Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there,
Speaker 1: so it's stuff you should know. Hey, Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 1: It's going good. It's not going so good for me.
Speaker 1: I'm having trouble loading up important pages here, important tabs
Speaker 1: on my computer. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: deal is in that riveting podcast. It's like Serial the
Speaker 1: second season. Yeah, well Josh's tabs opened. What's the deal
Speaker 1: with Josh's computer? Uh? The tabs loaded everybody, by the way,
Speaker 1: So thank you for your concern. So you feel good
Speaker 1: about this one? Yeah, I do. There's a It was
Speaker 1: yet again one of those topics that I knew somewhat
Speaker 1: about probably is us the average person, But digging into it,
Speaker 1: you really forget how polished and glossy history can become,
Speaker 1: and how not necessarily like grittier or anything, but just
Speaker 1: definitely more complex and complicated an interkate than the final
Speaker 1: story ends up being. Yeah, details matter, Um, no person
Speaker 1: exists in a vacuum basically, Yeah, and coincidentally or maybe kismately,
Speaker 1: we asked Jerry were like, hey, can we have this
Speaker 1: released right around uh the King Holiday? And she said, dude,
Speaker 1: it is happens to be scheduled before she even knew
Speaker 1: what it was going to be, Like, this episode fell
Speaker 1: into that slot. It's the spirit of Doctor King. How
Speaker 1: about that? Like it's sort of like our marijuana episode
Speaker 1: being the four release, which was a complete accident, completely
Speaker 1: happens then, So this is like that, but cooler, right,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's historical and it's important. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is important history. You know what I'm saying. The invention
Speaker 1: a silly putty. Well, I've been really been getting into
Speaker 1: uh here in my middle age, the civil rights movement
Speaker 1: in history and learning about that stuff. I think maybe
Speaker 1: to make up for my uh ancestry in the Deep South,
Speaker 1: you know, man. You know what's weird is like I
Speaker 1: I hear that like more than ever, just the last
Speaker 1: just the events of two thousand and fourteen. Like really
Speaker 1: it's not like my eyes were shut or anything or
Speaker 1: I was just unaware, but I've become more and more,
Speaker 1: um disenchanted and dispirited by the heritage that I have
Speaker 1: as well. It's just just that kind of studied obliviousness
Speaker 1: that the powers that be have about the plights of
Speaker 1: the people who aren't in power has really started to
Speaker 1: get to me more and more. Yeah, And I've I've
Speaker 1: had talks about this with a bunch of people, and
Speaker 1: the consensus I've come to is, I can't be ashamed
Speaker 1: of anything here in mean, you didn't do anything, person,
Speaker 1: I didn't do anything. And I don't know anything spece
Speaker 1: ccific about my family other than they we're you know,
Speaker 1: white people living in rural Mississippi since the dawn of
Speaker 1: time and miss I don't think they were the ones
Speaker 1: knocking on doors trying to uh, you know, encourage black
Speaker 1: people to vote. I don't think they were the standouts. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so what can you do but just try and
Speaker 1: be a good person, to educate yourself and learn from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and make the Bryant uh name move forward in a
Speaker 1: different direction. I think that's great. Yeah, good job. So
Speaker 1: anyway I've been getting into I've been reading a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff about it, and uh, I saw that play
Speaker 1: in New York. I think I mentioned with Brian Cranston,
Speaker 1: oh the Lbjay, Yeah, which really kind of got me
Speaker 1: reading a bunch of because a lot of stuff I
Speaker 1: didn't learn in school at all. They don't teach you
Speaker 1: that much in school, not as much as you think
Speaker 1: good touring of information. It's a trickle at best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or like you said, it's like a very kind of
Speaker 1: one day glossy affair, which we were about to do
Speaker 1: right now, right, Well, we're gonna flush it out a
Speaker 1: little more. And I have to say this article, for
Speaker 1: being a three three page article on how stuff works,
Speaker 1: was pretty good. Recognize the author, But lot of beef
Speaker 1: in here. Yeah there there, yeah, some good detail. So, um,
Speaker 1: we're talking today about the March on Washington, which took
Speaker 1: place on August I believe nine three. Yeah, the March
Speaker 1: on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is the official full name, yeah,
Speaker 1: which a lot of people don't realize that. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of a big deal that it has jobs and
Speaker 1: Freedom because that title actually represents the marriage of two
Speaker 1: separate um Black civil rights movements, Yeah, agendas married together,
Speaker 1: um under this common banner, which was at the time
Speaker 1: kind of a big deal because there was a lot
Speaker 1: of rivalry amongst different the different civil rights groups and
Speaker 1: their agendas and to be able to come together that
Speaker 1: was kind of huge. Yeah, And you know, when I
Speaker 1: first hear about rivalries among the as groups, I get
Speaker 1: a little disenchanted. But then when you start thinking about
Speaker 1: the task in front of them. Uh, if you assemble
Speaker 1: a group of suppressed people, everyone's gonna have their own
Speaker 1: idea about the best way to move forward and to
Speaker 1: get something done. And so of course there were gonna
Speaker 1: be rivalries between these groups because they all felt their
Speaker 1: path forward was the righteous one. Yeah, and this was
Speaker 1: and and not even necessarily righteous, but right, you know,
Speaker 1: like effective. On the one hand, you have say, um,
Speaker 1: a Philip um Randolph, yeah man who was the head
Speaker 1: of the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters. Yeah, I went
Speaker 1: into that little bit. H well, well tell me about it. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't even uh know what a Pullman porter was,
Speaker 1: because you know, I'm a modern kind of guy. But um,
Speaker 1: these were the the people, the essentially butlers and maids
Speaker 1: who worked on sleeping trains, sleeping cars and uh George
Speaker 1: Pullman in Chicago of the Pullman Company invented the sleeping
Speaker 1: train in the eight and eighties. And a Philip Randoff
Speaker 1: he was born in eighteen eighty nine, like he was
Speaker 1: seventy four years old when the march on Washington took place.
