Iran, coverage of bookfairs and festivals from across the country and the best sellers from this year and let us know what you think about the programs youre watching. Call us at 2026263400, or you can email us at comments at join the cspan conversation, like us on facebook, follow us on twitter. Charles cobb, former field secretary for the student nonviolent coordinating committee, or sncc, reef count tuesday the possession of and use of firearms by civil rights activists for selfprotection during the 1950s and 60s. This is an hour and 15 minutes. Thank you. Its always good to be in the mississippi delta, especially this changed mississippi delta. Perhaps i should say somewhat changed mississippi delta. This is an appropriate place to speak about this book, because i have vivid memories of hiding from police along this particular street, the county courthouse is over there, and i have even more vivid memories of posses and city police here, and i have memories in this is really what much of the book is about the very, almost exceptionally strong, people of greenwood who history doesnt include i tell the story of some of them in the book, and i wont do it here. I will just announce some names. The green family here in greenwood, mississippi, almost a legendary family for their strength. The magees, laura magee, ran the sheriff off the farm outside of greenwood with her winchester. There were exceptionally strong people, and much of the Southern Movement is lodged in these strong people who protected us, and in fact, taught us. Very much. Ill get back to that thought. Im often asked, well, charlie, why did you do this particular book . And when you read the book, is a trust all of you will, youll see that this is really much more than a book about guns. I have been, one, working reporter most of my life since leaving mississippi. I as a working reporter have primarily been a Foreign Affairs reporter. Thats what my working life, say, at National Geographic was very much like. I helped establish when i left all africa. Com, an Internet News Service concerning africa, which is now the largest Internet Service on africa in the world. I recommend if youre interested in africa, you click on the allafrica. Com, and its almost the only way to keep up daytoday with news that is and its a news site. Not a feature site. Its a news site. This is what is happening in nigeria. This is what is happening in ive been a working reporter, and one of the thing is learned almost immediately as i inch entered into the field or the craft, is a think of it, as reporting, is that news and i think news is most more often distorted by what is left out more than any bias that creeps in a report. You can spot bias. And but if something is left out, you dont know its left out unless you study the field yourself. And the average person this is a problem with history, too. And it is a particularly a problem with history of the Southern Freedom Movement or the mississippi Freedom Movement, the peoples opinions or thoughts about what took place in mississippi or what took place in alabama or what took place across the black belt south. Is mostly shaped by what hasnt been told. So thats what drove the writing of this book, essentially my dissatisfaction with the history of the movement, and its been presented, and that problem operates at several different levels. Ill tell you one story, all reporters have one or two stories in think back pocket. When hi did the bob moses book, when was that 2001, think, that book came out, and i brought the book the book is a book about education. When i brought the book to give it to some people in mississippi, who had helped me, including a principal and a middle school in medgar evers Old Neighborhood in jackson, i gave it to the principal and was coming humaner to the delta and sitting on the stepped of the school with these middle school students, half a dozen of them. And as it happens, the school is across the street from the medgar evers Public Library im sorry the Fanny Lou HamerPublic Library. So i decided to engage these middle school kids in what i only half jokingly called old guy talk, and asked them if they knew anything about mrs. Hamer, and if theyve did they should tell the other students setting on the steps what they knew, and they didnt know anything. Not a one of these kids. And my ride came, and i told them, as i rose, pointing at the library, that she was important to what mississippi is today. They needed to know about her. And i told them, i would be back in a few days and i will tell them some things about mrs. Hamer, and i was about to tell them a story about mrs. Hamer, and i was pointing at the library across the street. And i said, i knew her, and when i said i knew her, one of these kids, maybe 13 years old, leapt to his feet, stared at me in totele amazement and said i never will forget mr. Cobb, you was alive back then . [laughter] and on one level, im talking about lady whose name is chiseled on to the library, and how could i know, you know, somebody famous enough or old enough to have their name, and i put aside my saying something like, yeah, me and freddy douglas, and harriet, used to sit around and try to decide what to do in the struggle against slavery. And just dropped it. But it did place in my mind i was still doing mainly Foreign Affairs reporting that it did place in my mind the necessity of doing the history, and if anybody was going to begin to meet that necessity, it probably should be me, said. Youre a writer, charles. Self, youre a writer. And i literally shifted gears. Ive done very little Foreign Affairs writing since the book equations came out. I really concentrated on trying to figure out how to convey in writing what i think is important