>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC.
[ Pause ]
>> Good afternoon.
I'm Guha Shankar, staff
member and folklorist here
at the American Folklife
Center and on behalf
of Center Director
Dr. Betsy Peterson,
I want to extend the center's
collective welcome and thanks
for attending the latest installment
in the American Folklife Center's
Benjamin A. Botkin Lecture Series.
The talk for today as you see behind
me is entitled Reflections on Memory
and History: Collecting
New Oral Histories
of the Civil Rights movement
for the Library of Congress
and the Smithsonian NMAAHC,
short for the National Museum
of African American
History and Culture,
I'll stick with NMAAHC
for future reference.
And our guest speaker
here is Joe Mosnier.
For the purpose of allowing our
guest speaker the maximum allotted
time to both present his work
and to interact with you all,
I'll make my remarks
both brief and quick.
If you want to catch anything
I've said because you missed it,
you can of course watch this
eventually on our web screens
which are produced and presented
on Library of Congress website.
The Botkin lectures, I wanted
to acknowledge first of all,
were coordinated and produced by our
in-house programming section staff
which includes our coordinator Nancy
Groce, Jonathan Gold, Steve Winick,
Thea Austen, Stephanie Hall,
all the members of that section.
The series itself is structured
so as to allow us all to look
into the work of scholars
whose work resonates with
or has brought parallels
with the missions, aims,
and scope of the center
in the library.
This particular lecture then is
rather special in this regard
because Joe Mosnier's presentation
draw us explicitly from a collection
that has very recently been acquired
for the center and which is known
as the Civil Rights
History Project Collection.
What is the Civil Rights
History Project?
Well, my one visual
aid, on May 12, 2009,
the United States Congress passed
a Civil Rights History Project Act,
Public Law 111-19.
The law directs the
Library of Congress
and the Smithsonian's
NMAAHC to conduct first,
a survey of existing oral
history collections with relevance
to the Civil Rights
movement, and subsequently,
to record new interviews with people
who participated in the movement,
Civil Rights movement
or movement for freedom.
The survey information
which you see,
the portal behind me
representing a year's worth
of diligent archeological
work by a team of researchers
who were directed by the AFC
is now available worldwide
through a library website.
The survey data will
eventually migrate
to a more comprehensive
web portal on the topic
of the Civil Rights movement.
Principally, it will feature the
interviews and other materials
from both LOC and SI collections.
So this is a development, hopefully,
we're trying to get this
launched some time soon.
Apart from the web presence itself,
the interview has become a part,
a permanent part of the National
Library and the National Museum.
And at the library, the Civil Rights
History Project Collection joins a
rich and diverse corpus of
historical materials pertaining
to the specific topic
of the movement
such as NAACP Collection created
by our very own Adrienne Cannon,
portions of the Alan Lomax
Collection and several others
which are available to
you all as researchers.
As you can imagine a
project of the scale
and size involves many moving
parts in three major culture
and education institutions, and we
want to make to acknowledge them.
I'll begin with our
partners and collaborators
of this Smithsonian's NMAAHC.
The core operational team there
consists of Elaine Nichols,
but whom I will say
more in just a minute,
and Carlos Bustamante,
Project Coordinator.
And I must also mention this
terrific predecessor whom we work
with since the launch of the project
some two years ago, Marion Gill.
Also, at the SI, I want to
be particularly cognizant
of noting the management
of leadership
at the museum who've been
instrumental in sending the project
to date including Director
Lonnie Bunch,
Deputy Director Kinshasha
Holman Conwill
and Rex Ellis, Director of Research.
On the FAC side of the equation,
I will note the core members
of the CRHP without
whose work and talents,
nothing would ever get done.
They are Maggie Kruesi,
Kate Stewart,
[inaudible] Bert Lyons [inaudible]
and their various capacities,
their response for
the care and feeding
of the collections as it were.
I would be remiss not to
mention the thoughtful direction
of our former director, Dr.
Peggy Bulger who is now departed
from the warm and sunny
climate of Florida, I think,
she's somewhere on
the beach somewhere.
And David Taylor who worked on the
project before he left but only
within the library right over
here in the Madison Building.
Our other major partner of course
is the Southern Oral History Program
of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
which on their contract with
the NMAAHC has been responsible
for the documentation that is
recording our actual interviews,
[inaudible] coordinates
logistics there.
Our guest speaker, Joe Mosnier,
has been the principal interviewer
in almost all of the
recordings to date.
And John Bishop, the veteran
ethnographic film maker has been the
videographer and responsible for
the stunning images you will see.
Now, let me finally
introduce Dr.-- Ms.
Elaine Nichols who will tell
you bit about the NMAAHC
and its work on the CRHP.
A native of Charlotte,
North Carolina,
acclaimed temporary residence
in Charlotte for awhile,
Ms. Nichols is currently the
senior curator of culture
at the Smithsonian's NMAAHC
and the project curator
for the Civil Rights
History Project.
She is responsible for
helping to develop several
of the museums inaugural exhibitions
including musical crossroads,
popular culture, visual arts
and culture expressions.
She's the curator of the
Cultural Expressions Gallery
which explores African-American
aesthetics, style, and adornment,
food ways, religion, and the
literary and performing arts.
Prior to beginning her work at
the NMAAHC, Ms. Nichols worked
at the South Carolina State
Museum from 1989 until 2009.
And while at the museum, she serves
as a guest curator and later curator
of history where she worked at
several on site original exhibitions
and was also responsible
for mounting a number
of traveling exhibitions
incorporating South Carolina stories
and themes.
Ms. Nichols has a Masters in
Public Service and Archeology
from the University
of South Carolina,
Masters in Social Administration and
Planning from Case Western Reserve.
Please welcome Ms. Elaine Nichols.
[ Applause ]
>> Good afternoon.
I'm feeling somewhat like
I'm almost at an AMA church
where a hierarchy has already been
established by Guha and I want
to say thank you and thank
you for mentioning by name all
of the individuals who are part
of this important partnership.
On behalf of our Director Lonnie
Bunch, I bring you greetings.
No longer must we walk in our
land our strength unknown,
our knowledge obscure for we
are heirs to historic roots,
we've traveled far
and we found our way.
All of our dreams, our aspirations,
have taken hold and have bear fruit.
I've shared with you an excerpt from
Mary Ansie [phonetic] short poem.
Their walk was not easy because
the Civil Rights History Project
represents an important measure to
ensure that the memories of those
who have been heirs to historic
roots, who have traveled far,
had dreams and aspirations
continue to bear fruit.