Speaker 1: He was not a young guy, but he'd been at
Speaker 1: it for decades already, for decades as a civil rights crusader. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so basically what the deal was was George Pullman
Speaker 1: hired uh Black Americans to work as maids and butlers
Speaker 1: on these trains, and it really sort of kind of
Speaker 1: entrenched that master servant relationship even further. And uh, even
Speaker 1: though the black community said, these are really pretty good
Speaker 1: jobs actually, because even though the pay wasn't that great,
Speaker 1: it was a steady job. He got to travel. So
Speaker 1: it was sort of looked upon as an elite job
Speaker 1: until they started to sort of look at the details,
Speaker 1: who were like, wait a minute, we don't have job security.
Speaker 1: Our salary kind of stinks. We have to pay for
Speaker 1: our own uniforms and food and lodging. And so they
Speaker 1: got in touch with a Philip Randoff in he organized
Speaker 1: the union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and eventually,
Speaker 1: even though they refused to go shate with them, they
Speaker 1: were able to get that union. In the nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: they the Pullman company signed a labor agreement with them,
Speaker 1: got them a lot more rights as workers. But that's
Speaker 1: just one of the many, many things that he did.
Speaker 1: He was big into unions and organizing things and especially
Speaker 1: seeing to it that the that the black population got
Speaker 1: the same kind of fair treatment as the white population.
Speaker 1: And you said that, he became president of the Brotherhood
Speaker 1: of Sleeping car Porters in so think about fighting. First
Speaker 1: of all, you're a unionizer, which back in that day
Speaker 1: you could be gunned down by the state militia. He
Speaker 1: was a socialist, he definitely was. He was definitely like
Speaker 1: this is all basically of left movement. All of this,
Speaker 1: the March on Washington was UM. And he also if
Speaker 1: you if you consider at the times as the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow era, so he's fighting for workers rights and even
Speaker 1: more difficulty, he's fighting for black workers rights. So this
Speaker 1: guy was a tough cookie and a smart one too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King called him the Dean of Negro leaders.
Speaker 1: And he was forty years older than Kings. So he
Speaker 1: was really revered, uh in the black community for sure,
Speaker 1: but rightly so. I mean like he'd earned his chops right.
Speaker 1: And the March on Washington that that Um came about
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three was actually the second one that
Speaker 1: Randolph proposed. He was the one that said we should
Speaker 1: have this march on Washington. We'll we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: But in ninety one he also started to organize the
Speaker 1: same march UM and it was for crusading for jobs
Speaker 1: for Black workers UM to end discrimination among federal hiring
Speaker 1: government in defense hiring and UH federal agencies. Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: FDRs new deal was not I mean so favorable for
Speaker 1: Black Americans, like it did a lot for the country,
Speaker 1: but they were still sort of ignored and pretty much
Speaker 1: barred from getting jobs federal jobs and defense jobs. So
Speaker 1: FDR saw the writing on the wall basically with the
Speaker 1: you don't want to call the threat of a march,
Speaker 1: but because it just sounds like militaristic, it was the
Speaker 1: threat of a march and UM. So he signed issued
Speaker 1: Executive Order a D eight. Oh too, the Fair Employment
Speaker 1: Practices Committee was created and two million Black Americans were
Speaker 1: employed by the defense industry by which is great. But
Speaker 1: nine the FTPC was disbanded and dissolved. So the temporary win,
Speaker 1: the temporary win, UM, but a win nonetheless, and they
Speaker 1: did not have that march because of that executive order,
Speaker 1: which down I mean, imagine the credibility that UM Randolph
Speaker 1: got just immediately from that, like he got the President
Speaker 1: to create an executive order based on something he was organizing,
Speaker 1: so that definitely catapulted his status. But he also learned like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty effective tool. Like this isn't the
Speaker 1: big gun you want to bring out every time somebody
Speaker 1: pulls a pie shoot around you. But like when stuff
Speaker 1: really becomes intractable, march on Washington is not such a
Speaker 1: bad idea. Not a bad idea, you don't even necessarily
Speaker 1: have to do it. Yeah, he was kind of recruited
Speaker 1: UM to head this up by the Negro American Labor Council,
Speaker 1: of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality,
Speaker 1: and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and so he wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to Secretary Stuart Udal in May of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two. He was the Department of Interior, and UM
Speaker 1: basically said can we get our permits like the official request?
Speaker 1: And they got nervous immediately because he said we want
Speaker 1: to stop at the Lincoln Memorial and finish it up there.
