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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.

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Speaker 1: It's a podcast. It does what it says in the title.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today is

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Speaker 1: my guest Joel Monique, who is a pop cultural critic,

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Speaker 1: and it seems to do so much of everything that

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Speaker 1: I have a hard time pending her down. How are you?

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Speaker 1: Um good? You know, it's a gray morning, but in

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Speaker 1: l A that counts as weather, so I'm really trying

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Speaker 1: to vibe with it. Um, you know, I got my

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Speaker 1: hot tea. I'm ready to go learn about some nice people.

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Speaker 1: Is it below seventy degrees there? It is below seventy

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Speaker 1: degrees here, sweaters on. I'm under a blanket currently. Oh

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Speaker 1: that's nice, it's lovely. I'm in the mountains and my

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Speaker 1: heat is broken. Oh no, Margaret, it's okay. I have

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Speaker 1: like six backup heats sources because I'm like that, that's good.

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Speaker 1: That's good someone who came from a snowy climate. Um,

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Speaker 1: you need multiple sources of heat at all times, just

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Speaker 1: in caith. Yeah, no, absolutely, Like my house is like

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Speaker 1: like right now, I'm running electric heat space heaters, and

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Speaker 1: if that breaks, I have a wood burning stove, like

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Speaker 1: it's it's fine. Yes anyway, Joel, What's what's your favorite

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Speaker 1: of your many jobs besides being a guest on this post?

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Speaker 1: That is a really tough question. Probably like hosting live

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Speaker 1: events is my favorite because it's like all the aspects

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Speaker 1: of performance, but you get to like perform your ultimate self,

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Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's just as an extroverted introvert,

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Speaker 1: like getting to perform all the extrovertedness, you know, for

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Speaker 1: a crowd is a lot of fun, and you get

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Speaker 1: to you know, get their feelings and maybe you make

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Speaker 1: your guests cry, but in like a good way, you know,

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Speaker 1: and like all that energy is really lovely. And then

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Speaker 1: I would say writing after that is definitely a favorite. Okay, Okay,

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Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense to me. I I

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Speaker 1: really like performing and then going and hiding. That's like,

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Speaker 1: oh no, for sure. Afterwards, Please don't talk to me.

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Speaker 1: I was on set recently and we recorded for like

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Speaker 1: four hours straight and then we broke for lunch and

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Speaker 1: I did not leave the set, and they're like, are

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Speaker 1: you hungry? I was like no, They're like, are you okay?

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Speaker 1: And I was like, I just need to decompress and

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Speaker 1: not talk to anyone. For whatever long we have until

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Speaker 1: the next take, like I just cannot ye, so totally,

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Speaker 1: totally yeah. Absolutely. We're also joined as always by our

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Speaker 1: producer Sophie. Hi, Sophie, Hey, Margaret, how are you? Oh

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Speaker 1: wait that Sophy, it's the end. Yes, I'm finally on

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Speaker 1: the podcast. Yeah. Ian is our audio engineer and also

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Speaker 1: today our producer. Um, how are you doing, Ian? I'm

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Speaker 1: doing pretty good. Yeah, it's a nice, cozy, cool morning,

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Speaker 1: you know, got my sweatshirt on, ready to do some

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Speaker 1: podcasts and all right. So on this show we talked

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Speaker 1: about cool people in history, especially cool movements, cool complicated

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Speaker 1: networks of cool people who actually usually pretty complicated. But

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Speaker 1: this week, well actually this week is no different. I'm

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Speaker 1: really excited to talk this week about the non violent

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Speaker 1: civil rights movement the nineteen fifties and the sixties in

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Speaker 1: the US South and along the way. I'm going to

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Speaker 1: talk about the people who protected the non violent civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement with firearms and stuff. Yes they won't get violent,

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Speaker 1: but we sure will. Those are my favorite people. Yep,

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Speaker 1: that is that is today's It is exactly the people

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Speaker 1: who said, oh that's great, you're non violent. I'm got

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Speaker 1: to protect you. I'm not nonviolent. You have somebody who's

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Speaker 1: ready to do some absolutely exactly, and I think that

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Speaker 1: they don't get enough credit. Um. And so we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk about the armed wing of the non violent civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement, the paradox that isn't half as much of

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Speaker 1: a paradox as it might seem. We're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about the Deacons for Defense and Justice, which was a

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Speaker 1: non ideological but well organized collection of black people who

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Speaker 1: defended civil rights campaigners. We're going to talk about the

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Speaker 1: North Carolina branch of the a c P that armed itself.

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Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk about the all the unaffiliate groups

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Speaker 1: and individuals who relied often quite effectively on their capacity

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Speaker 1: to defend themselves in the struggle for self determination and

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Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Because we've been doing anyone

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Speaker 1: who's listening to podcast, we've been covering like the Clan

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Speaker 1: a bunch recently and not in the We've been talking

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Speaker 1: about people who fight the clan. M not not the

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Speaker 1: good people in the clan, but people who fought the Clan.

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Speaker 1: I got yeah. Um, So you all will be shocked

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Speaker 1: to know this. There's been a concerted effort in the

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Speaker 1: United States of America by white supremacy to disenfranchise black people.

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Speaker 1: You don't say, yeah, yeah, I only learned this, never mind.

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Speaker 1: And wherever there's oppression, there's resistance to oppression, which is

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Speaker 1: the core concept of this show. And so I'm going

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Speaker 1: to frame the civil rights movements of the nine fifties

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Speaker 1: of the seventies in the same way that I see

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Speaker 1: it framed by a lot of historians and people who

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Speaker 1: are there at the time as being kind of made

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Speaker 1: up of two general parts. You've got the sort of

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Speaker 1: civil rights era of the nineteen fifties and sixties, with

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Speaker 1: a focus on non violence and sit ins and voter

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Speaker 1: registration drives Um kind of most famously for my public

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Speaker 1: school education, Martin Luther King. Um, I have a dream

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Speaker 1: all of that stuff. And then you've got the black

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Speaker 1: power era of the late nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: best remembered these days because of the work of the

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Speaker 1: Black panthers. Um. So that's the classification that I've been

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Speaker 1: presented with is, you know, every dichotomy is false, right,

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Speaker 1: And we're going to talk about some of the ways

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Speaker 1: that all these things blur together. But so people talk

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Speaker 1: about it, they talk about the Civil rights era as

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Speaker 1: like pacifist reformism, and the Black power era as like

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Speaker 1: all armed revolutionaries. More and more people are starting to

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Speaker 1: talk about what people have been talking about a lot

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Speaker 1: of along the way, but more and more and more

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Speaker 1: media is paying attention to the Black Panthers, for example,

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Speaker 1: also had a lot of mutual aid programs and breakfast

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Speaker 1: programs and all of these other things that are part

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Speaker 1: of what made them so dangerous and powerful. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: one day we're gonna get into all that. Today we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about kind of the inverse. We're gonna talk

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Speaker 1: about how in the Civil Rights eara it's more complicated

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Speaker 1: than it's sometimes presented. When you guys do the breakfast

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Speaker 1: program for the Black Panthers, have me back, and I'll

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Speaker 1: try to get some stories from my dad, who's a

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Speaker 1: direct beneficiary of that program on the South Side of

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Speaker 1: Chicago when he was growing up. Yeah. No, that would

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Speaker 1: be amazing. Yeah, And that's actually one of the kind

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Speaker 1: of things that's interesting is I keep like on the

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Speaker 1: Today's episode, I like look through this and I'll like

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Speaker 1: start writing like so and so was and then I'm like, wait,

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Speaker 1: now is still alive? Yeah? You know, these people who

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Speaker 1: are fighting in the fifties, sixties, seventies, many of them

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Speaker 1: are still with us, which is fucking cool. So in

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Speaker 1: previous episodes, especially last week's episodes, we talked about that

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Speaker 1: most famous of voice supremacist organizations, the Ku Klux Klan,

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Speaker 1: the and we're gonna go through the super basics of them,

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Speaker 1: the speed run of these fucking worst people. And well,

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Speaker 1: there's so many worse people in you with history, but

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Speaker 1: these are some of the worst people in its history. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So there's like three or four basic distinct phases of

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Speaker 1: the clan. They were founded because of frat club for

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Speaker 1: piece of ship white Southern racists. In the wake of

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Speaker 1: the Civil War. They decided to rely on raw terror

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Speaker 1: and violence in order to fight for white supremacy after

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Speaker 1: having lost a war. This fell apart in eighteen seventy

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Speaker 1: one because the federal government was like, you actually can't

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Speaker 1: do that. And then white racists figured out a better

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Speaker 1: strategy instead of nighttime terror was legal disenfranchisement and the

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Speaker 1: Jim Crow laws that sucked everything up really bad. That's

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Speaker 1: Clan number one, and then you got Clan number two.

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Speaker 1: This is the weird multi level marketing scheme invented in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen by some people who are basically cosplaying the

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Speaker 1: Old Clan. It was this huge social club for white

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Speaker 1: Protestants that became the armed wing of the prohibition movements

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Speaker 1: as well as the white supremacy movement. And they had

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Speaker 1: this whole anti immigrant thing that not only had them

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Speaker 1: fighting against black people, but also Jews and white Catholics

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Speaker 1: and basically immigrants from anywhere. They just fucking hated everyone.

