Protest of George Wallaces segregation now, segregation forever a doctoral address. And for the first time they had said its wrong and that was a really notable departure for someone to make a public statement. We listened to that now and it just seems so trivial for somebody to say that but at the time they were really going out on a limb. So when they get this back from king you know they go you are so misunderstood and when i interviewed him in the 80s he was still complaining about how king had made them out to be a bigot. That was what he had taken away from this experience. What the d. Say . I miss some of that. Rabbi was complaining in the 80s when i talk to him that king had made him out to be a bigot and he was really sore about that. If we could collect the written questions now and we will continue but we will go ahead and do that. You may want to research this later. I am Roman Catholic and i would remind you of this. Dr. King when the the United States itself. [inaudible] the archbishop criticized the priest and the nuns. He criticized the priest and the nuns in support of himself to support the demonstrators but say if he will put the bishop said when he was a nationalist. He was saturated with segregation for many parishes and schools. [inaudible] i will just say a quick word because i know jim wants to follow with the questions but i do give a great deal of respect to him because it is true the eight clergy were not all the same and there was the callous bishop carpenter whose response was inexcusable and there was doric who became, he understood. He said i was against segregation but i did not understand it the way dr. King meant it and the one on two really embody the Prophetic Ministry of king and after king was killed, he preached the words, the critique of moderates at the commemoration. And because king loved to sample other peoples language he would always quote people and imagine them quoting him. He would love the fact that doric was quoting his own words back to him. He would give him such pleasure that he would stream that in and doric became king in some sense. You make a very lovely point. Did you all write any books about of the klan . I did not. I did a little bit on bull connor but its really diane spoke carry me home is an extraordinary voyage into that world so absolutely. Its terrifying and it really puts you back in that time but again a very good points to keep in mind there. John let me ask you if you grew up as i did in segregation you heard always heard the expression extremists on both sides and what that meant was the Civil Rights Activists were considered to be the moral equivalent of the ku klux and considered comparable. One of the brilliant passages in the letter from birmingham jail, uchitel when hes being called extreme by the clergy that the nerve on his temple starts going crazy. Talk a little bit about how he embraces that label. Well, before that again the very affable king is trying to say see, i am not extremist antidoes it in a number of boys and he talks about and reminds you of the conservatism. The Boston Tea Party and everything but knoxs did in germany was legal and i hope i would have been there for my jewish brothers and sisters if i was in nazi germany and in hungary. He puts himself with the hungarian Freedom Fighters who violated the wall law to fight communist oppression. He is not really an extremist and even says look in these two strains within the Africanamerican Community there are black civic there are blacks to become adjusted to segregation or have got a little bit of privilege because they are in the middle and upper middle class and they dont want to rock the boat and then there are these voices of hate who are black nationalists who sometimes border on hatred of the white man. So came, think what hes doing about there. Its a hope portrait. You thought i was an extremist but im a moderate like you. I have my George Wallace is and i have his other people so he has now tried to do that and that is when he finally stops and this is how you know that king has been affable and friendly and being nice to the white man but then he turns on a dime. Its a series of slurs going back and forth. He takes the manners right back and becomes as rude as can be. I beg you to forgive me if i have shown an unreasonable impatience. Who is going around begging and apologizing to the white man even in 1963 . Not shuttlesworth or james babil not very many people in sclc would have done that so you think hes not interested and he immediately says in the same parallel but if i have been unreasonably patient inpatient and goes whose convoluted phrase that says with justice i beg god to forgive me. What he basically does is he is taking the apology that because what really letters is what god thinks and not the people he just apologized to paid once he family embraces extremism and looks like he is still acting diplomatically but he takes it back and says because ultimately what defines justice is mike god and he says in the quaker edition he left a more explicitly. The differences in the other versions are miniscule. Some scholars make a big deal out of that one of the things he took out between may and june was let me make sure ive got this exactly. I may be confusing it but in any case there is the importance always of this embrace of extremism. Ill go i know, he does leave it in. An early version he said think about there were three extremists on calvary. Two were extremists for injustice and one was extremist for love and justice. King always identified with jesus more than moses. He used exodus often but if you listen to his weekly sermons overhears, exodus is and that import most of the time. Jesus is the savior and the sacrificial endeavor so he says jesus was an extremist. Love those who hate you. Bless those who despise you. So again, but to really appreciate the power of this letter you have got to see. This is a little bit bad. At first he says c. Im