to know about the Southern Freedom Movement. What write is not the whole story, not even moats of the story. Its just some of the story that is trying to fill in what has been absent from the movement. A lot of things you know, you may or may not know right now that this is the 50th 50th anniversary of the mississippi freedom summer, and that is being commemorated in jackson right now, and thats what brought me to mississippi on this particular trip. I have a problem with the way that is looked at because in some respects its looked at as if it came out of nowhere, just not connected to anything, and people in peoples thinking, a bunch of kids from the north came down to free the downtrodden mississippians and did so. Julian has a quip where he when i was talking to him when i worked on the book and we talked about the problem of hit and he said the public understanding of julian bond said the public understand offering history can be boiled down to one sentence. That is rosa sat down, martin stood up, the white folks saw the light and saved the day. And then you can say, Stokley Carmichael shouted out, black power. This kind of oversim my fix indication is what over oversim preliminary fix indication, and im saying what Movement People thought. People did more than act. They acted for a row. Students sitting in, in 1960 in greensboro, did so because they were thinking about how to challenge the segregation. The people in mississippi you know can the Mississippi Movement was mostly led by mississippians. Wasnt led by charlie cobb or by bob moses, wasnt led by anybody came from the outside. It was let by the mississippians. They range from Fanny Lou Hamer to aaron henry to Hollis Watkins to sam block, who worked the city, and wont tick awful the name is could all the name is could but the point is the mississippians led the Mississippi Movement, and southerners held the Southern Movement, and they were thinking about what kind of society they wanted to live in, what kind of action they should take to get the kind of society they sought, and that point is missed. I even read hoyt history book that quote my idea of that Freedom School and then proceed to tell me what i thought. Never asked me. Said charlie cobb wrote the proposal for the Freedom School. And he was thinking and i said, nobody asked me. And so this its an old problem. Read you a i think i can find it without even a bookmark. Frederick douglass in one of his autobiographies in his 1855 autobiography, complained about abolitionists, i wrote about it in the book. Ill read you how i wrote about it. Frederick douglass complained that other influential white abolitionist thought this intellectual weakened their cause. They only want him to narrate wrongs. Although after escaping from slavery, quote, i was now reading and thinking, end quote. However, if he did not have, quote, the plantation manner of speech, endends, john away collins, of the massachusetts antislavery society, wants council douglass, quote, people wont ever believe you are a slave. Advertise not best to seem to have learned. The abolitionists then win went ton state, quote, give us the facts. Well take care of the philosophy. Thats in 185 and that is still with us when it comes to how the movement is understood. So im spending time with this because its important for you to understand the context in which this book sits. Its not a story about cowboys or gunfighters or shootouts on broad street. Its a movement story. A story of the Freedom Movement, what people are thinking and why they chose to take actions they took. I often get asked about the title of the book, this nonviolent stuff will get you killed, it comes from a farmer who had a small farm next to a neighbor in Holmes County. A legendary figure in the Mississippi Movement, erased from his story of the Civil Rights Movement unless guys like me write about it. He met Martin Luther king in 1964 and after the usual courtesies of introduction hartman turn, never known to be shy about expressing his opinion, looked at reverend king and said this nonviolent stuff is no good, it will get you killed. Tragically he was absolutely right. Such a sentence is too long for the title of the book so i contracted it to what you see here, this nonviolent stuff will get you killed. I feel compelled after the camera grinds away, looking at me to give his props. A lot of ways, the other people like him who shape the movement, and shaped the movement in mississippi. I will elaborate little bit on guns and the movement and how to understand. And contradictory, and i will tell people as about italian no. And people, one way to think about the movement to divide it into two sections and non moving protests and lunch counters and the like. And seeking desegregation. The other part of the movementthe most important part of the movement, grounded in Grassroots Community organizing in the rural south. What occurred in 1960 in greenewood is part of a very old tradition that goes back to the days of slavery. Slaves were not seeking a seat at the plantation or dining room table, they were not organizing on the auction blocks. What were they doing . They were organizing. What where they organizing . Sometimes revolts, sometimes sabotage, sometimes assassination and sometimes it was just escape. In most cases it was just organizing the ways and means of surviving and a living in what had to be a very strange world, far distant from their regional homes. If you look at black history in the United States, you see a stream of organized efforts that take various forms to gain freedom, the sudden movement that erupted in places like greenewood, mississippi in 1962 when sam bloch from cleveland, mississippi came over to begin organizing or when