Speaker 1: They're like, well, rerounding traffic is gonna be tough. Why
Speaker 1: don't we send you here instead? And they were pretty
Speaker 1: adamant about sticking to that route, and so they granted
Speaker 1: him the permit, which was the first signed to Kennedy,
Speaker 1: like because Kennedy wasn't like, great, let's do this, he
Speaker 1: was nervous about it too. And it was I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. You mentioned that what's called
Speaker 1: the Big Six, the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters, Southern
Speaker 1: Christian Leadership Conference, that was Martin Luther King's UM Atlanta
Speaker 1: based group UM, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, which
Speaker 1: was led at the time by Representative John Lewis, our
Speaker 1: Representative Lewis, who was still a firebrand in Congress, who
Speaker 1: was twenty three at the time, and gave a speech
Speaker 1: at the march UM the Conference on Racial Equality which
Speaker 1: is known as CORE, the National Urban League, and the
Speaker 1: um N double a CP. All of these groups got together,
Speaker 1: and we already said like their arrivalries among them, but
Speaker 1: not only were these these was it a big deal
Speaker 1: that these groups that were fighting for civil rights, like
Speaker 1: voting rights and the end of segregation and like civil rights,
Speaker 1: but they got together with a Philip Randolph's UM movement
Speaker 1: for economic justice and rather than become confused or muddled
Speaker 1: or whatever, like remember Occupy Wallster. Everybody's like they have
Speaker 1: like ten million different demands. A lot of people were
Speaker 1: worried that joining these things together would do the same thing.
Speaker 1: It didn't. It actually broadened it, and it brought a
Speaker 1: lot of strength to the whole thing. And it all
Speaker 1: came down to a black feminist named Anna Arnold Hedgeman,
Speaker 1: and she brought Um, King and Randolph together and said,
Speaker 1: you guys need to make this happen. It'll make this
Speaker 1: march a million times better. I don't think that's a quote,
Speaker 1: but basically that's that's what she said. And as a result,
Speaker 1: the March on Washington for UM, jobs and freedom was
Speaker 1: what the result was. Yeah, and bringing Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: on was certainly a master stroke because, um, this article
Speaker 1: describes the proposition as tepid to begin with, but um,
Speaker 1: the stage was set for August then, uh, right after
Speaker 1: this message break, we'll get to a little bit of
Speaker 1: how mainstream media feared at this march. Right if it
Speaker 1: is so, mainstream media probably thought this was a great idea,
Speaker 1: and all of Washington probably rallied around this. Right, they
Speaker 1: couldn't wait. Everybody, Um made those needle point samplers that said,
Speaker 1: welcome marching black people to our streets. They rolled out
Speaker 1: the red carpet. That is not true. This is our
Speaker 1: facetious voice. Mainstream media actually was in fear, and they
Speaker 1: ran stories about this devolving into a riot. And Kennedy said,
Speaker 1: let's let's call this off. And they said no, and
Speaker 1: liquor stores closed and bars closed and stores boarded up
Speaker 1: their windows, and in the end none of that happened.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was very peaceful and amazingly really well organized,
Speaker 1: like a quotes where the organizers themselves said that, like
Speaker 1: the peacefulness and and dignity of the whole thing seeded
Speaker 1: even their expectations. Yeah, it was a colossally successful thing.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why there was such an
Speaker 1: amount of nervousness was not necessarily just because there were
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million people marching in Washington all
Speaker 1: at once for civil rights. But this thing took place,
Speaker 1: and it's considered the pinnacle, the high water mark of
Speaker 1: nineteen three, which was an enormous year. The Birmingham Campaign
Speaker 1: was going on um down in Alabama. Children were marching
Speaker 1: in the streets of Birmingham and police dogs were attacking
Speaker 1: them and they were being hit with fire hoses, people
Speaker 1: were being clubbed in the streets by Bull Connor and
Speaker 1: his police force, and it was being captured on TV.
Speaker 1: So like the American psyche was really being affected by
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement right now, And there was a
Speaker 1: lot of momentum behind the people who were leading the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, especially Martin Luther King, who you know
Speaker 1: proved his own chops by being jailed in Birmingham for
Speaker 1: protesting um. And he was kept in uh isolation for
Speaker 1: like eight days. I think it wasn't able to talk
Speaker 1: to anybody, I think, including his lawyer. Finally, his um wife,
Speaker 1: Kreta Scott King, got in touch with Jfkin and said,
Speaker 1: you've got to do something because I don't know what
Speaker 1: they're gonna do to my husband in jail. He's lucky
Speaker 1: he survived that, to be honest, right, Well, it took
Speaker 1: the President to order the city of Birmingham to free
Speaker 1: him for him to get out, yea, um, but it
Speaker 1: was it was a big deal by the time this
Speaker 1: thing came about, by the time it was even announced,
Speaker 1: like nineteen three was a huge watershed year already. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, I think I don't think we pointed out
Speaker 1: like ten the estimate were white folks joining in for
Speaker 1: the rally, and um, I don't know about percentages, but
Speaker 1: I do know that a lot of Jewish people were
Speaker 1: really involved in the civil rights movement as volunteers, helping
Speaker 1: to push that forward because they knew a thing or
Speaker 1: two about persecution, So I think they identified with the
Speaker 1: plight of the American black people and so um like
Speaker 1: Jewish folks from the Northeast, basically a lot of them
