I saw a lot of hands. Okay. I was curious about hotels in new york. I mean i know my parents stayed at one of the few hotels in new york that allowed black people to stay there. Well, you know, it was different. Like up where i interviewed paula, up at the polo grounds, she mentioned in her building at one time walter white from the naacp, Thurgood Marshal stayed there, judge bruce wright stayed there at one time in that building. But further up is a building count 555. Gnat king cole would come in town and he couldnt stay in town. He could playdown town but couldnt stay downtown. What years were your parents stay ting there . They got married in 54. Well you know, i guess it happens. But i know i read his article not too long ago that hairy bell fon taye was having a hard time finding a place. He ended up buying the building and sold the penthouse to lena horne. Thats how he was able to get in the upper westside. Do you know the websites url for the green book chronicles so people with keep up to date . My website is calvin sf zerntramsey sr. Com, which is kind of long. But the green book chronicles, you know, you can go there, greenbo greenbo greenbookchronicles. Com. I know a lot of adults getting the books for them. Floyd cooper is my illustrator. A legend in illustrations. This guy is out of oklahoma, lives in pennsylvania with his wife and family. But he was hes just a marvelous illustrator. But the green book chronicles is the documentary. We hope to have it out as soon as we can. And i thank you all for coming out. Appreciate it. [ applause ] thank you, calvin. Wednesday morning on cspan3, a hearing about Border Security including effort to stop people from illegally crossing the southern border. The House Oversight subcommittees on National Security and Government Relations will hear from law enforcement, Border Patrol officials and legal analysts. Live korng at 9 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan 3. American history tv on cspan 3. This weekend on saturday afternoon at 2 00 eastern, law professor Jeffrey Rosen talks about the influence of john marshal. Adams famously said my gift of john marshal to the people of United States was the proudest act of my life. And marshal has been widely praised for transforming the Supreme Court into what his biographer John Edward Smith called a dominant force in american life. And at 10 00 on reel america the roll will put the shuttle on its precise heading. Space shutting, a remarkable flying machine on the twoday Maiden Voyage of the Space Shuttle clum into yea. The 1968 Campaign Film for republican president ial candidate richard nixon. I have decided that i will test my ability to win and my ability to cope with the issues in the fires of the primaries and not just in the smoke filled room of miami. And at 1 00, a panel of authors on their recent books chronicling mexican civil rights from the 1930s to 1970s. In this coalition of labor unions with, mexican civil rights leaders and religious authorities came together to protest the exploitation of the program and in fact accelerated congresss decision to terminate it the next year in 1964. And i think this was a moment of blossoming for the what can that movement. For the complete schedule go to cspan. Org. The need for horses on the farm began to decline radically in the 1930s. It was not until the 1930s that they figured out how to make a rubber tire big enough to fit on a tractor. And starting in the 1930s, 1940s, you had an almost complete replacement of horses as the work animals on farms. I believe one of my books on horses i read that in the decade after world war i irk we had Something Like a horse holocaust, that the horses were no longer needed and we didnt get rid of them in a very pretty way. Sunday night on q a, robert gordon, pronfessor of economics discusses his book the rise and fall of american growth. One thing that often interests people is the impact of Superstorm Sandy on the east coast back in 2012. That wiped out the 20th century for many people. The elevators no longer worked in new york. The electricity stopped. You couldnt charge your cell phones. You couldnt pump gas into your car because it required electricity to pump the gas. So the power of electricity in the internal Combustion Engine to make modern life possible is something that people take for granted. Sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. When i tune in to it on the weekends, usually its authors sharing their new releases. Watching the nonfiction authors on book tv is the best television for serious readers. On cspan they can have a longer conversation and delve into their subject. Book tv weekends, they bring you author after author after author that spotlight the work of fascinating people. I love book tv and im a cspan fan. Next on lectures in history, Emory University professors Hank Kilbanoff and breath gadsden look at the politics in mid century georgia. They talk about a number of unsolved murders during the segregation era and the cold cases project. This class is about 90 minutes. Because today what were going to do, im going to open up the georgia civil rights cold cases, plural, class by taking note of a particular milestone that occurs is occurring this week. Anybody know who this is . This is emmett till. Now on this day, august 26, 1955, thats 60 years ago today, so im going to ask you to sort of take your mind back. Im sure none of you remember that, right . None of y remember what happened 60 years ago. But were going to take a measure of how long ago that really was in a minute. Emmett till was 14yearold boy from chicago. Hes spending his summer with his uncle down in mississippi. His uncle was a farmer and his uncle had a son who was emmetts age. His uncle is moses wright. Moses wrights son, simeon, and