WEBVTT - Outside Agitators 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:10.320 Coll Zone Media. On May twenty second, nineteen sixty seven, 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.920 George ware took the stand in a crowded courtroom in Nashville, Tennessee. 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.280 Whare was twenty seven years old. He had graduated from 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.720 Tuskegee University with a master's degree in biochemistry in nineteen 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:27.160 sixty five, but he quickly abandoned the job he got 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:31.080 up north after graduation for something he thought was more important. 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.760 He went to work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.880 as an aide to chairman Stokely Carmichael, and by nineteen 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:43.159 sixty seven he was planning Carmichael's college speaking tour as 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:47.320 the national coordinator of campus programs. That was the job 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:50.080 where was doing when he'd been arrested in Nashville a 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:55.800 few weeks earlier. On the stand, he calmly denied having 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:59.800 incited a riot. He was cross examined for hours about 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:04.000 the beating he'd endured in the hands of the Nashville police. 0:01:04.040 --> 0:01:09.000 He denied having called the officers monkies, and he denied 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.399 egging the crowd of black college students on by yelling 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:17.520 things like let's get the white police. He had no 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:20.640 idea who owned the pistol police had charged him with 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:25.360 carrying How could he know he hadn't carried it at all? 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:30.240 No one had the police found the gun in someone 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:35.319 else's car that he'd ridden in briefly that day. Criminal 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:37.800 charges related to his arrest in April were put on 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:41.240 hold pending a verdict in this lawsuit, which challenged the 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:46.280 constitutionality of Tennessee's riot and disorderly conduct statutes. Everything was 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:49.400 still in limbo when George Ware returned to Nashville in 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:54.560 August of nineteen sixty seven, but some people weren't content 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:59.840 to wait. They wanted that terrible outside agitator arrested immediately, 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.720 so segregationist lawyer Jack Kershaw convinced a local judge to 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:08.760 arrest the civil rights activist on a trumped up charge 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:32.760 of sedition. I'm Molly Conger and this it's weird, little guys. 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.160 Today we're circling back to a story that i'd cut 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.760 from an older episode. I was sorry to have cut 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:44.720 it then, but it just didn't feel like there was 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.239 a neat spot for it in the episodes I was 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:52.960 writing about Jack Kershaw in April. It's funny, though I'm 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:56.800 never done with any of these stories. I'm never really 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:59.080 putting them to bed at the end of a series. 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:03.760 I still keep tabs on old characters and storylines. I'm 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.120 keeping an eye out for echoes of these stories in 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:10.760 current events, just waiting to weave those loose ends back in. 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:18.320 They all fit together, sometimes in surprising ways. And I 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.440 arrived back at this story this week in a roundabout 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:28.600 sort of way. The actual story here is fairly brief. 0:03:29.120 --> 0:03:31.280 I'd put it off to the side, thinking maybe I'd 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:33.160 have time to do a minisot about it one day. 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:38.040 I mean, Jack Kershaw having Stokely Carmichael's aid arrested for 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.680 sedition is a wild thing to stumble across and then 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:50.200 just discard. So in the summer of nineteen sixty seven, 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:54.680 Saint Anselm's Episcopal Chapel and Student Center in Nashville received 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:58.560 a small government grant. The city had received a pot 0:03:58.600 --> 0:04:02.400 of federal funding for an ty poverty initiatives, and grants 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:06.720 were awarded to various programs at the local level. Nashville 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:09.440 gave a few thousand dollars to Saint Anselm's to run 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:14.600 