Speaker 1: came down south, a lot of students to volunteer for
Speaker 1: not only this but just the voter rights, going door
Speaker 1: to door. I mean those will will do a more
Speaker 1: in depth went about voters rights maybe one day. But
Speaker 1: I know the two. I think two of the guys
Speaker 1: basically were murdered because they were going door to door
Speaker 1: trying to help black people registered to vote. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know their names, but I've heard about them. I
Speaker 1: mean they murdered by the local police. Yea, they just
Speaker 1: shot him on the side of the road. Basically, there
Speaker 1: was I think in nineteen sixty three there was um
Speaker 1: a group of students that were going to Birmingham, which
Speaker 1: was like the center of the universe as far as
Speaker 1: the civil rights struggle in the US is going Um
Speaker 1: and again, Bull Connor, the head of the police department,
Speaker 1: gave his his police department the whole thing the day off,
Speaker 1: so that there was nobody to protect these students that
Speaker 1: were going to protest in Birmingham. It's like, I have
Speaker 1: a hard time talking about this stuff. So but but
Speaker 1: consider this is the this is the stage that we're setting,
Speaker 1: Like this is the state of the country. There's like
Speaker 1: on television you can see black kids being attacked by
Speaker 1: police dogs in your country. Um, in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: If you live there, you're worried that the same stuff
Speaker 1: is gonna go on on your streets. There's like a
Speaker 1: lot of turmoil going on. Two months, two months before
Speaker 1: this happened, Medgar Evers was shot in his driveway and
Speaker 1: killed in Jackson, Mississippi, after coming home from uh going
Speaker 1: door to door and encouraging poor African Americans to register
Speaker 1: vote and a white supremacist name I don't feel like
Speaker 1: reading his name, um uh day La beckwith Byron Della
Speaker 1: Beckworth basically pulled up and shot him in the back
Speaker 1: with a rifle, got equipment, not acquitted, but there were
Speaker 1: two hung juries by all male jurors, and he remained
Speaker 1: free until when they finally came back and retried him
Speaker 1: as an old man. Remember that found him guilty and
Speaker 1: he spent like the last six years of his life
Speaker 1: in prison before he died. But he was just human
Speaker 1: trash because he remained steadfastly white supremacists till the end.
Speaker 1: Was not sorry. His son followed in his footsteps, and
Speaker 1: it was just a ugly human being. And uh, I
Speaker 1: think James Woods played him in a movie. Was that
Speaker 1: was that who he played? I'm pretty sure it was
Speaker 1: James Woods. Yeah, he's pretty slimy. He can not real life,
Speaker 1: but he can do he can do slimy. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is two months previous at Medaga Evers was killed,
Speaker 1: so it was supercharged time and people were nervous for
Speaker 1: good reason. Yeah. And to our white supremacist listeners, if
Speaker 1: you're at all offended by Chuck's characters too, don't even
Speaker 1: bother emailing. I don't think we have We don't care
Speaker 1: at all what you have to say. We have enlightened listeners,
Speaker 1: I think so too. Um So nineteen sixty three, huge dear.
Speaker 1: They announced in June that they're going to carry out
Speaker 1: this march in August, and like you said, JFK was like, no, please,
Speaker 1: don't do that. And they said, you know what, Mr President,
Speaker 1: you have proven yourself is not very reliable trying to
Speaker 1: get the Civil Rights Act through Congress. It was just
Speaker 1: languishing there um, and the the black civil rights leaders
Speaker 1: were like the Brown versus Board of Education happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, I believe desegregated schools in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: There were plenty of schools that still weren't desegregated. All
Speaker 1: of these things that that they have been fighting for incrementally,
Speaker 1: bit by bit, every battle um that they'd won was
Speaker 1: still not necessarily being fulfilled. And Kennedy didn't really seem
Speaker 1: to care that much. So when he asked them as
Speaker 1: president not to do the march, they basically said, you
Speaker 1: don't really have any clout with us right now, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna do this. Yeah, And they did, and they
Speaker 1: announced it in June and they marched in August. And
Speaker 1: the reason they were able to do that was thanks
Speaker 1: almost entirely to a guy named Bayard Rustin. He's my
Speaker 1: new hero. I love this guy. There's a documentary on him.
Speaker 1: Actually it's called Brother Outsider. Yeah. I was gonna watch
Speaker 1: it today, but at that time. Is it on the internet.
Speaker 1: I only saw it on DVD. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I look for it. You could probably get clips. I
Speaker 1: bet piece it together on Uh. Yeah. This guy man,
Speaker 1: you talk about outsiders, he and this is in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three, was openly gay. He was walked with the Kane,
Speaker 1: walked with the Kane. He was black for fun. He
Speaker 1: Uh wasn't really, That's the impression I had from this,
Speaker 1: Like he didn't have an injury. No, he just had kane.
Speaker 1: He had flair. Uh. He was Um. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he was an actual Quaker. His grandmother was a
Speaker 1: Quaker and he followed in her footsteps or was at
Speaker 1: least informed by her religion. And uh was also I
Speaker 1: think a socialist, and most of these people were, if
Speaker 1: not like self identified socialists, carried out a lot of
Speaker 1: held onto a lot of socialist ideals like workers rights,
Speaker 1: like the power of labor too and the right of
Speaker 1: labor to unionize and organize in the basic um value
Speaker 1: of the of a human being. Yeah, I mean, as
Speaker 1: far as outsiders go, though, you could have just stopped
Speaker 1: at openly gay in nineteen sixty three, much less everything else.