going to show you that im okay with you. Im glad you approve of me. Im not going going to show you who have you think i am and then the crowd turns around and says i am proud to be an extremist. He says i to pleasure the more i thought about it. There is such richness and that. John, as the attorneys on law and order say since you opened the door and as a way of asking the question im going to ask, what john mentioned the Birmingham Public Library is sponsoring next years reading of the letter from birmingham jail and what we did, a very simple idea. We decided we would have people here at the library read the letter aloud to whomever shows up in months to hear it. We decided that we would issue an invitation to anyone anywhere who wanted to also do the same thing any time on that day. I am not someone who understands social media so i dont quite understand how these things happen, but through the hard work of a number of people here and through this magic of this social media thing it just took off and we have on our web site at page asking everyone to just let us know that you are going to be a doing a reading and where and how you might do it. When i left my office to come up here we had 176 locations signed up so far. They are all over the world. [applause] thank you john. We have locations in 28 states. We have people who will be reading the letter and the wonderful thing is its going to go on all day because its going to start in australia and its going to come around the world. We have people in south africa somalia cameroon israel england Northern Ireland germany thailand. We have a teacher in taiwan who is teaching her students about the letter. They are going to read the letter on the 16th and then the students are going to write letters back to dr. King which we will be receiving. So i said all of that to ask you to talk about that because you can include in the book talking about the place of the letter has not just in birmingham history or American History but in World History and in freedom fighting all over the world. There are two complementary impulses at work in the letter. One, of the man who is a fighter for his people. He says im here because injustice is here but its really because black people are suffering. But he never forgets that he is here because universal humanity suffers. So there is nothing that he is doing in birmingham in particular or not in particular but in the letter from the birmingham jail its lazarus because the sid as king makes him is he was a rich man but it wasnt his riches that makes him the center. He is a center sinner because he did not recognize the gimpy beggar covered with sores at his door. He walked past him as if he didnt exist. In a sense for king his preaching as we have an obligation to respond to everybody, not just our own people. White people on the sidelines. That is the critique of the moderates. They have to respond and black people have to liberate themselves so its utterly sensible that over time this document has been read not only as a civil rights in birmingham document but as it ascends psychotically to its status it takes a while to grow. It goes to the nobel prize and describes quote words spoken to mankind. Is such a powerful document that it resonates at that very occasion. The Freedom Fighters in polish solidarity understand this speaks to our vision of christian militants. Lech walensa so when he comes to america since people to talk to andrew young and to tell them thank you for teaching us to always give our opponents ace facesaving way out. He goes to south africa and apartheid and goes to the east German MovementPastors Movement against communism and eventually the european and christian and black world and goes to iran and Tahrir Square and tiananmen square. So i think the greatness of the document is as wyatt walker felt an and andrew young put it this way, is a philosophical document that summarizes the christian strain within the civil rights movement. It may not capture sncc but it captures an important part of the movement. It has been read by people around the world who see in kings critique of moderation and civil disobedience and his affirmation of protest kind of a reflection of their own struggles and is all great documents are, they usually read it in the light of their own world so its all different. If you look at the Game Movement there is a very wellknown and bisexual web site which basically translates the letter from birmingham jail into what it means for people addressing white moderates. So, the answer is part of its power is its artistry. Part of its story is the statement of black defiance and christian forbearance and the other part is that universal words spoken to mankind. I think we have time for one or two questions from the audience and this is touching on something i was wondering as well in terms of you know i think about president obama and the fine line he walks in not saying the angry black man because that so quickly you no, turns on you. This person has asked the u. S. A sociologist feel that king realized during his stay that with the apathy of the complacent and when he returned he had to change his statue. He had to push people out of their comfort zones to succeed. You know i have talked plenty tonight so i dont think i need to go on too long. But yes i think the question answers itself absolutely. Remember he wanted to push blacks out of their comfort zone as well as whites out of their comfort zone. The gospel of freedom, there are versions for the oppressed and the oppressor. This is a good question to end with here for both of our authors. My question today with so many people of color in prison and a greater disparity between rich and poor, what do we need to do today to defend the promise of 1963 . I think that we need to use 1963 to learn to teach ourselves how to recognize and is king said inevitability. Human progress does not come on wheels of inevitability and i thought that when