the first bunch of slick people entered in there to begin the registration, part of the organizing tradition that began far earlier than the naacp. The shape it takes very much depends on the circumstances people find themselves living in but the one Common Thread running through it is the desire for freedom. That is important to understand and what i am trying to portray in this book. They use guns in many instances. Obviously weapons reused in slave revolts, weapons were used in the post civil war, the reconstruction period, they had to fend off the ku klux klan, the paleface brotherhood, a white knight and other organizations that were seeking to to dismember these fledgling attempts at creating democracy in the south that followed the civil war. Black veterans in world war i and world war ii, very large presence in this book. After world war i and especially after world war ii, veterans led the way in the fight for freedom in the south. This is matt grabbers, and the more, told snake into mississippi. This is aaron henry, the pharmacist who became state president of the naacp and president of the council on federated organizations. All in the south. Changed the climate of the south. He may tell in another book about the slaughter of black veterans, in number of them were killed by refusing to knuckle under White Supremacy. And black veterans, and take off being people like myself. And 21 years old, bob moses, perhaps the old guy in the group, these veterans had their weapons ready and i described in this book how and why they had those weapons ready. And korean war veterans. And the Freedom Movement, and came to organize and protect corps workers who were organizing in louisiana. Some cultures a part of the south, i lived in many homes in the mississippi delta in 19621967, and i never was in a home that didnt have a shotgun in the corner. The men would pull 45 white table, and i got four shotguns, shotguns in every corner to quote it exactly. The first cracker tries to throw some dynamite on my porch wont write his momma again. Martin luther king during the montgomery bus boycott had pistols in his home, the journalists rights of going to interview Martin Luther king, beginning to sink down in an armchair and byron yells out bill, old it there are a couple pistols on that shares they ask Martin Luther king and he said adjust yourself. When the night riders blew up his home in 1956 in the montgomery bus boycott he went to the Sheriffs Office to apply for a concealed gun permit. He didnt get it but the representative from the federal, from the fellowship of reconciliation, a pacifist organizations that was helping Martin Luther king said kings else is an arsenal, dont you understand nonviolence . Alive in this gathering here, and the guy who plotted Martin Luther king to a full understanding, nonviolence as a way of life. Taking note of the fact, when he was alive, young people is what he did. So this easiest way to understand this is all you have to do, you dont have to think of this in sharp political terms. What you have to understand is black people are human beings and they are going to react to terrorism or violence directed at friends, family, community, the way anybody reacts, do the best they can to protect them and in greenewood or Holmes County over here, or all these other counties in mississippi, grabbing a rifle or a shotgun, protecting ones home or family or friends or community and you have to understand this. From durham, a person in arkansas and other places, i quote him in the book, you can pray with him or you can pray at him. If you are did you wont make and effected of the organizer. That is the real wealth. All i am trying to do in the book is provide some portraits of black people, human beings, in this real world, mississippi, what did they are in greenwood or washington d. C. Dont realize how murderous the state was and how murderous much of the black belt in the south was, murderous People Killed you for trying to register to vote. Herbert lee, the first of the naacp leaders to take us in in mississippi, southwest mississippi, the strongest bastion of the ku klux klan was gunned down in broad daylight at the cotton gin by a member of the Mississippi State legislature who was never brought to trial and the man who witnessed the trial the murder and word got out he was black, that he might be willing to testify. He was killed getting out of his truck one night in front of his house. This was a murderous place here and nobody was paying attention to it and these guys, many of them world war ii veterans, ones who said we are not going to accept this anymore and i discussed in the book why i think the war had this effect on people like medgar evers or alan henry. The point i am trying to make is this is not a book about black guerrilla warfare. This is not a romance about guns. It is simply a portrayal of the life in the black belts out that i witnessed although this is not a memoir and it is not an autobiography. Is a history. The other thing i should say i am trying to do in this book again has to do with my grievances with how history is presented. I tried to connect the dots in American History that explain why White Supremacy emerged. What the founding contradictions of the country are. And why they carried over all the way into the 20th century when we began working in the south. You know, bob moses when he speaks likes to have the audience join him in a recitation of the preamble to the United States constitution. As you undoubtedly know, the first three words of the preamble are we the people and the point bob makes in having people recite the preamble is we the people. Doesnt say we the white people, it doesnt say we the southerners, it does not say we the