a summer program for black youth. They called it Liberations School, 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.040 and most of the volunteers of the school were also 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:23.520 organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNICK. The 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.600 summer program at Saint Anselm's borrowed from curriculums SNICK had 0:04:26.600 --> 0:04:30.479 already used successfully in their Freedom School programs during the 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:35.440 Freedom Summer of nineteen sixty four. The Liberation's School opened 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:39.719 its doors in late June of nineteen sixty seven. By 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.839 early August, the program's insurer had dropped them, and the 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:48.480 Liberations School was shut down. A Nashville Police captain named 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:51.760 John Sarrace had complained that the school was a hotbed 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:56.039 of anti white hatred and that SNICK volunteers were using 0:04:56.040 --> 0:05:01.479 the program to indoctrinate children and foment rebellion. But how 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:04.919 on earth did one silly little complaint end up the 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:08.120 subject of Senate hearings, New York Times headlines, and a 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:14.600 sedition charge. Because John Sarace made his silly little complaint 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:19.800 in a Senate hearing on Civil disorders in August of 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:23.479 nineteen sixty seven, the Senate Judiciary Committee was already hearing 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.560 testimony about the civil unrest that had shaken the country 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:31.120 that summer. Sarach, as the head of Nashville Police's intelligence 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.800 division went to Washington to testify about a riot that 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:39.200 had taken place in Nashville in April, and John Sarach 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:43.520 blamed SNICK for those riots. He was having hard time 0:05:43.560 --> 0:05:47.520 moving on, so when he saw volunteers from that organization 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:52.200 tutoring children in a church, he told the Senate committee 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:55.279 that the group was using federal funds to train ten 0:05:55.360 --> 0:06:02.680 year olds how to engage in violent riots. They weren't. 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:08.680 They weren't doing that, I mean, obviously right. Federal officials 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:12.440 visited the school and found no evidence of Sarach's claims, 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:19.560 but it didn't matter. He'd already won. The volunteers from 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.520 SNICK were hardly strangers who attempts to thwart their efforts, 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.800 so they adapted. They couldn't use the church anymore, but 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:30.800 kids can learn anywhere, and they moved the classes to 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:35.520 a public park. In the summer of nineteen sixty seven, 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:39.720 SNICK was involved in active litigation against the city of Nashville. 0:06:41.000 --> 0:06:43.640 The trial had been held in May, but the panel 0:06:43.680 --> 0:06:48.960 of judges wouldn't issue their decision until October. Back in April, 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:51.800 there had been several days of unrest that coincided with 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:55.760 the week that stokely Carmichael gave speeches at three Nashville 0:06:55.760 --> 0:07:02.480 area colleges. This is often abbreviated as race riots ensued 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:06.440 after a speech from Stokely Carmichael or Stokely Carmichael gave 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:13.640 a speech that sparked riots, But that isn't entirely true. 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:16.640 The civil disorder in Nashville in April of nineteen sixty 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:21.120 seven started at a bar across the street from Fisk University, 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:27.200 where Carmichael had given a speech several days earlier. So 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:32.040 I think it's less that his speech directly caused police 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.760 to overreact to a drunk bar patron, leading to a 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:39.400 crowd of angry college students escalating into police responding poorly 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:43.400 to that crowd of protesters. And it's more likely that 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:47.960 Stokely Carmichael chose to give his speeches in places where 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:53.360 conditions like this already existed. He's not telling those black 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:56.880 college students in Tennessee that racism exists and the police 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.920 treat them unfairly. He's there talking to them because they 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:05.400 already know that. It's likely that whatever happened there that 