The Civil Rights History Project has
been a very successful partnership
wherein the National Museum of
African American History and Culture
and the Library of Congress
have diligently worked
to support the 2009 Congressional
Mandate to capture the memories
and reflections of unsung heroes
of the Civil Rights movement.
We are indeed thankful to
represent it to Carolyn McCarthy,
represent it to John Louise,
and Senator Dianne Feinstein
for assuming the leadership and
making the legislation possible.
The modern Civil Rights movement
can rightly be associated
with the period after World War II
when many African-American
soldiers returned
from the battlefield fighting
against Hitler's racism
and imperialism to face ongoing
racism and discrimination at home
but it is much, much more than that.
By the late 1950s, the movement had
begun to establish full momentum
and some major victories starting
with the 1954 Brown versus Board
of Education, the 1955
Montgomery Bus Boycott,
and the 1957 desegregation
of central high school
in Little Rock, Arkansas.
During the Civil Rights
movement of the 1960s,
movement workers were involved in
large scale direct action, marches,
sit-ins, boycotts,
and demonstrations.
Public Law 111-19 that Guha
referred to earlier says that,
"Those who participated in the
Civil Rights movement from the 1950s
and the 1960s are shining example
of the fundamental principle
of American democracy that
individual should stand
up for their rights and
beliefs and fight for justice.
Participants in the Civil Right
movement demonstrated this principle
of action.
They possessed an invaluable
resource
in their first-hand memories of
the movement, and the recording
of the retelling of their stories
and memories will provide a rich,
detailed history of our nation doing
an important and tumultuous period."
The Civil Rights History Project
interviews will become an important
part of the National Museum of
African-American History and Culture
when it opens on the mall in 2015.
We will note now we've
had a groundbreaking
and there's a large hole there and
construction work is occurring.
These interviews will
be a valuable resource
for museum visitors whether
they are part of exhibitions,
public programs, or educational
programs for teachers and students.
They will also be included
in the archival collections
that will be made available
to scholars, researchers,
and the general republic alike.
Because of the many
exceptional leaders, supporters,
and grassroots activists,
we continue to be heirs
of great historic roots.
The legacy of the Civil Rights
movement has been extensive.
The Civil Rights movement has been
the model for international civil
and human rights movements that
have benefited women, the elderly,
the physically and mentally
challenged, gays, lesbians,
bisexuals, and transgender persons.
It begun as a movement
to secure racial equality
for African-Americans and has
generated many other movements
of inclusivity and empowerment.
And now, I would like to
introduce Dr. Joseph Mosnier.
In March 2011th, the National
Museum of African American History
and Culture contracted with the
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill Southern Oral History
Program to hire Joseph Mosnier
as lead interviewer
and project manager,
and John Bishop as a videographer.
Beginning in April of 2011
and ending in September
of that same year, Dr. Mosnier
conducted 50 interview sessions
in 30 cities and in 20 states
including the District of Columbia.
Dr. Mosnier has consistently
just demonstrated
that he is a serious scholar of
oral history, southern history,
racial history, and
American history.
For the interviews that he conducted
and then I was able to observe,
he was always a consummate
professional
who was always well prepared.
His research reflected adept
in breadth of analysis related
to the lives of each
individual that he interviewed,
as well as the broader
social and political contexts
of the specific communities.
More than anything, I appreciate
Joseph Mosnier for the treatment
that he accorded every
person that he met.
He respected the people and
he respected their stories
as precious artifacts of memory.
Personal memories are
essential not only
because they help people make
sense of their experiences
and order their lives
in meaningful ways.
They help others to understand
and interpret those memories
as valuable documentary resources.
The work of collecting these oral
histories is critical as many
of the contributors are passing away
and we are losing this
valuable information.
We are indebted to Dr.
Mosnier for his dedication
to helping us preserve
those important stories
in a most honorable way.
[ Applause ]
>> Hello everybody.
Thank you so much for coming out.
Elaine and Guha have kindly
allowed me to dispense
with at least the first three or
four pages of my notes which had
to do with all of those complicated
relationships, and thanks.
I echo their thanks.
I want to thank Elaine
for that very--
those very generous
remarks, thank you.
I want to say a quick
and easy note about Guha.
He has picked up a huge
portion of this project
and put it on his shoulders.
I knew you have lots of help
from your great colleagues
but I appreciate that and we have
appreciated that all across the way.
It's been great to work with Elaine
and her colleagues at the museum.
It's been a real privilege.
There are-- besides echoing those
thanks to the people already noted,
I want to call out just a few names.
These are RAs, research assistants,
graduate research assistants
at the Oral History Program in
Chapel Hill who did research
that was just instrumental and
absolutely essential to the project.
So let me just record their names
here, I think it's important.
Liz Landeen, Anna Krome-Lukens,
Kim Coutts, David Williard,
Rob Ferguson, Brandon
Winford, and Hudson Vaughan.
I really tip my hat to those guys.
They did work that was
absolutely essential
to the success of the project.
Let me jump right in.
My ambition here today, really,
is to share with you just
some preliminary reflections
about this project, its character,
what we've done, and really, then,
open it up to some converse to--
I hope a very vibrant conversation
because we're just the first
year into what will be five years
of interviewing as the museum
and the library move forward
with the project and
feedback from folks like all
of you will be essential to allow
us to do our very best work.
So please jump in with
any thoughts, criticisms,
observations that will be
very helpful to all of us.
I think, I think Guha,
we can probably--
I'm going to share just
a few short video clips.
There will be four.
I'll talk for probably-- oh,
I'll try to do it in 25 minutes
and then we'll have, you know, the
final 15 or 20 minutes to talk.
So this will just sort of
introduce you to some of the flavor
of what we are-- what
we're recording.
>> These are the people
that made the history.
And, what I have said to myself as
part of admission is it's one thing
to read about it, it's
another thing to acerbate,
talk to the people who lived it.
It's something like the [inaudible]
about Jesus Christ who came
down off the cross and
that was-- that was Thomas.
Put your finger in the
wound where the spear was
and I tell this [inaudible], come
and take to the people that went
to jail, the people
whose houses were bombed,
the people who were put out of job.
Come and see them.
These were real people.
This is not fiction.
These were real people.
>> Kind of do a little
bit of tree of life again?
[Background music]
>> As you know.
[ Music ]
>> Okay, I'll start off.
