Power and the meredith march against fear. And at the university of memphis for fester tells the story of James Meredith the first africanamerican admitted to the university of mississippi who was shot upon his return to the state to promote Voter Registration. The ensuing civil rights battle rock the black Power Movement to the forefront. The program is about an hour. Host what a pleasure to be with you today to talk about your book. You know i looked at its cover and i was immediately intrigued by it. Some say you cant judge a book i its cover but lets start by judging this book by its cover. Tell me about the cover. Guest thanks for having me. It was actually quite a struggle to pick the perfect image for the cover. It is a picture from the last day of the march june 26, 1966 as leaders lead the final leg of the meredith march into jackson mississippi and it was kind of a struggle to pick the right picture because on the one hand we wanted to capture its Human Element and capture the many people who are part of this long threeweek civil rights demonstration that started in memphis and ended in jackson. He wanted to highlight the main leaders and that was Martin LutherKing Stokely Carmichael and that includes the quixotic man who started the whole thing James Meredith. You have to capture all three of those as well as a whole sweep of the march. Host lets backtrack a little bit and tell us about the march you were march you are offering two and tell us about the title of the book and how you judge it. Guest the title is down to the crossroads civil rights, black power and the meredith march against fear and it is a civil rights march that began cement is the beginning of june june 1966 and in those three weeks you could make an argument that the Civil Rights Movement in many way transforms that it approaches its crossroads. The call for black power was first heard. Stokely carmichael unveils back midway through march and immediately generates controversy and immediately generates a great swelling of enthusiasm among many black people and a lot of ways it ignites a new direction in black politics. Now those changes might have happened over the course of time. What the meredith march did was sit at dramatized this shift and brought together civil rights leaders and regular people white and black from all across the country and put them into this laboratory of black politics is a moose or mississippi and created all these dramatic moments that highlighted the key divisions and some of the key tensions and the key strengths that have long animated the Civil Rights Movement. Host speaking of dramatizing the march a lot of people of my generation especially like people are parents will say you should be grateful for this. We marched and then we teased them behind their backs because they are always complaining about their bunions that they have got. But take us there. Dramatize the march for us for people who werent there firsthand what was it like this particular march and civil rights marches in general . Guest one of the marchers that i interviewed talked about how a status symbol of a real march was ventilated tennis shoes. They walked for so many miles that there were holes in their tennis shoes that you are talking about june in mississippi on a hot open highway such as the physical rigor of being part of this march and marching somewhere between anywhere from eight to 15 miles in a day and there are some diehards that did it for most of those three weeks so if you just want to talk about the physical aspect of it, it could be quite rigorous. Now mix that in with camping at night and mix that in with dealing with the fears of possible attack from hostile whites, mix in the many demonstrations that were held along the way, rallies for Voter Registration and then mix in some of the violence especially in philadelphia mississippi and canton mississippi and what you got was a whole host of dramatic moments. Host in those dramatic moments a lot of folks tend to be familiar with the selma march on Edmund Pettis bridge but this march in particular how to begin and who were the main guest its unique story in the sense that it begins in the mind and actions of one man and that is James Meredith. James meredith is famous for integrating mississippi in 1962 the socalled ole miss crisis the first africanamerican to attend this bastion of White Privilege and read to severe resistance from white authorities and prompted the federal constitution crisis ultimately calling the National Guard. There was a great right and riot and two people died in meredith spent a year at old myths and graduated and faced incredible hardship under constant protection from federal marshals and much of that began in his mind. He was a very singular individual man. He wasnt someone who associated himself necessarily with the large group but he was determined at the same time to combat what he saw as in institutions of White Supremacy. After ole miss meredith drifts off the radar screen. He struggles to find his place. He spent time in washington d. C. And accepts a fellowship to nigeria a threeyear fellowship that he abandons. He enrolls in Columbia Law School buddy has a bye on a larger critical political career. He arranges this march is a single mans watch. He sees it as having a number of goals. One is to encourage people to register to vote in. The Voting Rights act had been passed the Previous Year and it was stimulating the beginnings of demonstrademonstra tions in mississippi but for your ordinary black person they realize going to the courthouse in the courthouse and registering the voting casting a ballot can be accompanied by serious danger, lots