Speaker 1: It's May nineteen sixty three. The eyes of the world
Speaker 1: are on Birmingham, Alabama. Hundreds of Birmingham's black residents, including
Speaker 1: scores of teenagers, pour into the streets in their church
Speaker 1: clothes on a warm Sunday afternoon. Birmingham's police chief, Eugene
Speaker 1: Bull Connor, watches the scene unfold. Connor is a burly
Speaker 1: white man in his mid sixties, slipped back, gray hair,
Speaker 1: horn rimmed glasses. He looks a lot like the warden
Speaker 1: from the Shawshank Redemption. In recent days, the frustrated Connor
Speaker 1: has turned to police dogs and fire hoses to put
Speaker 1: down the stream of protesters, and he has drawn national
Speaker 1: attention to himself and his city in the process. The
Speaker 1: marchers are given one more chance to turn around and disperse.
Speaker 1: They refuse. The angry Connor whirls and shouts to his men,
Speaker 1: damn it, turn on the hoses. Many protesters take to
Speaker 1: their knees, prepared to stand a ground peacefully against the
Speaker 1: coming onslaught. But what happened next is not what you
Speaker 1: think or what you may have seen in the black
Speaker 1: and white photos of protesters, dogs and fire hoses. What
Speaker 1: happened next surprised even the man behind the protests in Birmingham,
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr. What happened next, or the dogs
Speaker 1: that didn't bark, the fire hoses that didn't spread. What
Speaker 1: happened next was what Dr King called the pride and
Speaker 1: the power of nonviolence. We are so jess in ay.
Speaker 1: We have to find, we have to ruy, we got
Speaker 1: to love the bo we got to all it up.
Speaker 1: We I'm Sean brass Well. Then this is The Thread.
Speaker 1: Each season we unravel the stories behind some of the
Speaker 1: most important lives and events in history to discover, essentially
Speaker 1: how one thing leads to another. To do so, we
Speaker 1: travel back through history, one story at a time to
Speaker 1: explore the origins of an important event, an iconic figure,
Speaker 1: or a big idea. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: of the death of the iconic civil rights leader Dr
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr. And so in season three of
Speaker 1: The Thread, we explore the origins of a revolutionary idea,
Speaker 1: one very near and dear to the heart of Doctor King,
Speaker 1: the principle of nonviolent resistance, the counterintuitive notion that the
Speaker 1: best way to reform your enemies is to love them.
Speaker 1: The best way to counter their blows is to absorb them.
Speaker 1: King established the use of mass, nonviolent protest on American soil,
Speaker 1: but it did not begin with him. We'll take you
Speaker 1: on a journey through the minds of some remarkable individuals
Speaker 1: and across the globe this season on the Thread, we
Speaker 1: find out how a single powerful idea can spread and
Speaker 1: remake the world. When Martin Luther King Jr. Was fourteen
Speaker 1: years old, he had a formative experience aboard a segregated bus.
Speaker 1: King and his high school teacher were on their way
Speaker 1: back to Atlanta from an oratory contest in southern Georgia.
Speaker 1: They were asked to give up their seats when two
Speaker 1: white passengers boarded the bus. The teenage King stood and
Speaker 1: stewed for hours at the back of the bus. He
Speaker 1: later recalled quote, it was the angriest I have ever
Speaker 1: been in my life. Twelve years later, a forty two
Speaker 1: year old seamstress found herself in a similar situation, but
Speaker 1: his history has well told. Rosa Parks refused to give
Speaker 1: up her seat, and his fate would have it. The
Speaker 1: now twenty six year old doctor King had just accepted
Speaker 1: a job as a minister in the city where Parks
Speaker 1: took her famous ride Montgomery, Alabama. Mrs Rose of Parks
Speaker 1: was arrested and taken down to jail, taken from the
Speaker 1: bus just because she refused to give up a seat.
Speaker 1: That is the young King addressing reporters about the events
Speaker 1: unfolding in Montgomery. A boycott of the city's buses was
Speaker 1: proposed four days after Parks was arrested. This is David
Speaker 1: Garrow King, biographer and the Pulitzer Prize winning author of
Speaker 1: Bearing the Cross. That's when Dr King debuted as the
Speaker 1: lead spokesperson for this new citywide bus boycott effort. You
Speaker 1: have been moved that a second the resolution the red
Speaker 1: will be received a dollar. Are you read about a
Speaker 1: question all in fable that had been known by standing
Speaker 1: on your feet? King and his wife Kreta woke up
Speaker 1: early on the first day of the boycott. They watched
Speaker 1: the bus stott near their house from the front window
Speaker 1: and looked on in amazement as bus after by passed by.