My name is Gwendolyn Annette
[inaudible] and I was born
and raised in Lincolnville of Saint
Augustine, Florida, June 28, 1956.
>> I was born in Manhattan.
I was born in Hungarian Yorkville
which at that time extended
from 79th street to 72nd street.
>> I was born in Tallahassee,
Florida, November the 28th, 1929.
>> Well, I was born on June
23rd 1954 in Winslow Hospital
which was a one-floor
hospital that was reserved
for the colored citizenry of
Danville, Virginia, so to speak.
>> We can go down in downtown of
Oklahoma City and shop in a store
where you could not try on a hat.
You could not try on shoes.
When my grandmother went to buy me
shoes, she had to take some thread
and tie a knot in it to
determine the size of shoe
that she would buy for me to work.
You could not eat in any restaurant.
You would have to go to
the back of the restaurants
and they would pass you a brown bag.
Come on and keep walking
with me in Oklahoma City.
>> Let me say a word about
the persons we talked to.
What-- who comprised
this list of 50 sessions.
I should note as you saw
with the [inaudible] ones,
there were some sessions that
had multiple contributors,
so an interview with
more than one person
but those were the
distinct minority.
I think person-- counting
up all the persons together,
there were probably 65 or so
contributors in 50 sessions.
They were nonviolent activists
who marched and went to jail.
They were key movement
strategists who struggled
to find a viable path forward.
They were singers,
they were musicians,
they were journalists
who spread the word.
And they were certainly
also individuals encouraged
to more radical positions
by loss and violence
and systematic oppression.
On that list of 50
sessions, there are names,
probably I would guess only
three or four you might
as a general audience recognize,
people like Reverend Joseph Lowery,
Reverend Charles Sherrod, Mr.
Pete Seeger, Mr. Jack Greenberg.
All the remaining names, I
would think that it's unlikely
that unless you knew the field of
Civil Rights really pretty closely
that you would have
heard of these folks.
It's just the nature I think
of a vast movement involving many
thousands of people in many, many,
hundreds of places that we
don't know their stories.
So as Elaine and Guha have
already helped to explain,
I think that's the core purpose of
this project to go on and recover
and capture and preserve
these voices.
Let me now shift to talking
about a couple of the themes
that we find in the material.
Some familiar, some a little bit new
but this will give
you a further sense.
I'll run a second clip
and this will suggest some
of that multiplicity of experience.
These will be-- as we sat down with
all these folks a common question
as we found our way into the
interview would be talked about,
explain how it was that in your life
you became involved in the movement.
So we have a couple of clips that
talk about how people stepped
into an engaged role
in the broad movement.
>> Everyone I knew
is like, [inaudible].
I've seen that photograph and it
was like a clarion call for action.
And that we got older, we would
like to avenge this stuff.
I mean I can remember the
feeling that's so strong.
And I remember putting those
hands for the Americans,
each time there was an article of
that and it's okay to send in trial
and I kept the scrapbook,
I wish I kept it near.
I remember they want to--
they're taking it up to my--
play mama's house but yet these
teenage girls will be a play Mama.
They were like nice
to you and so on.
Adult-- young sis-- younger
sister [inaudible] was Model
Stuart [phonetic].
I remember when they're taking
this scrapbook to her house
and I remember lying on
the floor on my stomach.
Flipped them through and [inaudible]
me to her, I remember crying
and feeling so terribly vulnerable
but at the same time feeling
that one day I'm going to
do something about this.
That was always the feeling that
you can see these horrible things
happening to people but one day,
it's not going to be like this
because I am going
to help to change it.
>> And I saw in the Philadelphia
newspaper a photograph
on the front page.
There's a photograph of a patty
wagon from the back and then
with these girls-- high school girls
in the back and they're all singing
and they were being
cornered off to jail.
And I was just so intrigued,
there's a bit of girls,
they're high school girls,
I'm a high school girl.
These are people in Georgia
challenged in segregation and going
to jail and I was just
extraordinarily impressed.
I mean, I was more than impressed.
I wanted to be like them.
>> What I realized was that all of a
sudden, something was more important
than going back to do my assignments
in Howard for the weekend,
something even more
important than maybe a party
that might be happening
on a Saturday night.
Something was more important
than what my mother might think
about my future, or how this might
fall in her career, and all that.
That's all I think about,
liberation, it was real sense
that all of a sudden, I was
making a stand, it could be a--
kind of have been about
something entirely different
but I was thinking to stand from
what I wanted my life to be,
you know, and well, I was
aware of other's opinions.
I was doing well and
really wanted a degree.
And I was willing to take whatever
responsibility, in this case,
getting arrested before from
that sense that was really, like,
it was crossing the
Rubicon,[inaudible]--
and it was very much--
thing, this is now my life--
>> Yeah.
>> And I'm going to live it
and face the consequences.
>> Let me say a little bit about--
a little bit more about each of
those three contributors there.
Some of you may recognize the first
speaker, that's Dr. Joyce Ladner,
the prominent sociologist and
the first woman to be president
of Howard University
here in the district.
We interviewed her together
here in the district
with her sister Ms. Dorie Ladner.
The second speaker
Mr. Phil Hutchings--
oh sorry, you also saw Kathleen
Cliber [phonetic], excuse me.
Just as this remarkable life
experience kind of swept up into--
through having met Eldridge
Cleaver swept up into the experience
at the Black Panther Party
from the mid-60s forward.
Mr Phil Hutchings, the last speaker
in that clip, his roles ranged
from student participation when
he was a student in the early '60s
at Howard with the nonviolent action
group, one of the early affiliates
of the news-- Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
They protested down Route 40.
He moved on to significant roles
in SNCC, in STS and, in fact,
he was the National chair
of SNCC at that time
when they were making tremendous
effort to try to keep those forces
of disintegration from
really breaking
that critical institution
apart there in the late '60s.
He reached out to try to
build alliances with Core,
with the Panthers, with
Chicano groups, and with others.
His narrative says much about
the effort to bring the movement
from the south into
northern urban settings.
There are couple other people who
come to mind when I think back
about the broad issue of
stepping into the movement.
We don't have clips but
let me talk about two.
You did see briefly Mr.
Evans Hopkins talking
about his origins in
Danville, Virginia.
In 1971, let me just
illustrate the kinds of things
that we discover in
his conversations.
In 1971, he was just
17 years old living
in Danville, a very difficult place.
Met some persons who were involved
in a very active Black Panther Party
community house in Winston-Salem,
North Carolina where
he moved in 1971.