of credit at all sorts of reprisals. The other aspect of merediths goal was what he called the walk against fear. He saw the role of Voter Registration tied into this battle against this culture of fear and he also had a personal ambition beneath that as well. He saw this as a chance to resuscitate his career to build a political following in ultimately run for office in mississippi. It was a new dawn in black politics. On the second day of his watch he had just come through hernando mississippi the first town in mississippi. He gets a nice warm reception from about 150 people there who said they would register to vote and he tells stories of these old africanamerican men who had been so intimidated by powerful whites for so long but now standing up and even as hostile whites are glaring at them from across the town square they still support meredith. He sees himself as just beginning to achieve his personal vision for this walk. A few miles south of hernando he is going down this dipping stretch of road and there are Mississippi State policeman and Highway Patrol and local police but none of them stopped a man from jumping out of the woods and shooting James Meredith, firing three shots. Meredith is wanted in all of a sudden this becomes a Huge National story. The march had gotten a little bit of attention for James Meredith at as soon as he was shot it was plastered on the front page of every newspaper in america. It becomes a big rallying cry for the civil rights establishment to pass more civil rights legislation. It causes all sorts of excitement and tension in black neighborhoods throughout the country from the south side chicago to jackson mississippi and memphis tennessee. And what began now as one mans walk has transformed into an extravaganza basically every Civil Rights Organization descends upon memphis determined to carry on the walk through mississippi. Host what inspired him to join that had inspired him before . Guest everyone saw the original walk as James Meredith solitary endeavor. He had not invited participation of those ergen stations. He said you can follow but you have to have this hierarchical pitcher of all you and you have to be independent trade this is the big march that will impose on local communities. We are we are not going to leave people vulnerable to violence. You have to be all to move in small groups and in a family way this walk is going to work. So it wasnt a a walk that invited mass participation but once ardently for king and the naacp and core and snack and all those organizations come in it becomes, its almost like a chance to replicate the success of selma. Host and meredith did not die, correct . Guest meredith was wounded when he was shot there was a misinterpretation and the ap report put out a bulletin that he died in this caused more hysteria as you might imagine but quickly that was dispelled. Meredith was wounded and ended up recuperating so there were all these organizations marking marking marching in his name. It has a somewhat, he accepts that is occurring and he viewed it on some level as the lets sing but at the same time he is exceptionally frustrated. He saw this being centered around him as an individual and his ideas for how to combat White Supremacy and now its become a mass march starting with martin of the king and lots of Media Attention and lots of impact on the world that meredith had been concerned about. Host part of what i love about this book is your color will portrait of personalities that are so richly steeped in history personalities that we read about elsewhere but they are presented here. The two that come to mind for me are Stokely Carmichael and of course Martin Luther king. What was the participation in the march . Guest i think i see James Meredith artba the king and stokely Stokely Carmichael is the main characters in for carmichael he sees this as a unique opportunity. He is the new chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which has always been on the progressive vanguard founded a Young Students pushing for civil rights establishment in new directions. They are really sort of questioning who they are is an organization and want to take themselves in a new direction. They are exceptionally frustrated with what they see as a slow pace is far as federal reforms. They dont want our legislation. Enforce the legislation thats on the books. Rather than seeing president Lyndon Johnson as their ally they tend to see them as their enemy. They dont care anymore about lopping White America. They dont care about repealing to the national conscience. They are much more concerned if developing leaders on a Grassroots Organization so they dont have to define themselves by the idea of the mass marching. By the same token when meredith gets shot they recognize an opportunity because the march will be traveling through mississippi. Snape had done the most organized march in mississippi particularly in the mississippi delta so they urged a diversion of the march into the mississippi delta and into the larger lack communities. Where snake so they see this as a chance to create a moving of balding demonstration and at the same time show the direction. Out of the comes the slogan of black power. Carmichael is a fascinating character. Not that he is unknown but its really what catapults him into celebrity. By the end of the march he is compared to malcolm x in a lot of ways. Really the voice of lack radicalism. He has a gift for talking to local people and connecting to so many different audiences whether thats in harlem or the mississippi delta. He is charismatic and powerful and he is provocative harriet its almost like he makes a rhetorical point