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:11.320 weekend would have happened anyway. Stokely Carmichael's speech didn't cause 0:08:11.400 --> 0:08:16.280 this to happen, and whatever kicked it off, the violence 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:20.000 that followed wasn't unique. It happened in more than one 0:08:20.160 --> 0:08:24.760 hundred other cities that summer, and Stokely Carmichael wasn't giving 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:29.600 speeches in all those towns, but in Nashville and in 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:37.800 quite a few other cities, SNICK got the blame. Several 0:08:37.800 --> 0:08:41.080 of the people arrested that weekend in Nashville were SNICK organizers, 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:46.400 including George Ware. The group quickly filed a lawsuit challenging 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.840 the constitutionality of the state's riot and disorderly conduct laws, 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:53.079 and Where's criminal charges were put on hold pending the 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:57.320 outcome of the lawsuit. So in Where arrived in Nashville 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:01.160 in August of nineteen sixty seven, he hadn't actually been 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:05.679 indicted yet on the charges from his April arrest. He 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.720 had testified at the civil trial in May, but the 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.880 case wasn't decided yet. And here's where the newspaper reports 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:19.280 get a little spotty. I mean, it's strange. Actually there's 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.160 information that's missing here, and no one seems to acknowledge it. 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:28.120 On August twenty first, nineteen sixty seven, George Ware was 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:31.319 the guest lecturer at the Liberations School in the Park, 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:35.320 and it seems like reporters were not allowed close enough 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:39.600 to actually hear what he said to the children. Evening 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:43.520 editions of local newspapers published on August twenty first say 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:47.160 no reporter got close enough to hear anything until the 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:50.520 very end of the lesson, and no reporter published anything 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:58.120 that sounded particularly inflammatory. But the next morning, George Ware 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:04.120 was arrested. According to those same newspapers, two local attorneys 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:06.960 in Nashville had gone to a judge to request that 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:10.040 an arrest warrant be issued on a charge of sedition. 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:16.120 Jack Kershaw told reporters that he and his friend Charles 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:21.000 Galbraith had acted on their own as citizens, a cryptic 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:25.680 sort of comment that he doesn't elaborate on, but Kershaw 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.400 says they took it upon themselves as private citizens to 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:33.640 petition Judge Daniel Boone, that is a real judge, apparently, 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:38.920 to issue this arrest warrant. So these same papers that 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.920 had just the day before all agreed that no reporter 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.160 got close enough to hear what was said at the 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:49.600 Liberation School appearance. They're now publishing Jack Kershaw's claim that 0:10:49.679 --> 0:10:55.760 George Ware had made a very inflammatory comment to a newsman. 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:01.959 The AP story says, without evidence or outside corroboration quote, 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:05.959 Gershaw said the warrant was based in part on Where's 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:10.320 statement to newsmen that black people have to achieve power 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:15.320 by any means necessary. I mean, first of all, we 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.920 have to acknowledge that that's a really innocuous statement. But 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:23.880 that's apparently not the issue here. So maybe George Ware 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:27.320 said this in an interview he gave after his speech. 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:32.120 That's totally possible, right, But if he said it to 0:11:32.320 --> 0:11:35.560 a reporter, Gershaw is saying this remark was given to 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:39.600 a newsman. If George Ware said this to a reporter, 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:45.440 why didn't anyone report it? It only appears in print 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:50.160 coming out of Jack Kershaw's mouth. No reporter published a 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.120 story about hearing George Ware say this or anything like 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:58.920 it in a speech or interview on August twenty first. 