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Speaker 1: Last week we talked about some of the organizations that

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Speaker 1: work to stop them. They fell apart because like every

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Speaker 1: financial scam, they fell into bitter infighting and disgrace, and

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Speaker 1: their property was repossessed in all that ship by the

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Speaker 1: end of the nineteen thirties, I know that, I know

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Speaker 1: I want more. Well, we're starting to see all of

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Speaker 1: these modern white supremacist movements fall apart into weird infighting,

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Speaker 1: and it's been really lovely. Every time I get a

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Speaker 1: little update like so and so I was going to prison,

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Speaker 1: I'm like small victories or the like. I wish I

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Speaker 1: had the notes in front of me about this, But

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Speaker 1: there's like, I don't know, like ten years ago they

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Speaker 1: like went around the anti fascist thing that some of

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Speaker 1: the Nazi clan member people or whatever, like one of

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Speaker 1: them killed the other because they like there was like

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Speaker 1: some like incestuous like cheating that happened, like they taking

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Speaker 1: themselves down, even inctionists who posted to Instagram. It's like

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Speaker 1: he made everybody's job so much easier, I know, and

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Speaker 1: so us kind of how the nineteen twenties clan went

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Speaker 1: down even though there was they were five millions strong

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Speaker 1: at their fucking peak. Uh, Eventually everyone realized that they

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Speaker 1: were a bunch of like just random pieces of ship

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Speaker 1: and people started distancing themselves from them. But the fucking

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Speaker 1: clan is like a stupid racist hydra. And the third

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Speaker 1: Clan popped back up pretty soon after the Second Clan

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Speaker 1: went down, and this time they got back to their roots,

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Speaker 1: which was terrorizing black people in order to maintain white supremacy.

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Speaker 1: And you know, this is kind of back when you

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Speaker 1: people were like really blatant about being white supremacists. Actually,

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Speaker 1: we're getting back there, We're getting back to that point.

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Speaker 1: But they never reached quite the numbers of the Second

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Speaker 1: Clan because they were less of like a popular organization, right,

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Speaker 1: and they were more just like just fucking terrorists right,

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Speaker 1: they were really die hard, they were decentralized, and they

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Speaker 1: got an awful lot of terrorism done. Um. They also

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Speaker 1: there's like arguments to be made about whether they infiltrated

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Speaker 1: the police or whether they just came out of the police,

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Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, I'm on team the slave catchers

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Speaker 1: turned into police. Yeah yeah, I think I think most

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Speaker 1: people would agree with that. It is we just look

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Speaker 1: at their badges and who's happening and the current forever

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Speaker 1: police lineage of just you know, active lynching. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think they're one in the same. So third clan has

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Speaker 1: a lot of cops in it, or the cops have

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Speaker 1: a lot of clan in it or whatever. We're just

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Speaker 1: using synonyms. But wherever there's the bad people, there's the

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Speaker 1: people trying to stop the bad people. And we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk about some of those cool people. And we're gonna

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Speaker 1: talk today. We're going to talk a lot about, um,

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Speaker 1: some of the non violent organizations, right uh, and then

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Speaker 1: on Wednesday we're going to come back and talk more

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Speaker 1: about a lot of the organizations that defended them, even

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Speaker 1: though they're a whole decentralized defense of them that happened

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Speaker 1: before that, and so we're gonna talk about two of

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Speaker 1: the major non violent organizations today. We're gonna talk about

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Speaker 1: CORE and we're gonna talk about SNICK. There's like a

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Speaker 1: bunch more than this. SCLC will come into it a lot,

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Speaker 1: The Double A CP will come into it a lot.

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Speaker 1: But for what we're going to talk about Core and

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Speaker 1: SNICK kind of where it's at. The oldest one of

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Speaker 1: these groups is the Congress of Racial Quality, just found

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Speaker 1: in ninety two. It grew out of the Christian pacifist movement,

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Speaker 1: especially a group called the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Only about

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Speaker 1: a third of its founders were black. I was founded

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Speaker 1: by almost half women, which for the time is better

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Speaker 1: than some of the other people around. You know, a

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Speaker 1: lot of the founders of this were ministers and of

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Speaker 1: various Christian denominations, and that is actually something that they like.

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Speaker 1: The multi faith getting together, the groups that got together

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Speaker 1: a lot of different faith based organizations to do a

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Speaker 1: lot of good work is like something that I think

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Speaker 1: sometimes it's left out of the more radical understandings of

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Speaker 1: all of this history. Basically, course started as a we

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Speaker 1: like what Gandhia is doing in India, We're going to

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Speaker 1: do that for anti racism in the US and they

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Speaker 1: got together. They fought against Jim Crow laws, housing discrimination,

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Speaker 1: voting rights, all that stuff. They were pretty cool. They

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Speaker 1: have complicated stuff that will get into but you know

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Speaker 1: everyone does. In Core sent sixteen people, eight white, eight

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Speaker 1: black on a journey of reconciliation on buses and this

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Speaker 1: was kind of the the first freedom ride, about fifteen

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Speaker 1: years before the freedom rides became more of a thing.

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Speaker 1: And this first journey was a mix of folks that

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Speaker 1: had socialists, that had religious leaders at pacifists as musicians,

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Speaker 1: that had just like people who wanted the world to

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Speaker 1: be better, who are like, fuck it, let's go do

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Speaker 1: this weird, dangerous thing where the government had just passed

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Speaker 1: a law banning segregation on interstate travel. And so basically

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Speaker 1: they were like, all right, we're gonna go test that.

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Speaker 1: We're going to go said people like basically white and

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Speaker 1: black people sitting next to each other on the bus

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Speaker 1: or sometimes the white people sat in the back of

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Speaker 1: the bus and black people sat at the front of

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Speaker 1: the bus. All this ship and they just basically went

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Speaker 1: around the South, the kind of near South doing this. Um,

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Speaker 1: it didn't it didn't go smoothly. Uh, I don't know

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Speaker 1: whether that will be shocking to hear. It didn't take

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Speaker 1: long before four of them were arrested. I mean, this

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Speaker 1: is okay. This is like one of the things that's

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Speaker 1: so interesting me about this right is like so much

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Speaker 1: of the Civil rights era stuff was basically like the

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Speaker 1: federal government like would pass a law and then people

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Speaker 1: would be like, let's go see if this law is real,

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Speaker 1: and then they would find out that the law is

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Speaker 1: not real because the local police everywhere they go would

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Speaker 1: mm hmm. You know. So, basically, two black men were

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Speaker 1: arrested for not moving to the back of the bus,

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Speaker 1: and two white men were arrested for defending the two

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Speaker 1: black men who would not move to the back of

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Speaker 1: the bus. All four of them ended up on segregated

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Speaker 1: chain gangs. The black men got thirty days and the

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Speaker 1: white men got ninety days. And specifically because the racist

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Speaker 1: judge was so mad at the white people for betraying whiteness. Wow,

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Speaker 1: that is the deep, deep, deep seated hate. Because it's

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Speaker 1: one thing to be like, I hate black people, and

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Speaker 1: I punish them more harshly. It's about the thing to

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Speaker 1: be like and if you're a white person, I'll punish

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Speaker 1: you three times. It's hard because screw you voting my agenda.

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Speaker 1: I guess. Wow. Yeah, like overall, like clearly, including in

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Speaker 1: the Civil rights movement, Like it was much harder for

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Speaker 1: black folks as part of the Civil Rights movement the

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Speaker 1: white than the like white allies and stuff. But here

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Speaker 1: and there you would run across this kind of ship

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Speaker 1: or like the clan would go around being like, hey,

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Speaker 1: any white people, if you show up and support this,

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Speaker 1: we're going to murder you, you know, or whatever like that.

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Speaker 1: That kind of ship happened a lot. We're gonna get

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Speaker 1: to some of that. Um. So the judge, I'm not

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Speaker 1: going to read the quote of what I literally can't

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Speaker 1: the judge said a lot of racist ship in the sentence,

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Speaker 1: but of it, and I'll do an interpretation of the No. No,

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Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't even copy and paste it in

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Speaker 1: my script. It's just bad. It's just bad ship, you know. Um.

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Speaker 1: But in it he specifically called the two white men

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Speaker 1: who I believe were not Jewish, referred to them as

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Speaker 1: white Jews from sorry, referred him as Jews from New York. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so not even doing his research, just is out here

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Speaker 1: being like if they helped the blacks. They must be Jews,

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Speaker 1: just slumping all that hate together specifically. Yeah, it's like that,

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Speaker 1: like it's like the coastal elites coming here and ruining everything.

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Speaker 1: You must basically be the Jews from New York and

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Speaker 1: the like Jewish agenda to desegregate the United States. Um.

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Speaker 1: And it was just a slur I think for him,

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Speaker 1: Like I don't think he thought they were Jews. I

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Speaker 1: think it's possible, and I couldn't the books I was

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Speaker 1: reading about it didn't like name which of the white

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Speaker 1: people were the people who got arrested. Um, But it's

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Speaker 1: completely possible they were like Christian ministers, you know, so

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Speaker 1: they get arrested. They spent some time on the chain gang.

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Speaker 1: And one thing of note, they intentionally went to the

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Speaker 1: Near South and not the Deep South because basically they

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Speaker 1: were like, if we do this in the Deep South,

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Speaker 1: we're all going to die. And it took a special

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Speaker 1: kind of courage to go to the Deep South and

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Speaker 1: desegregate and enroll voters and um or be from the

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Speaker 1: Deep South and desegregate and enroll voters. And it's a

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Speaker 1: kind of a courage that many of them found, which

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Speaker 1: we'll get to later. One of the black men who

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Speaker 1: served some time on a chain gang as part of

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Speaker 1: the result of this journey for desegregation was a guy

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Speaker 1: I want to take a closer look at because he

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Speaker 1: rules um or at least he did a lot of

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Speaker 1: really cool stuff. Everyone's complicated. His name is Bayard Rustin.

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Speaker 1: I know. It's like, I'm like, yeah, this guy's awesome.

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Speaker 1: And you get to like part of the like descriptions

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Speaker 1: of him that you find, you're like, oh, well, you know, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but like whatever booms amongst it, Like, okay, So Bayard Rustin.

