WEBVTT - Hitler’s Olympics, Part 9: A Plague on Both Your Houses. 0:00:04.160 --> 0:00:07.440 The thing I'm really really interested in is the kind 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:10.960 of way the case was received around the country and 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.440 the world. That's where I want to get to. But 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:18.040 starting with So, this train that's going to run right 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:23.520 out there, it's coming from Chattanooga right going where at Nashville, Memphis, 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.080 going to Memphis. Yeah, I'm in a little town in 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.480 northeast Alabama called Scottsborough, sitting in an old African Methodist 0:00:31.480 --> 0:00:35.520 Episcopal church built in eighteen seventy eight by former slaves. 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.560 The church is now a museum and Ben, the daph 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:41.680 Haffrey and I are talking to the director, Tom Reidy 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:45.680 about what happened on the Chattanooga to Memphis train at 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:47.040 the peak of the Great Depression. 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:49.960 It's nineteen thirty one. People are hoboing all over the 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:54.360 country and on the morning of March twenty fifth, the 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:59.240 nine defendants along with two young ladies from Huntsville, along 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.400 with dozens of others. Never we'll never know who else 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:07.120 was on that train between here and Chattanooga. There was 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:12.240 an altercation on the train and at Stevenson, which is 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:19.399 a town about twenty miles from here, six white guys 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:24.600 were thrown off the train by a group of African Americans. 0:01:24.640 --> 0:01:26.679 This is probably one part of the story. Everybody agrees 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.000 on that the six came off and these other guys 0:01:30.000 --> 0:01:33.160 stayed on. There's a fight, Yeah, there's a fight over space. 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:37.480 This is Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:40.240 So these the white guys that got off the train 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:47.560 went back to the agent at the Stevenson depot and said, hey, 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:50.160 we just got thrown off this train, which they were 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:54.200 illegally on right there on ticketed. But and there's all 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:56.480 these black guys. Of course they didn't call them black guys. 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:59.080 And oh, by the way, two white women. 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:03.720 We have white women and young black men together on 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:08.239 a train. The station master at Stevenson Depot calls ahead 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:09.320 to the paint Rock station. 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:13.959 By the time they get to paint Rock, there's anywhere 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:20.520 from one hundred and one hundred and fifty men, horses, 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:23.200 ropes waiting for the train. 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:26.959 Everyone's pulled off the train. The two women say they've 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.920 been raped. The nine young men, some of them just 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.880 kids twelve and thirteen years old, gets shipped directly to Scottsboro, 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:37.040 which is the county seat. By the time they get there, 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:39.880 another mob is waiting, and. 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:45.200 There's this wonderful Atticus Finch moment in the story where 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.840 the sheriff of Scottsboro, Mattwane, comes out with his shotgun 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.400 and says, the first one that tries to cross me 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:58.080 is going to get their head blown off. And that 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:00.280 apparently held the crowd back a little. 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:02.120 Because I guess they believed them, And. 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:08.360 Two weeks later, on April sixth, and three hours after 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.119 they met their attorney, the trial started. 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:20.000 Him Malcolm Gladwell, Welcome to Revisionist History, my show about 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:25.160 things overlooked and misunderstood. This is a ninth episode in 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:29.600 our series about Hitler's Olympics, The Games behind the Games. 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:35.000 We've spent the last eight episodes exploring the many rationalizations, 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:40.640 self justifications, and delusions triggered by the Berlin Olympics. Berlin 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:45.000 kicked off cognitive dissonance on an international scale. Hitler's wave 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:49.800 of anti Semitism focused the world's attention on Germany, But 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.400 in nineteen thirty one, something happened across the ocean from 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.880 Germany that held the world's attention in the same way 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:02.840 the Scotsboro Boys trial. In this our series finale, let's 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:12.080 turn the clock back to nineteen thirty one. The Scottsborough 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:15.880 trial was a farce. There was no evidence of rape, 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:18.520 and one of the women would later retract her accusation. 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:22.000 Neither fact made a difference in nine. 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:26.000 Negro youths are hurriedly arrested, promptly marched off to Scottsboro 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:29.679 for trial. Six days later, they are indicted uncharges of assault. 