Speaker 1: Most of the buses contained not a single black passenger.
Speaker 1: Grant was the day that we started a bust protest
Speaker 1: which literally electrified the nation. And that was a day
Speaker 1: when we decided that we were not going to take
Speaker 1: segregated buses any longer. King saw a powerful social movement
Speaker 1: come together before his eyes. Well several weeks now were
Speaker 1: the Nigro citizens of Montgomery have been involved in a
Speaker 1: non violent protest against the injustices which we have experienced
Speaker 1: on the buses a number of years. Soon the boycott
Speaker 1: went from weeks to months, and Montgomery's white community started
Speaker 1: to press back. This is historian John Demilio, So imagine
Speaker 1: a protest like this developing in Alabama in n segregation
Speaker 1: is the rule. Um, white supremacists have no reluctance to
Speaker 1: use violence to keep African Americans in line. Uh. They
Speaker 1: lynch people, they shoot people, They're willing to burn houses.
Speaker 1: They will do anything that they have to do. King
Speaker 1: quickly became a primary target for that violence. David Garrow again.
Speaker 1: Doctor King gradually becomes a more and more visible figure
Speaker 1: in local Montgomery news coverage. Not long thereafter, Uh, there's
Speaker 1: a small bomb that's detonated on the porch of his
Speaker 1: home when he's out at a rally. It breaks some windows. Uh,
Speaker 1: No one fortunately is injured. An angry crowd had gathered
Speaker 1: outside Dr King's home by the time here back. They
Speaker 1: refused to obey police instructions to disperse, King stepped onto
Speaker 1: the front porch. He asked them not to retaliate. Then,
Speaker 1: referring to the people who had nearly killed his wife
Speaker 1: and child an hour before, King told the crowd quote,
Speaker 1: I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them,
Speaker 1: love them, and let them know you love them. And
Speaker 1: you can see in his remarks that evening how his
Speaker 1: fundamental Christian belief in a in an ethnic and doctrine
Speaker 1: of love, even love for one's enemies, uh is at
Speaker 1: the very core of his being. Finally, Montgomery City leaders
Speaker 1: agreed to the protesters demands after a community of more
Speaker 1: than fifty thousand people had protested for three hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty two days. Montgomery's buses would never be segregated again,
Speaker 1: and King and his allies had launched a powerful new
Speaker 1: form of protests in America. Nonviolent resistance give passive resistance
Speaker 1: means just passively accepting violence and justice. If it means
Speaker 1: cowardice and stagnant passivity, then that is a difference. Because
Speaker 1: non violent resistance that there is resist it is dynamically active.
Speaker 1: Governments think it's a dangerous idea. It's a cherished notion
Speaker 1: of government that they have an exclusive right to violence.
Speaker 1: This is Mark Kurlansky, author of non Violence, The History
Speaker 1: of a Dangerous idea. If your opponents are violent, uh,
Speaker 1: and you're violent, you're playing to their strong suit. Whereas
Speaker 1: if you're non violent, you're they don't really know what
Speaker 1: to do. Uh. And that's what happened with the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement. King's non violent approach transformed that movement. Before
Speaker 1: the Montgomery bus boycott, the U s Civil rights movement
Speaker 1: was based in the North, with organizations like the Inn
Speaker 1: Double A c P, which won the landmark school desegregation
Speaker 1: decision Brown Versus Board of Education a year after the boycott.