Within about 12 months,
he was in Oakland
at the Black Panther Party
National Headquarters working
as a journalist for
the party newspaper.
And he, as so many, in fact almost
all of our contributors was able
to present such a nuanced
and detailed account
of his life experience across
those kinds of remarkable shifts
and ranges of experience
that you really can, I think,
walk a little bit in those shoes and
see that experience through his eyes
and it makes those kinds of
choices I think quite intelligible
in a very direct and immediate way.
I think of one other person too
about on the theme of stepping
into the movement, how one
could, almost by accident
at times, just be pulled in.
Richard B. Sobol in the summer
of 1965 was a young lawyer
who had recently joined Arnold
& Porter, a major firm here
in DC even to this day of course.
And in the summer of '65, he had
a perfect, you know, IV resume
and exactly the right things in
his background as a young lawyer
to rise right through the ranks
and become a very powerful
and economically successful
attorney here in the district.
But in the summer of 1965,
he was very much interested
in all the things happening
in the south
which he had watched very
closely and he volunteered
to take a three-week stint with
a newly created lawyers' group
that was trying to help pitch
in and provide legal services
to the movement in New Orleans,
went down for three weeks
and he basically never came home.
He walked away from a career that
would have been secure in one way
and then instead engaged in a life
of direct contribution
to the movement.
He would play a very
significant roles in attorney
in the federal courts litigating
employment schools and other issues
and he also provided direct legal
assistants to the activist community
in Bogalusa, Louisiana about
30 miles north of New Orleans
where there was just some
extraordinary Civil Rights history
that played out.
Let me talk now and
shift to a second theme.
We learned in this material as
well or in this interviews as well,
we found some fabulous examples
in those stories that people told
of some of the pre1960s
antecedents to the movement that.
Elaine had pointed out, of course,
the movement's roots go way back far
beyond 1960 but in popular telling
of the Civil Rights
movement, oftentimes the--
or quite often anyway that
the kick off point is taken
to be the February 1, 1960 sit-in
at the Woolworth's Counter--
Lunch Counter in Greensboro,
North Carolina,
and actually I'll say something
about that history
in a moment as well.
But, we have a clip
that will talk a little
about a couple pre-1960 movement
antecedents and if we can--
[ Pause ]
Not-- oh sorry, Guha, can you shift?
>> Okay. No problem.
That's it, that's all.
>> No?
>> No.
>> It would start with--
[ Pause ]
It would start with-- excuse me.
We might not brought that clip.
Let me just describe this.
There are two, just to make sure
we can find it later if it's there.
We went to Oklahoma City and
met with-- intending in fact,
to meet with the woman
named Mrs. Clara Luper.
Mrs. Luper is one of those
extraordinary people who,
when it was-- of course it
wasn't never easy but one
of this particularly difficult
through the mid 1950s began all
of that hard work, that
organizing that's necessary to sort
of create the pattern of resources
requisite for a sustained movement.
She led in the Oklahoma
City NAACP Youth Council.
And in 1958, the 14 members of that
Youth Council Chapter ranging in age
from 6 to 16 and including
two of her children.
One of them, Marilyn Luper, she
will be Marilyn Luper-Hildreth
and you saw her briefly in
those introductory remarks,
and her brother, Mr. Calvin Luper.
They were meeting one day
and the idea was hatched
by Ms. Hildreth, then a 10-year-old.
Why don't we go down and protest
at the Katz Drugstore
counter, and indeed they did.
And this is one of the stories that
doesn't much get any attention.
But in 1958, two years before
they kickoff of what we think
of as the activist sit-in phase of
the movement, there were members
of the African American Community in
Oklahoma City including children led
by Mrs. Luper at the Katz
Drugstore counter and then amazing--
oops, excuse me, the
amazing thing happened.
In three days, Katz capitulated,
as did, in short order,
a couple of other statewide
Oklahoma-based department
store chains.
Some others fought and didn't
but they had this early success
within the boundaries of the State
of Oklahoma but it kind of passed
without too much attention.
And Mrs. Luper and her charges
and others in the community,
they did a very interesting thing
and this is the kind of thing
that I think says so
much about this people.
They pretty much started sitting
in 1958 and they were still sitting
in years later into the
mid-'60s in Oklahoma City.
I think of-- I think of
another pre-1960s sort of story
of antecedents to the movement.
We went to Columbia, South Carolina
and interviewed Judge Matthew
J. Perry Jr. Judge Perry,
African-American graduated from Law
School in South Carolina in 1951
and began practicing law,
and certainly gave his time
and attention, and effort took
contesting the racial mores
and laws of that day.
In 1956 as a very young attorney, he
successfully challenged segregation
in South Carolina and
interstate transportation.
He sued a municipally-operated bus
system and won a decision following
on the logic of Brown that
that system must desegregate.
Eighteen months later, that legal
president would be an important case
sided in the disposition
of Rosa Parks's legal case
in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The cases of Mrs. Luper in Oklahoma
City, Judge Perry in Columbia,
South Carolina, if I can just
step to the side for a moment
to register an additional
point, they suggest,
and Elaine has made this
point in our opening remarks.
They suggest the urgency
of this work.
Here we are some 50, 60 years on
from the period of most active stage
of the movement through
the '60s and some
of these people are quite elderly,
and are failing, and indeed,
we arrived in Oklahoma
City in the case
of Luper Family expecting
interviewing Mrs. Luper
but her health had taken a turn for
the worst just as we were arriving.
So we did the interviews
instead with her adult children.
In Columbia, we sat down with,
now, Judge Perry and in fact,
what is the, this is a lovely thing,
the Matthew J. Perry
Federal Courthouse
in downtown Columbia
which opened in 2004.
Judge Perry was the first
African-American elected,
elevated to the federal
bench by Jimmy Carter
in '79 in South Carolina.
Judge Perry was vibrant in his
early '80s, vibrant, active.
He concluded our 90-minute
interview and said, "I'm sorry,
but I've got to step
across the hallways
from my chambers 'cause I'm
running a trial and I got
to get back to the court."
But in both cases, the visit
to Oklahoma City and the visit
to Columbia, within a couple
months, we lost those folks,
both Mrs. Luper and
Judge Perry passed.
And so, we are reminded of how we
need to not waste time in getting
out across the country
to do this work.
Let's go to Dr. Hayling
clip if we can.
This will-- this is a third
theme and it's a tough one.