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Speaker 1: He was a black gay Quaker. Yeah. And this there's

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Speaker 1: this recurring thing on this show where somehow Quakers end

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Speaker 1: up in every episode. I've never done an episode on

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Speaker 1: the Quakers. They're everywhere. The Quakers really rocked with black people,

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Speaker 1: like way early they were like, no, we're not down

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Speaker 1: with this slavery thing, and we will help for you

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Speaker 1: where we can. Yeah, exactly, Like I keep running across

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Speaker 1: being like and then the people who organized to get

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Speaker 1: black people out of slavery were black people and some

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Speaker 1: white Quakers, you know, over and over again. Um So

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Speaker 1: Baird Rustin. He was deeply involved in Core from from

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Speaker 1: its founding, and he was everywhere. He did everything mostly

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Speaker 1: from behind the scenes because people were afraid that his

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Speaker 1: homosexuality or socialism would make their movements look bad. And

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Speaker 1: I want to talk about him really quick. He was

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Speaker 1: kicked out of his university for organizing a strike. He

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Speaker 1: sang tenor on Broadway in the choir. He sang spirituals

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Speaker 1: on a ton of records. He joined the Communist Party

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Speaker 1: for a a while, and then he realized that Stalin

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Speaker 1: was a fuck, and so he quit the Communist Party

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Speaker 1: and he became a socialist. Specifically, he was in the

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Speaker 1: Communist Party until the USSR ordered the Communist Party in

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Speaker 1: the US to stop working for civil rights and start

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Speaker 1: working to try and get the US to join World

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Speaker 1: War two. He organized a march on Washington for the

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Speaker 1: desegregation of the armed forces. He went to California to

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Speaker 1: fight against the racist in prison of the imprisonment of

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Speaker 1: the Japanese during the war. He would like go and

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Speaker 1: like try and make sure that people could hold onto

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Speaker 1: their property and shoot like that while they were being

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Speaker 1: taken into the fucking concentration camps that the US had,

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Speaker 1: Because US is deeply racist. He was arrested ninety two

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Speaker 1: for refusing to give up a seat on a bus.

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Speaker 1: And that was the moment, I mean he was he

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Speaker 1: was arrested for being black on a bus, and it

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Speaker 1: was that was the moment where he was like, from

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Speaker 1: now on, I'm not going to hide the fact that

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Speaker 1: I'm gay. Because he basically was just like, oh, I'm

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Speaker 1: with the bigots. I it's hard for me to like

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Speaker 1: totally explain this epiphany that he had, but he talks

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Speaker 1: about it. I should have put the quote, and I didn't,

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Speaker 1: and he got arrested it again and again for basically

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Speaker 1: fighting everything bad. He fought against the colonization of India

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Speaker 1: by the British. Uh. One time he also got arrested

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Speaker 1: for being gay. Like one time he got arrested for

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Speaker 1: rooking up with two dudes in a car. So he's

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Speaker 1: clearly I know, yes, my polyamorous king, I would put

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Speaker 1: that on him. I don't know he was about that life.

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Speaker 1: But if you're doing two dudes in a car at

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Speaker 1: the same time, I love that for him. I know,

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Speaker 1: not talked about part of the civil rights movement, like anyway, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he co wrote an influential, influential pastivest paper in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties called Speak Truth the Power, but in the

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Speaker 1: end he kept his name off of it. He chose

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Speaker 1: to keep his name off of it because he didn't

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Speaker 1: want to six sexuality discredit the paper. And he worked

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Speaker 1: with Martin Luther King Jr. It was probably him that

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Speaker 1: who convinced MLK to stop carrying a handgun for self defense,

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Speaker 1: which goes against the spirit of the rest of today's topic.

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Speaker 1: But whatever, everyone's different, it has different ideas. You know.

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Speaker 1: He was heavily involved in organizing the nineteen sixty three

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Speaker 1: March on Washington, the one with the I Have a

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Speaker 1: Dream speech. He would have been called the director of

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Speaker 1: the March because he did all of the director of

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Speaker 1: the March stuff, but he was a gay socialist, so

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Speaker 1: they didn't want to put his name on it. Um

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Speaker 1: And like the fucking right wing dragged up all kinds

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Speaker 1: of ship, just like the same way that people would

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Speaker 1: do it on Twitter now. Yeah, and he actually was

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Speaker 1: like one of the staunchest so basically they're like, oh,

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Speaker 1: this communist. He was one of the staunchest anti us

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Speaker 1: S are U S socialists to the point where he

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Speaker 1: actually kind of verged into some right wing positions, like

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Speaker 1: he supported the war in Vietnam, for example, because he

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Speaker 1: hated the U. S S. So he like supported the

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Speaker 1: Cold War. This is why I was the beginning where

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Speaker 1: I was like, I get interesting the complex time, and

395
00:20:51,800 --> 00:20:55,120
Speaker 1: when you're you know what I mean, Like American wars

396
00:20:55,119 --> 00:20:58,080
Speaker 1: are often started because like, oh, someone who's doing something terrible,

397
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Speaker 1: and then we seek really going and do horrible ship

398
00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:03,199
Speaker 1: and we're like what we had to stop? This guy

399
00:21:03,280 --> 00:21:05,400
Speaker 1: had to meet the mother. It was so oh gosh, yeah,

400
00:21:05,480 --> 00:21:08,040
Speaker 1: you're right messy. Yeah, And so he gets called a

401
00:21:08,080 --> 00:21:10,879
Speaker 1: conservative socialist and he's the only term I've actually personally

402
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:13,760
Speaker 1: run across. Anyone get called a conservative socialist and I

403
00:21:13,760 --> 00:21:17,440
Speaker 1: don't really understand it yet. Funny in the eighties, as

404
00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:19,600
Speaker 1: most people would be want to do as an out

405
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Speaker 1: gay person, he turned to gay activism in the nineteen eighties.

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Speaker 1: He died seven not of HIV r AIDS. He died

407
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Speaker 1: of being old. He was born in nineteen twelve. Yeah,

408
00:21:32,960 --> 00:21:37,440
Speaker 1: a good long life, Yeah exactly. He did find anyway

409
00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:39,520
Speaker 1: as just an aside because I find him really interesting

410
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Speaker 1: because people don't talk about the gay polyamorous too fucking

411
00:21:42,480 --> 00:21:46,960
Speaker 1: like organized the March on Washington, you know. Anyway, he

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Speaker 1: was on a chain gang for a while as part

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Speaker 1: of his work for CORP. That's Core, what a hero,

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Speaker 1: I know, And I'm sure Core could be its own

415
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:56,080
Speaker 1: two part episode, but they're going to come in and

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Speaker 1: out of Today's of this week's. Now you've got Snick.

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Speaker 1: Snick is the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, which is

418
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Speaker 1: six times more radical than you might guess with a

419
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Speaker 1: name like that. It was Black Youth formed and Black

420
00:22:10,560 --> 00:22:13,600
Speaker 1: Youth lead, so it didn't have kind of that sort

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00:22:13,600 --> 00:22:16,200
Speaker 1: of problem that CORE actually ended up dealing with fairly

422
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Speaker 1: effectively in the mid to late sixties, where they were

423
00:22:19,400 --> 00:22:21,840
Speaker 1: a little bit too white, white lead, you know, for

424
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Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of what they're doing, and

425
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Speaker 1: Snick comes out of. In nineteen sixty, there were four

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Speaker 1: black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, who were like, you

427
00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:36,880
Speaker 1: know what, funk all this ship? Fuck this fucking white

428
00:22:36,920 --> 00:22:40,439
Speaker 1: supremacist society we live in. They were freshmen at the

429
00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:43,359
Speaker 1: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, which is an

430
00:22:43,440 --> 00:22:49,240
Speaker 1: HBCU historically black college university. One of these freshmen went

431
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:51,280
Speaker 1: and tried to buy a hot dog at the greyhound

432
00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:55,320
Speaker 1: station and he was denied because he was black, because

433
00:22:55,720 --> 00:22:58,480
Speaker 1: the world's full of racism. I can't get a hot dog,

434
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:01,320
Speaker 1: bro yea, oh my guy here on my answers. We

435
00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:04,879
Speaker 1: had to deal with them like that is exhausting, my

436
00:23:05,040 --> 00:23:09,719
Speaker 1: green American cat. There's all that ship like people talk

437
00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:11,600
Speaker 1: about like what my money is no good here or whatever,

438
00:23:11,680 --> 00:23:14,320
Speaker 1: like it is like this thing that still happens. Um, yes,

439
00:23:15,240 --> 00:23:18,160
Speaker 1: and and yeah though like literally can't buy a fucking

440
00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:19,920
Speaker 1: hot talk something. So sim we don't want to make

441
00:23:19,920 --> 00:23:22,439
Speaker 1: your gay wedding cake even though our whole business is

442
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:28,680
Speaker 1: making cakes. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Somewhere there's a heterosexual couple

443
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:30,760
Speaker 1: named Sam and Chris who can't get a wedding cake.

444
00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 1: You know, like, what the hell? I move out of Indiana. Yeah,

445
00:23:36,359 --> 00:23:39,520
Speaker 1: so after getting refused service for a hot dog, they

446
00:23:39,560 --> 00:23:41,720
Speaker 1: meet up back in one of their dorm rooms and

447
00:23:41,760 --> 00:23:44,520
Speaker 1: they're like, all right, what the fund do we do? Right?