Speaker 1: Plus he apparently had a knack for art collecting attic
Speaker 1: I for buying or finding art on the chief that
Speaker 1: turned out to be like really great. Well, he was
Speaker 1: a renaissance man, used to quote poetry and like, uh
Speaker 1: he was he was the guy to organize this thing
Speaker 1: because apparently his just skills bringing people together were legendary
Speaker 1: and also took Probably the thing that is most remarkable
Speaker 1: about Bayard Rustin as far as the lasting legacy goes,
Speaker 1: was that he met um Martin Luther King in the
Speaker 1: early fifties, the early to mid fifties, I think ninety six,
Speaker 1: and at the time MLK had not fully embraced the
Speaker 1: idea of complete non violent protests and resistance. He was
Speaker 1: still like guarded by armed guards and like that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. It was rust and Bayard who brought this
Speaker 1: um Gandhi gandhi is um Yeah, this thought of non
Speaker 1: violent protests and and talk dr King into like really
Speaker 1: embracing it. Was this guy. Well, he did a great job.
Speaker 1: In just two months. He was able to completely organize
Speaker 1: this thing from soup to nuts, um coach all the volunteers. Uh,
Speaker 1: teach everyone how to have a non violent you know,
Speaker 1: protests basically of this size, because it's not just like, hey,
Speaker 1: don't be violent like they may have encountered or violence
Speaker 1: and how to respond to that in a non violent
Speaker 1: way was super important. Uh. He created a twelve page
Speaker 1: manual for bus captains apparently on uh I mean handled
Speaker 1: everything from where to park, to how to park, to
Speaker 1: where the bathrooms are and then maybe most importantly, he
Speaker 1: was responsible for putting together the run of show and
Speaker 1: getting these very large egos um enough time per person
Speaker 1: to where they all felt like they were cared for,
Speaker 1: because even though they all had the same goal, these
Speaker 1: were people who have big egos. You can't get in
Speaker 1: a position like that if you don't have some sort
Speaker 1: of ego and you want your time at the podium.
Speaker 1: You know, they were singers, speakers, public prayers, and he
Speaker 1: was able to navigate those uh ego waters very well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so check, let's um, we'll talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about um rust and Baird and what he did, and
Speaker 1: then talk about the actual march itself. Yeah, right after that,
Speaker 1: So Chuck, um, we're talking about Rust and Baird and
Speaker 1: the job he did putting this whole thing together, but
Speaker 1: as well as as well as he organized in, as
Speaker 1: well as it was pulled off. Um. Even before it
Speaker 1: went down, there was a lot of criticism of it,
Speaker 1: especially from the farthest um, I guess, fringes of the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, like um uh, what was the guy
Speaker 1: who followed John Lewis in the Student Non Violence Coordinating Committee,
Speaker 1: Stokey Carmichael. He was a huge outspoken critic, stoke Stokely Carmichael.
Speaker 1: He was a huge outspoken critic of the march. Basically
Speaker 1: he said, this is not nearly radical enough. This is
Speaker 1: the watered down, um, middle class, sanitized version of the
Speaker 1: real civil rights movement, and I'm not gonna have anything
Speaker 1: to do with it. Yeah. Malcolm x uh kind of
Speaker 1: denounced it as well and called it the farce on
Speaker 1: Washington and said told his fellow Nation of Islam members
Speaker 1: don't go. Even though he did go, um, I don't
Speaker 1: think he necessarily went to support. I think he was
Speaker 1: probably just checking things out, you know, but he didn't
Speaker 1: like join anyone on stage. He was still denouncing it, right,
Speaker 1: and then this, I mean, this is a real criticism
Speaker 1: of this that you know, it's as radical as the
Speaker 1: white establishment thinks this agenda is who you're asking to
Speaker 1: not be discriminated at the polls. You know, like guys
Speaker 1: like Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X are saying, you need
Speaker 1: to go further than this. If you're going to use
Speaker 1: something this big, you need to really carry out a
Speaker 1: bigger agenda UM. And one of the one of the
Speaker 1: things that added fuel to their arguments was the news
Speaker 1: that John Lewis, who again was twenty three and the
Speaker 1: head of the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, had had
Speaker 1: his speech watered down by some of the other UM leaders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just other leaders, but like the Catholic Archbishop of Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Basically it was the speech was circulated to
Speaker 1: a bunch of different people and everyone came back and said,
Speaker 1: you know, you need to tone this down. You can't
Speaker 1: be call out Kennedy quite so plainly because he said
Speaker 1: Kennedy's act the Civil Right checked was too little, too late.
Speaker 1: And then his most famous quote that was UM, I
Speaker 1: guess just deleted pretty much was we want to march
Speaker 1: through the South through the heart of Dixie the way
Speaker 1: Sherman did. We will pursue our own scorched earth policy huh,
Speaker 1: there's a hyphen after that in a non violent way?
Speaker 1: Did he say that, how I finished it, but still
Speaker 1: there's a hyphen and then like, oh yeah, in a
Speaker 1: non violent way. Yeah. So they basically held a caucus
Speaker 1: and they all got together and he said that he
Speaker 1: was still very proud and it was a very strong speech,
Speaker 1: and um, I think everyone has a good point on
Speaker 1: the best way to move forward. But for the kind
Speaker 1: of press this thing was getting, and at the time
Speaker 1: they were probably why is to sanitize it a little
Speaker 1: bit for Middle America? Well, yeah, you know, just to
Speaker 1: reach more people. I mean, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: the for better or for worse? Once John Lewis UM
Speaker 1: once his post was taken over by Stokely Carmichael. The
Speaker 1: Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee eventually changed its name to
Speaker 1: take out the non Violent and was replaced with National
Speaker 1: I think UM And it just kept getting more and
Speaker 1: more militant, and Stokely Carmichael wrote black Power. He also
Speaker 1: coined the term UM. But the militant Black Power movement
Speaker 1: it wasn't trying to too, and we should do an
Speaker 1: episode just on that. They weren't trying to make themselves
Speaker 1: palatable for you know, white Middle America. They were trying
Speaker 1: to take over certain their position. However they needed to
Speaker 1: UM and I agree with you. I just don't think
Speaker 1: the march on Washington, sitting back with this much hindsight,
Speaker 1: would have had the pack that it did necessarily had
Speaker 1: it had that that much more militant tone to it, Oh, totally.