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.840 Seven of them are senanced by Justice John C. Anderson 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:38.159 to hang by the neck until dead. Subsequent motion for 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.440 a new trial is overruled as the Alabama Supreme Court 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:42.680 affirms the convictions. 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:45.320 This kind of thing had been happening in the South 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:49.680 for years, but something about Scottsboro and the brazenness of 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:54.119 all white juries saying guilty, guilty, guilty, really touched a nerve. 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:58.080 Thousands of telegrams bore into Alabama from all over the world, 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:01.280 asserting that the Negroes had been night a fair trial. 0:05:01.600 --> 0:05:04.040 The case is finally carried to the highest court in 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:07.640 the land, the Supreme Court of the United States. 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:13.960 There was public pressure, There were appeals, re trials, landlock. 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:15.200 Did you go to jump in chout? 0:05:15.760 --> 0:05:18.960 They tell you what's all about. 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:25.080 Everybody's writing about it. Everybody knows the Discosbrow Voice. People 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:27.440 were starting to have radios in their house. But it's 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:30.760 just remarkable how fast the word did spread on. 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:33.800 This Reedy was sitting inside the old church as we spoke, 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:36.760 and behind him there was a poster. It was a 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:39.599 list of names linked in some way to the public 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:43.720 campaign to get justice for the Scotsboro Boys. There was I. B. Wells, 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.960 the great African American activist, Jimmy Cagney, one of the 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.920 biggest names in Hollywood, and then Albert Einstein. 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:56.240 Einstein was in Germany when they arrested, and he in 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.440 the summer of nineteen thirty one wrote a letter with 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:05.000 a bunch of German scientists to the governor Miller, saying, well, 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.640 they were intellectuals, they called them. So German intellectuals demand 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:14.160 the release of the Scottsboro Boys because they're innocent. 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:23.720 And Einstein, I sent is like physicists living in Germany. Right, 0:06:23.800 --> 0:06:28.360 who is somehow so moved by the press accounts of this? 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:28.880 Right? 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:33.400 Two years before Hitler became Chancellor, thousands of Germans were 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:38.039 out in the streets protesting American white supremacy. 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:41.599 And they had people throwing rocks through the American embassy 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.440 with notes taped onto him. That was just say they 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:45.400 shall not die. 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.479 And that is why Ben and I were in Scottsborough. 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:52.200 I remember when you sent me an email with one 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:54.040 line and it was like, We're going to do an 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.279 episode on Scottsboro. And I was like, why would we 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.200 talk about Scottsborough? And then I realized what year it 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:03.440 was and what happened the year after? 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:08.200 Oh right, nineteen thirty two an Olympic year as well, 0:07:08.480 --> 0:07:11.760 and where were those games held? I think you can 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:29.960 guess where this is headed. In April of venteteen twenty three, 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:34.640 a real estate developer from California named Billy Garland traveled 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:38.880 to Rome for the annual meeting of the International Olympic Committee. 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.600 Garland was good friends with Avery Brundage. They were cut 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:47.040 from the same cloth, men from humble beginnings with outsized ambition, 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.760 dreamers builders. But where Brundage was grim and angry, with 0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:54.080 a chip on his shoulder the size of Lake Michigan, 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:59.760 Garland was all sunny, optimism and charm. Billy everyone called 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.400 him Billy had life force. Billy grew up poor and 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.360 married money. Billy was the embodiment of Los Angeles, a 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:10.760 city in the nineteen twenties, half a million strong and 0:08:10.840 --> 0:08:14.520 growing by the day, a city on the verge of stardom. 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.280 Billy watched the sunrise every morning over the San Berardino Mountains, 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:21.200 but never bothered to look to see if it's said 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:21.560 at night. 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:27.400 LA was really controlled and run by a coterie of 0:08:28.160 --> 0:08:33.880 a shadow government comprised of banker's financiers, but really, above 0:08:33.920 --> 0:08:35.240 all the real estate. 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.560 Man Barry Siegel, the author of a wonderful book about 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.080 Billy Garland, Dreamers and Schemers. 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:47.200 Of which Billy Garland was premier. The prince of the realtors. 