We will finish up our primetime programming at 11 00. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. Welcome to montgomery, alabama on booktv located on the alabama river, population of 200,000 making it the second largest city in the state. We explore the history of the city and state by local authors including a look at alabamas most powerful governors. Go around the entire south, louisiana had the laws, georgia had the challenges, South Carolina had pitchfork intel and strom thurmond. I would say we can say and put ourselves up against theirs. Later we will go inside the home of F Scott Fitzgerald to learn about the importance of montgomery. We show you a house that was the turning point for scott and zelda. You will find out F Scott Fitzgerald is more than just a writer. He is not a genius who can come up with everything on his own. He needed a partner, someone to give him a life full of ideas that he could write the Great American novel. That was elza. We speak with fred gray about the montgomery bus boycott changing the system by the system, the life and works of fred gray. Montgomerys pattern of segregation touched all forms of the citys life, long frustration with negro citizens erupted, riding in a bus, refused to honor the traditions of segregated seating was a protest movement headed by doctor king, then an obscure pastor of a Baptist Church, took the form of a boycott of the citys buses. If you look at the cases that i have handled since the montgomery bus boycott involving voter registration, employment, jury discrimination, desegregating the buses, education and voter registration, represented the persons in the city, freedom rides, the selma to montgomery march, all those things contributed the passage of the Voting Rights act of 1865 and helped change the landscape of america. We sit here in montgomery, alabama, across the street from the Federal Building where i filed most of my in bus ride to justice changing the system by the system, the life and works of fred gray. When i was growing up in this city, where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as president of the confederacy. In the 40s and 50s, on the west side of town, nothing good could coming out of it, the ghetto area of montgomery, two basic things that young africanamerican males would be considered well respected. One is a preacher. And two is a teacher. You did both of them on a segregated basis. Quite early, baptized cats and dogs, i was sent to a boating school in nashville, tennessee, when i was 12 to learn to become a preacher. I did all my High School Work after going to Elementary School in montgomery. I went to high school, nashville, the president of that school, one of our society of preachers, a society, he needed to do two things for the school, one it was a private church school, and he had to solicit students. I was elected by him to be one of the teachers who would travel with him all over the southeast and southwest, recruiting students. I finished there. I knew a Little Something about preaching. I made a secret commitment i kept secret for 40 years and that is i was not only going to be a preacher, but i was going to become a lawyer. And would solve the problems and everything was completely segregated at the time so my commitment was finish Alabama State and finish law school some place, i knew they wouldnt accept me. Finish law school, back to alabama, take the bar exam. The book talked about rosa park and doctor king and all these others but the first civil rights case, a 15yearold girl who lived in a part of montgomery called king hill, the northeast part of the city, but there were three streets in that section surrounded by white people. To take a bus downtown, in washington high school, one day in 1955, tween 9 months before rosa parks did what she did, coming from school, she had to change downtown, when she went down doctor king hill where she lived, more white people than usual got on the bus. When they filled the white seats up, the bus driver asked her, she was sitting in the first seats to ask them to get up and she was not sitting in the white section and she didnt get up. As a result, she was arrested, mister nixon contacted me and i represented her before judge hill in the Juvenile Court of Montgomery County in early spring of 1955. That was my first civil rights case. Let me ask this question. What do colored people hope to gain by pressing the segregation fight at this time . What immediate results do you hope to achieve . We want to achieve equal rights for any human being. What do you think the prospect are for achieving that goal . It is essential. How long do you think it will take . I have no idea how long. Guest two or three things. She was a very good friend with ed nixon, was the secretary to the Montgomery Branch of the naacp, she was the youth director of that branch. I was interested in civil rights cases and met her when i was in college before law school so i was young so i wasnt far removed from the youngsters she was dealing with so i knew her and she encouraged me to become a lawyer and our church was only three blocks from where she lived. But more importantly, as she worked downtown montgomery at a department store, which was a block and a half from where my office was located, each day, five days a week, she would usually walk from her place to my office and we would talk about things, talk about the problems on the buses. We talked about the florida situation. We had done what we could. We didnt file a lawsuit at that time. We began to keep a record of it. Every day we would meet and talk about what a person should do if they were asked, she was well prepared and willing to do what was needed to be done to end segregation on buses. And i told her i was going to be out of town. When you get back in town, i had phone calls, i had a lot of messages from my secretary telling me mrs. Parks had been arrested and asked me to come to her house and talk to her about