theyre all living together in the wright house down in mississippi having a good summertime. Two days before this day, 60 years ago on august 24th, emmett till had gone into a local Country Store called bryants. Bryants meet and grocery i think its called. And h was hanging out with simeon, with some other guys and he goes into the store to purchase something. And he purchases it and hes at the Cash Register and there he sees the woman who owns the Grocery Store with her husband, Carolyn Bryant. And something happens at that point and theres only one person alive today who knows what happened. And thats Carolyn Bryant. Okay . And he purchases something and he then either whistles at her in a sassy sort of way, a wolf whistle, you know, that construction workers and others are known to do when women walk by, okay, or as hes leaving he says Something Like bye, baby. Or, if you listen to his mother, he starts to Say Something and he stutters. He had a stutter, she said. And he would blow air out in what sounded like a whistle. Whatever he did it crossed the line. Certainly in the minds, not of only Carolyn Bryant but her husband. A couple of days later roy bryant and his brotherinlaw j. W. Mylum show up late at night at the door of moses wrights house. And demand to see the boy that was in the store. em mitts till sfitirs, he come out. Simeon remembers, emmett till is half asleep, goes to the door and mylum and bryant grab him, taking him out to a truck and they can hear bryant and mylum say, is this the boy that did that. And a womans voice says yes, thats him. And they take him away. Not to be seen again for several days. Okay . That was now on the 28th. So two days from now, 60 years ago. All right . They took him to j. W. Mylums barn where they tortured him, they beat him and they shot him. And then they took him out to the tall Hatchie River where they strapped a cotton gin fan weigh 70 pounds, wrapped with barbed wire around his neck and threw him in the water. And hes missing, people are looking for him. Even before his body surface, the spotlight turns to bryant and mylum, and they say yeah, we did that, se we showed up and took him, we roughed him up a little bit and let him out on the road. Whatever else happened we had no hand in. Somebody else must have done. But then he surfaces. And what im about to show you is a very gruesome picture that at the time was only show in the black press. It later made its way out to the larger. So the body was bloated beyond recognition, one eyeball was dangling from its socket, his tongue extended from his mouth swollen eight times its size, there was a bullet hole behind his left ear and he was recognizable only by the ring that his mother had given him and she had fitted it on to his fingers. It has had been his fathers. So this is a civil rights cold case unresolved, unpunished, as is the case with many of these. There are still elements, possibilities of prosecution on small elements of it. Ultimately this is the chicago defender the black newspaper that he was a local kid to them. Theyre following a big local story. And this is only part of the front page but the entire front page, if i recall, was devoted to this. It wasnt just the black press that was interested. He became a national story. This is the Chicago Daily tribune. You can see the title to the left of the cartoon. The Chicago Daily news till case goes to jury for verdict. This is what happened as it finally went to trial a mere three weeks after his body was found it goes to trial. Now you know, it seems forever between an arrest and when somebody might go to trial. So mylum and bryant are tried, okay, in a courthouse in sum ner, mississippi. And if you ever come back with this detail on a piece, were going to love you. Okay . Guess what the slogan of the town of sumner was. You wont guess. Ill tell you. Thats a mean trick. Nobody knows . Okay. A great place to raise a boy. Totally ironic. And a detail that you as writers ought not miss when you come across Something Like that. Okay . It may not be a surprise to you that they were the two white men, mylum and bryant were acquitted. The jury was out 67 minutes. In fact when they came back they said we wouldnt have been out that long except that we stopped to have a pop, a soda, a drink, you know. It seemed a fanlly slam do you think deal. The prosecution was actually pretty did what many people believed to be an effective job. The judge was a fair judge. I wont go into all of that now. But we can at some other time. The one thing thats interesting is that mylum were not convicted of the one thing they admitted, abducting him. It was a few months later by the way that mylum and bryant and Carolyn Bryant sat with a journalist from alabama and told the story. And in effect confessed to the murder for a piece that ran in look magazine. But you can read the piece and never know they spoke to the reporter because he vowed to reveal that they admitted it. He would have to write the story in some bizarre contorted way that would tell the story of what happened without acknowledging. And he agreed they could go out in the world and deny that they did it and that he wouldnt argue. Later that fellow just couldnt take it any, the writer and he made sure that everybody knew they had confessed. I have copies of the documents where he paid them money for the interviews. I was one of the earliest examples of checkbook journalism. Emmett till was of course not a civil rights activist, right . Hes 14 years old. Back then hes seven years from being able to vote, you know, or whatever the age was back then. So that wasnt the case. He was killed for violating what scholars somewhat primly refer to, and we will in this case because were prim, racial etiquette. Okay . He crossed the line, the social