448
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:48,639
Speaker 1: And there's been some sit ins before where people just

449
00:23:48,640 --> 00:23:50,080
Speaker 1: go and show up and be like, you know what

450
00:23:50,119 --> 00:23:51,720
Speaker 1: funk this? I'm going to be here whether you want

451
00:23:51,760 --> 00:23:55,320
Speaker 1: me here or not. Going back to nine with the

452
00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:58,399
Speaker 1: Alexandria Library sit in, a lot of those sittings have

453
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 1: been successful, but they've been a scatter shot up to

454
00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:03,440
Speaker 1: that point. Would be like every couple of years someone

455
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:05,240
Speaker 1: would do a sit in. It's an earlier one that

456
00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:08,359
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about later because I'm really good at chronology.

457
00:24:08,480 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 1: And so the four freshmen they're like, all right, we're

458
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:14,000
Speaker 1: gonna go sit in at the F. W. Woolworth Company store,

459
00:24:14,040 --> 00:24:15,680
Speaker 1: which is a big department store that also was a

460
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:18,359
Speaker 1: lunch counter and you can go buy stuff there if

461
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 1: you're black, but you can't go to the lunch counter

462
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:23,560
Speaker 1: if you're black. So they go in, they asked to

463
00:24:23,560 --> 00:24:26,159
Speaker 1: be served, and then they refused to leave when their

464
00:24:26,200 --> 00:24:30,240
Speaker 1: refused service. February one, nineteen sixty they ordered coffee and donuts,

465
00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:33,720
Speaker 1: and they got both criticism and support from both white

466
00:24:33,760 --> 00:24:36,840
Speaker 1: and black folks at the store, Like, obviously most of

467
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 1: the white people were like, fuck you, we're not serving you.

468
00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 1: One white woman was like, oh, this is great what

469
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 1: you're doing, but didn't like do anything about it. And

470
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:45,680
Speaker 1: some of the black folks were like, oh please, oh god,

471
00:24:45,680 --> 00:24:47,919
Speaker 1: this is going to go really badly. I would not

472
00:24:48,000 --> 00:24:50,360
Speaker 1: like to be beaten with a police baton today. You're

473
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:55,399
Speaker 1: making that probability increase. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, they

474
00:24:55,440 --> 00:24:58,199
Speaker 1: weren't arrested, but they weren't served. They waited until the

475
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:00,920
Speaker 1: store closed, and they left and the store closed, and

476
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:03,640
Speaker 1: they showed up again the next day with more than

477
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:07,520
Speaker 1: twenty black students from the university. There were a few

478
00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:10,440
Speaker 1: service but they weren't arrested. They hung out all day

479
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:12,880
Speaker 1: and did their school work at the store. The next

480
00:25:12,960 --> 00:25:16,639
Speaker 1: day they had sixty people, including some high school students

481
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:19,199
Speaker 1: who joined them, and this time some people from the

482
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:22,159
Speaker 1: fucking clan showed up to keep an eye on it

483
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:24,359
Speaker 1: all or whatever, right, but they didn't do ship because

484
00:25:24,359 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 1: there was fucking sixty people there. Clan the clan is cowards.

485
00:25:27,840 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 1: Is one of the main takeaways of all this research.

486
00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:34,919
Speaker 1: For you'd have to be yeah, no, exactly. It's like

487
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:38,359
Speaker 1: fascism and it's mass and they only like unfair fights.

488
00:25:38,359 --> 00:25:42,159
Speaker 1: So that the yeah, the fact that they only like

489
00:25:42,280 --> 00:25:44,920
Speaker 1: unfair fights is something that we all need to fucking remember.

490
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:49,560
Speaker 1: So day four, February four, there's three hundred students. They

491
00:25:49,560 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: filled the entire lunch counter, including and this time a

492
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:55,200
Speaker 1: tiny handful of some white folks and white women from

493
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,680
Speaker 1: a nearby university show up to support as well. Day five,

494
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:02,280
Speaker 1: they get their first your counter protesters about fifty white men,

495
00:26:02,400 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: three of whom were arrested. Day six, they had a

496
00:26:05,040 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 1: thousand fucking people. They entirely filled the store. Yeah, like

497
00:26:09,280 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 1: ships snowballs sometimes, you know. They entirely filled the store

498
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:18,159
Speaker 1: and several nearby other segregated stores. By day eight, the

499
00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 1: sit in movement spreads across the South. Within months, there're

500
00:26:21,520 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: sit ins in fifty five different cities, and on July,

501
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:31,720
Speaker 1: Boycott's had cut their income by a third, and the

502
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:36,840
Speaker 1: Woolworth store World I'll started quietly desegregated its lunch counter. Yes,

503
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 1: it's bullying, We're exactly. So the students they're like, all right,

504
00:26:43,040 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: we should, we should get organized, right, because that's that's where,

505
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,879
Speaker 1: in my mind, where the magic happens is. It starts

506
00:26:50,880 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 1: with something that is spontaneous and then you figure out

507
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:57,120
Speaker 1: how to like keep that going, and that takes structure

508
00:26:57,119 --> 00:27:01,560
Speaker 1: an organization. Yeah, when people see power, they are reminded

509
00:27:01,600 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: of their own right. Yeah, totally totally, And you need

510
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:09,879
Speaker 1: that initial spark for people to actually see that. So

511
00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:12,879
Speaker 1: in April nineteen sixty, there was a conference in Raleigh,

512
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:16,280
Speaker 1: North Carolina. The adults or the like older than students.

513
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: It always just referred to in history. They're like, the

514
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 1: adults said this, and then the youth said this, And

515
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:22,400
Speaker 1: I'm like, these people are like twenty, I don't want

516
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 1: to call them not adults, you know, right right, right right?

517
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:30,080
Speaker 1: The young people. Yeah, So the older than students helped

518
00:27:30,119 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 1: call for the the conference. Specifically, it was Martin Luther

519
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:38,400
Speaker 1: King Jr's organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the SCLC,

520
00:27:39,240 --> 00:27:44,159
Speaker 1: called for it, but it um, it wasn't called for

521
00:27:44,280 --> 00:27:46,000
Speaker 1: by MLK. It was called for by someone I'm going

522
00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:48,480
Speaker 1: to get to in a second who is like my absolute,

523
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 1: my favorite person I'm gonna talk about this week. And

524
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:53,399
Speaker 1: the s c l C they weave their way throughout

525
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 1: this episode, but they're not our focus. And so the

526
00:27:57,119 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 1: conference was organized by the students, and it was organized

527
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:01,200
Speaker 1: by one of the most asked women to ever live,

528
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 1: Ella Baker. Ella Baker, so like the people that I'm

529
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:08,120
Speaker 1: like pulling aside that I'm really excited about are so

530
00:28:08,240 --> 00:28:12,440
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, like and that's like their fucking thing.

531
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:15,919
Speaker 1: Ella Baker worked with King in the SCLC, but she

532
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:18,720
Speaker 1: was basically there to be critical of him, Like as

533
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 1: far as she was critical of his hierarchical leadership and

534
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:25,720
Speaker 1: basically the concept of charismatic leadership is the way to

535
00:28:25,760 --> 00:28:27,680
Speaker 1: run a movement. That was like her main thing. She

536
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,359
Speaker 1: was like, that's not the plan, So she calls for

537
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 1: the conference. She told the assembled students, quote, strong people

538
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 1: don't need strong leaders What they need instead is organization

539
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: and to help each other. And they're not anti leadership,

540
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:46,600
Speaker 1: their anti this, like, you know, to your point, this

541
00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:49,840
Speaker 1: hierarchical system that's like we all follow this one person

542
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 1: when we're a community of people with dope, ideas and

543
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:57,720
Speaker 1: capabilities and skills, and um, what is the word I'm

544
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:04,320
Speaker 1: looking for? Not materials but resources? People with resources? And yeah,

545
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 1: we can absolutely just go out and accomplish these goals

546
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 1: without needing to be told to do them. Yeah, but

547
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 1: you know what people do need to be told to

548
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:25,040
Speaker 1: do too, Well, it's by things. There's some ads, and

549
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: we're back and we're talking about Ella fucking Baker, who

550
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:33,920
Speaker 1: would probably hate being put on a pedestal. But what

551
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 1: is the show about cool people? So I'm going to

552
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:38,600
Speaker 1: take an aside and talk about Ella Baker because she

553
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:41,160
Speaker 1: is my favorite cool person this episode. Sorry everyone else,

554
00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:44,760
Speaker 1: I love everyone else, but just seriously, like my like whatever,

555
00:29:45,680 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 1: I will just gush about Ella Baker very quickly. She

556
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: she grew up listening to her grandmother tell stories about slavery.

557
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 1: As soon as soon as she became an activist, like

558
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:57,160
Speaker 1: with the double a CP, she started working for decentralization

559
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:00,959
Speaker 1: and against charismatic leadership, and for more democratic or ganizational models,

560
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 1: and for better inclusion of women within activist organizations. So

561
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,719
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, as far as I can tell, like,

562
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 1: this is the main person I can point to and say,

563
00:30:10,680 --> 00:30:13,680
Speaker 1: this is what brought grassroots activism. Like, the concept of

564
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:16,440
Speaker 1: grassroots activism has always been there, right, But the person

565
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 1: who like worked tirelessly to make the civil rights movement

566
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 1: grassroots was Ella Baker um. And that's my own conjecture

567
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: about her being the inventor of grassroots whatever. But she

568
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 1: traveled through the South and made direct, interpersonal connections with people.

569
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:35,960
Speaker 1: She believed that the purpose of a national organization was

570
00:30:36,040 --> 00:30:39,720
Speaker 1: to support local initiatives and help local people help themselves,

571
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 1: rather than to like see the local people as people

572
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: to funnel resources from to move upwards in a pyramid,

573
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:48,920
Speaker 1: you know. She basically said the movement made Martin Luther

574
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: King it's not that Martin Luther King made the movement,

575
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 1: which doesn't mean that she didn't like Martin Luther King,

576
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:58,800
Speaker 1: you know, just the direction of power had to be understood.