Speaker 1: King and several other Southern black ministers and activists formed
Speaker 1: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or SCLC in nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: and that's when the center of the civil rights movement
Speaker 1: began to shift to the South, and so the black
Speaker 1: religious leaders like King, who waged a new war of
Speaker 1: non violence. David Garrow. The lesson of Montgomery was that
Speaker 1: local black communities, just ordinary residents citizens could take meaningful
Speaker 1: action on their own against racial segregation without waiting for
Speaker 1: leadership from new York City. Dr King was a unique
Speaker 1: personality because he was a conflict resolver. He acted as
Speaker 1: a lubricant and a persuader to get people to compromise
Speaker 1: and do things in keeping with his tradition of the
Speaker 1: non violent techniques. This is Timothy Jenkins, a civil rights
Speaker 1: leader who helped organize students, sit ins and other non
Speaker 1: violent protests during the nineteen sixties, and he was an
Speaker 1: advocate of techniques of persuasion that did not revolve around
Speaker 1: force or arms or threats, and that led to I
Speaker 1: think a unique character to this movement as opposed to
Speaker 1: normal political movements, because it was not a test of
Speaker 1: power and the test of authority. It was a test
Speaker 1: of moral suasion. But it was a test that did
Speaker 1: not always work. John Demilio again. Dr King had been
Speaker 1: in supporting protests in Albany, Georgia in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 1: for much of the year and it was a very
Speaker 1: frustrating experience, um in part because the sheriff in Albany,
Speaker 1: Georgia had the foresight not to respond to these protests
Speaker 1: with violence, and so the protests didn't capture headlines. The
Speaker 1: Southern non violence campaign stalled by the end of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. In many ways, non violent protests depends upon
Speaker 1: violence from those in authority to succeed, and King knew
Speaker 1: that the movement needed a confrontation to regain the nation's attention.
Speaker 1: Mark Kurlansky. He realized that, you know, resisting non violently
Speaker 1: would only work if people saw you doing it, which
Speaker 1: is how King and the SCLC came to be in Birmingham, Alabama,
Speaker 1: the most segregated city in America in early nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: Birmingham has one of the most brutal white sheriffs in
Speaker 1: the South, John Demilio. Again he went by the name
Speaker 1: of Bull Connor, which tells you something about out how
Speaker 1: people perceived him. He was as determined and fierce as
Speaker 1: a bull. Here the animated Connor in a white shirt
Speaker 1: and black tie defends his actions in Birmingham. You can
Speaker 1: never with the boy if you don't keep you and
Speaker 1: him separated. I found out out bleming him. You've got
Speaker 1: to keep your white and a black separn King and
Speaker 1: local black leaders were banking on the fact that Connor
Speaker 1: would take any means necessary to ensure that Birmingham's races
Speaker 1: remained separate. The demonstrations began during Easter Week nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: About fifty supporters turned out for the first march on
Speaker 1: Good Friday. After four and a half blocks, the marchers,
Speaker 1: including King, were met by Connor's officers, placed under arrest,
Speaker 1: and taken to the city jail. For the next few weeks,
Speaker 1: the demonstrations did not have their intended effect David Garrow.
Speaker 1: Initially in Birmingham, King and SCLC had a good degree
Speaker 1: of trouble in recruiting Black community members to participate in protests.
Speaker 1: Connor and the Birmingham police remained restrained, avoiding the media
Speaker 1: attention that King counted on. So a new tactic was adopted.
Speaker 1: Leaflets are circulated in Birmingham's black high schools urging students
Speaker 1: to join the next demonstration in Birmingham. They decide to
Speaker 1: mobilize young people, not young adults, not college students, but
Speaker 1: high school students and younger and that gets a lot
Speaker 1: of publicity and at a certain point Bull Connor and
Speaker 1: the police just lose it and they start beating people
Speaker 1: and arresting them on mass Police arrested more than five
Speaker 1: students in the first two days. The jails were full
Speaker 1: and Connor's patients was running thin. He unleashed the police
Speaker 1: dogs and ordered the fire hoses be turned on demonstrators.
Speaker 1: Water from the high powered hoses tore the clothes off
Speaker 1: some protesters backs for agraphers and television cameras captured the
Speaker 1: brutal attack. Images of police officers beating protesters, the teenagers
Speaker 1: getting slammed against walls by water, and if dogs snarling
Speaker 1: at young girls made headlines across the country. Many whites
Speaker 1: in the rest of the country, we're going about their
Speaker 1: lives not even noticing that this was going on in
Speaker 1: the South. Well, you couldn't not notice this, And so
Speaker 1: Birmingham really brings the civil rights struggle up to a
Speaker 1: new level of visibility. But perhaps the most remarkable part
Speaker 1: of the Birmingham story happened on that Sunday afternoon in
Speaker 1: early May where we started this episode. The protesters, many
Speaker 1: on their knees, braced themselves yet again for the Birmingham
Speaker 1: police to unleash the dogs and the fire hoses. Bull
Speaker 1: Connor himself gives the order for them to do so.
Speaker 1: Then for the next thirty seconds, something astonishing occurs. Connor's
Speaker 1: men do nothing. Slowly, the protesters stand up and continue
Speaker 1: forward with their march. Doctor King later described the scene.