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:50.880 Billy owned huge swaths of downtown Los Angeles. His best 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.840 friend was the publisher of the La Times, the most 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.080 powerful man in the city. His brothers in the shadow 0:08:57.120 --> 0:08:59.000 government kept out of the spotlight. 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:00.440 Billy. 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:09.680 Billy was the frontman, a very outgoing personality, making speeches, 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:14.800 arriving at the railroad station, press conferences, writing columns of 0:09:14.840 --> 0:09:22.400 his own for the La Times, always always promoting, promoting 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:24.560 the city, promoting the future. 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.160 So in nineteen twenty three, Billy sails to Italy for 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:34.640 his biggest pitch yet to the International Olympic Committee. The 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.880 IOC was meeting that year in the Old Capitol Building 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:41.080 across from the Forum, a venue worthy of a group 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:44.559 obsessed with antiquity. To start the day, the King of 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:48.280 Italy said a few words. Then the King is opening things, 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:52.000 and like, here's this guy from I mean, from what 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:54.600 their perspective must have been, the middle of nowhere. 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.920 Absolutely, they literally were asking him where Los Angeles is? 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:02.320 What's his trump card? 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:11.839 Hollywood? By that time, Hollywood films were widely popular all 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:15.680 around the world, and that's one of the things he 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:20.359 was asked at that meeting. Is is La anywhere near Hollywood? 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.199 And Billy was smart enough to say, yes, La is 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:26.320 a suburb of Hollywood. 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:31.720 He understood that that glamour, the emerging glamour of the region, 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:35.520 could play to his advantage. Yes, yeah, I'm just thinking 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.120 back to the IOC though, because the the IOC really 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:43.160 is it's like every faded aristocrat in Europe is, Yes, 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:46.720 every fuddy dotty you can find with their wax mustache 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:53.000 is around the table. And then this like this, this 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:57.840 this kind of charismatic, wide open, extroverted Californian shows up. 0:10:57.880 --> 0:11:01.120 I just I'm just imagining. It's a fantastic scene. 0:11:01.880 --> 0:11:03.880 I've imagined it too, And I think that's part of 0:11:04.320 --> 0:11:08.160 how he was effected. I mean, he was a breath 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:10.640 of fresh air. He knew how to talk to them, 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.400 the idea. When he rose to give his talk, his pitch, 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:21.160 he's pitching America. He's pitching the culture of America, which 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:23.520 is still which is strange and exotic to them. 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:28.000 They're there amidst all of this sort of eighteenth century grandeur, 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:33.320 and the American stands up and says, there's this brand 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.440 new country across the ocean. You guys need to go 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:39.160 there next. Kind of this kind of yeah. 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:42.000 It's and that's exactly that's an exact sort of exactly 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:43.240 how he put it too. 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:47.760 He says, if the Games are to be truly international 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:51.600 in character, they must also be held in other parts 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:57.079 of the universe. The Olympics should come to Los Angeles. 0:11:57.800 --> 0:12:00.840 The room is silent, No one says a word. Then 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:06.200 one delicate stands up and says, so moved, let us 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:09.280 take our beloved creation to the shores of the Pacific. 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:12.280 Someone else seconds the motion. It goes to a vote, 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:18.800 it carries unanimously. The whole group celebrated at the Coronel Palace, 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:22.360 home to the country's royal family. Billy spotted a bald 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:27.079 man speaking passionately to a group of onlookers. It was Mussolini, 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:31.040 the newly installed fascist leader of Italy. Billy wandered over 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.520 shook his hand. The next day, Billy had an audience 0:12:34.559 --> 0:12:37.760 with Pope Pious, the eleventh of the Vatican. Pious said 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:41.240 how much he believed in the Olympic tradition, and Billy 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:47.719 kissed his ring. Billy convinces the IOC to bring its 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:51.800 temple of human idealism to the United States, And just 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:56.120 as the whole dazzling spectacle is about to launch, nine 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.240 black kids in northern Alabama gets swept up in a 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:03.280 miscarriage of justice so outrageous that it sparks a wave 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:08.120 of protest around the world. March is in Germany, South Africa, Cuba, 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.280 and the world finds itself in the same position as 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:13.880 it would four years later on the eve of the 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:19.600 Berlin Olympics, contemplating a pure competition in an impure place 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.520 with one difference. No one ever threatened to boycott the 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:25.640 Los Angeles Games. 