new englanders, it says we the people and he likes to launch a discussion around those three words after this recitation. I also use the constitution in my discussion of his story. We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal and our endowment with certain inalienable rights. He was probably being served tea by one of his african slaves when he wrote that. He had 200 on his plantation. It is in his notes in virginia but i wouldnt want to be held to this that his first memory as a child was being carried by an african slave. We had this founding contradiction that connects to the situation of black people today. I happen to think white people were invented and i discuss that in the book. I think there is a whole connected history here that we have to understand and dont understand, how blacks connect to the country. The dread scott decision, though hold read scott decision, the most often quoted part, dread scott was a slave brought by his masters to a free state for his freedom and lost. If you read the whole argument it is fascinating of the rationale of chief justice book, not broke cannae, brooke was his middle name, because he said we cant have blacks being citizens of the United States. They could participate in the political process. They could get guns. They would make the United States and stable. He was often quoted passage in that decision is the white man, the black man has no rights that a white man need respect but you should read the whole decision because you get a sense in 1857, a real sense of what White Supremacists thinking was like. It helps to understand why they fought so hard in the 1960s to deny blacks the right to vote. I have that in the book. It is important that we connect the dots of history to understand, and americans in the United States are not very good with history. Just not good with history, whether it is westward expansion which is the conquest of the native americans or the civil war, is not very good. In fact, many people resent you putting history on the table. For black people, why do you people line so much . Will you make a simple clear straightforward a lot of this book to clarify the history in so far as black life is concerned. This is not again fall whole story of American History. It is not even the whole story of the Southern Freedom Movement but it attempts to offer some clarity on this and guns just are a handy way to do that because when you Start Talking about guns you catch everybodys attention, use a Martin Luther king had guns in his house, or sncc workers, core workers were living with these farmers who were sitting up in the window and they were men and not women since we are in greenwood, lauren mcghee, whose legendary family at least to those of us to understand history of the movement, the sheriff came out, the police chief came out to try to persuade her not to let her farm be used for a civil rights rally. Bobby dillon came to that rally and saying but the police chief did not want her, kind of frightening manner, but when this big he sat in a rocking chair on her front porch, in our region when he picked it up, she told him this is my land and you are trespassing on my land and you dont have permission to be on my land so you should leave my land. The police chief got the message and he left. That is how all the rally was held. That is how these tough, fierce people, i could go on and on about this in every state of the old confederacy in louisiana. Martin luther kings group was protected by a group of world war ii veterans who worked, what is interesting, i am not a scholar. I am not a scholar. I am a writer on scholarship. For all my criticism of historiography, the mid1980ss there has been the new scholarship that won from the bottom up instead of the top down, tackles history around grassroots efforts, not so much iconic figures, or the book on lawrence county, alabama if i could give the commercial year. Was lee hogan and her book on mississippi, we will shoot back. A whole group, charles payne, i could give you a whole printed out book list. These are the books you need to remind to be at the top. And quite helpful to people like me and i am a reporter. Not a scholar, i tell you a story. And let me tell you a story, and how they worked and how they fit in with snack and core, and officially declared themselves nonviolence, when you look that is that story, there are tensions with the possession of guns and use of guns for selfdefense and nonviolent activism, more often worked in tandem with one another. With my own personal experience in mississippi and if there is time, i will take some questions from the group. One of the countys i worked in was an interesting county because you need to someone who would emerge, women played a powerful role in the movement. You need a black well who would emerge from as a leader in the movement, and also become interestingly enough an expert on china. That again, you need to read his autobiography if you want to see how she became an expert in china. Anyway, she was active in the Voter Registration effort. I asked him about it and he said well, charlie, i know you are nonviolent and i am not going at the courthouse without my pistol. If somebody messes with me at the court house i am going to shoot him. I know that is going to cause you some trouble so i am not going. So he would never i know that he saw himself as a participant in the nonviolent movement. People saw no contradiction in the movements, in the nonviolent movement. But still shotguns and rifles every night. That being said i will take some questions i think. Surely someone. To characterize the forces the Civil Rights Movement was fighting against jim crow. And so jim crow in no way adequately describes the