Freedom. I come to say to you this fternoon, i understand the hour. It will not be long. How long . Not long. You will reap what you sew. This is called an illustrated guide to the cradle of freedom. And basically, it looks at the hist referee the Civil Rights Movement in beal kind of telling the story geographically. I wrote a book history telling it chronologically. And kind of the theme of both books is that alabama had a central role in the Civil Rights Movement starting the montgomery busboy time in 1956 on through the freedom rides, the Birmingham Movement in 1963 and the settlement in 1965. But there are a lot of smaller stories scattered all around the state including here in mobile. And so i try to tell those as well. A lot of them were people i had never heard of, you know . And in many ways they were as ordinary as, you know, as you or me, except they did these Amazing Things under such stressful situations that existed at the time. And so it seemed to me that it was a movement of foot soldiers as well as great leaders. I want to track down as many people as i could who were still alive and talk to them about their stories you know, while they still remembered the details of what happened. You can watch the old film footage and see the state troopers charging at demonstrators but having somebody remember that as an 11yearold she thought they were monsters because they had these masks on their faces. I dont know. I just love those kind of details as an old recovering journalist and storyteller at heart. It just makes the story kind of come alive and gives it a face, i think. In mobile, for example, theres a little Jesuit College on the western part of mobile called spring hill college. Spring hill college was the first school of any kind in the state of alabama to desegregate. It began that process back in the 1940s. Had its first africanamerican graduate in 1956. And that was very early in the deep south. And spring hill kind of went ahead and did it quietly. And so in Martin Luther kings letter from a birmingham jail he mentioned Springfield College as one of the places that had inspiration and tried to do the right thing. I just want to call attention to the fact that in addition to those dramatic headlines where you saw police dogs and you saw the bombs church in birmingham and those horrific scenes that were the flip side of the courage that the civil rights leaders and protestors were displaying but you had these quieter things going on in a number of different places. Mobile had a man who an africanamerican man whose name ohn le fluorescent and ledfleur decided that he was going to take on segregation and started one of the chapters mobile. Aacp here in he went about pursuing the right to vote, lynching, desegregating buses and public accommodations and mostly he did it through negotiations and lawsuits and that kind of thing , less by demonstration and confrontation. E found a few moderate a alleys that would part ways that became the mobile story although there was a lot that needs that apparent progress where there was still a lot of, you know, hard core segregation and some pretty hard racial attitudes. And so it took a while for all that to play out. But there were people going way back in mobile who tried to get things started earlier. John hewitt became the first africanamerican sheriffs in lambs county, alabama. Lambs county was the toughest county in alabama in terms of its resistance to civil rights. It was the county that the settlement montgomery march actually mostly took place in lambs county. Some were in dallas county. And then the next 50 miles of the march were through lambs county before you get to lambs county and montgomery county. At the time that the march started in lambs county there in 1965 there were no African American voters in lambs county at all. 80 of the population was black and there were no African Americans to vote. John hewitt became one of the first two africanamerican people until lambs county to register. And it was 1965 before that happened. There was violence in lambs county. The detroit housewife who came down to the march was murdered in lambs county. A little bit after that Jonathan Daniels a white supporting urch was it. So he became the most visible leader in lambs county and actually was a was a one of the founders of what became the black Panther Party which was an allblack Political Party designed to support black candidates for office. And he eventually won the office of sheriff in 1970 and served in that capacity off and on until he died. Very interesting man. Brave man. It was a rough dangerous place. And he knew it. Very softspoken guy. Got this tall, you know . Physical as unimposing as a person can be. And yet he just had this this boldness about him and this courage about him and he you know, he went about the business of building a movement there. One of the interesting things about bame is as tough as those years were in the state at the time, alabamas probably done as good a job as any other state of kind of claiming that history officially and preserving it in civil right sights and museums and markers and the Alabama Department of tourism works really hard at bringing in people in alabama to see the place where is these dramatic things happen. Although the Civil Rights Movement was you know, was a , rbulent time and it was hard violent ugly things happened during that time. But it was also a time when people confronted violence with nonviolence. And so there was something incredibly courageous about that. And because they did that, all of us became a little more free. Official segregation ended because of the Civil Rights Movement. The voting right passed in 1965 essentially ushered in a period of interracial democracy in the south, in the deep south which really hadnt existed in so many of these rural county. There just werent any black voters or hardly any. People could vote or could participate in the life of their own place. And so they were more free and alabama in that sense became the cradle of their freedom. But think it became the cradle of other peoples freedom too, my freedom because, you know, it became easier just to be decent, just to treat people like you maybe wanted to all along. There was a time tham if you were in alabama or that you were publically respectful toward an African American person you could get yourself and that person in trouble. I mean, it was that hard at times. And it isnt anymore. So im not saying racism is dead. It certainly is not. But but its no longer respectable and you dont have to be afraid to be a person who treats people as human beings regardless of who they are. Cspans American History tour next friday focus on native americans. We start off with the battle of the little big horn also known as custers last stand. Also a tour of the new mexico pueblo. 9,000iv