just blasted him with a shotgun.
Meredith was taken to a
Memphis hospital under police guard,
his blood still remains on the highway.
Once he was shot then there had to be some response
by the movement, they had to show that
the segregationist can't win that way.
Carson: They got together
and decided to continue the march,
Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King.
Stokely Carmichael was very much unlike
the Nashville group in terms of his perspective.
We feel that we must
continue this march right now, that is...
It is urgent to do it,
and we will be calling on people of goodwill
from all over the nation to join us in this march.
Carson: Martin Luther King was almost
at level of sainthood,
Stokely Carmichael understood that
he needed that symbol in order to
provide legitimacy for what he was trying to do.
We want to put President Johnson on the spot,
he called a conference two days ago
to fulfill these rights,
we want those rights fulfilled.
They cannot be fulfilled with words,
words cannot stop bullets,
and we need action, and we need it now
from the federal government.
No more questions.
No more questions, gentlemen.
We've got the march.
The most impressive thing
about this march on Mississippi
is a developing coalition among
Civil Rights leaders.
There are reports of differences between
leaders, and they are true,
but their organizations have always been divided,
a split among them is nothing new.
Put them all together on a march
in a highway in Mississippi
and frictions emerge because of
personal competition and individual ego.
Our sweat and blood
built Mississippi, and we got to take it over
'cause we deserve to have it.
That's what we working for.
Stokely Carmichael started expressing
the goal now is black people exercising power.
Let me say first
this march is nonviolent,
it is a non-violent expression
of our determination to be free.
This is the principle of the march,
and certainly we intend
to keep this march non-violent.
Mr. Carmichael, are you as committed to the non-violent
approach as Dr. King is?
- No, I'm not. - Why aren't you?
Well I just don't see it as a way of life, I never have.
But I also realize that no one in this country
is asking the white community
in the south to be non-violent,
and that in a sense is giving them
a free license to go ahead and shoot us at will.
If there was a symbol of
white anger at Negro protest
in the north this summer
it was Cicero, Illinois,
a town chosen by Dr. Martin Luther King
as the pressure point in his open housing drive.
Dr. King takes the Civil Rights movement north to Chicago,
and the issue is housing.
The northern scene
was a far more complicated scene,
and did not have the advantage of the Jim Crow law
as a target.
It was one thing for northern liberals
when the issue was integration in Selma,
quite a different thing when it was in Cicero.
Reporter: If lets say 10 or 20 families
moved into Cicero, which is a town of 70,000.
They'd get killed.
It was the beginning of serious white backlash
against the entire Civil Rights movement.
Reporter: The nation suddenly learned
what it should've known,
that racial prejudice was not just
a southern problem, it was nationwide.
If whites in the north formerly
could comfort themselves by pointing
an accusing finger at the south
they could do so no longer.
Cicero once again
is showing open hostility
towards the Civil Rights demonstrators.
These people here are firmly opposed
to these marches, moreover
they don't see where they serve
any useful purpose.
Most of the national press
categorizes Chicago as a defeat for King.
I can say that I have never seen,
even in Mississippi and Alabama,
mobs as hostile and as hate filled
as I've seen in Chicago.
There was a growing feeling
that King's movement wasn't working.
He had lost a lot of support
from whites and blacks.
Martin Luther King is a good man,
he's my brother, he's still like me,
we're all catching hell, he's got his approaches of freedom,
he's doing his best, and he's changing now too.
He sees now that it seems to be impossible
to do what he want to do.
King was rapidly being
eclipsed by a younger and much more
militant faction of the Black Power Movement.
We are not going to let these
white people come into our neighborhood and kill us.
We're going to put every cracker
in Atlanta on his knees.
There was a lot of disunity
because the only thing that had
really kept the black community together,
ironically, was segregation.
Once that has been overcome
then the question is what do you want?
I would like for all of us
to believe in non-violence,
but I'm here to say tonight
that if every Negro in the United States
turns against nonviolence
I'm going to stand up as a lone voice
and say this is the wrong way.
I think that there's a realization
in this country that black power is
not just a mere slogan,
nationally or internationally.
It is real that black people can come together
and start determining for their lives
how they're going to live, and controlling
their economic and political lives.
So it means that you have to build a movement
so strong in this country
that if one black man is touched
every black man will rise up
and let this country know
they're not gonna tolerate it.
You better quit running around here
talking about loving these honkies to death.
During rebellions brother you got to stop
looting and start shooting.
Black power brother.
Dallek: The issue is one
that moves across Civil Rights,
moves across poverty,
you get this explosion of violence.
You have the Watts riots.
Then subsequently riots in Newark,
in Detroit.
Carter: The riots bring to the fore
the problems of inner city life,
a consequence of a generation of neglect
in America's urban centers.
Reporter: This happened on 12th Street
in Detroit in July.
Next time it could happen downtown,
or in your town.
Reporter: When you stood on the Lincoln Memorial
you said I had a dream, did that dream
envision the federal government
preventing the society doing for the Negroes
that which you think had to be done?
It was a high moment,
a great watershed moment,
but I must confess that... that dream
that I had that day has in many points
turned into a nightmare.
Now I'm not one to lose hope.
I keep on hoping.
I still have faith in the future.
But I've had to analyze many things
over the last few years, and I would say
over the last few months,
I've gone through a lot of soul searching
and agonizing moments,
and some of the old optimism
was a little superficial, and now it must be
tempered with a solid realism,
and I think the realistic fact is
that we still have a long, long way to go.
Chet Huntley: Martin Luther King, Jr
was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Shot in the face as he stood on the balcony
of his hotel room.
Martin...
was gone.
And the main part of everything was over.
And we knew that the Movement would never be
the Movement as it was,
but then the things that we had
lived and really fought for was won.
I just want to do God's will,
and He has allowed me to go up to the mountain,
and I've looked over,
and I've seen
the promise land.
I may not get there with you,
but I want you to know tonight
that we as a people will get to the promise land.
So I'm happy tonight, I'm not worried
about anything, I'm not fearing any man.
Mine eyes have seen
the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Nash: There were many kinds of
sacrifices made for freedom,
most liberation struggle
is trying to bring about a better world,
and a better society.
We had to give everything we had to the Movement.
We accepted a way of peace as a way of life,
a way of nonviolence as a way of life,
as a way of living.
We forged an agenda
in the mind of the country.
The movement begins with Montgomery,
becomes a Sit-in Campaign, the Freedom Ride,
the Birmingham Campaign, the Mississippi Summer,
the Selma to Montgomery March.
Jones: History will record
that those singular cumulative acts
of courage transformed the south,
transformed the country.
We wanted to change America, make America better,
not just for our generation,
but for a generation yet unborn.
All of the civil rights, all the marches,
all the people who have died in the civil rights struggle
will have died in vain
if, once the opportunity,
once the doors are open,
no one is prepared for it.
I know there's got to be several young people here
who are like five years old, right?
It's now becoming a possibility
that that young man, by the time he's 50, could be
running for the President of the United States.