577
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: She constantly worked against in fighting in a civil rights movement,

578
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 1: including she fought against red baiting. She was like, don't

579
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:08,280
Speaker 1: toss out the socialists. They've been here forever. By the

580
00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:10,720
Speaker 1: end of her life, she actually, uh was more openly

581
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 1: a socialist. And while she organized non violent direct action,

582
00:31:15,120 --> 00:31:17,560
Speaker 1: non violence was always a strategic choice for her and

583
00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:21,680
Speaker 1: not a moral imperative. To quote her biography Joanne Grant quote,

584
00:31:21,840 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: she had no qualms about target practice. The first organization

585
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: that she worked with was the Young Negroes Cooperative League,

586
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:31,760
Speaker 1: which was a collectivist organization working to build black economic

587
00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:35,640
Speaker 1: power through cooperativism, which is something that I've run across

588
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:38,520
Speaker 1: here and there, like uh, Fanny lew Hammer also got

589
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:42,560
Speaker 1: into this stuff later in the sixties and stuff like that. Um,

590
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:44,800
Speaker 1: And it's really interesting to me, and I'm really looking

591
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: forward to do more of a deep dive on on

592
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,440
Speaker 1: cooperativesm and specifically how the US concept of cooperativism was

593
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:56,080
Speaker 1: like built out of black cooperativism. Or like I don't know, whatever,

594
00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 1: it's the most whatever, it's fucking cool the one day,

595
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,720
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a whole episod about that. But Ella Baker,

596
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:05,360
Speaker 1: when she stepped back from the movement, it was around

597
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:07,160
Speaker 1: the time that the black power stuff in the late

598
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:09,400
Speaker 1: sixties started to pick up. But it was it wasn't

599
00:32:09,440 --> 00:32:11,040
Speaker 1: because she had a problem with that. It was because

600
00:32:11,040 --> 00:32:13,800
Speaker 1: of her health. And she continued to be basically part

601
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:17,000
Speaker 1: of everything. She was part of the Free Angela Davis campaign,

602
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:20,600
Speaker 1: the Puerto Rican independence movement, the anti apartheid movement, all

603
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:26,640
Speaker 1: the while focusing on yeah, right, like just just did everything,

604
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:32,800
Speaker 1: never anything showy. She never like got herself like this

605
00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:36,959
Speaker 1: is the speech or this is the martyr or you know,

606
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: this is the core of activism. And it's something we're

607
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: absolutely seeing a the activist community, particularly the black activist

608
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: community in America today, is very adamant that celebrity has

609
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:53,840
Speaker 1: no space in their movement, and they're very weary of

610
00:32:53,880 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 1: anybody who comes in and trying to make a name

611
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 1: for themselves, because if the idea is a relation and

612
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 1: equity for everybody, then how can you center yourself in that?

613
00:33:05,520 --> 00:33:08,320
Speaker 1: By it's complete opposite of the end goal. And so

614
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:12,920
Speaker 1: it's so cool to hear from the people who started that,

615
00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,640
Speaker 1: you know, and to have that vision before anyone else.

616
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 1: It's it's a radical concept that people can liberate themselves

617
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:24,240
Speaker 1: if they're given the tools and if they're educated about

618
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 1: their surroundings and what's happening. Yeah, no, that yeah, exactly. No.

619
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 1: Notes Ell Baker like you know the other guy right,

620
00:33:35,640 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 1: like complicated here and there. I'm like Ella Baker. I

621
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:41,239
Speaker 1: I have everything I've read about Ella Baker. I have

622
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,480
Speaker 1: not found anything negative to say about Ella Baker. You know,

623
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 1: a dope woman, do a dope thing. So she called

624
00:33:48,160 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: for this student conference. Uh and the s CLC, which

625
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: was the organization she used to call for the conference,

626
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: they were hoping that the students would become the youth

627
00:33:56,080 --> 00:33:59,360
Speaker 1: wing of their organization. Right. They were like, ah, excellent,

628
00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:01,720
Speaker 1: these young people are doing something cool. We will bring

629
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 1: them into our organization. And Ella Baker was like, she

630
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: gave a keynote speech. Her keynote speech was basically like

631
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:12,279
Speaker 1: you might want to remain autonomous and set your own

632
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: goals and do your own thing. So they did, and

633
00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 1: the youth, the the adults who weren't the older adults.

634
00:34:21,680 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 1: They formed the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee. It was

635
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:28,800
Speaker 1: youth led. They had a few adult advisors or whatever.

636
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:31,919
Speaker 1: I'm gonna keep using the lord adult accidentally throughout the script. Yeah,

637
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:35,520
Speaker 1: Ella Baker was the primary advisor. I've read one thing

638
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 1: that claims that the historian Howard's Inn was another one

639
00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 1: of their advisors, and um, and I want to know

640
00:34:41,680 --> 00:34:44,360
Speaker 1: more about it. He wrote a whole book about about SNICK,

641
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 1: and I haven't read it yet, so I can't say

642
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:50,840
Speaker 1: too much yet. The organizers gave Ella Baker the nickname Fundi,

643
00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:54,959
Speaker 1: which was a Swahili word. To quote the site Afropunk,

644
00:34:55,280 --> 00:34:58,800
Speaker 1: the word means to them as as relates to um,

645
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: as to Ella Baker, an artisan who has mastered their

646
00:35:01,440 --> 00:35:05,160
Speaker 1: craft and shares their knowledge freely with the community. And

647
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 1: so SNICK organized their asses off. They went directly into

648
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:11,200
Speaker 1: the most dangerous parts of the South, where many of

649
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:13,960
Speaker 1: them were from, although more of them were urban, going

650
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:19,239
Speaker 1: into rural spots in the South, which is, as far

651
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 1: as I can tell, almost as big of a divide

652
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:23,600
Speaker 1: as like North South divide. The urban world divide was

653
00:35:23,640 --> 00:35:28,080
Speaker 1: also very major in terms of organizing. SNICK worked together

654
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:31,759
Speaker 1: with Core and then Double A CP. But unlike Core

655
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:34,440
Speaker 1: and Double a CP, there were no membership cards, no

656
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 1: membership fees, And while Core was more ideologically committed to

657
00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:40,839
Speaker 1: non violence, Snick, even though it is in their name,

658
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 1: was strategically committed to non violence. And the Field secretaries

659
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 1: which is what their organizers were called, had tons of autonomy.

660
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:53,640
Speaker 1: There weren't like a lot of levels of hierarchy. I

661
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:56,320
Speaker 1: mean there was right as an organization. They had different

662
00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: levels and tears or whatever, right, but like overall, the

663
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:03,239
Speaker 1: field organizers um, their field secretaries were the main thing.

664
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:07,640
Speaker 1: They had a lot of autonomy. And later Snick gets

665
00:36:07,640 --> 00:36:10,240
Speaker 1: involved in like everything, they get part of the broader

666
00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: left in the late sixties, part of the feminist movement,

667
00:36:12,560 --> 00:36:15,759
Speaker 1: anti war movement, and they're also we'll get to this later,

668
00:36:15,800 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: the crucible from which the modern conception of black power

669
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: was formed. But we're not here just to talk about Snick.

670
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:25,600
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the delicate and beautiful balance

671
00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: between the non violence civil rights movement and the people

672
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,640
Speaker 1: willing to use violence to defend the individuals within that movement.

673
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:34,560
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about that. The first thing you

674
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:36,800
Speaker 1: got to understand is that in the Deep South, especially

675
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 1: in rural areas, the gun issue was a settled issue.

676
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:43,720
Speaker 1: Black people owned guns and they used them to defend

677
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:47,719
Speaker 1: themselves against and others against one white violence. The main

678
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: book that I'm referencing a lot throughout this book by

679
00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:56,120
Speaker 1: Charles E. Cob Jr. And the book is called this

680
00:36:56,200 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: non Violent Stuff Will Get You Killed. How Guns made

681
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:02,400
Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Movement possible. And this book fucking rules.

682
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 1: It's not this like called arms right. He like very

683
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: specifically talks about how he's talking about the context of

684
00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:14,600
Speaker 1: the rural South in the nineteen sixties, and it's readable,

685
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 1: it's insightful. This is like literally, if I could just pivot,

686
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: is not an actual ad pivot, but just like, seriously,

687
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:21,959
Speaker 1: this book rules. Um, It's one of the best books

688
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:25,400
Speaker 1: I've ever read for this research. He was there. Charles

689
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 1: Cobb was a field secretary for Snick from nineteen sixty

690
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 1: two to nineteen sixty seven, and the premise of the book,

691
00:37:31,120 --> 00:37:34,080
Speaker 1: to quote him, is that the use of guns for

692
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:36,400
Speaker 1: self defense and the non violent civil rights movement was

693
00:37:36,440 --> 00:37:40,600
Speaker 1: necessary and vital to the movements survival. Writing about his

694
00:37:40,640 --> 00:37:45,000
Speaker 1: own experiences, he said, quote Snick was unusual and placing

695
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:48,160
Speaker 1: its field secretaries in rural Southern communities to work from

696
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:50,840
Speaker 1: the bottom up instead of the top down. Living among

697
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:53,000
Speaker 1: the downtrodden black men and women of the Deep South,

698
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:56,239
Speaker 1: I underwent a subtle conversion. The principles and illusions I

699
00:37:56,239 --> 00:37:58,759
Speaker 1: had brought with me of non violence, of the uniformity

700
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:01,319
Speaker 1: of the Southern Black experience were shaped by the men

701
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,280
Speaker 1: and women I encountered there. We and Snick were radicalized

702
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: by working with people in their homes and communities much

703
00:38:06,640 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 1: more than by ideology. It's probably practically living under the