It's the, you know,
from this distance,
sometimes we forget the immediacy
of the violence, and the fear,
and the trauma but it's
everywhere in these interviews.
[ Pause ]
>> When we looked up, there
were clansmen with [inaudible]
in the front of the car
and that wheel of the car
and [inaudible] was driving the car.
And he thought he knew
a side road or whatever.
We were thinking to escape, and
he took the side road and low
and behold, the clan has built
almost a ditch across the roadway
and we had to come to a stop to
keep them going in to that ditch.
And when we knew anything,
we were surrounded clansmen,
ordered out of the car, and all,
and the physical punishment
started at that time.
And they took out wallets
and, you know, personal things
and in my wallet, they saw my
identity and everything else,
and also discovered an
NWCP card and that will--
that was the impetus for them
to really start beating us.
The beating was so
severe with the ax handles
and that baseball bats and all.
Then we were pressured up to
be eventually on stage of that,
you know, where the speaker was.
And we will crawl on top of
each of the semiconscious
like hard wood on top of each other.
>> What I'm trying to say is
that that day shook my life
when the horse started charging
and those white men started
swinging the [inaudible].
And I must tell you, I was so naïve.
I'm almost ashamed to admit this
that I kept looking up in the sky.
Because I had grown
up with this notion
of guy that's riding chariot
delivering God's children.
And if you were doing the right
thing then you would be delivered
and I waited, and waited, and
waited in Ontario, and oh, God.
>> It was just horrible.
We slept with our clothes but then
we didn't take our clothes off
that night, you know, because
the clans went [inaudible].
It's all around until the men
involved the most of this act
to do something about it.
>> I want to say a quick word
about each of those cases.
Dr. Hayling, he was a young
dentist in St. Augustine, Florida,
really kindled and led
the movement there.
As tough as that clip
is, his interview goes
on to even harder descriptions
which are hard to talk about.
There were persons in that
clan, assembly, white--
excuse me, white local
police officers and others
who were attending the clan
rally as clan rally participants.
They know Dr. Hayling because
he actually provided their
dental service.
There was a de facto
practice in the community
of that white law enforcement
couldn't effect demand
with that service from a
person like Dr. Hayling.
And they knew that
he was right-handed
so they beat him especially
aggressively on his right side
to make the effort to damage
his professional prospects.
There are other very hard aspects
of the story from St. Augustine
that we recorded in a cluster
of interviews that we did there,
we did five interviews
in St. Augustine.
Ms. Ruby Sales, you saw her as the
second person in that sequence.
She elsewhere tells a story again.
These are just very
difficult things.
She tells a story of
being in Hanceville,
Alabama in the summer of 1965.
She and others have been jailed for
participation in nonviolent protest
between Soma in Montgomery and
suddenly on a weekend afternoon,
although jail door was-- and this
is a very small community obviously
in the rural south in the mid-'60s.
Their jail door was drawn up, and
they're all told that you can leave,
which made them extremely
uncomfortable anticipating
that a circumstance like
that could only mean
that they were being setup
potentially for violence.
They wearily moved
forward, things seemed calm
for the ensuing few minutes.
It was a very, very hot day.
They've been jailed
without many food
and beverage resources obviously.
And there was a small store across
the little town square so Ms. Sales
and a young seminarian from
Boston who had also been jailed,
they stopped across to buy some
drinks for themselves and the others
and when they stepped back out
of the store, someone stepped
on to the store's porch, leveled the
shotgun at Ms. Sales, and as he went
to pull the trigger, it was only
that young seminarian behind Ms.
Sales pushed her out of the way
and died himself in that moment.
So you can imagine the force
and the emotional impact
of these kinds of stories.
I'll say a little bit more
about that when I wrap up.
The-- you saw Mrs. Hicks
there closed that sequence.
There are so many things
to say about Bogalusa.
You could talk for days about the
Civil Right story in Bogalusa.
Let me just personalize
this as she did in--
with one end or one
element of their experience.
We did an interview there with
Mrs. Hicks and four or five
of her children and
then one grandchild
so there were seven people
there and they talked
in this collective interview.
One of the things that they
explained was Bogalusa was such,
such a violent and difficult
and almost ungoverned place
in that moment of history
that the Deacons Of Defense,
local African-American man
who built in a quiet network
to provide armed defense to people
like the Hicks' who were part
of the leadership team in Bogalusa.
So, that family lived-- the
Hicks family lived with,
and you can imagine, with armed
men in their yard at night
on their roof for three years.
And the children, the Hicks
children tell the story of learning
as small children, when they walked
across the front of their house
and reached the front windows
of their house, to stop walking
and to crawl and then
to stand up again,
when they pass the windows by.
So you can imagine one the things
that has very much impressed itself
on me in this work is to think more
about the legacy of this violence
and trauma, and I'll say a few
things about that as we move on.
Let me just call up
one other, he was in--
too many of these instances of
course because the movement was
so difficult and so
violent so often.
Charles McDew, Mr. Charles McDew
who was the first President
of SNCC actually, remarkable man.
He went early into Southwest Georgia
with Reverend Sherrod and others
and he talks about, again, this
is a obviously in racial terms,
almost ungoverned the white local
law enforcement where persons
who could enforce authority
with even murderous violence
with no consequence and
indeed that happened
across Southwest Georgia
more than once.
And I will never forget sitting in
interview with Mr. McDew and he said
"Well, you know, we just-- there
it was, a blood price just had
to be paid if we were
going to move forward.
That is what it would take
to move the movement forward
in Southwest Georgia and we
decided that we would go ahead."
So, as you can imagine,
these interviews are remarkable
instances again and again and again
of this just courage, this
capacity, the faith to step
in to that kind of context.
Let me turn to a fourth
and final clip.
This will suggest how so many people
in the movement had this yearning,
this spirit, this vision for
something that, you know,
some transcendent achievement
in re-crafting the social order.
It wasn't-- it wasn't narrowly the
question of formal legal rights
of formal Civil Rights but
an objective that range
to transforming society, and I think
these are two beautiful short clips
that suggest that.
>> And so, we feel that night and
we're staying back that night.
For one of the things that happened
when we were there is the
policeman from the city came in.
We were having a movie I
believe that night, Southeast.
And, they came in, they turned out
all of the lights from the city,
they turned them out so we were
in complete darkness that night
and we could not see each
other, we didn't know where,
I didn't know when I see the
walls, I didn't know where we were.
We were just there wherever
we were at that time
when the lights went
out, that's why we set.