forces arrayed against the movement. Do you think any of the equations would have been different in the movement had the movement more adequately been characterized as the confederate counterrevolution . Against this movement . The short answer is i dont know. The question is an interesting one. We more often than not characterize the movement affirmatively as the Freedom Movement more than the Civil Rights Movement. I want to be used something, one of the historians i was talking about if i could find it. I will read you two things i will read you about jeffries first, a young scholar from ohio state university, making the argument about this passage which appears in bloody rounds in alabama, the movements is better characterized as a freedom Rights Movement rather than a Civil Rights Movement in terms of the question is worth while listening to what one me has to say, the fight for freedom rights, acknowledges the centrality of slavery and emancipation. Incorporates the long history of black protests gating back to the daybreak of freedom and the black power era. Recognizes the africanamericans civil and human rights objectives and captures the universality of these goals. Moreover it allows for regional and temporal differentiation, moments of video logical rationalization and periods of social movement formation. I think much of the civil rights establishment didnt take this approach, much more limited approach, fighting against jim crow, or fighting for school desegregation, all worthwhile causes. I think if leadership had embraced this idea yes, we would have had a stronger movement. We would in the 21st century had much more effective black politicians. That alone oil beyond that particular statement in much the same way Vincent Harding who passed away tragically from my personal point of view last night, the historian, citing books for your book list, since there is a river, the history of reconstruction, an extremely important book and i was talking with him at the beginning, not so much to interview him but about what i had in mind for this book and he said i want to remind you of something, this is what i wanted to remind him, our struggle was not just against something but was trying to bring something into being, always at the heart of nonviolent struggle was and still is a new society. I found it necessary to bring into the discussion, a substantial discussion of nonviolence, and the thinking of people who were committed to it as a way of life, and ive been up front with people for many years. I say, yeah, was in what could be called a nonviolent movement, but i had at no point felt that i had the courage to adopt it as a way of life. So i think the discussion of guns is bound to the discussion of nonviolence, and if treated that way in this book. I know thats counseled of a roundabout way to approach answering your question. A couple comments. Your initial comments about [inaudible] your initial comments about [inaudible] i think hat have to go beyond try to figure out why that is that i like to say, you know, im talking to people, hollywoods view of the world, is that its a struggle between good white people and bad white people and all the colored folks do is root for the good white people to win. But we play no role in the outcome, and that i would argue that the narrative that youre suggesting from the book dish havent read it theres a reason why its out. Not just people said, its not important. But its political as far as im concerned. I dont want to preclude your answer about that. But id be interested in your view. Kind of like the king holiday. Im telling people, look through all of the speeches that Martin Luther king ever gave and you told me where you see the word voluntaryism. In any speech. And i it may be used but theres a reason why he is the he is, reason why a person like miss hamer is people perceive her as the mammy they had who was also kind of catchy with the word freedom and that is a dynamic leader of her people. I have a view of that. At the heart of that in a political sense, is the question of citizenship. Who gets to be fall citizen, and the way the country has been set up, from the very beginning, is to keep the full rights of citizenship away from whole groups of people. Women didnt get the right to vote until the 20th century. Black people, didnt get the right to vote until guaranteed until 1965. Struggling with that question around illegals now . The United States . There are laws related to sexual preference and gender. This whole question of who gets well, let me put it this way. Full citizenship, we, the people, fight those who have the power in this country, and they have used throughout the history of the country various mechanisms to deny this, you know. If you look at black history, which was the history i obviously know the best, terror, poll tax, literacy tests required for Voter Registration, while at the same time the society requiring them dep bratly keeps black people deliberately keeps black people illiterate. All mechanisms to deny political participation. Why . Because people who have it are afraid of that. We see this being waged right now around the question of education. How do you get quality Public Education in school . Public. Public education in school. Society on one hand says we want good schools. At the same time they resist any meaningful effort to get good schools. And i mean something very simple, by quality Public Education. Coming out of the 12th grade at a 12th grade level, being able to enroll in College Without having to take a remedial course. This is not some complicated something. And as Frederick Douglass says, reading and writing unfit for the child be a alive. For a child to be a slave. And this what youre