704
00:38:11,360 --> 00:38:15,680
Speaker 1: boot of oppression made you more active in your desire

705
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:20,799
Speaker 1: to liberate the people. Wow, I imagine, imagine in other words,

706
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 1: leave your guilded cages, y'all. Yeah, it's it's It's for

707
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: sure different, particularly I think in the Deep South at

708
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: that time. Um My dad talks about he his family

709
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:35,239
Speaker 1: came up to Chicago during the Great miss Migration, which

710
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 1: was a time period post slavery when a lot of

711
00:38:37,719 --> 00:38:40,120
Speaker 1: black people moved from the South to the North, but

712
00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:43,440
Speaker 1: he would go back to Alabama to visit his great grandmother,

713
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:47,480
Speaker 1: who still lived in a slave cabin where she had

714
00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: been freed. Like she was freed, they weren't using it,

715
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: just stayed on the land. And I think you know

716
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:55,960
Speaker 1: a lot of people did, which meant you're looking at

717
00:38:55,960 --> 00:39:00,279
Speaker 1: dirt floors, no inter plumbing. Um, you're restricted to what

718
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: kinds of jobs you can have in the South under

719
00:39:03,040 --> 00:39:05,480
Speaker 1: Jim Crow, So you're seeing a lot of people like

720
00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:08,399
Speaker 1: either being porters or an chicken and so like it's

721
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: an and and then because you know, if you know,

722
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:13,480
Speaker 1: and the rules set around specific jobs, that's where we

723
00:39:13,560 --> 00:39:15,839
Speaker 1: got like you can be making two dollars an hour

724
00:39:15,960 --> 00:39:18,400
Speaker 1: as a waitress, and so there's like a lot of

725
00:39:18,400 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 1: financial restrictions. And I think we saw you know, I

726
00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:23,040
Speaker 1: can only imagine that if you were living there during

727
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:27,600
Speaker 1: that time, like your instinct would be like, oh, immediately,

728
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 1: these people need access to better rights, like this is insane. Yeah, yeah, totally.

729
00:39:33,239 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: And like and there's this thing that also happens, right

730
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:41,279
Speaker 1: where like people sometimes like go out into a community

731
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:43,799
Speaker 1: and he's a he's a black man, but he's from

732
00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 1: an urban environment going out into a rural environment, you know,

733
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 1: and like coming with an ideology, right and then immediately

734
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 1: being like instead of like educating these these like you know,

735
00:39:56,520 --> 00:40:00,479
Speaker 1: ignorant rural people instead of being like they know what's

736
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:04,000
Speaker 1: up and I should learn from them. Um. And that

737
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:06,680
Speaker 1: was like the process that seemed to happen with snick

738
00:40:06,760 --> 00:40:12,560
Speaker 1: Field organizers. And that absolutely ties into how the whole

739
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 1: thing transformed and the whole push towards black power and

740
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 1: the the change within the civil rights movements. As far

741
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: as I can tell and as far as like I've

742
00:40:21,040 --> 00:40:26,879
Speaker 1: read UM and yeah, I uh, I met Charles Cobb

743
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:30,440
Speaker 1: briefly in North Carolina. UM, because he did a talk

744
00:40:30,520 --> 00:40:33,560
Speaker 1: about the book, and I had UM. I went because

745
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:36,840
Speaker 1: that day I had just been whatever the Nazis, No,

746
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:40,040
Speaker 1: they docked me. I'd just been docks by Nazis, they

747
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 1: called themselves, don't call us Nazis, were neo confederates. I've

748
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:44,799
Speaker 1: just been like docks by neo confederates who had like

749
00:40:45,719 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 1: told me, like showed me pictures of my family and

750
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: told me they're gonna burn my house down and ship

751
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:52,719
Speaker 1: and he sound like Nazis. I just want to know you,

752
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:55,080
Speaker 1: how are you telling the conservatives you should move in

753
00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:57,400
Speaker 1: a different direction than the Nazis, because that sounds like

754
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: class a Nazi bullshit, neo confetti it. Sorry, I might

755
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:05,320
Speaker 1: have misspoken. Yeah, you know, but I mean it's like whatever,

756
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:07,560
Speaker 1: Neo Confederate and Nazi, like, I don't care whether you

757
00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 1: call yourself an American Nazi or German Nazi, You're fucking Nazi.

758
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:13,400
Speaker 1: Like fuck you. They had like just docked me and

759
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,880
Speaker 1: some other some other folks. And so I bought a rifle.

760
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 1: And I never owned a firearm before. Um, I didn't

761
00:41:20,160 --> 00:41:23,399
Speaker 1: particularly grow up around firearms, and like I come from

762
00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:25,440
Speaker 1: a sort of military family, both like a liberal bent,

763
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:29,879
Speaker 1: you know. And and so I told him, I was like, hey,

764
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: like your talk was really interesting meaningful to me because

765
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:35,279
Speaker 1: I I just went and bought a rifle today. And

766
00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:36,560
Speaker 1: he was like, well, how do you how do you

767
00:41:36,560 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 1: feel about that? It's like I feel really mixed about it.

768
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:44,840
Speaker 1: And he was like that makes sense, you know. And

769
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:47,680
Speaker 1: and Mike, I'm mostly just like talking about how much

770
00:41:47,680 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: I like this guy in this book. But my copy

771
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 1: of the book is signed off from my generation to yours,

772
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:56,000
Speaker 1: and I think about it a lot. That's really beautiful,

773
00:41:56,160 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 1: and especially for somebody who's doing, you know, such key

774
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:03,000
Speaker 1: and important work and understands intimately the struggle like what

775
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 1: a plussing to sort of be given, uh, you know,

776
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:10,920
Speaker 1: like a passing of the baton. That's wonderful. Uh. To

777
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:13,719
Speaker 1: quote more from this non violent stuff will get you killed.

778
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:18,160
Speaker 1: The rural black culture that snick Field secretaries encountered in

779
00:42:18,160 --> 00:42:21,239
Speaker 1: the Deep South had long accepted arm self defense is legitimate,

780
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: although local black people could be uncertain about when and

781
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:26,759
Speaker 1: how best to employ it, the idea itself was not

782
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:30,759
Speaker 1: subject to debate. Guns were common in southern households us

783
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:33,360
Speaker 1: not only for hunting, but for protection from white violence.

784
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:35,880
Speaker 1: The idea of removing guns from the equation was, for

785
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:40,000
Speaker 1: the vast majority of rural Southern blacks simply a non issue. Later,

786
00:42:40,040 --> 00:42:41,800
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about a bunch of the organized

787
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: groups that defended the non violence movement, and those groups matter,

788
00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:49,400
Speaker 1: But I think it's also worth understanding where they come from.

789
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:51,879
Speaker 1: Which what didn't just like show up like one person,

790
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:54,160
Speaker 1: wasn't suddenly like I have an idea, we can defend

791
00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:58,319
Speaker 1: ourselves right. Um. It was built on a bedrock of

792
00:42:58,360 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 1: people just doing it themselves. As Cobb describes, for example,

793
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,479
Speaker 1: a seventy year old woman in Lee County, Georgia named

794
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 1: Mama Dolly. She ran a farm and I'm under the

795
00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 1: impression maybe she was a local midwife, and to quote

796
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: a student organizer, stayed with her. What Snick would do

797
00:43:12,120 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 1: is they send people down to like and Core would

798
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:16,920
Speaker 1: do is like people would leave and go into these

799
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:21,319
Speaker 1: rural environments and register people to vote and possibly help

800
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 1: organized desegregation and stuff like that. Right, and they would

801
00:43:24,040 --> 00:43:28,160
Speaker 1: stay with black families who would defend them. So, to

802
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 1: quote a student organizer, Mama Dolly had this big shotgun.

803
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:34,960
Speaker 1: I tried to talk her out of guarding me, but

804
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:37,080
Speaker 1: she said, baby, I brought a lot of these white

805
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 1: folks into this world, and I'll take him out of

806
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:44,920
Speaker 1: this world if I have to come on. Yes, that's

807
00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 1: why I think she was probably a midwife. Um, sometimes

808
00:43:48,120 --> 00:43:50,400
Speaker 1: no matter what I said, this is to the quote, Sometimes,

809
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:52,080
Speaker 1: no matter what I said, she would sit in my

810
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,439
Speaker 1: bedroom window, leg propped up with that big old gun.

811
00:43:55,680 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 1: Do you know how to handle it way better than

812
00:43:57,320 --> 00:43:59,800
Speaker 1: I did. In fact, I knew nothing about no shotgun.