And so all of these
policemen came in
and all we could see basically
is the [inaudible] and the butts
of their gun, you could
see a charged.
And they also-- and they told
us to see [inaudible] police,
stay still, be quiet, [inaudible].
And something sang
we are loved, are we,
everybody start to
sing, we are loved.
And we hear people come in,
my sister who is not a singer,
I knew she was safe 'cause I heard
her out of tune voice [laughter]
and I could hear men's
base coming about.
We are not afraid and we
just got louder and louder,
we're singing that verse until one
of the policemen came and he said
to me, "If you have to sing,"
and he was actually shaking,
"Do you have to sing so loud?"
[Laughter] And I could not
believe, hear this people here all
of the good, or bad
things, or power, we fought.
And he was asking me with a shake
if I would not sing so loud.
I knew at that time that I had
really understood the power
of our move, of our music.
>> When we look at worlds apart,
people, I think, think that she was,
she did that because
her Civil Rights
of wanting to sit down on the bus.
What she also did was a
rebellion of me to rebellion
of working class women who
were tired of boarding the bus
in Montgomery, the public space
and being assaulted and called
out of their names and
abused by white bus drivers.
And that's why women-- that's why
that movement could hold so long.
Even that that was merely
approached us about riding a bus,
it might have shattered but it went
to the very heart of black womanhood
and black women played a major
role as a state in that movement.
And so that's why I think
it's really important
to see the larger context.
I don't think the Civil Rights
movement could have last but as long
as this movement did without
the culture nuances of that,
without the theology, without the
intimacy, without the connection,
and without the strong desire
to be first class human beings.
>> We moved pretty fast
but let me conclude here
with just a few reflections.
The persons in these
interviews certainly confirmed
and extend the way we
think about the movement.
Historians have done now, you know,
decades of work on the movement.
There's a vast literature,
much of it is superb.
But the popular understandings
that prevail in our culture
of the movement, I think,
are often very tightly drawn,
maybe don't point to-- maybe
at times obscure more
than they illuminate.
I think that these materials
will be extremely useful
to the new National Museum of
African American History and Culture
in disrupting and recasting
aspects of the popular narrative
that will help us all
understand this history better
so I'm really pleased
at that prospect.
Let me reach back, I mentioned
that I would come to Greensboro,
another little disruption.
We interviewed a woman, Dr.
Esther Terry at Bennett College
in Greensboro, North Carolina.
She's now a senior
administrator in the university's--
in the college's hierarchy.
In 1959-1960, she was a
student at Bennett College,
the women's college,
African-American women's college
in Greensboro, North Carolina.
You can pick up many history
of the movement and they talk
about the four young men
from North Carolina A&T
who very courageously sat down at
the Woolworth's Counter on the first
of February 1960 and [inaudible]
with kicking off the active
sit-in phase of the movement.
As we talk with Dr. Terry, she
very quietly but firmly reminded us
that we should rethink that
history and tells us the story
about how there were young
women, students at Bennett
who were meeting frequently to
talk about what they might do
in the community to contest
the prevailing racial order.
And they had extensive conversation
about launching a sit-in movement
and of course there were young
men who like to come and visit
around Bennett College and some
of these young men were kind
of on the edges of those
discussions and they came back
from the winter Christmas Holiday
and low and behold, there were four
of them suddenly went in and
sat in at the counter but they
like to assert and I don't
have any reason to doubt them
that it was young women at Bennett
College who in fact were the ones
who did much to craft that strategy
of confrontation in Greensboro.
Another key reflection, I
was absolutely struck not
that I necessarily expected anything
differently, but absolutely struck
across 50 interview session with
the absence of any narrative
of a realized transcendent
kind of accomplishment.
As a group, these persons,
so many of them have
remained actively engaged
in progressive social
change movements
and they are relatively discouraged
about the current state of racial
and economic affairs
in this country.
It was not the experience of
going out and ending the interview
with this kind of an
emotional high point.
These were all difficult stories
and people do not see a rising arch.
No one says that the southeast
in the country is unchanged,
everybody says that it's all changed
substantially, obviously it is.
But, I don't think we had a
single interviewee who sees this
as the work is now accomplished
and done and yet too often
in the popular narrative, that's
how we understand or, you know,
it suggested to us that that's how
we would understand this history.
A third reflection, I am
absolutely struck by two things
that we would do well I think
to give further attention to,
both in our own work and
historians generally.
One is the whole pattern, varied and
flexible and two successful pattern
of white reaction which could-- it's
sort of exhibiting endless capacity
to absorb, deflect, and destroy
threats to the prevailing order.
A second thing is that I think
we need, us I mentioned, earlier,
I think we need to get more
attention to the long legacy impacts
of all this violence
and fear and trauma.
If you read through say
Civil Rights, the literature
of Civil Rights autobiography,
you'll find so many of these people
at some point, it can be a
year later, it can be five,
it can be 20 years later.
People just, at some point, have to
step away and have kind of a moment
of deep compression and removal
from all of what they have carried
with them from encountering
violence so directly
for so much time in these years.
Lastly, let me just say we can
maybe get to the same questions
and we're running up against
the clock so I need to stop.
But I do really want to emphasize
my thanks to the library,
my thanks to the museum, my
thanks to the oral history program
and all my colleagues in this
project across those organizations.
It's been, for me to do this work,
it's just been a tremendous
privilege, this is the work I do.
I have worked in oral
history for many years.
I studied Civil Rights,
legal history.
So, it was a great privilege and
my thanks especially in this work
to the interviewees who I
think because they feel I'm--
I'm inferring as I do, I will report
that, so proud of this prospect
of this new museum, so happy
that this is coming into being,
that they were especially
pleased to have the opportunity
to preserve their thoughts,
their personal narratives
for that archive.
So, let me invite questions
and thoughts
and I thank you all
for that in advance.
[ Applause ]
Yes?
>> I was wondering how were these
people selected, were they--
did they volunteer or
how did you all choose
out of many that there are in this--
>> Yup, Elaine can answer that with
a quick summary if that's okay.
Ah, do you want to?
>> No--
>> Okay. The museum convened
a special advisory committee,
activists, scholars, former
movement leaders, participants.
And collectively, they worked
with Elaine and others at the--
but especially with
Elaine and others
at the museum to draft a list.
So, it wasn't the Oral
History Program
that put the 50 names together
or the 50 sessions together
but rather the museum.
>> Okay. And that was little bit
more complicated than that because--
>> Why don't you get
on-- get on mic?