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:32.720 That's in the name are the President of the United 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:39.240 stirty I have proclaim open the Olympic Games of Los 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:47.360 Angeles celebrating that tenth opiod on the modern area. 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:54.160 Well, so if the world is upset about Scottsboro in 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.760 nineteen thirty one, then why is there not a boycott 0:13:57.920 --> 0:13:59.280 of the LA Games in thirty two? 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:06.000 I think you know, Well, the obvious reason is the 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:12.440 nature of American transgressions in civil rights are on the 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:15.959 surface so different from the nature of Nazi transgressions. American 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:22.040 transgressions are three hundred years old. They're embedded in the 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:26.600 kind of culture of the country. And I can't stress 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:31.680 this enough. They involve black people, and it's just it 0:14:31.760 --> 0:14:34.000 is simply the case and continues to be the case 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:37.040 in some sense that a transgression against a black person 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:40.160 is not considered the same as a transgression against a 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:40.680 white person. 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:42.840 Part of the difference is that Nazism is a new thing, 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:45.640 whereas what's happening in Alabama is just not new at all. 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:51.560 Yeah, what's important is it's because it wasn't it wasn't 0:14:51.560 --> 0:14:55.400 a one off. Right, why does America go up and 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:57.600 the black community particular gets so up in arms about 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:01.480 George Floyd because it had happened too many times? Right, 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.160 And Scott's part is kind of like that. There's been 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.280 a steady drumbeat of this kind of stuff coming out 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:11.480 of the South, and there's you know, the world seizes 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:15.400 on that because they're like it can't, can't keep doing this. 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:20.680 It wasn't system malfunction. It was system function. That's a 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.360 lot more kind of a outrageous I don't think you 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:26.400 could make sense of what happened with the Scottsboro Boys 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.080 unless you take a step back and look at the 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:33.520 Alabama Constitution. I mean, look at the kind of legal 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:36.240 infrastructure that was in place in Alabama at the time. 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:42.320 So why did the LA Games escape moral scrutiny. It's puzzling. 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.280 Maybe it's as simple as the fact that the world 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.560 holds America to a different standard than everyone else. If 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:51.520 you're a young upstart of a country, you get away 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:54.680 with more. Or maybe the world cares less about crimes 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:58.360 against black people than it does about crimes against white people. 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.400 Or maybe the Nazis were in the Olympics so much 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:04.400 about Nazism that it was really easy to see the 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:08.120 contradiction between the Games and its host in a way 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:12.320 that didn't seem as obvious with the LA Olympics. Or 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:16.240 maybe it's all three, but Scottsborough was not some strange 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:20.920 outlying event. It touched a raw nerve because people understood 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.360 that it was typical. It was how the South worked. 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:29.720 Discrimination was baked right into American law. I called up 0:16:29.720 --> 0:16:32.800 a law professor at the University of Alabama, Susan Hammill, 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:36.200 and the first thing she brought up was Alabama's state 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:39.160 constitution at the time, which had been rewritten in nineteen 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:43.000 oh one, with one thing in mind. There was no. 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:48.480 Doubt as to what the intent was. 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:52.200 As one delegate said, they were driven by quote, the 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:56.560 necessity of relieving the black belt of the incubus resting 0:16:56.600 --> 0:17:00.360 on it. Another delegate was more blunt. 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:04.119 We are here to get rid of the nigger. 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:08.800 The fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution bars states from 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:11.679 denying people the right to vote, So the framers of 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:16.480 the Alabama Constitution devised a bunch of workarounds. First, a 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.800 poll tax. You had to pay a dollar fifty to vote, 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:21.960 which was a lot of money back then. Right there, 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:24.479 you've gotten rid of a lot of sharecroppers. But they 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:27.760 kept going, adding every obstacle they could think of. 