raising is essentially a political question, a question about who has power, and who doesnt. Who has power and how do they use it . And thats something more difficult and more complicated than i can talk to you about from my perch here. Yes. Im looking forward to im looking forward to reading your book and hearing some of these stories about southerners that had these guns and used them as part of the movement, and im wondering about another image i have personally of guns in relation to he social movement of the 60s and thats the black Panther Party, specifically the story i think of is the one of them going the Oakland City Council meeting the guns and then all of a sudden everyone became gun control enthusiasts. Im wondering if you go into that in the book . No. This is a book about the south there are a couple of references to the black Panther Party of california in the epilogue, in the sense that the black panther excuse me the black Panther Party, and specifically the image of the black panther, emerges from alabama and the work of Stokley Carmichael and the group of sncc field secretaries who went in there at 1965. At that point huey nut ton and bobby seal and others in oakland were beginning to organize like the panther and asked sncc if they could use the panther. As a side bar, the panther itself came from the Clark College yearbook. The black panther is the mascot of Clark College, and essentially traced from the yearbook. The book doesnt go into north northern issues at all. In some respects, the use of guns by the black Panther Party and others in the north that i can thick of. The revolutionary Action Movement comes to mind is different than the south. The south pretty much was guns as a defensive measure, first of all, against the klan, and the like. And while you can hardly call the black Panther Party a guerrilla organization, the issues they were dealing with were little different in terms of police and the issue of using guns against police existed in the north or particularly was a particular problem in oakland, the police, in a way that it didnt emerge in the south. There was no thought in the south of using guns against the police or using guns for any kind of aggressive purpose. That needs more exploration. I felt it was too much to try to put in one book, a discussion of a group like the panthers, which is black Panther Party, which is enormously complicated, complex. Again, very much like the southern struggle, the black Panther Party has been grossly oversimplified. Its complexities, richness. Its just doesnt exist very much in the historiography. So if anyone here is a budding scholar, this is one area that you need to look at. I know thats an inadequate answer for your comment. I guess if i could ask one quick followup. Was there ever an attempt by the revolutionites to disarm people or was that not something it didnt really happen. Heres the south were talking rural culture now. After mrs. Hamer tried to register to vote in 1962, a whole group of people, about 17, the night riders came through and shot up the community, black community. And the mayor, who was also the president of the white citizens council, had the biggest business in town, the hardware store, broadcast the agricultural news on the local Radio Station andat did was justice of the peace, had me arrested for doing the shooting. He said the voting registration effort was failing and i needed some publicity, and the best way to get publicity was to shoot at the black home and claim that white people did it. That was his reasoning. So, he hands me over in fact to the brother of the man who killed emmett teller and hauled off to this little jail. All an attempted intimidation. But within that context the mayor then confiscates the shotgun of the man im staying with as evidence. And this is my first entrance into the gun discussion because when i get back to this man, he is worried about his gun because southerners selfdefense wasnt the primary reason southerners had guns. They were poor. They used the guns for hunting. They put food on the table with guns. They used guns to keep rats out of the garden, the third item on the list of reasons the southerners mr. Joe, the man im staying with, joe mcdonald, is now, when im back, worrying about what to do without his gun. And i tell him he has a right to his gun. And he asks me if i was sure. And we had a history book and had the u. S. Constitution, and i went and got the history book and i read the Second Amendment out loud to him. And the guy i was with, charles mclauren, who is right down the road here, says, you see, mr. Joe, thats where it says you have a right to your gun, right in the United States constitution. And mr. Joe took the told me to fold over the page id read to him, and took the book from me, and understand, mr. Joe was 76 years old and couldnt read or write. So he took the book from me, and do and i didnt really none of us thought very much more about it. An hour 0 are so later we noticed he was not around. So we asked if wife, rebecca, where is mr. Joe . And she says he went to get his gun. You said it was all right. Now mississippi is murderously violent. Our concern is he is going to get himself killed because he is going down there to get his gun because i said he had a right to his gun. And i really, quite frankly, was not prepared to live with that. And we were going to rush down to try and catch him, but we heard his he had this raggedy old truck, and we heard the rattle of his truck pulling back up, and we rushed outside and asked him what happened. He said i went down and told the mayor, come to get my gun, and i said, what did he say . He said the mayor said i didnt have a right. He says yeah, didnt have a right to my gun. And