813
00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:03,800
Speaker 1: And everything I've read is story after story of rural

814
00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:07,239
Speaker 1: farmers defending organizers, most of whom were black urban Southerners,

815
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: some of whom were you know, white urban Southerners, people

816
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:14,640
Speaker 1: from all over in different backgrounds. Right. But because frankly

817
00:44:14,680 --> 00:44:17,160
Speaker 1: defending these people as part of hospitality. And of course

818
00:44:17,239 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 1: the supremacists were really fucking mad about Snick and so

819
00:44:22,719 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: the bravery of these organizers matters, but the bravery of

820
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:27,759
Speaker 1: the people who took them in is at least as

821
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:30,640
Speaker 1: much right because the organizer might leave, but that family

822
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 1: still wherever and everyone knows you all your business, and

823
00:44:36,960 --> 00:44:40,480
Speaker 1: I know that some of them like lost is you know,

824
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a black person providing a service

825
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,000
Speaker 1: that is available to white people, like I can put

826
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 1: your whole livelihood in danger. That's wild. Yeah. And the

827
00:44:49,280 --> 00:44:54,000
Speaker 1: clan was during this time running around killing people, burning

828
00:44:54,040 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 1: and bombing buildings, murdering organizers and uh like, people would

829
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 1: go red a stirt of vote and they would get

830
00:45:01,640 --> 00:45:04,040
Speaker 1: laughed out of the room by clerks or one case

831
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:06,879
Speaker 1: like in I think it was Mississippi, Like literally someone

832
00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 1: just got pistol whipped because they were like, what do

833
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 1: you mean I can't register of vote. I pulled out

834
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:13,160
Speaker 1: a gunhead and hit the woman in the head. But

835
00:45:13,239 --> 00:45:15,800
Speaker 1: you know what won't hit you in the head except

836
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:25,439
Speaker 1: with really good deals potatoes, that's right. Oh yeah, okay,

837
00:45:25,440 --> 00:45:26,879
Speaker 1: So so Joel. One of the things that we try

838
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: and do on the show is we try to be

839
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: sponsored only by very good things, right, and so our

840
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: our perennial sponsor is the concept of potatoes. They're good

841
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:39,200
Speaker 1: for you. Um, you can eat them cooked, to cook

842
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 1: them first. They're cheap. Uh. And I'm wondering if you

843
00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:44,759
Speaker 1: have any anything that you would like to be sponsored by.

844
00:45:44,760 --> 00:45:49,400
Speaker 1: We've also been sponsored by, um, sleeping dogs, like I

845
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 1: think like comb, Yeah, good, comb was good. The laughter

846
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:58,440
Speaker 1: of children after children is great. I want to be

847
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 1: sponsored by a rainy with a good book. Oh yeah,

848
00:46:02,760 --> 00:46:06,799
Speaker 1: my favorite space to live in. Oh my god, if

849
00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:08,960
Speaker 1: I could. That's what heaven looks like to me. It's

850
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:13,440
Speaker 1: constantly raining, and like there's good books and hot tea everywhere.

851
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:16,799
Speaker 1: He never goes cold. All right, that is what we're

852
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 1: sponsored by today, and possibly some other stuff that you'll

853
00:46:20,000 --> 00:46:26,240
Speaker 1: hear about in a second. Okay, and we are back,

854
00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:32,560
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna mostly the like atrocities of what people

855
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:35,719
Speaker 1: were facing. I've been told at great length, and so

856
00:46:35,760 --> 00:46:38,560
Speaker 1: I don't want to like specifically go through like every

857
00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 1: time that people got murdered or whatever, but one of

858
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:46,239
Speaker 1: them that impacts all of this a lot. In Mississippi,

859
00:46:46,239 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: in September, a local black farmer and n double a

860
00:46:50,000 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 1: CP leader who was affiliated with SNICK. His name is

861
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:56,200
Speaker 1: Herbert Lee. He was killed in broad daylight in front

862
00:46:56,200 --> 00:46:59,840
Speaker 1: of a dozen people, and he got killed by his

863
00:47:00,080 --> 00:47:02,360
Speaker 1: childhood friend who was a white man who in a

864
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:05,319
Speaker 1: racist who he was like neighbors, who had just like

865
00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: decided should have gone too far, and he'd basically been like, hey,

866
00:47:08,520 --> 00:47:10,960
Speaker 1: come over here, I want to talk to you, and

867
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:18,440
Speaker 1: then murdered Herbertlely. Yeah, the murderer was acquitted that afternoon

868
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:24,839
Speaker 1: by an all white jury whoa and no one none

869
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:28,719
Speaker 1: of the witnesses felt safe coming forward. Right later, a

870
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,400
Speaker 1: black witness to the crime, Luis Allen, was murdered on

871
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: his own property before he could testify. And that murderer

872
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:39,120
Speaker 1: was almost certainly done by the local county sheriff. And like,

873
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: this is an example story, not the thing that changed everything.

874
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:48,920
Speaker 1: This is what people like, Basically, a lot of the

875
00:47:48,960 --> 00:47:51,280
Speaker 1: people that I'm reading about or refer to what's happening

876
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:53,080
Speaker 1: as a war, and they're like, I am in a

877
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:58,040
Speaker 1: war against white supremacy. Um, And that's that's some of

878
00:47:58,040 --> 00:48:04,439
Speaker 1: the context, you know. So so SNICK organizers themselves, they

879
00:48:04,440 --> 00:48:06,759
Speaker 1: didn't go armed because it would break the spell of

880
00:48:06,800 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 1: what they were doing, and non violent organizing was a

881
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:15,840
Speaker 1: very effective strategy. And but especially in Mississippi, their local

882
00:48:15,880 --> 00:48:20,719
Speaker 1: defenders absolutely went armed. The whole thing was massively debated

883
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,959
Speaker 1: within the movement, but overall a lot of the debates

884
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 1: against this sort of protection were happening far away. You know. Um,

885
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: they were the movement leaders who weren't in the ship.

886
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:36,960
Speaker 1: So I like telling stories about the clan losing, So

887
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:40,399
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell some stories about the clan losing. Oh. Yes,

888
00:48:41,280 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five Baker County, Georgia, there was a

889
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 1: seventeen year old young woman named Shirley Miller, who, alongside

890
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:50,680
Speaker 1: other folks, integrated the local high school. The clan burned

891
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 1: across in your yard. More than a dozen of the

892
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 1: fox showed up the you know, scare her and possibly

893
00:48:56,880 --> 00:49:00,000
Speaker 1: do worse. So Shirley's mother called her neighbors, who pulled

894
00:49:00,040 --> 00:49:02,879
Speaker 1: it in armed and took him at the klansmen, and

895
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:06,400
Speaker 1: the klansmen literally begged for their life in order to

896
00:49:06,719 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: be let leave. Oh could you imagine a recording of

897
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:16,080
Speaker 1: that just playing it back and be like, yes, you assholes,

898
00:49:16,360 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 1: that for threatening a high school or you jerks, yea.

899
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:23,000
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty four, some folks tried to register to vote,

900
00:49:23,000 --> 00:49:26,920
Speaker 1: and we're turned away. Mrs Brewer's sons were turned away,

901
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 1: so the clan showed up at the Brewer house to

902
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:32,760
Speaker 1: teach her and her kids a lesson about trying to vote.

903
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:36,359
Speaker 1: So Jennie Brewer, Mrs Brewer, she armed up her kids,

904
00:49:36,360 --> 00:49:38,319
Speaker 1: and she armed up her grandkids, and she armed up

905
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:41,120
Speaker 1: the Snick organizers who were supposedly not supposed touch guns,

906
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:46,439
Speaker 1: and then made a bunch of Molotov cocktails oh too,

907
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:50,440
Speaker 1: to quote Charles Cobb again. As the sheriff and the

908
00:49:50,480 --> 00:49:54,440
Speaker 1: truckload of klansmen approached the farmhouse, the Brewer family members

909
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 1: and some of the Snick workers were still in the

910
00:49:56,200 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 1: fields with rifles and shotguns. Before the raiders reached the house,

911
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:03,239
Speaker 1: someone shown a floodlight on them, others fired into the air.

912
00:50:03,719 --> 00:50:05,840
Speaker 1: Brewer stood on the front porch ready to hurl a

913
00:50:05,880 --> 00:50:10,919
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktail. Everyone, including the sheriff, fled. Night riders never

914
00:50:10,960 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 1: returned to the Brewer farm. Come through, suck around and

915
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:21,800
Speaker 1: find out what the main thing that I keep finding.

916
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: And I read a book that has a bias right

917
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:27,000
Speaker 1: to be clear, and I've read other stuff and I

918
00:50:27,080 --> 00:50:29,080
Speaker 1: have my own bias and and all of that. But

919
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:32,280
Speaker 1: one of the things that kept happening was the arguments

920
00:50:32,280 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 1: for non violence. Part of the arguments for non violences

921
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:37,960
Speaker 1: this is a very effective strategy and the nitty gritty,

922
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:40,000
Speaker 1: and I think that's true. But part of the argument

923
00:50:40,080 --> 00:50:43,759
Speaker 1: was if we arm up, they'll kill us, all right, um,

924
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:48,000
Speaker 1: and what the book that you know, this non violence

925
00:50:48,000 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 1: stuff get killed and and anything else that I've read

926
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:55,160
Speaker 1: doesn't carry that out, at least in this context and

927
00:50:55,239 --> 00:50:58,000
Speaker 1: time that I'm talking about. What would happen is the

928
00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:00,799
Speaker 1: clan shows up, someone takes a fun and warning shot

929
00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:03,560
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh god, those people have guns, even

930
00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: though the klan has guns too, and they never come back.

931
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:09,879
Speaker 1: That happens more times than not in what I have read.

932
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:12,440
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to make a blanket. I feel like, no, no, no,

933
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:14,640
Speaker 1: no no, But I hear what you're saying. I think

934
00:51:14,680 --> 00:51:18,719
Speaker 1: the non violent aspect was necessary to change liberal white

935
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:23,120
Speaker 1: people's minds, right, because the argument was always like, oh,

936
00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:26,960
Speaker 1: well not yet. People need time to adjust, so your

937
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:30,240
Speaker 1: liberty has to wait. But then also, if you react

938
00:51:30,440 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: violently to whatever violence is being hurled at you. Suddenly

939
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:37,560
Speaker 1: you're still the danger, which is a confusing mind game

940
00:51:37,600 --> 00:51:39,960
Speaker 1: to play with a person. But there they were. And

941
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:42,080
Speaker 1: so I think that that was a you know, and

942
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:45,000
Speaker 1: similar to Gandhi, because I'm sure there were people in

943
00:51:45,000 --> 00:51:47,080
Speaker 1: India also being like, no, fuck you get off my

944
00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:51,440
Speaker 1: British people, what are you doing? But in order to

945
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:53,040
Speaker 1: make the world care, you have to be like, now,

946
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:55,200
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything to defend myself, and these guys

947
00:51:55,440 --> 00:51:57,680
Speaker 1: were total jerks. Still I did do anything to piss

948
00:51:57,680 --> 00:51:59,400
Speaker 1: them off. I didn't do anything to defend myself, and

949
00:51:59,440 --> 00:52:01,279
Speaker 1: yet here they will calm. And that's when people can

950
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:03,319
Speaker 1: sort of be like, oh, well, now I see that

951
00:52:03,360 --> 00:52:06,600
Speaker 1: you're clearly a monster. There's no way you can't really

952
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:10,799
Speaker 1: twist that, which is exhausting. It's an exhausting gauntlet to

953
00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:14,680
Speaker 1: ask people to run through. But what else can you do? Yeah,

954
00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:18,840
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, yeah, like I don't know, you know,

955
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:22,560
Speaker 1: like I'm not. It's so fucking complicated, and it's something

956
00:52:22,600 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 1: that every movement needs to determine for itself, you know.