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:35.200 They had to own property, there were literacy tests, and 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:41.560 there was the overall discretion of the white voting registrars. 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:47.600 The voting registrars in terms of who was actually registering folks, 0:17:48.000 --> 0:17:50.879 had a great deal of discretion. If you had a 0:17:50.880 --> 0:17:55.240 white person that kind of met the requirements but also 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:57.840 maybe didn't, they could get waved through. 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:01.719 The nineteen oh one Alabama Constitution would end up being 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:06.040 the longest constitution in the world three hundred and eighty 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:09.960 eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty two words, about eight 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:13.480 hundred and fifty times longer than the US Constitution. 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:18.320 When African Americans went to register after the nineteen oh 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:21.800 one constitution was ratified, they were just turned away. 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:25.199 In nineteen hundred, there were one hundred and eighty one thousand, 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:29.160 four hundred and seventy one African American men of voting age. 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:33.800 After the constitution, fewer than three thousand of those men 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:34.439 could vote. 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:37.960 You know, we did not have a black electorate in 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:42.320 this state worth speaking of until the nineteen seventies. 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:48.800 It gets worse. In nineteen oh two, a black janitor 0:18:49.040 --> 0:18:53.439 named Jackson Giles file suit against the state. Jackson says, 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.360 I meet all the requirements, I can read, I understand 0:18:56.359 --> 0:18:59.600 the constitution, I paid my pull tax, I own property, 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.080 but they still won't let me vote. The case goes 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:06.560 all the way to the Supreme Court in nineteen oh three, where, 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:11.120 writing for the majority, the legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:13.640 one of the greatest legal minds the Supreme Court has 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:18.760 ever produced. Rites and I'm not making this up. The defendant, 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:23.120 mister Jackson, alleges that the state of Alabama has constructed 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:26.080 a voting system that is in open violation of the 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:29.959 Constitution of the US. But he is asking to be 0:19:30.040 --> 0:19:33.320 registered to vote under the very same rules that he 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:36.960 says are an open violation of the Constitution of the 0:19:37.040 --> 0:19:40.600 United States. If we rule in his favor, we are 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:44.280 complicit in the violation. It's one of the all time 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:46.880 great Supreme Court catch twenty twos. 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:54.720 Justice Holmes disingenuously said, Oh, if Jackson Giles wants a remedy, 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:57.320 he needs to seek his member of Congress to do 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:01.440 something about it. But Jackson and Giles had been denied 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:05.960 the right to vote for any member of Congress. 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:09.400 Mister Giles, if you don't like the system that keeps 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:11.560 you from voting, then vote to change it. 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:16.480 The US Supreme Court, like the rest of the country 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:21.080 just wanted to wash their hands of If I can 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:23.399 put it this way, the dirty South. 0:20:24.960 --> 0:20:28.439 Now we can understand what happened in Scottsboro. The jury 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:32.199 pool in Alabama is drawn from the voting pool, and 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.040 since the voters are basically all white, then the juries 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.040 are all white, which means that when nine black kids 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.679 are accused of some bogus crime on the Chattanooga to 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:45.800 Memphis train, those nine kids are out of luck. All told, 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:48.840 the Scottsboro boys would end up serving more than one 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:54.040 hundred years behind bars for something that never happened. And 0:20:54.080 --> 0:20:57.159 in Giles v. Harris, the Supreme Court of the United 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:02.639 States signs off on the whole range. And so do 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:06.280 you study that case in at law school in Alabama. 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:08.480 No, isn't that a shame? 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:15.720 Scottsboro was an embarrassment, an outrage, exposing the very dark 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.159 heart of the country that was about to host the 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:23.760 purest of athletic spectacles. If the world shouldn't have gone 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:28.200 to Berlin in nineteen thirty six for moral reasons, then 0:21:28.200 --> 0:21:30.639 the world shouldn't have gone to Los Angeles in nineteen 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:42.320 thirty two either. Where can you go in the lead 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:44.720 up to the Berlin Games, a group known as the 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:47.800 Jewish Labor Committee set out to solve the problem of 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:51.240 what to do about impure places and peer competitions. The 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:53.879 organizers were the same people who had been up in 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:57.200 arms over the Scottsboro Boys four years earlier, who helped 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:00.600 fund their legal defense, who were fighting for the rights 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:05.399 of working Americans. Their hands were clean. They called their 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:09.800 games the World Labor Athletic Carnival. It was held in 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:12.639 New York City on Randall's Island in August of nineteen 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.560 thirty six, overlapping with the last two days of the 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:20.760 Berlin Olympics. Invitations went out. The carnival will function as 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.880 a show of protest against the iron heel of Nazism. 