the case. And on thursday evening, she wanted me to represent that case. I told him that i would and also not only take care of that case but we need to do whatever it takes so we dont have this problem again. A teacher at Alabama State, had a bad example in 1948, she was now president of the Women Political counsel which is the organization of educated women in Alabama State, and when she was arrested, so did nixon, i knew we were interested in doing something permanently. When i talked to mister nixon mister nixon was not a plan who did a lot of planning. Mister nixon, let me go and talk to joann, see what she thinks and what we can do about permanently getting the community involved. And more people go to church on sunday morning. The announcements could be made, we need to get black preachers involved and they make an announcement at that church and people stay off the bus monday, that would be fine. We knew all the black preachers. And we concluded if we tell people, we need to have someone to serve as a spokesman. And the question is who should that person be . There was another man in town named rufus lewis. Rufus lewis on the east side of town, and educated man, he was only interested in one aspect of civil rights, getting registered to vote, getting people elected and all of them responsible to get elected. He had a nightclub and it was the citizens club. To get in that club you had to be a registered voter. Beyond those two, who are we going to get . Joann said i tell you who. We need both of them. If we get nixon we lose rufus lewiss people and rufus lewis, a spokesman, we lose some of mister nixons people. Why dont we get that. Doctor Martin Luther king hadnt been here long, hadnt been involved in Civil Rights Activities but there is one thing he can do. That is fine. We decided what we would do to stay off of the buses for a day. As soon as i get through here i will get some leaflets made out. Then we assign each of us responsibilities to carry out certain responsibilities so there could be an official meeting called and when it was called in the living room, doctor Martin Luther king jr. Was selected to be part of the official meeting when he was not present. Mister rufus lewis was selected as chairman of the transportation committee. Nixon was selected as the treasurer, and out of law school, as the lawyer for the movement, in charge of legal activities. And after the appeal and after the official meeting when they met at the Baptist Church at the mass meeting, when doctor king spoke, and joanns living room was the right thing and the rest of it is history. That is how i became involved in its and between 40 to 50,000 africanamericans in montgomery and many have been used for Public Transportation and those who used it stay off of the buses, those who didnt cooperated to help transport people and for what . We stayed off of the buses and so we could return on nonsegregated basis and the Civil Rights Movement. It was an introduction of doctor Martin Luther king to the city, the state, the nation and the world. On booktv, a literary tour of montgomery, alabama with charter communications. We start with political commentator steve flowers to learn how past alabama governors have shaped the states politics. We had in the south unique political history. If you go around the entire south, louisiana had laws, georgia mississippi, South Carolina had pitchfork and strong sermon strom thurmond. We could put our cases against theirs. With George Wallace. Both of them had an impact. The last 25 or 30 years, not the first one had any legacy. Big jim thought the legislature, going back to an agrarian state, we were a rural state, everybody farmed. They were small farmers. Everybody on dirt roads. If you are a farmer living on a dirt road you cant get your crop to the market. Big jim paid every rural road in alabama, little mans big friend. Country folks loved him. I can make a speech in alabama and tell big jim stories, but at the end of the day i have someone telling me if big jim was running for governor i would vote for him, in rural geneva counties, another interesting story, running for congress as a young man. He was campaigning on a dirt road in geneva county. Got a big bond with a farm couple. No one talks about drinking buttermilk now. Big jim as big as he was, two quarts of buttermilk, he used to love to get barefoot, drink buttermilk, i am going to tell you if you ever get to be elected i want to ask you a favor. Anything you want, anything you want. He said i want you to pay my road. I cant get to the market. Big jim, 20 years later, the first road he paved, named it buttermilk road. In 1940s and 50s. A man who stood 6 foot 9, you put the word uninhibited in the dictionary you can put big jims picture by it. The best story that he penalizes big jim, big jim had a penchant for alcohol. He stayed drunk his whole second term. The governor got signed and served and every two weeks he would be sober around the capital, sober day. One day, alabama, one of the biggest textile manufacturing states, most towns had a textile mill. A lot were built on the textile industry. Us in South Carolina, the biggest textile states in the country. American textile manufacturers were meeting in montgomery. And welcomed to the capital and somebody had written a nice speech, bold big jim had not seen the speech. Someone handed me the speech, in mobile with his friends, got that reading the speech. I want to welcome you to alabama. One of every six jobs, i didnt know that. You dont want to hear that stuff. Really and truly, he tells farmers, you know big jim will steal a little bit. Big black belt plans, alabama is one of the most progressive states in america. You put congressional delegation, voting record and put the new york delegations to be identical. Southerners love roosevelt, the new deal helped the deep south in alabama, one of the poorest application states in the country. They transformed that area to one of the