>> Guha mentioned the survey
that the Library of Congress did.
And so, many of the names that
we chose came from that survey
but people also called us and gave
us names and so, there were lots
of resources that helped
us build that name.
I want to add something else to
your comment, Joe, for the records.
Judge Matthew Perry whom I
knew quite well and was someone
that I was really surprised
that he said yes to us,
because he's a rather reserved
person and I actually expected
that he was going to say no.
But he was actually in his late 80s
and he passed away four days
short of his 90th birthday.
So I was really excited
when Joe came back and said
to me he had actually had a case and
he did the filming on his lunch hour
between the time he had
to go back to the bench.
So, it's six volumes about the
intellectual ability of this man.
And also, in the case with the
women in Greensboro, another aspect
of that story was that
the man thought
that it would be quite dangerous
for the women to go and protest.
And so some of that was
near chivalry coming out
and they didn't want to put
this bells on the front line.
[Laughter]
>> Thank you, Elaine.
>> Yes sir?
>> You have the, in fact,
the other four years
of interviews already planned out?
>> No, we are in front of
the [inaudible] towards that.
>> Okay.
>> If I could ask another question?
>> Please.
>> I often see American men and
women, Caucasian women and men
but what about the rules that any
Asian American, Native American.
I don't know how they-- those
population really work in the south
and in the urban areas at the
time that when I do readings,
I rarely see that highlighted.
>> Wonderful question.
The list in the first year
included probably four
or five white persons
among the 50 sessions,
at one Asian-American woman
who was in seminary in Chicago
and went south to join
in the protest in Soma.
So, you are-- and that's
great point and I'm sure
as the series moves forward, we
will, we are always hoping to reach
to provide the most complete
portrait of the wide range
of persons who contributed
absolutely.
>> Okay.
>> So, for this-- the people
you have interviewed before,
were there different kinds
of questions that you asked
or different ways that they
told stories to you as opposed
to earlier interviewers or instance
of how their story
telling changes every time?
>> Yeah, thank you.
Let me just recap kind of how we
approached one of this interviewees
and they answer to
[inaudible] question will emerge
from that story, that description.
In approaching any interview
or any session in this series
as with any oral history work we
do, the best I think that we can do
on the front side is
to be as comprehensive
in our research preparation
as possible,
so I want to know everything
contextually for the community,
the state, regional
history, all those things.
I want to know everything
specific to the person,
but some of these individuals,
not many
but some had given prior interviews.
Some of those were available
to us that I would want
to have indeed read all of
that material in advance
of sitting down with someone.
And my ambition just
gets to your question,
my ambition in this series--
well, in oral history work
generally is not to replow a ground
that has been well-examined
but to work
from that well-understood foundation
and try to reach and push the edges
and open new questions
and introduce new themes.
In this series, given that these
interviews collectively will
represent, do represent
a foundational collection
that the museum's curators
will use to tell this history,
the story of this history.
In some instances, I actually
did want them to repeat things.
I wanted that on film for the
museum, but as a general rule,
I would try to reach
pass narratives.
And then so I would
always within extensive--
I'd arrive with an extensive
series of questions built
of what was known,
what they had said.
And, I could say lots
more but I don't have time
about the way you try to structure
the atmosphere of an interview
to build beyond what is known.
>> Yeah.
>> Sir?
>> Talk a little bit about the
use of the uniform backdrop
and the medium-- the medium
close up shot as a visual device.
>> Yeah, I will do my best on that.
That's really wasn't my part of--
the press is John Bishop
who was just an exceptional,
ethno videographer film
maker did all of that work.
The backdrop decision I think
was taken by the museum.
Just for the sake of uniformity, we
went out to meet these people in all
of these locations
around the country,
30 cities as Elaine
mentioned, and so we were
in probably 45 different
filming locations.
We doubled up in a few cases.
And we weren't sure
how that would work
and they wanted some consistencies
so the decision was just make
and let's-- you know, we could go
either way, there's a little bit
of additional information that's
gained from seeing maybe the home
or the office context in
which you meet someone
but on the other hand we weren't
sure how that would work on film.
So that was the decision
for the backdrop.
In terms of the framing,
my understanding
and really this is the
question for John Bishop
who isn't with us here today.
I think he wanted that deep kind
of immediate sense of the person
and that was his ambition.
I don't know about that,
yeah, I wish John could--
>> I thought we are rethinking.
Seriously, we are thinking the--
using the backdrop and we
sort of just [inaudible].
>> Elaine is--
>> I think we're feeling like we
would like to see the setting.
>> Yeah, it seems to me,
everything is a trade off.
You gain the focused impact by in
a sense having the person's bust
as if it were in a plain background
so you focused attention
on the person.
On the other hand, the trade off is
you lose the setting or the context
which provides-- enriches our
sense of who the person is
or what their role is,
you know, it's acclaimed--
>> It is, it is, and I can
imagine-- I understand all of that.
I think-- excuse me, I think you're
exactly right in saying that.
I can imagine some of
these persons are people
of extremely ten US
economic circumstances.
Their lives have not
rewarded them in those ways
and I can imagine people
being self-conscious.
The backdrop helped in a few cases
where I think people might
have been self-conscious
about their presentation
because their homes
or the places were not
that extremely modest.
So that would be a concern as well.
Yeah, it is a balancing, and
it is a-- it's a trade off.
Sir?
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> They will.
[Inaudible Remark] They all-- yeah.
I'll let you have it.
So these collections which are
principally the interviews are
to be held jointly between
the Library of Congress
and the Smithsonian Institution.
It's an interesting prospect for us.
We've done duplication projects of
collections before which always get
into certain technical difficulties
because you're taking analog
materials, the old-fashioned reels,
and trying to do something with
them in order to transform them,
in order to make them available
to with the other party.
In this case, by virtue of the fact,
this is a totally born-digital
collection, you know, from beginning
to end, maybe the first that
the center has taken on board.
I think I'm, correct me in saying
this Maggie if I'm not right.
And, what that means is
that the distribution
of those materials becomes
markedly easier to negotiate
with our partners, the Smithsonian.
That, however, doesn't preclude us
from doing a lot of not do diligence
in terms of cataloging, in terms
of applying metadata and so on
and then providing that
to the Smithsonian.
The access to those materials
are governed by memorandum
of understanding between
us and our colleagues
at the Smithsonian Institution.
We are on the process of
negotiating several things.