0:12:00.920 --> 0:12:05.880 So Jack Kershaw made it up, fine, right, I mean, 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.640 if you listen to the Jack Kershaw episodes, you know 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:12.840 he's a liar. He's a racist and a liar. Of 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.000 course he would make something up about George Ware. What 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:19.840 difference does it make? It sounds like something George Ware 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:25.000 would say, and he had said much spicier stuff on 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:30.880 the record many times before. But this is so odd, 0:12:32.160 --> 0:12:34.840 and the thing I think is the actual truth here 0:12:36.200 --> 0:12:42.760 doesn't seem worth lying about unless you're very afraid of 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:45.960 being caught hanging out with civil rights activists. 0:12:48.720 --> 0:12:52.320 George Ware had said to me sometime a week or so, 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:55.040 I had him the man. 0:12:57.520 --> 0:12:58.320 He had. 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:03.120 I decided to have a little snake fundraiser at my house, 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:10.640 and so we invited a number of my friends over 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:15.800 to just hang out, meet, to snack. People, get on 0:13:15.880 --> 0:13:18.440 the list, contribute to money, people hoped. 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:20.880 And where were these friends? 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:24.040 Are these childhood. 0:13:23.480 --> 0:13:25.920 Friends, friends from college, law school? 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:32.280 They were maybe then current friends, some lawyers, some just 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:40.520 people on you and who weren't lawyers, the sort of 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:42.960 a liberal set of sort of a liberal. 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:52.959 Set, I thought, that's Reber Bolt, the white Nashville area 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:57.080 attorney who represented George Ware back then. The two were 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:59.680 good friends, and Bolt was involved in the civil rights 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:03.800 movement for many years in the mid nineteen sixties, George 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.280 Ware often stayed at Bolt's house when he was traveling 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:08.880 through the Nashville area. 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:09.800 And what he's. 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.000 Getting at in that oral history recorded in twenty eighteen, 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:19.080 is that George ware did say whatever it was that 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:23.000 Jack Kershaw told that judge, but he didn't say it 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:28.680 to a reporter. He said it to State Legislator Charles Galbreth, 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:34.120 the other attorney who swore out the warrant with Kershawvalbreath 0:14:34.120 --> 0:14:37.000 had somehow gotten an invitation to the fundraiser that they 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:39.720 were holding at Bolt's home this Saturday night before where 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:45.880 a speech on Monday, and Galbreth hadn't simply overheard this remark, 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:50.640 He'd approached where at the party and asked him to 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:56.480 explain the Black Power movement. Charles Galbreth and Jack Kershaw 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:00.560 set him up on purpose, and the the best they 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.000 could bait him into saying was We're going to win 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:09.160 by any means necessary. But Jack Kershaw managed to convince 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:14.960 Judge Daniel Boone that this again very innocuous statement somehow 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:20.000 met the standard for sedition a Tennessee state statute that 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:26.320 outlawed any advocating, abetting, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:30.480 or propriety of the overthrow or destruction of the United 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:37.240 States or Tennessee State government. Again, it just seems so 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:42.080 odd that Kershaw went with the by any means necessary, 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.400 comment and even stranger that he went for the sedition charge. 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:48.560 It just seems like there would have been easier ways 0:15:48.600 --> 0:15:54.160 to catch him up. Declassified FBI files for Stokely Carmichael 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.360 and Snick show that J. H. R. Hoover was getting 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:01.760 multiple memos a day every day for weeks around this 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:07.680 time about the feasibility of charging Stokely Carmichael with sedition 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:13.000 after his recent trip to Cuba, a trip that George 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:18.480 Whare accompanied him on. So it's strange timing that Jack 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:22.720 Kershaw would invent a fake sedition case against Where the 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:25.760 same week that Jay Hadgar