codes, by whatever he did or was believed to have done. Its worth noting that as much attention as this one got, there were two other murders in the weeks leading up to it in ms, a man named george w. Lee and lamar smith, different parts of the state of mississippi and they had been actively involved in Voter Registration, trying to get black to the polls and had been warned not to do it. And they did it anyway. So this semester were going to explore a case thats actually more similar to george w. Lee and lamar smith. Thats going to be the 1948 murder of isaiah nixon in the town of alston, montgomery county. Its three hours from here. He was shot dead for voting. And he voted in the 19 in 1948. And im going to come back to this in a little bit and talk to you about the extraordinary period of time in Georgia History between 1946 actually more broadly 1944 and 1948, the highlights of which were two statewide races for governor within two years of each other, one in 1946 and one in 1948. Two and possibly three black men were killed for vote in that time that we know of. Now, why just i want to open the floor for a second. Why would white people go to such lengths to stop black people from voting . What do you think would so trouble white people back then or anytime that they would murder someone for voting . Yes, sir. I mean, at that point politics was a way to actually voice ones opinions and it actually was power. So there was a specific power structure in the south and black people voting would most likely upset that. That wouldnt be a thing that they wanted. Absolutely. Yes. I agree with that. I think you know at the time politics all, you ow, sheriffs, councilmen, mayors, theyre all white men. And if you have black men voting, it, of course there might be a change to that. You know, they couldnt let that happen. They couldnt give up the power of having control making decisions because who is going to go after the white men killing people if all of their friends are in politics and everyone is going to side with them. Right. Right. Absolutely. Yes, megan . Also, if you have the right to vote the politicians have to cater to your needs because they are a part of getting you elected. So i think thats a big part of it, too. And by that you mean that white people would never want to cater to a black persons need . Yes, exactly. Yes. Its a Legal Equalizer and it was one of the only things at the time that could equalize what was going on in society. Right. Its worth knowing that you may know this intuitively. But the details are what make it extraordinary. What life was like. What segregation was like. I was absolute. Okay . In the 1940s. Okay . And were talking about before some people would say it was even a little more liberal atmosphere in the 40s leading up to the brown versus board decision by the Supreme Court that that really hardened people even more. But in the 1940s even your liberals never believed for a minute that segregation would end. Youve got i can name four liberal editors, prominent people who worked later worked in the roosevelt administration, ralph mcgill, others, Jonathan Daniels who was an editor in raleigh, North Carolina who said absolutely segregation will never end in the south. You might as well believe that day is going to become night and night is going to become day. All of the armies of the world, access and ally combined said Mark Eldridge who had been in lincoln will never bring an end to segregation. So it was that absolute. So when we say that white people didnt want black people to vote, it was just one piece of all of the absolutes that were going to be banned, actually be barred from. But lets get to the real technical detail. You could say they cant want them to vote because they might elect a black person. Keep in mind. What do you think why do you think a group of blacks and these counties, Rural Counties that were talking about could ever elect a black person back in the 40s if they could vote . No . No. Why not . Because i dont think they had the structure there to get someone into office, to run for Political Office and then to win Political Office is a hugely expensive timeconsuming endeavor, right . And i think these people were in such a situation where theyre more concerned with their daytoday livelihood, getting food on the table, than they are about putting someone into a system that has never, in their experience, been beneficial for them. That is all true. Okay . But i would remind you that white people down there were very, very poor too. And white people were struggling day to day. Okay . And heres what i want you to keep in mind, is that in rural georgia, rural alabama, rural mississippi, the population was heavily African American. You can go into some counties and it would be 70 African American. And maybe voting age would be 60 and youd look at the voting roles and seven people, blacks, would be registered. Maybe 100 in a really aggressive county. My point is that the structure, not just of their lives, but the structure that barred them from voting at all was because whites feared that they were they would be the minority. Whites were the minority and that majority ruled, they would lose power. I want somebody else to quickly name one other important reason why the vote matters. What happens when you register to vote . We stumped them. Year after year after year. What happens . How many of you are registered . What do you get in the mail every now and then. You get a call from your folks back home jury duty. Jury duty. And what does that mean . That you go sit on the jury and you can make the decision that these you have an influence on the criminal Justice System, right . A widely overlooked consequence that white people clearly understood, okay . And as we go through these civil righ