Speaker 1: Connor's men as though hypnotized, fell back, their hoses sagging
Speaker 1: uselessly in their hands, while several hundred Negroes marched past
Speaker 1: them without further interference. It would prove to be a
Speaker 1: defining moment for the civil rights movement, and for King,
Speaker 1: it was an eye opening event. As he later wrote,
Speaker 1: I felt there for the first time the pride and
Speaker 1: the power of nonviolence. The nonviolent movement had taken the
Speaker 1: struggle to the heart of the Jim Crow South and
Speaker 1: to the forefront of the national consciousness. King was thrilled.
Speaker 1: The activity is which have taken place in Birmingham over
Speaker 1: the last few days, into my mind, marked a non
Speaker 1: violent movement coming of age. David Garrow again, the images
Speaker 1: and impact of Birmingham convinced both of the Kennedy brothers
Speaker 1: that they needed to finally move forward with a meaningful
Speaker 1: civil rights bill. That's the real tangible impact of Birmingham.
Speaker 1: Congress passes the most sweeping civil rights bill ever to
Speaker 1: be written into the law, and thus reaffirms the conception
Speaker 1: of equality for all men that began with Lincoln and
Speaker 1: the Civil War one hundred years ago. The summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three was a revolution, King later said, because
Speaker 1: it changed the face of America. By the time it
Speaker 1: was over, hundreds of lunch counters, hotels, parks, and other
Speaker 1: public places had been integrated. King and his nonviolent movement
Speaker 1: continued to win victories and historic legislation over the next
Speaker 1: few years, but not without cost. King led a march
Speaker 1: for voting rights in Alabama in nineteen sixty five that
Speaker 1: resulted in what was called Bloody Sunday. Armed police attacked
Speaker 1: King and other peaceful demonstrators as they walked across the
Speaker 1: Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, just like in Birmingham. Television
Speaker 1: carried the beatings to audiences across the country and the world.
Speaker 1: Mark Kurlanski again, you know it worked in a way
Speaker 1: that I don't think his opponents understood how well it worked,
Speaker 1: or they wouldn't have done things like the Pettis Bridge.
Speaker 1: You know, the power of people seeing that all over
Speaker 1: the world. King's non violent campaign was working, but he
Speaker 1: sensed that violence still bubbled just beneath the surface during
Speaker 1: the turbulent times. Here's King on Meet the Press in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five. Realism impel impelled me to admit, however,
Speaker 1: that when there is justice and the pursuit of justice,
Speaker 1: violence disappears. And where there is injustice and frustration, the
Speaker 1: potentialities for violence are great on those frustrations, and the
Speaker 1: potential for violence would grow with the nineteen sixties war
Speaker 1: on Up. Next, we dip into the shadows of history
Speaker 1: to meet the remarkable man who inspired Dr. King's non
Speaker 1: violent approach in the first place. Men, for years now
Speaker 1: have been talking about one piece. But now no longer
Speaker 1: can we just talk about it is no longer The
Speaker 1: choice between violence and non violence in this world is
Speaker 1: non violence on non existence. That is where we are
Speaker 1: to date. Good evening. Dr Martin Luther King, the apostle
Speaker 1: of non violence in the civil rights movement, has been
Speaker 1: shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. Doctor King was standing
Speaker 1: on the balcony of his second floor hotel room tonight when,
Speaker 1: according to a companion, a shot was fired from across
Speaker 1: the street, and the friend's words, the bullet exploded in
Speaker 1: his face. Martin Luther King's legacy is inextricably tied to
Speaker 1: the non violent approach he championed, but the civil rights
Speaker 1: leader was not always opposed to violence. As a seminary student,
Speaker 1: he expressed skepticism about the virtues of pacifism and non violence.