Hoover was blowing a gasket 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:32.640 about the impossibility of charging Stokely Carmichael with sedition. The 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.440 FEDS did strip both men of their passports that week, 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:44.160 though a weird coincidence. Maybe Where spent a few days 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:46.360 in the local jail before a pastor paid his five 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:50.200 thousand dollars bond. A week after his arrest, his attorneys 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:54.280 filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee's sedition law, 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.120 but they made it clear they'd dropped the case if 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:03.080 Where wasn't indicted. That same day, August twenty eighth, a 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.800 Florida congressman invoked Where's name and a speech on the 0:17:05.800 --> 0:17:11.120 House floor. Representative William Kramer of Florida was a huge 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:14.879 proponent of the Anti Riot Act, a bill that would 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:19.000 pass the following year, and in this speech in August 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:22.560 of nineteen sixty seven, Kramer argued that the Riot Act 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:28.439 was necessary to thwart the outside agitators responsible for the 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:33.080 race riots that had been happening all summer, outside agitators 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:38.560 like Stokely Carmichael and George Ware. Kramer noted that the 0:17:38.600 --> 0:17:42.480 pair had recently visited communist Cuba, and now where is 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:47.600 back in Nashville. Just a day later, a grand jury 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:50.520 in Tennessee declined to indict where on the sedition charge, 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:55.439 and the whole saga was over. Snick lost their lawsuit 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:58.840 against Nashville over the unrest in April. And Where did 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.879 end up getting indicted on the inciting a riot charge 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:07.040 for that incident? He paid a fifty dollars fine and 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:12.119 the sedition charge incident never really comes up again. It 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.160 was just a strange side quest. In my notes about 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.840 Jack Kershaw, the racist lawyer who built the world's ugliest 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:25.200 Confederate monument out of spare parts from a bathtub factory. 0:18:25.800 --> 0:18:30.560 But if you'll indulge me for a minute, I want 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:33.240 to talk about how I ended up thinking about George 0:18:33.280 --> 0:18:37.080 ware in nineteen sixty seven again this week, because again 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:40.679 I filed this away from minisode and then I moved on. 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:44.920 Wasn't writing about Jack Kershaw anymore. This little tidbit was 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:48.760 going to stay stuck in my notes, But these little 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:54.920 snippets of history keeps sneaking back up on me. If 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.000 you haven't already seen the other episode in your podcast 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:01.520 app of choice today, there is a brief tribute to 0:19:01.560 --> 0:19:05.919 my friend Laura Sullivan. She passed away last month and 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:09.400 I went to her funeral last week. She was an 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:13.439 absolute legend in the field of anti fascist research and 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.880 a genuine force of nature. I mean, it's just it's 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:19.760 a huge loss for the whole world, even if you 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:24.560 didn't know her. After the funeral, sitting in a little 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:28.520 plastic chair in the reception space of the cemetery, we 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:33.240 were just chatting remembering Laura, of course, But given the 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.280 kind of person Laura was, you can probably guess that 0:19:36.359 --> 0:19:38.760 it was a room full of people whose passions matched 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:45.080 hers tracking right wing extremism. I couldn't tell you how 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:47.719 the topic turned to George Lincoln Rockwell, but I swear 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:52.320 I wasn't the one that brought it up. Maybe because 0:19:52.320 --> 0:19:55.199 we were gathered there to honor our friend, an anti 0:19:55.240 --> 0:19:57.920 fascist whom we'd all loved dearly and lost too soon. 