Speaker 1: I mean their goal was progress, not to like scare
Speaker 1: white Americans watching this on television, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: would have happened, you know. Uh, but that's a pickle though,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, like that is there. Those are
Speaker 1: definitely two different ways to achieve an end, and you know,
Speaker 1: is the sanitized, watered down version that's palatable to you know,
Speaker 1: white Middle America? Is that is that the best way?
Speaker 1: Or ultimately you get to a point where you're like,
Speaker 1: is this really making things go anywhere? Is this really
Speaker 1: just kind of allowing more of the same. Well, and
Speaker 1: how hard it must be to temper your anger and
Speaker 1: frustration and tamp that stuff down to try and reach
Speaker 1: more people, you know, Like, to me, that makes it
Speaker 1: even more brave and courageous. Yeah. Well, MLK actually addressed
Speaker 1: that a little bit in his UM speech where he
Speaker 1: basically says like, if you're sitting there thinking like the
Speaker 1: black people are gonna just we're blowing off steam right
Speaker 1: now and things will cool off, so I don't really
Speaker 1: have to do anything. He says, you're in for rude awakening,
Speaker 1: because if things don't change, we're gonna take it back
Speaker 1: to the street and we're gonna be like it's gonna
Speaker 1: get even worse, Like this is the nice version exactly. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so we're at the event, and what civil
Speaker 1: rights event in the nineteen sixties would have been complete
Speaker 1: without a bunch of white liberal celebrities joining in? Thank
Speaker 1: God for them. Uh so, of course you had Marlon
Speaker 1: Brando and Charlton Heston, which I don't know if that
Speaker 1: surprises me or not. Charlton Heston, Yeah, maybe he wasn't
Speaker 1: just across the board one way politically. Maybe he just
Speaker 1: happened to be walking around DC at the time of
Speaker 1: or maybe he championed civil rights and he loved his guns,
Speaker 1: and I don't know enough about him could do both.
Speaker 1: I just remember seeing him being berated by Michael Moore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm bowling for Columbine and then of course plan of
Speaker 1: the apes. But I don't really know that much about him.
Speaker 1: You know, as much as I don't know. As as
Speaker 1: passionate as I feel about guns and things, I feel
Speaker 1: equally passionate about badgering old folks. Yea. And I felt
Speaker 1: kind of bad for him. Man, Michael Moore took a
Speaker 1: lot of guf was just like an old dude that
Speaker 1: you're yelling at in his just old like senile, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in his home. Yeah. Uh, but we can laugh about
Speaker 1: it now. Um. Bob Dylan, of course was one of
Speaker 1: the performers. Johan Bayez, Peter Paul and Mary Yeah, pre
Speaker 1: electric Bob Dylan. Uh. And then we had um some
Speaker 1: famous black stalwarts like Sydney Poartier and Harry Belafonte and
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker, Halliot Jackson saying yeah, and I mentioned James
Speaker 1: Garner was there, Yeah, which is pretty cool. I remember
Speaker 1: where he died. They mentioned that he was like a
Speaker 1: big crusader for civil rights. He was one of the
Speaker 1: few that like really you know, put in the leg work,
Speaker 1: like it wasn't just lip service. He was Rockford dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he is all about the leg work. Yes, he would
Speaker 1: drive around the Kenning away from getting beat up in
Speaker 1: his gold Camaro. Um. So the show opened up basically
Speaker 1: with I think Joan Bayez opened up with the song
Speaker 1: Oh Freedom and then let us sing along of We
Speaker 1: Shall Overcome, and then Peter Poullmry awkwardly covered Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: I know Dylan sitting right there with their version of
Speaker 1: blowing in the wind, and then Dylan followed up with
Speaker 1: paste version paste commercial. Remember that from Mighty Wayne. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was funny, and then Um Dylan followed them with
Speaker 1: his new song about the murder of Medgar Evers called
Speaker 1: only a pawn in their game and um lasted nineteen minutes?
Speaker 1: Is that a joke? Okay? Dylan had some long songs,
Speaker 1: it may have been. UM what else can contralto? Anderson
Speaker 1: Um saying the Negro spiritual He's got the whole world
Speaker 1: in his hands. It's a great tune. And Mahalia Jackson
Speaker 1: I think closed things right before King's speech with I've
Speaker 1: been buked and I've been scorned. So they had people
Speaker 1: like fired up basically with great entertainment, meaningful entertainment, and
Speaker 1: the stage was set for UH the MC's Ozzy Davis
Speaker 1: and Ruby d to introduce UH Martin Luther King for
Speaker 1: his now famous speech, which at the time, at least
Speaker 1: they say in this article it wasn't the end all
Speaker 1: be all, but over time it has gained more and
Speaker 1: more steam. It's like sort of the you know, the
Speaker 1: watershed moment, right Like Life magazine covered the March on Washington,
Speaker 1: and the issue that followed the march didn't have MLK
Speaker 1: on the cover. It had Bayard Rustin and a Philip Randolphe.