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.920 New York Mayor Fiorlo LaGuardia signed up to be co chair. 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:30.760 The Governor of New York agreed to hand out prizes. 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:33.720 Proceeds from the event will go to supporting the anti 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:38.280 Nazi movement end eventually to helping Jews escape from Eastern Europe. 0:22:39.359 --> 0:22:43.280 The Labour Games represent the first solution to the dilemma 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:48.080 of the Olympics. Carve out a little corner of ideological purity, 0:22:48.560 --> 0:22:53.240 don't compromise align your political values with the ethic of 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:58.520 amateur sport. Be an absolutist. Ed Gordon was there. He 0:22:58.560 --> 0:22:59.959 was the winner of the long jump in the night 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:04.080 nineteen thirty two Olympics. George Veroff, the so called jumping Janitor, 0:23:04.160 --> 0:23:07.040 was there too. His gold medal jump beat the winning 0:23:07.080 --> 0:23:09.199 mark in Berlin by a full inch and a half. 0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:12.240 The women's forty yard dash was won by a member 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:17.720 of the dressmakers Union, Wanda Oldzuska. Another Oldzuska Mitzi, competed 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:20.640 with her on the winning relay team. When reporter asked 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:25.439 Mitzi how she trained, she responded, oh, picketing and throwing 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:32.000 stones through windows, and nobody came to watch. The stands 0:23:32.040 --> 0:23:37.080 were half empty. Why well. The Games were supposed to 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:40.240 draw their support from the labor movement, but the Jewish 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:44.320 Labor Committee was an anti communist socialist group, so some 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:48.320 communists felt left out and stayed home. Then came a 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:52.159 second disagreement, this time between the American Socialist Party, the 0:23:52.200 --> 0:23:56.600 Old Guard, and some upstart progressives led by Norman Thomas. 0:23:57.400 --> 0:23:59.520 Let me just read to you from a History of 0:23:59.520 --> 0:24:04.199 the Labor Games by Edward Shapiro. The struggle came to 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:07.800 a head at the party's annual convention in nineteen thirty 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:11.480 six in Cleveland. When the Olguard left, the party took 0:24:11.600 --> 0:24:14.680 the magazine The New Leader with them and created the 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:19.240 Social Democratic Federation. The New Leader viewed Randall's Island as 0:24:19.359 --> 0:24:24.560 virtually a New York Social Democratic Federation, event copiously discussing 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:27.919 its progress from its inception in May through the Games 0:24:27.920 --> 0:24:32.919 themselves in August. The pro Norman Thomas Socialist Call, in contrast, 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:36.800 merely printed a pro forma announcement of the Games. More 0:24:36.840 --> 0:24:40.280 to its liking, was a track in gymnastic demonstration on 0:24:40.359 --> 0:24:45.280 July fourth, nineteen thirty six, in Taberville, Ohio, near Cleveland, 0:24:45.840 --> 0:24:50.240 sponsored by the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America, the Czechoslovak 0:24:50.400 --> 0:24:53.760 Labor Gymnastic Union, the American Workingmen's Socle of New York, 0:24:53.800 --> 0:24:58.840 the Workingmen's Gymnastic Association, and the Workers Sports League of America. 0:25:01.280 --> 0:25:04.679 This is the problem with the pursuit of purity. At 0:25:04.680 --> 0:25:09.080 a certain point, it starts to get absurd because the 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:12.159 Communists get upset of the Socialists, and then the Socialists 0:25:12.160 --> 0:25:14.880 get upset at each other, and sooner or later, your 0:25:14.960 --> 0:25:18.359 athletic spectacle that was intended to showcase the greatest talent 0:25:18.400 --> 0:25:22.960 in the world is in Taberville, Ohio, under the aegis 0:25:23.040 --> 0:25:28.600 of the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America. I mean, with 0:25:28.680 --> 0:25:32.359 all due respect to the Czechoslovak Socialist Federation of America. 0:25:33.200 --> 0:25:40.920 Who wants to watch that? So what's the solution? Option two? 0:25:41.640 --> 0:25:45.840 Take that absolutism down a notch. Be willing to compromise. 0:25:47.080 --> 0:25:50.560 Remember Charles Cheryl, the American delegate who fought so hard 0:25:50.600 --> 0:25:53.720 for America to stay in the Berlin Olympics. Just before 0:25:53.720 --> 0:25:56.800 the games, someone sent him a news clipping about the 0:25:56.880 --> 0:26:00.399 killing of a Jewish footballer who had apparently been dragged 0:26:00.440 --> 0:26:03.159 off the field by Nazis in the middle of a match. 0:26:03.800 --> 0:26:08.479 Cheryl wrote back your September twenty three letter about the 0:26:08.520 --> 0:26:12.359 Prague press story of a Jewish football player killed at 0:26:12.440 --> 0:26:17.919 Ratisports Silesia arrived today. If true, it is as bad 0:26:18.000 --> 0:26:24.040 as Negro lynchings in our South. Cheryl had ideals. He 0:26:24.160 --> 0:26:28.639 was perfectly willing to compromise around the edges. Yes, the 0:26:28.680 --> 0:26:32.400 American South is a nasty place, but so what show 0:26:32.440 --> 0:26:35.920 me a country without nasty places. You have to hold 0:26:35.920 --> 0:26:39.560 a pure competition in an impure place, because there aren't 0:26:39.560 --> 0:26:44.520 any pure places. Here's how Cheryl finishes the letter, answering 0:26:44.560 --> 0:26:47.280 your clipping. Let me ask you what you would have 0:26:47.320 --> 0:26:51.040 said if any foreign team had boycotted our Los Angeles 0:26:51.280 --> 0:26:54.240 nineteen thirty two games because of our negro lynchings in 0:26:54.280 --> 0:26:58.800