then he says so what did you do . He said i toll him again, i come to get my gun. And then i told him and he said then i held up the book and i opened it up to the page you folded over and told the mayor, this book says i do. So the mayor gave him the gun back. Im not sure all of the social dynamic of that. But the mayor did give him the gun back, and that was one of the few instances that i can recall of official authority taking a weapon from someone. In louisiana that didnt happen with the deacon sort of sense of justice. When students halt the boycott in jonesboro, louisiana, the police rolled up with firetrucks, and this is february february or march, its cold, anyway. And the firemen are getting ready to hose turn the hosesi birmingham style on these students who are picketing the school. Theyre picketing the school, picketing the school, because a teacher has been kicked out of school because of his support for the movement. And they had walked out of school were boycotting the school. So the firemen are beginning to roll the hoses out when the when a car load of deacons pulls up. They always watched the students protests because they werelkcoz there to protect the. Four of them and they saw what was happening, and fred kirkpatrick, was the leader of this group, and he stepped out of the car, sees what is happening, turns to his men, who are coming out of the car, and he says, men, ready your weapons. Loud enough for the police chief, who was there, because he is the one who called in the fire trucks to hear. And the police chief ordered the firemen to roll up the hose and go back to the fire station. And the guns were never confiscated from the deacons for defense and justice. I think thats because they understood, a. , these men were prepared to use their weapons, and, b. , could confiscate the weapons would make worse. Final analysis, these white supremacist for all of their rhetoric were practical people. Among other things, as much as they believed in White Supremacy, they werent prepared to die for it. So, there are very few instances i can think of where guns were taken away. Its too deep in the southern culture. When this mississippi legislator in 1956 tried to introduce gun registration, legislation, and he said in entry duesing it, he introducing it, he said to protect us from those who are out to do is harm. Meaning the black people. The bill never got out of committee. In the Mississippi State legislature. So i think the gun culture is just too deep, and it am transcends raise. There are differences. Black people tend to not have automatic weapons, white peopled a automatic weapons. Got difficult for blacks to get large quantities of bullets. You had some racial but by and large the gun culture trumped the racism in these societies, and i think White Authority just thought it would just be too dangerous to try to take guns from guys like the deacons, who are guys like Hartman Turnbull over here or any of these guys, lee moore, down in cleveland, or mrs. Magee on her farm out there in lafleur county. So, ive been studying the freedom mom for a few years, and also looking at food systems, and agricultural systems, and its interesting to see how many connections between farmers and this issue of guns and power. You look at Hartman Turnbull, Fanny Lou Hamer, her freedom farm corporation, also looking at the republic for new africa public of new africa and they slogan, free the land. Land seems like its crucial to this equation so my question is do you think that the story is more about guns or more about Land Ownership . I think the story is about freedom. And part of achieving freedom has to do with land, at least some people thought that in greenville they had sharecroppers strike. And sometimes the idea of freedom revolved around guns, just staying alive inch its possible to have a discussion of land. Im not sure whether it would be a meaningful discussion at this point. Because unless youre a big land owner in mississippi you are just living a subsis citizen life. You subsistence life. You can have the land but its not unless youre big enough its not going to form the heart of your economic wellbeing. In some respects, this is a problem that arrived earlier for black people. I think its not just black here in mississippi now. Small white farmers, small black farmers anywhere in the south, or out west, small ranchers and the like. Having economically impossible time. What you ask would have more would have been more relevant in the post civil war period, when blacks consciously sought not only sought land but sought as directly connected to their idea of freedom. My great, great grandfather migrated to the delta from alabama, and acquired land with a group of people out from clarksdale. Called new africa. And when i read his letters because he stopped at what was then this Normal School on the way out to mississippi and read his letters, its unmistakable the idea of land was tied to the idea of independence and freedom and selfreliance and selfsufficiency, but this ills 19th century, mississippi. I think in 21st century mississippi, im not sure, one, i have no expertise on this, so i cant comment in any great detail or length on this, but my gut feeling about this is mighty tough to be a small landholder, and im not sure that the idea of owning a small farm is as connected to the idea of freedom and selfreliance as it was in the 19th century. But i stress that i dont have great expertise on that point. I do think that there is this social movement that emerged out of the ella washington, where the question of land my grandfather being 1893 graduate of tuskegee, when he went back to his little hamlet, one of the aside from education, the other question was land acquisition. They