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome, actually, and I mean that's how a
Speaker 1: lot of people viewed the march for a very long time.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a Philip Randolf's idea, Bayard Rustin
Speaker 1: planned it, MLK lent a ton of star power to it,
Speaker 1: and by signing on a lot of other people signed
Speaker 1: on too. But it wasn't until and I've seen this
Speaker 1: else where. It's not this article alone, but um supposedly
Speaker 1: it wasn't until MLK was assassinated that a lot of
Speaker 1: people UM that had formerly been just kind of sympathetic
Speaker 1: or whatever like really came to adopt like his viewpoint.
Speaker 1: And tragically his death propelled the civil rights movement forwards. Sure, UM,
Speaker 1: and one of the by products of that was that
Speaker 1: this speech came to become what the March on Washington was,
Speaker 1: but for the five years after the march, until MLK
Speaker 1: was assassinated, that wasn't really the case. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: main thrust of the speech, even though it's remembered now, um, well,
Speaker 1: if you've never listened to the whole thing, you should
Speaker 1: do that, by the way, but you you know, it's
Speaker 1: best remembered for the famous quote, I have a dream
Speaker 1: that my four little children will one day live in
Speaker 1: a nation where they will not be judged by the
Speaker 1: color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Speaker 1: The main thrust of the script, though, was the or
Speaker 1: the script the speech which was scripted to um was
Speaker 1: the bad check that America had written, basically with the quote,
Speaker 1: instead of honoring the sacred obligation, America has given the
Speaker 1: Negro people a bad check, check which has come back
Speaker 1: marked insufficient funds. And um, apparently after this you know
Speaker 1: a bit about the bad check and basically saying that
Speaker 1: you promised everyone freedom and you're not giving everyone freedom. Um.
Speaker 1: Mahalia Jackson behind him, one of his friends said, tell
Speaker 1: him about the dream, and that's when he improvised that
Speaker 1: section at the end, which was so powerful that he
Speaker 1: had he improvised it, but it is something he had
Speaker 1: used in sermons previous. But he was riffing during this
Speaker 1: speech at that point, pretty much quite a riff. I've riffed.
Speaker 1: I ain't riffed like that, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And so after that they met with Kennedy and Johnson,
Speaker 1: and Kennedy was going to get the votes lined up
Speaker 1: to get the Civil Rights Act passed, but was and killed,
Speaker 1: as we all know, And so then that fell to Johnson,
Speaker 1: which is what that play that Cranston is in covers
Speaker 1: is from basically the moment he took office and the
Speaker 1: whole rigamarole with trying to get the Civil Rights passed through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I think Kennedy, I think is I don't think
Speaker 1: he was against it. I think he was just a
Speaker 1: politician above all else and cared only about being a
Speaker 1: politician that gets reelected. Well, apparently he had. He went
Speaker 1: through a little bit of a transformation. He wasn't adamantly opposed,
Speaker 1: he wasn't a segregationist, but he certainly wasn't like a
Speaker 1: black civil rights crusader. Yeah, yeah, um, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he was. Also there was a certain amount of
Speaker 1: ineffectiveness with Congress or whatever, where lb J would just
Speaker 1: beat you at the switch until you voted the way
Speaker 1: he wanted you to. He just wouldn't leave you alone.
Speaker 1: He just kind of did what what he said if
Speaker 1: he wanted something done, which is how he managed to
Speaker 1: get the Voting Rights Act passed. He had a hard time, though.
Speaker 1: They should make a movie version of that play, I
Speaker 1: think to get it out the more people. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was really fascinating. It was kind of like Lincoln. The
Speaker 1: movie wasn't like here's Lincoln's life. It's like, here's a
Speaker 1: really important part of Lincoln's Well, here's the act of
Speaker 1: trying to get the amendment passed. They probably will, you know,
Speaker 1: if it was that good, they will. Yeah, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen some Man yet. Have you seen that? No, I
Speaker 1: haven't dying to see that. It's supposed to be really good.
Speaker 1: So so LBJ gets the Voting Rights Act passed, the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Act passed, and um also, I didn't mention
Speaker 1: this anywhere, and I didn't really see it elsewhere. But
Speaker 1: the Great Society, the War on Poverty came about in
Speaker 1: like n sixty five, and I'm pretty sure that all
Speaker 1: of those things. The passage of all those things were
Speaker 1: direct result of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that march got those things pushed through. Didn't
Speaker 1: hurt that Kennedy was assassinated. LBJ definitely played on that
Speaker 1: to get Congress to pass through because even called the
Speaker 1: passage of those acts of fitting tribute to to JFK.
Speaker 1: But um, the the the that show of of agreement
Speaker 1: of a quarter of a million people, black and white
Speaker 1: and Jewish and who I'm sure they were like Chicano
Speaker 1: people there, that's what they call them back then. Um,
Speaker 1: there were. It wasn't just black people showing up in
Speaker 1: d C. Going to the trouble of driving from all
Speaker 1: over the country to get to d C to march
Speaker 1: to say this is what we want. That had a
Speaker 1: huge effect, a direct impact on this, this legislation change totally,
Speaker 1: all kinds of minorities jumping on board. For sure. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. And since those acts were passed, there's
Speaker 1: been no more racism in the United States. No, that
Speaker 1: was it. It ended right then when LBJ signed those
Speaker 1: Everything was cheery after that, still a long way to go.