Speaker 1: Even in the opening days of the Montgomery boycott, King
Speaker 1: had not yet found his non violent voice. Mark Kurlansky,
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny the way he's portrayed today, especially
Speaker 1: in schools, you know, as as just this kind of
Speaker 1: dreamy guy who's about peace and love. He was a
Speaker 1: very determined political activist who eventually embraced non violence because
Speaker 1: he became convinced that that would work. And one man
Speaker 1: above all others convinced King that it would work. But
Speaker 1: King would have to make some changes. First. Let's go
Speaker 1: back to Montgomery. It's February ninety. King's house has just
Speaker 1: been bombed David Garret. As the Montgomery bus boycott begins
Speaker 1: to achieve national news coverage, um civil rights supporters around
Speaker 1: the country begin asking them selves what they can do
Speaker 1: to assist the Montgomery protesters. One of those prominent northern
Speaker 1: activists was a forty three year old black Quaker from
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania named Bayard Rustin. A longtime advocate of nonviolent protest,
Speaker 1: Ruston was concerned by what he saw when he arrived
Speaker 1: in Montgomery. So at the beginning there in Montgomery, even
Speaker 1: though doctor King believed in a Christian doctrine of love,
Speaker 1: his interest in nonviolence was not such that he was
Speaker 1: prohibiting black community members from standing armed guard. After King's
Speaker 1: house was bombed, armed men kept guard out front each night.
Speaker 1: Byar Rustin came to King's home shortly after the bombing,
Speaker 1: but byed himself. Is is taken somewhat aback um when
Speaker 1: he sits down in a chair at doctor King's home
Speaker 1: and realizes there's a gun in it. King explained that
Speaker 1: they did not intend to use the firearms harm anyone
Speaker 1: unless they were violently attacked. This is Rustin biographer John
Speaker 1: Damelio again, and Rustin explains to him that if you
Speaker 1: want to be modeling non violence, you can't possess guns.
Speaker 1: You actually have to live out completely the philosophy of
Speaker 1: non violence. That was just the first lesson Rustin would
Speaker 1: provide to the young King. The weapons and armed guards
Speaker 1: were removed, and so Rustin becomes his tutor and instructor.
Speaker 1: And really within the space of a few weeks, it
Speaker 1: is not an exaggeration to say that in terms of
Speaker 1: the strategy, tactics, and philosophy of non violence. Buyard Rustin
Speaker 1: becomes Dr King's most trusted and closest advisor. The tall,
Speaker 1: cosmopolitan Quaker and the short, eloquent Baptist preacher made for
Speaker 1: quite a pair. It was to be one of the
Speaker 1: most productive relationships in American history. Rustin immediately recognized King's
Speaker 1: raw talent and potential as a leader, but knew he
Speaker 1: still had a long way to go. Doctor King justifiably
Speaker 1: has become such a heroic figure and so closely associated
Speaker 1: with non violence and a mass movement that most people
Speaker 1: don't realize that. At the time that Rustin meets him
Speaker 1: in the early stages of the boycott, Doctor King knows
Speaker 1: about non violence, but he has no training in it.
Speaker 1: He has no direct experience in the tactics and strategy
Speaker 1: of a non violent movement, and so, starting in Montgomery,
Speaker 1: Rustin and King had lengthy conversations about non violent principles,
Speaker 1: organizing tactics, and strategic thinking. Rustin even started ghostwriting some
Speaker 1: of King's speeches. King could not have had a better tutor.
Speaker 1: Many in the activist community considered Rusting, to be quote
Speaker 1: the American Gandhi. It was not hyperbole. Every fiber in
Speaker 1: Ruston's being was dedicated to the principles of non violence.
Speaker 1: Here's Buyer Drusted. I said to beget when you were
Speaker 1: not like what I am saying. Those people who think
Speaker 1: that we can use guns and knives against tanks and buzukas,
Speaker 1: they are an ignorant bunks. In the next episode, we
Speaker 1: learn more about King's mentor, Buyer Drusted, the remarkable individual
Speaker 1: responsible for the March on Washington that launched King's dream,
Speaker 1: a gay man banished behind the scenes of the civil
Speaker 1: rights drama, but who still managed to change the course
Speaker 1: of American history from its shadows. We are so in.
Speaker 1: We have to fi. We got to all the good.
Speaker 1: We've got to all it up. Well, we've got to cry.
Speaker 1: We have to cry. We've got to all the threat
Speaker 1: is produced by Libby Coleman, Robert Coulos, Sophia Perpetua, and
Speaker 1: me Sean Braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show. This episode
Speaker 1: features the Montgomery Gospel Choir with a song called we
Speaker 1: Are Soldiers in the Army. To learn more about the Thread,
Speaker 1: visit AUSI dot com. Slash the thread all one word,
Speaker 1: and make sure to subscribe to the thread on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: follow us on I Heart Radio, or listen wherever you
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Speaker 1: stories from history, look no further than the flashback section
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