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.840 Maybe that reminded some one of Rockwell, the Nazi leader 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:07.160 assassinated by his own best friend. Because loving each other 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:11.439 is something we've always had Over the Nazis. They just 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.920 can't do it, but it's part of the fabric of 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:19.240 what we do. But of course, as soon as someone 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:22.920 brought up Rockwell, I offered up a few Rockwell facts 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:24.719 for the table. You know, I'm up to date on 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:28.879 my lore. I'd forgotten to tell you this listener's. But 0:20:29.880 --> 0:20:34.520 George Lincoln Rockwell's assassin died on Christmas Day last year. 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:39.040 John Patler, who by then had perverted back to his 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:42.840 original Greek surname pat Solos, died two weeks shy of 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:46.440 his eighty eighth birthday. That whole story, how the son 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.280 of a Greek immigrant became an American Nazi, shot his 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:51.040 hero and lived out the last half of his life 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:53.480 in obscurity. That was all covered in a series of 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:57.720 episodes last fall. But I was thinking about Rockwell's death. 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:01.040 So on our way home from the few roll, my 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.240 friend God and I stopped off at a nearby landmark 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:08.760 of sorts, this strip mall where George Lincoln Rockwell was 0:21:08.800 --> 0:21:13.200 assassinated in nineteen sixty seven. It's in Arlington, Virginia. It 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:17.880 was on the way home. I'd studied maps and pictures 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:20.800 of the area pretty extensively when I was writing about Rockwell, 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:26.920 but i'd never been. It turned out it was very unremarkable. 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:34.679 We took a selfie. The funeral was on Friday. Usually 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:36.760 by Friday, I've got a really good idea what I'm 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:39.959 writing about. I'm deep into my research, my notes are 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:45.720 a mess, but I've got a vision. I didn't when 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:47.960 I got up Friday morning, knowing I was going to 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:50.560 spend most of the day in the car. I'd read 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:52.760 half a book and then decided I didn't want to 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:57.160 write about it, and I didn't have any other ideas. 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.680 But when I got home that night, I was thinking 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:04.240 about the summer of nineteen sixty seven. I mean, I 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:06.919 started thinking about it because I'd gone out of my 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:09.200 way to go stand in a strip mall parking lot, 0:22:09.600 --> 0:22:11.520 just to see if it made me feel anything because 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:14.240 a Nazi got shot there in August of nineteen sixty seven. 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:16.080 It didn't. 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.080 But thinking back to sitting there in those little plastic 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:25.639 chairs at the cemetery, reminiscing about Nazi rallies and police riots, 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:28.600 where we'd bumped into each other over the years, chatting 0:22:28.600 --> 0:22:32.880 about current events, parting ways with well wishes for continued 0:22:32.920 --> 0:22:36.159 safety at the rallies. We'll probably see each other in 0:22:36.240 --> 0:22:40.879 the future. I was thinking about the whole summer. I 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:44.480 was thinking about this summer, the summer of twenty twenty, 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:47.960 the summer of twenty seventeen, and the summer of nineteen 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:53.280 sixty seven. They have a lot in common. The summer 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:56.919 of nineteen sixty seven got the nickname the Long Hot 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.680 Summer because between April and August of nineteen sixty seven 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:04.040 there were outbreaks of violent unrest and over one hundred 0:23:04.080 --> 0:23:09.520 cities across the country. I'm not gonna call them race riots, 0:23:10.280 --> 0:23:14.360 because what does that even mean? A race riot, racial tension, 0:23:14.520 --> 0:23:20.560 racial violence, racial unrest. These are useless terms designed to 0:23:20.600 --> 0:23:24.280 erase the reasons people were protesting and the motivation for 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:29.560 the violent reactions to those protests from law enforcement. But 0:23:29.640 --> 0:23:32.560 it was a long, hot summer, and I wonder if 0:23:32.600 --> 0:23:33.240 we're due for one. 0:23:33.280 --> 0:23:33.440 Two. 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:51.680 I got home, I was thinking about Darryl Lamont Jenkins. 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:55.960 He's Laura's longtime friend and collaborator, the founder of One 0:23:55.960 --> 0:24:00.520 People's Project. He gave such a beautiful eulogy the funeral. 