to not appeal to white consciousness even when he is pushed and pushed. He is cleverly stubborn about his concern with uplifting black people and not being seen as appeasing white liberals which are uncertain allies. The best part of the what animates this idea lacked power and the other main character he becomes in some ways the moral center of the march. For king its not the march. A both a local people who sometimes really want to see Martin Luther king. It is also what draws more federal attention and national Media Attention and sncc and Stokely Carmichael realizes it. We need king for the attention that we want to generate on this. And king is constantly being pushed in multiple directions. I think this march reveals king somewhat at his most morally powerful because hes constantly trying to on one level articulate the intent of the young militants beebe likes to the carmichael but trying to craft it into a larger lens nonviolent action the integration of america and a larger plea for racial brotherhood and to do so he is constantly using his rhetorical gets to try to merge these messages into something. Hes trying to find this unity and its just a burden. By the end of the march he is worn down and he calls the march a mistake. By the same token without Martin Luther king host why did he call it a mistake lacks. Guest is towards the end of the march and he is just gone through fairly extraordinary trials. The marchers had just gone to philadelphia and mississippi and in philadelphia its june 21, the two years anniversary of the murder of three civil rights marchers are which was of course the freedom summer of 1964. They lead a demonstration through philadelphia but they see this as a unique political opportunity and they ally with the local leadership. Because they are also at the root of the march they get less protection from the state police. The people who are supposed to be protecting them in the march of the local police some of them had been directly involved under federal investigation for the murders two years earlier so we are not talking about sympathetic Law Enforcement. When they lead the demonstration from philadelphia they are essentially attacked by a mob. People throw insults at them and they throw cherry bombs at kings feed and people think its gunshots as they are finishing the rally and marching out the full throw rocks at them. Eggs. There is one marcher that has an epileptic seizure and people dont lead the medical truck near him for a while. They sort of mock this man having a seizure in the mist of the march. They couldve descended into far worse but luckily they were able to march back into the black community in philadelphia before it got much worse. King later said that was the most scared he had ever been. Then he went to ride after that he had to go to gaza city which was where the march congregated back in the delta and by the time he got back there there was a large rally going off. Some of the speakers like willie ricks who was a member of sncc and thermos thomas was a speaker for an armed defense organization. They were using very provocative rhetoric and he was trying to pull it back to the Core Principles and he gave this beautiful moving speech about how they couldnt get their guns out and couldnt get the molotov tales. He talked about the times in birmingham and selma. It was a beautiful speech but he was so worn down at that point by trying to bring everyone sort of under his wide arms that he wondered if he could still work with these young organizations like sncc. Host and what were the other tensions or moments during the march besides the philadelphia episode . Guest the other major incidents of violence comes a few days later in canton mississippi. This is just a few days before the end of the march and its a few days after the philadelphia violence. After the philadelphia violence king and others have petitioned the federal government and had said look the state of mississippi has not had protection we need a federal presence as it existed in selma. We need protection of u. S. Marshals the National Guard and the Justice Department personnel. You name it we need the federal government as an ally and they were essentially ignored at that point. Johnson had grown over the past year alienated from the Civil Rights Movement. He had seen urban riots in places like watson and the moynihan report which was a government meant report that stigmatized black families and there was a backlash against that and he was seeing groups like sncc which were known as an enemy rather than an ally said johnston capped his distance from grassrootgrassroot s organizations. He basically refuses to have any more federal presence on the march. What that gives the governor of mississippi and basically gives them karp launch against the marchers. He had been using state police to protect the marchers for most of the march but with the march coming through he knows hes not going to get federal intervention. The marchers have made a point throughout the march to try to set up their big tents on land in the black community publicly because black people pay taxes too. We have a right to use this land. The whites cant dictate whether we use this land but what happens in many places along the way the local white Authorities Say they cant and they do it anyway. The police let it happen because they dont want it to escalate. When they get to canton at this point because its close to the end there are 1000 people participating in these last demonstrations. They come to the ball field at the Elementary School in the black community which read they were going to set up their tents. At first the police sort of let