richest in the country, it is one of the highest per capita income. Having said that, there are new dealers, they fall into the new deal and alabamas congressional delegation brought home the bacon like you have never seen. What changed politics was when the race issue came to fruition in the mid1930s with brown versus board of education and the south was determined to resist integration. Politicians moved from breathing being progressive base, based on liberal progressive issues that were good for their people, became race haters just to get elected. In his heart, he was a progressive populist just like big jim was, but he became a race baiter because that was how to get elected. In the name of the greatest people that have ever lived, i draw the line in the dust and stand before the seat of tyranny and i say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. Guest during my lifetime, to make the greatest politician in the state of alabama, George Wallace was born with a memory for names. I dont think anybody could cultivate. No politicians are able to cultivate that, to remember someones name. Wallace he could go to a group of people and speak to them ten years later. Stories abound all over the state, to meet someone in 1958 and see ten years later, how is your wife, susie. He would have been numb 100,000 people but he had a memory for names. I had been a page in the legislature when i was 12 years old. In his first term as governor, i met him as a young page, he had never forgotten that day, 20 years later i became his representative in legislature. Part of where he was from was my district. I became his friend and we saw a lot of animate stories close to wallace which i animate in the book. He had become a different man in the 1960s. Most people dont realize in 1982, the year he won his last term as governor he won for one reason. You know what that was . Africanamericans. Most people dont know that. He won with the africanamerican vote. He would not have won. Most white voters were tired of laws, tired of his rhetoric, knew he had not been a real governor, he had worn out his welcome. He went to dexter ave. Kings church, doctor kings church, in his wheelchair. The assassinations bullet, his body had been riddled six times. Most people would have died. But he survived six bullets to his body but his body was completely paralyzed from the waist down. He had no feeling and was on pain pills a lot. Probably put 16 pain pills it made him incoherent. It gave rise to him crying a lot. I might find him in the corner in his wheelchair with a cigar in his mouth talking about tiny stuff, telling the same story, he would say to me steve, when you were a little boy you were a pageboy, you had to be a page. I was a pageboy too. Those shepherds in the northern part of york county, i know, by the way, and he was also Hank Williams up there. He says steve, Jenny Wallace is my aunt, an old maid. He would tell me that same story over and over again. He would call me on the floor and tell me one day the funniest thing. He would tell me the story verbatim, called me six times that week, voting on one of his bills. I told the person the secretary who came to get me, the governor whats to see you. I am voting on one of his bills. Is there something he wants to talk about . I went down to the office and he was sitting there and there were five japanese industrialists in the office trying to locate a plant in huntsville. Wallace had run out of things to say. I was a pageboy and vocal pageboys, and in the north part of his county, she is my and, those poor japanese, what are they thinking . Are they going to locate in huntsville or not . They came to see the one time telling the same story. Started campaigns and he was also down there and had five or six children and a bunch of grandchildren. Back to that encounter, the reason africanamericans voted for him was he begged forgiveness, i made a mistake, i paid the awful price, i am sitting in a wheelchair and i want to tell you i am sorry i did this stuff. Alfred wallace was the ultimate politician. I thought that was demagoguery. This particular day after telling the same story, only one picture on his desk, a picture of an africanamerican girl. Who is that little girl there . You ought to have your grandchildren or something. He said steve, that is an old schoolgirl from birmingham. She came down and told me she loved me and he started crying. I could tell it wasnt like when he was doing it in press, whether he liked the girl or not. Hard to overcome. Still the image problem that was created, because of that, i tried to show the personal side of wallace, the whole south doing the same thing. Wallace was better at it, more vocal at it, ran for president , pretty much saying the same things trump is saying now. Wallace would have voted for trump. They said the same thing. Bombastic things, you know, on meet the press, i tell you what, if one of those pointyheaded liberals wants to ride his bicycle straight, lay down in front of my car, first thing i will do is run over them. That is what trump would say today, the same thing. Those stories should be told. I want that era captured. It is a colorful history. The south had a colorful history. You are watching booktv on cspan2. This weekend we are visiting montgomery, alabama, to talk to local authors and tour the citys literary sites with the help of our local cable partner, charter communications. Next we speak with Richard Bailey who explores the history of alabamas political process after the civil war. As i love to say, black officeholders were members of the Republican Party, they were not carpetbaggers or scalawags. Carpetbaggers is a derogatory term people used to denote whites who came to the south from the north and usually the intent was to show these people as persons who came for political and personal gain. A scalawag was a southern white who was here before the civil war began, who became a member of the Republican Party<