Speaker 1: People still being facetious here. Uh and we would love
Speaker 1: to close the show by playing the tirety of that speech.
Speaker 1: But I looked it up today to see if it
Speaker 1: was in the public domain, and surprisingly it is not.
Speaker 1: It is owned by the king family. So where can
Speaker 1: you go listen to it? Though, Well, I've listened to
Speaker 1: it on YouTube and I've posted it on our Facebook
Speaker 1: page last year on YouTube, so I don't know if
Speaker 1: they just don't police it as much, but I know
Speaker 1: they have gone to court a few times. Doing CBS
Speaker 1: USA today, Apparently they are not against educators that have
Speaker 1: used the speech, but a king himself obtained the rights
Speaker 1: UM one month after he gave the speech. And ah,
Speaker 1: some people, a lot of people, in fact of historians
Speaker 1: have come out and said, you know what, you should
Speaker 1: release this. You're making a big mistake. It can only
Speaker 1: help the cause, uh, to get it out to more
Speaker 1: and more ears and full because it's one thing to read,
Speaker 1: it's another thing to hear it. UH. And they have
Speaker 1: declined so far, so we'll see what happens in the future.
Speaker 1: Oddly enough, UM E M I Publishing UM, along with
Speaker 1: the King family, owns the publishing copyrights and which was
Speaker 1: sold off to Sony, so the Sony Corporation technically now
Speaker 1: partially owns that I have a dream. Speed's just such
Speaker 1: a weird ending progress. Yeah yeah, uh, I think we
Speaker 1: can play snippet though, for sure, Oh we can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's we should end with a snippet. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to get do you have a listener
Speaker 1: mail in or should we just do the snippet? Um?
Speaker 1: I do have a listener mail, and then we'll do
Speaker 1: the snippet happen? Okay? All right, Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about the March on Washington, you should
Speaker 1: check out actually a um an article in Descent magazine
Speaker 1: called the Forgotten Radical History of the March on Washington's
Speaker 1: from Spring two thirteen. It's online. It's pretty great. UM.
Speaker 1: And then also, don't forget to check out our own
Speaker 1: article on how stuff works dot com. Just type that
Speaker 1: in the search bar and it will bring us up.
Speaker 1: And since I said search parts, time for listener mail,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this from Chris about Jim Henson. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to express my appreciation for yesterday's episode.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of Henson. UM so on any
Speaker 1: ordinary day it would have been great to hear the
Speaker 1: two of you cover such an amazing person. However, it
Speaker 1: came at a time when I really needed a positive distraction.
Speaker 1: Tuesday was one of the most difficult days of my life.
Speaker 1: I had to have my dog put to sleep. Uh.
Speaker 1: Jupiter was thirteen and a half years old. She'd been
Speaker 1: with me since she was a puppy. She was my
Speaker 1: best friend. In imagining life without her is difficult. So
Speaker 1: Monday and Tuesday we're full of tears, and your show
Speaker 1: really helped take my mind off the sadness. I've been
Speaker 1: a fan for years and realized this morning, but I
Speaker 1: listened to you guys for the first time while walking Jupiter,
Speaker 1: so you've accompanied on many walks since. I'm a huge
Speaker 1: fan of Jim Hinson, as I said, managed New England's
Speaker 1: only year round nonprofit puppet theater, The Puppet Show Place Theater,
Speaker 1: for four years before moving to d C to pursue
Speaker 1: a Master's of Fine Arts degree in nonfiction filmmaking. My
Speaker 1: thesis project, which I'm currently in pre production on, utilizes
Speaker 1: puppets to introduce kids to history. It's kind of cool.
Speaker 1: It's called Footnotes, a socumentary see what he did there?
Speaker 1: You can find a description at socumentary dot com. The
Speaker 1: thesis is partially funded by the Mr Rogers Memorial Scholarship,
Speaker 1: which is provided by the Television Academy Foundation. I encourage
Speaker 1: you to consider Fred Rogers is a future episode topic because,
Speaker 1: like Henson, he was such a talented guy often marginalized
Speaker 1: by society. I'd totally love to do one of Mr Rodgers.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the show. Yeah, man, um, I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the show and appreciate what you guys do. One
Speaker 1: day in the future, your talents may be recognized by
Speaker 1: a couple of knuckle heads with the podcasts. So I
Speaker 1: think he called this knuckle heads. Yeah, and I hope
Speaker 1: that someone covered us one day. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: of weird backhanded compliment. So that's from Chris Higgins and
Speaker 1: email with Chris today. Very sorry to hear about Jupiter
Speaker 1: and best of luck with soccumentary dot com. People can
Speaker 1: go and check that out them all for puppets, sure,
Speaker 1: especially punny named puppets. That's right. Um. Well, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us to let us
Speaker 1: know that we're knuckle heads or for whatever reason, you
Speaker 1: can tweet to us at s y S k Podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and has
Speaker 1: always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. And now the Reverend Doctor
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr. When we allowed freedom ring, when
Speaker 1: we let it ring from every village and ever hamlet,
Speaker 1: from every state and every city, we will be able
Speaker 1: to speed up. At day when all the thoughts children,
Speaker 1: black men and white men, Jews and gent piles, Protostants
Speaker 1: and Catholics, we'll be able to join hands and singing
Speaker 1: the whites of the old Negro spiritual pre at last, free,
Speaker 1: at last, Thank God a light here we'll te