i was younger. I do think there is his arc that it was Getting Better and i dont really believe that anymore. They think things he coming around and its really important to be able to break the code in figure out when these injustices are coming around again because they always, under a different disguise. Now you know we have used some of the tools of 1963 now to fight back against the Immigration Law that was passed in the state that to me was reinventing jim crow. We couldnt quite the legislature couldnt quite recognize and of wasnt remembering that we have been there before but the resistance was ready. Resistance has not succeeded so that is kind of you know but their assistance is there and knows what to do now. The clergy was the first out of the gate on that and they were ready to protest this Immigration Laws. And then you know of other people joined in as well including the newspapers who are kings enemy here. So you now its just maybe you get a little bit better as you go on down in history but its the same issues that keep recurring. You know i and gospel of freedom by saying we misunderstood what king meant by the arc of justice and it was related to what king imagines moses, god telling moses to tell the children of israel. The arc and im really repeating what diane just said in a somewhat different image. King did not believe the arc of the universe would bend towards Justice Without men and women doing the bending which is her point about coworkers. I hate to use a fancy word and i dont usually like them but kings vision of deliverance is quite difference from reverend cl franklins version who was also a Freedom Fighter but Aretha Franklins father one of the great preachers of the 20th century. When he preaches he says wait on him. He will part the waters. Kings view was god wants you to deliver yourself and the bending of the universe requires that actual people bend it. The faith of the arc of justice because god is on your side. That brings us back to criminal justice and a whole lot of other things. King would say today our work is not done. He wasnt a glass is half full guy. Not in a bitter pessimistic way. Just because all black people do not suffer from jim crow doesnt mean that there arent plenty of other suffering people who required the intervention of coworkers. Or coworkers for whoever is your spiritual guidance. The coworkers of active human beings to minister their pain and bring justice. So the answer is exodus repeats itself in every time and every place. It just looks different in every time and therefore the obligation of people never ceases. Ive always thought the ultimate lesson of birmingham is one that as diane pointed out was seen playing out in our own time with questions over and the current rights and i think the lesson is when you come down on the wrong side of justice that history does not judge you well. And you live with the consequences. I will say that ive been an archivist and a historian for 20 years and i am encouraged in that i see more and more people that are open to see this story in its complexity and to see this not only as a tragic story and some people feel we just need to stop talking about. And people who want to know and want to understand why this happened and why this does keep happening. I know you pointed out many times, Kia Birmingham conserve the world is a good example and as a starting place for all these conversations we need to have. Speedway you all please join me in thankto professor medgar. Thank you very much. Thank you. [applause] it is wonderful to be here this evening. Im going to read very briefly, three short excerpts from the autobiography of medgar evers. That captures different aspects of what the book covers. The autobiography of medgar evers was a labor of love. For both myrlie and myself because medgar evers was more than simply a pioneer of the black freedom struggle. He was indeed a central figure in American History. Who has yet to be fully recognized. For the giant that he was. This evening id like to speak for about 20 minutes. Myrlie is going to follow with her own personal reflexis and comments on her experiences in the struggle for civil rights working sidebyside with this central figure of American History, Medgar Wiley Evers. Then we can entertain questions and your comments. The true origins of medgar evers political life can be traced back actually to 1832. When the Mississippi StateConstitutional Convention was held, establishing that state. The del cats at that convention adopted the principal of universal white manhood suffrage eliminating all property qualifications on the voting franchise. However, blacks, slave, or free were obviously not permitted to vote during the period following the civil war of reconstruction from 1865 to 1877, there was a brief experiment in multiracial or biracial democracy in that state. But with the demise of reconstruction, that was snuffed out. The legal and political regime of White Supremacy was established in 1890. When the state held a new Constitutional Convention. A series of provisions were developmented including blacks were also kept from the polls through outright violence and lynching. Between 1882 to 1927, there were 517 after kwan americans limped in the state of africanamericans lynched in the state of mississippi. The highest number in that state during that period. A book ward politically culture rooted in violence was firmly established by the early 20th century, making mississippi symbolic of everything undemocratic and oppressive in the american south. It was in that repressive environment of white domination and black subordination. Into which Medgar Wiley Evers was born on july 2, 1925 in decater, mississippi. He was one of six children of james and jesse evers. James was employed as a stacker at a decater sawmill, his wife, jesse, took in laundry and ironing for local white families. The evers family was never well to do yet it managed to acquire land. And