One of which is a public
facing portal
from which we will
stream these videos
in various some of
sort of formulations.
The Smithsonian as my
colleague who is a curator
and excellent designer will tell
you has much different options
and much different
alternatives and ways
of making those materials available
in a gallery setting for instance
that we may not be able
to do here at the library.
They will be available onsite
in their entirety as out--
as much of our research
materials as we can make available
across the various reading rooms
at the library so that you can
and if you do course of
time, make an appointment
with our reference room open from
nine to five, Monday through Friday.
[Laughter] And you may come and
watch and view those materials.
And everything else that just
falls under the preview here,
the regular way in which we
take care of and maintain
and provide access
to our collections.
Did that answer the question?
[ Inaudible Remark ]
Sure, the library was
not involved in that.
The museum made initial contact
with folks and advanced those names
to us only after the
persons had said, "Yeah,
we'd be willing to do this."
And then Elaine would say, "Okay,
Joe Mosnier will be getting in touch
and he'll have more information."
There was an initial letter that
went out that had a good kind
of the summary of the project, and
indicated that I'd be following
up with them, and then I would open
a conversation with them and handle
that contact going forward.
That's a whole process with
different elements and exchange
of information, and documents,
and all kind of all designed
to make the person maximally
comfortable and generate trust
and security for the person.
There are very careful
ways that you can do that.
In oral history, we try to
be really careful about that.
And so then we would-- I'd
needed to gather, you know,
itineraries where we would go
out, and John Bishop and I,
the videographer, we'd go
out and travel, you know,
kind of point to point
for a week or two
to actually sit down with people.
>> Let me just add to that.
Elaine mentioned a survey but I will
say that the survey portion of our--
of the project which begun almost
immediately after the memorandum
of understanding was signed
in a-- about three years ago.
Through the mechanism of that
survey, we had researchers
who were scholars, some of--
two of them were scholars of this
four-person team who were scholars
of the Civil Rights movement both
at the University of North Carolina.
And they actually sowed
the seeds or paved the way
for subsequent interviews
by providing for us
and to the Smithsonian the
names of people whom they,
and are new from their own
field work, and from talking
to say repositories across the
length and breadth of the country.
That would be available
for, you know, talking to
and it would be crucial for--
in a recording precisely I
think as Joe has pointed out.
Those myriad hundred and
thousands of people who have never,
who'd never ever make the light of
day, you know, in the normal sort
of course of events, and I think
so, in that sense, the library did,
you know, make the
first sort of, you know,
approach out there into the field.
So we were there in
spirit virtually,
if not actually physically.
Yes sir?
>> You know, was there ever any
kind of acknowledgment by anybody
for that former clansmen or
with those local policemen.
Butt, they had perpetrated a crime.
>> Yeah, I really appreciate
that question.
In the first phase, we did
not interview any persons
who are on that side.
I think it would be a very
valuable thing to interview some
of those persons and I'm advocating
for that practice down the road.
And you can imagine that you
would get a fascinating array
of responses, and I think there's
probably much meaning and much value
in securing and preserving
those types of perspectives also
for this museum, absolutely.
Yes?
>> I'm wondering, I think it's
obvious that it's not ourselves.
We know people who are
probably descending,
so things go as we go [inaudible].
And due to various
issues of protection,
we may not hear that by the way.
So I'm hoping, are you
also collecting some kind
of database of names?
You may not ever get
interviews from them.
But it was some kind of
name just to underline that,
yes this really happened, yes and
we are descending from these people.
>> No, no, we're not trying to
develop that sort of list of persons
who played all of these
different roles, we're not.
>> Although it might be instructed
to look at those repository,
that repository there, if you have
available the library web site
and while we can get
that level of granularity
down to the individual
level, I have that, I think,
come across several instances.
We can sort of conducting
it upon like[inaudible]
where you do have specific projects
at individual repository level
who have actually gone out and try
to interview former clansmen and
or former people on the what we
call other side of that divide.
But that's, you know, that's be--
you're going to get in to the
[inaudible] kind of project,
which you are welcome [inaudible].
>> Yes.
>> And so [inaudible], how do
you handle when in the course
of an interview, someone
names a name of someone
who has been involved in a crime
and might not have been
prosecuted especially
since these will be public records.
>> Yeah, in-- that's a great
question, great question.
And at lunch, 'cause we're going
to go to lunch later, I'll tell you
yet another story, that--
[Inaudible Remark] Yeah.
In the law that prevails
in the United States,
if I sit down to interview
someone and they say to me,
I know that I did this or I
know that Jim Smith did this,
I have no obligation as a person
hearing that report from them
to carry that information
to law enforcement.
I'm not obliged by the law to make
a judgment about its veracity.
Sorry, so you wanted--
>> But, if you're going
to make this a public--
>> Oh yes, okay.
So right. So there are
consider-- yeah, exactly.
So there are considerations
about what the repositories,
how the repositories sort
of think about these issues.
I could talk about the way we
thought about them over the years
at the Oral History
Program at Chapel Hill.
Guha could talk about and
his colleagues could talk
about how the library
thinks about that.
Without getting into details,
you may know of the case that's
unfolding right now in the courts
up in Boston, the BUKs with
the interviews with some IRA,
Irish Republican Army
folks from the '70s.
Fascinating question.
I have never-- well, I will say
in North Carolina, relatively,
we are state and that they
no statute of limitations
on a wider range of felonies
than which typically the case,
and say for example
in North Carolina,
as I understand there's
no statute of limitation
as regards to arson, felony arson.
And there is one instance
in particular
where white-owned tobacco
warehouses in a particular place
in North Carolina were
burned down as a response
to ongoing white violence
perpetrated
against Civil Rights protesters.
And you, I know, everybody
knows, who knows the stories,
and they just can't say
it because if they did,
some local prosecutor could
cite their own testimony
as condemning them out of the
commission of this particular felony
which is still actively
prosecutable in North Carolina.
In other places, they could tell
you because the statute is gone.
>> Why don't just say
a coincidence--
>> Yes sir?
>> Are you planning to do interviews
with people who were involved
in the movement outside the south?
>>Oh, absolutely, and some of
these people were involved outside
the south.
Yeah, this first phase, I have
to say was heavily weighted
towards the regional southeast.
No question, the south.
But no, we are-- have done
and will do interviews
with people whose activism was
principally accomplished outside
the south.
Yeah, good question, yeah.
Well, I thank you all, it's been
a delight and I'm very grateful.
Thank you.
[Applause]
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