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