0:24:02.200 --> 0:24:05.119 I hadn't seen him in years. Those years have not 0:24:05.240 --> 0:24:08.640 been kind to most of us. But as we said 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:11.159 our goodbyes, he told me he was headed back out 0:24:11.200 --> 0:24:14.439 to Delaney Hall to cover the protests outside the iced 0:24:14.480 --> 0:24:19.680 attention facility in Newark, New Jersey. Reports of cruel treatment 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.880 inside the facility and hunger strikes of sparked protests outside 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:28.479 the facility, and things have been getting pretty violent. Federal 0:24:28.480 --> 0:24:33.560 agents and state police are hurting people inside the facility 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:39.119 and outside on the streets. On Saturday, New Jersey Governor 0:24:39.160 --> 0:24:42.040 Mikey Cheryl gave a press conference about the ongoing situation. 0:24:44.359 --> 0:24:46.920 We know that people from outside the state have been 0:24:46.920 --> 0:24:50.639 interfering in the protests and escalating them. Five of the 0:24:50.760 --> 0:24:53.680 six people arrested last night by state police were from 0:24:53.720 --> 0:24:57.800 outside New Jersey and some national extremist groups have become 0:24:57.840 --> 0:25:01.600 involved in the protests here today, to the people coming 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:04.840 from out of state to create chaos and dangerous situations, 0:25:05.240 --> 0:25:06.040 you should not be. 0:25:06.040 --> 0:25:17.040 Here outside agitators. Huh, that's what she's going with. It's 0:25:17.040 --> 0:25:19.520 such a tired trope. I mean, you hear it all 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:22.800 the time. It's very popular. A lot of people believe 0:25:22.800 --> 0:25:27.160 in it, sort of no true Scotsman fallacy for protesters 0:25:27.200 --> 0:25:30.320 you don't like, And I'm sure you can come up 0:25:30.359 --> 0:25:33.320 with a few anecdotes to support a belief in the 0:25:33.400 --> 0:25:37.120 idea that all misbehavior at political protests is the work 0:25:37.119 --> 0:25:42.880 of a dastardly outsider. But it isn't true. You can 0:25:42.960 --> 0:25:45.440 believe it, you can feel it, but the data shows 0:25:46.600 --> 0:25:51.160 it's not true. And I would argue it wouldn't matter 0:25:51.200 --> 0:25:55.840 if it were. It's a concept we've always carried with us, 0:25:56.359 --> 0:26:00.040 this desire to blame unknown outsiders for bad things that 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:04.639 happen in our communities. We are good people. Our home 0:26:04.760 --> 0:26:07.920 is a good place. Bad things do not happen here 0:26:07.960 --> 0:26:11.600 because we are good people. We treat our minorities well. 0:26:11.920 --> 0:26:14.679 If something bad has happened here, it's because some wicked 0:26:14.720 --> 0:26:19.840 external force has disrupted our peaceful way of life. Right. 0:26:21.400 --> 0:26:22.919 We heard it all the time in the summer of 0:26:22.920 --> 0:26:27.760 twenty twenty. Anytime a protest went sideways, it was outside agitators. 0:26:27.800 --> 0:26:30.840 There's no need to point the finger at police violence, 0:26:30.840 --> 0:26:33.120 because then we'd have to talk about the fact that 0:26:33.119 --> 0:26:36.760 that's what the protests are about. So just blame someone 0:26:36.800 --> 0:26:40.920 from out of town. But the idea wasn't new then. 0:26:42.520 --> 0:26:45.639 In twenty twenty, plenty of commentators pointed to the history 0:26:45.640 --> 0:26:49.639 of the phrase and the Civil rights movement. Southern cities 0:26:49.640 --> 0:26:52.959 were all quite sure that their black populations had been 0:26:53.000 --> 0:26:58.320 perfectly content until those rabble rousers showed up. Black panthers 0:26:58.359 --> 0:27:01.520 and communists and big city agitators from up north, and 0:27:01.640 --> 0:27:05.560 before that, well, factory workers and farm workers and working 0:27:05.560 --> 0:27:07.760 class people all over the country in the nineteen twenties 0:27:07.760 --> 0:27:11.480 and thirties never would have organized for better working conditions 0:27:11.520 --> 0:27:14.640 if not for those damned socialists and communists and Bolsheviks 0:27:14.640 --> 0:27:17.760 and paid professional organizers coming from the big cities to 0:27:17.760 --> 0:27:21.840 stir up trouble. Everybody was perfectly satisfied with the way 0:27:21.880 --> 0:27:26.359 things were before those outsiders showed up. Nobody here in 0:27:26.400 --> 0:27:29.480 our town ever wanted a union, ever wanted integration, ever 0:27:29.560 --> 0:27:34.120 wanted civil rights, ever wanted freedom until those outsiders came 0:27:34.119 --> 0:27:40.600 to town. I was well familiar with the way the 0:27:40.640 --> 0:27:44.560 trope worked in the sixties against civil rights activists, and 0:27:44.600 --> 0:27:47.040 I asked my husband where he thought it came from, 0:27:47.119 --> 0:27:51.439 and he suggested the thirties, recalling that it was leveraged 0:27:51.440 --> 0:27:56.439 against union organizers. We were both right, but we were 0:27:56.440 --> 0:28:00.800 both wrong. I mean, the idea is probably as old 0:28:00.840 --> 0:28:05.199 as civilization itself. Right, We've always feared the outsider, the 0:28:05.320 --> 0:28:12.000 unknown change. But I was curious about the phrase, so 0:28:12.040 --> 0:28:15.920 I popped the words outside agitators into the search bar 0:28:16.040 --> 0:28:19.320 in a few places where I might find old newspapers 0:28:19.359 --> 0:28:27.359 and books and magazines, it's slavery. The answer is slavery. 0:28:28.480 --> 0:28:34.880 The American concept of the outside agitator was invented to justify, defend, protect, 0:28:34.920 --> 0:28:40.800 and uphold the institution of chattel slavery. The phrase starts 0:28:40.800 --> 0:28:44.160 occurring with the exact same meaning it holds today, all 0:28:44.240 --> 0:28:48.680 of a sudden in the mid eighteen fifties. Most of 0:28:48.680 --> 0:28:50.440 the uses of the phrase I found in the mid 0:28:50.480 --> 0:28:54.800 eighteen fifties were specifically in reference to Kansas at the 0:28:54.800 --> 0:28:58.680