owned no land. So i came across a diary of his that was around 1901 through 1903, when you find a entry, sell the land, 20 acres, and not only is he attempting to buy but he is encouraging his students, and after he is there for about five years, when he come back, he say maybe five acres of land was owned by africanamericans in the entire district but after after he was there five years, then 5,000 acres. I think that was part i think that is a story in the 19th century. I definitely think that is a story. But for 19th century, whole groups of people the delta was really opened up, this part of mississippi was opened up by blacks. The delta, when my greatgrandfather migrated here, this was bear, panthers and alligators and yellow fever and malaria and snakes and swamp. And its not until and a lot of the farm there was some plantations up there but until the levee is built and the railroads are built, you know, this is not a very hospitable place, but with a few dollars, people like my greatgrandfather and his friends and other people mt. Bayou probably the only remaining example of this now, but people with a few dollars could come here, buy enough land, set up sometimes cooperative farms, communities, set up villages and all of that. I dont know if that is possible in the 21st century is all im saying. And im not sure that the idea of it is even as strong as it was. Its not difficult to imagine people who had been enslaved, a. , wanting to leave the place where they served as slaves, and, b. , wanting to own property and seeing the ownership of property as directly connected to their sense of what freedom was. I think that notion has faded. I could be wrong here but i think that notion has faded in the 21st century. Is that thank you oh, youre not one question here, yes. I want to know [inaudible] oh, yeah, the story of fanny lou automatic fanny lieu lou hamer, and who you point the finger at toward the local history not being told in and the local history, especially in the local schoolsor, blame it on the city government, the city and be people, the federal government, the state government. There or two levels to that problem. Part of the blame falls on us. That is, those of white house participated in this those of us who par participated in the movement. We never really made any great efforts to tell the story of this experience in mississippi or Central Alabama or southwest wherever. So part of the blame lies with us. We may be telling the story or more of a story now because we are becoming aware that we have less and less time to tell the story. I dont know, but part of the blame falls with us. And then part of it belongs to the very culture here not just in mississippi and the United States, one, that reduces education to the lowest common denominator, is afraid of the history. This, again, gets back to questions of power and who has it and who understands it, and the story of mississippis story is true for much of the south, is the story of ordinary people raising their voices and saying, enough of this. Thats mrs. Hamer. She said im sick and tired of being sick and tired. I think the people who run the country are afraid they dont want to see a lot of people like mrs. Hamer. These are the unexpected people. Mrs. Him a are with her sixth grade education, lives all her life on cotton plantations, and the mississippi delta, and all of a sudden she miamis not all of a sudden but emerges as this not just powerful voice but inflew enshall voice, and i think that causes discomfort for people like that. That is why you had all this violence in mississippi in part. And there were a lot of people like that. Answery moore. Medgar evers. And from all strata, but particularly the bottom strata of society. So, thats a fight we didnt make in the 1960s, this fight really is a fight about education and what kind of education should we we solved in some way this Voting Rights problem and we solved somewhat the access to public accommodations. We never even really Freedom Schools not were standing not withstanding, never took on and certainly never solved this question of education, of history, and learning, including reading, writing and arithmetic. We just didnt take it on. So its out there for your generation to deal with. Because the one lesson that emerges from the Southern Movement and the Mississippi Movement in particular, things change when people begin to make a demand for what a everybody else says they dont want. , in. They want to remster to vote. So when it comes down to the school question that you raise, the same thing is true. Because what do they say about young people and minorities in school . They say, well, they dont want to learn. Then they say they cant learn. And if i say, yes, they want to learn or, yes, i think theyre able to learn, thats just me, you know, whistling in the wind. So when students, it seems to me, young people have to headache make a demand for what everybody says they dont want; education. There was a group of kids in baltimore, maryland, associated with bob moses algebra project that attempted to place the School Superintendent under citizens arrest [laughter] for failing to do his job. And at least it attracted some attention to the poor education in the baltimore, maryland, schools. But im for things like that, you know . I think students have to do it, and im not opting out because, you know, any efforts like that automatically have my support. And my willingness to contribute to those efforts at whatever level. But whats key and what you learn from the south in the 1960s and 50s is you have to make the demand for what you want. And youre the only one who can determine what you want. I cant decide what you want for the society that youre going