957
00:52:27,920 --> 00:52:29,480
Speaker 1: And uh, And that is actually one of the things

958
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:30,520
Speaker 1: that comes up in the book. And I don't know

959
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:32,080
Speaker 1: if I wrote in the script, maybe you hear me

960
00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:35,760
Speaker 1: talk about later a higher percentage. It was not universal.

961
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:37,800
Speaker 1: There were white people who are totally fine with violence,

962
00:52:38,080 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 1: and there were black people are totally fine and non violence.

963
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:42,839
Speaker 1: But a higher percentage of the organizers who were coming

964
00:52:42,880 --> 00:52:46,360
Speaker 1: from out who are white were more ideologically committed to

965
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:49,759
Speaker 1: non violence, whereas more of the black organizers were strategically

966
00:52:49,800 --> 00:52:56,600
Speaker 1: committed to non violence. I'm sure, yeah, And that matters

967
00:52:56,680 --> 00:53:01,359
Speaker 1: so much, especially when you're talking about like, look, clearly,

968
00:53:01,400 --> 00:53:03,239
Speaker 1: I'm a white person talking about this history because I

969
00:53:03,239 --> 00:53:06,600
Speaker 1: think it matters, But like white people shouldn't fucking have

970
00:53:06,719 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 1: anything to do with saying what should happen? Like that

971
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:12,479
Speaker 1: doesn't make any fucking sense. You know, they still weren't

972
00:53:12,480 --> 00:53:15,040
Speaker 1: at a place where they were ready to recognize the

973
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: power structure and its entirety. Right if they were, then

974
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:22,640
Speaker 1: you would never ask people who were constantly being threatened

975
00:53:22,719 --> 00:53:26,719
Speaker 1: to be non violent. But because they couldn't acknowledge like, oh,

976
00:53:26,760 --> 00:53:29,080
Speaker 1: we as white people also whold power. Despite the fact

977
00:53:29,120 --> 00:53:31,480
Speaker 1: that we want to stand with you, so we're going

978
00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:34,400
Speaker 1: to ask you to not only be non violent, but

979
00:53:34,440 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: it's a way for us to not have to become

980
00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:39,560
Speaker 1: violent in defensive I can stand with you and say,

981
00:53:39,560 --> 00:53:42,040
Speaker 1: oh no, I was there. I linked arms, like, but

982
00:53:42,080 --> 00:53:44,879
Speaker 1: did you take off arms? Switch would have been much

983
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:48,280
Speaker 1: more helpful in protecting these bodies you claim to care about. Like.

984
00:53:48,800 --> 00:53:52,040
Speaker 1: It's again, it's a total mind funck and a completely

985
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:54,919
Speaker 1: ridiculous gauntlet to ask anyone to have to run through.

986
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: But I think at the time it was the only

987
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 1: way to move the evil and therefore necessary. I do

988
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:07,439
Speaker 1: hope that we've moved past that in some I don't

989
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:09,520
Speaker 1: think from on a government level we have, but I

990
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:12,839
Speaker 1: think for a very personal and individual level, I hope

991
00:54:12,840 --> 00:54:15,440
Speaker 1: that we as a society are moving past this idea

992
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 1: that passivism off you know is the best reaction to violence. Um,

993
00:54:21,640 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: clearly not clearly not yeah, exactly. And then it even

994
00:54:26,800 --> 00:54:30,960
Speaker 1: strategic non violence apparently works really well paired with self defense.

995
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:34,200
Speaker 1: You know, you know, you know, but I don't. I

996
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:37,480
Speaker 1: don't want to hurt you. I don't want to you know, bomb,

997
00:54:37,600 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: or hurt anybody or take someone's you know, friend, parent,

998
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:44,360
Speaker 1: whatever away from them, But don't work with me. I

999
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:48,200
Speaker 1: think that's a very reasonable line to draw, or like,

1000
00:54:48,239 --> 00:54:51,200
Speaker 1: don't funk with those non violent activists. You know, also

1001
00:54:51,239 --> 00:54:57,040
Speaker 1: don't sunk with them, they're just here. Absolutely another one

1002
00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:01,319
Speaker 1: of these stories. An indigenous act vist named Hunter Bear

1003
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:04,839
Speaker 1: Salter was a professor at an hbc U in Mississippi

1004
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:09,200
Speaker 1: called Tugala Southern Christian College, and he spent his time

1005
00:55:09,239 --> 00:55:11,799
Speaker 1: advising students who are sitting at lunch counters and you know,

1006
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:15,320
Speaker 1: teaching and all that stuff. And he traveled armed everywhere

1007
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:18,080
Speaker 1: he went in he said, the fact that he was

1008
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:20,239
Speaker 1: known to be armed is the reason he survived the era.

1009
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:23,400
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's I have no particular doubt about that.

1010
00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:27,360
Speaker 1: And the student the school itself was constantly being attacked

1011
00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:30,760
Speaker 1: by night riders because as an HBCU, until the school

1012
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:33,880
Speaker 1: formed armed groups of students and faculty to keep watch.

1013
00:55:34,280 --> 00:55:37,319
Speaker 1: And when word got out about that, the attacks dropped significantly.

1014
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:41,920
Speaker 1: So self defense was a decentralized, impromptu an ever present

1015
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:45,440
Speaker 1: part of the non violence movement until it was organized,

1016
00:55:45,719 --> 00:55:51,560
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in part two. But first let's

1017
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 1: talk about you, Joel and the things you do and

1018
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:59,160
Speaker 1: the places people can find the things you do. Yes,

1019
00:56:00,520 --> 00:56:03,440
Speaker 1: I am on all the social media sites, but mostly

1020
00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:07,200
Speaker 1: Hive nowadays, actual Monique, it's j l E L E

1021
00:56:07,840 --> 00:56:11,719
Speaker 1: M O N I q U e uh and the

1022
00:56:11,760 --> 00:56:14,960
Speaker 1: EP of Fake Doctor's Real Friends. If you have any

1023
00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:17,680
Speaker 1: desire to come check out a Scrubs rewatch podcast. Also

1024
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:20,839
Speaker 1: have a new girl rewatch podcast called Welcome to Our

1025
00:56:20,920 --> 00:56:24,520
Speaker 1: Show that I adore. And then you can check out

1026
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:27,280
Speaker 1: my writing all over the place and doing a lot

1027
00:56:27,360 --> 00:56:32,200
Speaker 1: of work for the Rap Right Now and polygone Um.

1028
00:56:32,239 --> 00:56:36,480
Speaker 1: And then I'm frequently at MPRS pop Culture Happy Hour. Yeah,

1029
00:56:36,520 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping to bring a couple of new shows

1030
00:56:39,040 --> 00:56:41,200
Speaker 1: to you guys next year. So just follow me on

1031
00:56:41,200 --> 00:56:44,160
Speaker 1: the socials and you'll you'll hear all about it awesome

1032
00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:48,239
Speaker 1: and you've got anything you want to plug? Uh? Isn't

1033
00:56:48,239 --> 00:56:50,759
Speaker 1: there a live stream coming up? There is a live

1034
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:53,799
Speaker 1: I think it's this week. Yeah, it's this week. As

1035
00:56:53,800 --> 00:56:57,279
Speaker 1: you listen to this, if you want to hear me

1036
00:56:57,719 --> 00:57:01,360
Speaker 1: learn about something bad from Robert Evans, the host of

1037
00:57:01,560 --> 00:57:06,760
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, you can listen to the live stream

1038
00:57:06,760 --> 00:57:09,239
Speaker 1: me hearing about bad things. They don't tell me ahead

1039
00:57:09,280 --> 00:57:12,040
Speaker 1: of time what the bad thing is, so you can

1040
00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:17,400
Speaker 1: watch me react and horror to the world. You can

1041
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:20,840
Speaker 1: get tickets by googling. It's like an amazing show. I'm

1042
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:23,960
Speaker 1: really excited. Yeah. The link to a tickets is a

1043
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:27,400
Speaker 1: moment house dot co slash bTB. I think if when

1044
00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:29,560
Speaker 1: you buy a ticket you can also submit question for

1045
00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 1: the Q and A make sure you get those in

1046
00:57:31,840 --> 00:57:36,200
Speaker 1: asap before the event that this week. And uh yeah,

1047
00:57:36,240 --> 00:57:39,200
Speaker 1: I think that's all I got. All right, well, we

1048
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:45,439
Speaker 1: will see you all on Wednesday. Farewell. Cool People Who

1049
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:48,000
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.

1050
00:57:48,360 --> 00:57:51,200
Speaker 1: For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website

1051
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:53,840
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com, or check us out on

1052
00:57:53,880 --> 00:57:56,800
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1053
00:57:56,840 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. You