Speaker 1: Coll Zone Media. On May twenty second, nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: George ware took the stand in a crowded courtroom in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Whare was twenty seven years old. He had graduated from
Speaker 1: Tuskegee University with a master's degree in biochemistry in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, but he quickly abandoned the job he got
Speaker 1: up north after graduation for something he thought was more important.
Speaker 1: He went to work for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Speaker 1: as an aide to chairman Stokely Carmichael, and by nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven he was planning Carmichael's college speaking tour as
Speaker 1: the national coordinator of campus programs. That was the job
Speaker 1: where was doing when he'd been arrested in Nashville a
Speaker 1: few weeks earlier. On the stand, he calmly denied having
Speaker 1: incited a riot. He was cross examined for hours about
Speaker 1: the beating he'd endured in the hands of the Nashville police.
Speaker 1: He denied having called the officers monkies, and he denied
Speaker 1: egging the crowd of black college students on by yelling
Speaker 1: things like let's get the white police. He had no
Speaker 1: idea who owned the pistol police had charged him with
Speaker 1: carrying How could he know he hadn't carried it at all?
Speaker 1: No one had the police found the gun in someone
Speaker 1: else's car that he'd ridden in briefly that day. Criminal
Speaker 1: charges related to his arrest in April were put on
Speaker 1: hold pending a verdict in this lawsuit, which challenged the
Speaker 1: constitutionality of Tennessee's riot and disorderly conduct statutes. Everything was
Speaker 1: still in limbo when George Ware returned to Nashville in
Speaker 1: August of nineteen sixty seven, but some people weren't content
Speaker 1: to wait. They wanted that terrible outside agitator arrested immediately,
Speaker 1: so segregationist lawyer Jack Kershaw convinced a local judge to
Speaker 1: arrest the civil rights activist on a trumped up charge
Speaker 1: of sedition. I'm Molly Conger and this it's weird, little guys.
Speaker 1: Today we're circling back to a story that i'd cut
Speaker 1: from an older episode. I was sorry to have cut
Speaker 1: it then, but it just didn't feel like there was
Speaker 1: a neat spot for it in the episodes I was
Speaker 1: writing about Jack Kershaw in April. It's funny, though I'm
Speaker 1: never done with any of these stories. I'm never really
Speaker 1: putting them to bed at the end of a series.
Speaker 1: I still keep tabs on old characters and storylines. I'm
Speaker 1: keeping an eye out for echoes of these stories in
Speaker 1: current events, just waiting to weave those loose ends back in.
Speaker 1: They all fit together, sometimes in surprising ways. And I
Speaker 1: arrived back at this story this week in a roundabout
Speaker 1: sort of way. The actual story here is fairly brief.
Speaker 1: I'd put it off to the side, thinking maybe I'd
Speaker 1: have time to do a minisot about it one day.
Speaker 1: I mean, Jack Kershaw having Stokely Carmichael's aid arrested for
Speaker 1: sedition is a wild thing to stumble across and then
Speaker 1: just discard. So in the summer of nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: Saint Anselm's Episcopal Chapel and Student Center in Nashville received
Speaker 1: a small government grant. The city had received a pot
Speaker 1: of federal funding for an ty poverty initiatives, and grants
Speaker 1: were awarded to various programs at the local level. Nashville
Speaker 1: gave a few thousand dollars to Saint Anselm's to run
Speaker 1: a summer program for black youth. They called it Liberations School,
Speaker 1: and most of the volunteers of the school were also
Speaker 1: organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNICK. The
Speaker 1: summer program at Saint Anselm's borrowed from curriculums SNICK had
Speaker 1: already used successfully in their Freedom School programs during the
Speaker 1: Freedom Summer of nineteen sixty four. The Liberation's School opened
Speaker 1: its doors in late June of nineteen sixty seven. By
Speaker 1: early August, the program's insurer had dropped them, and the
Speaker 1: Liberations School was shut down. A Nashville Police captain named
Speaker 1: John Sarrace had complained that the school was a hotbed
Speaker 1: of anti white hatred and that SNICK volunteers were using
Speaker 1: the program to indoctrinate children and foment rebellion. But how
Speaker 1: on earth did one silly little complaint end up the
Speaker 1: subject of Senate hearings, New York Times headlines, and a
Speaker 1: sedition charge. Because John Sarace made his silly little complaint
Speaker 1: in a Senate hearing on Civil disorders in August of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, the Senate Judiciary Committee was already hearing
Speaker 1: testimony about the civil unrest that had shaken the country
Speaker 1: that summer. Sarach, as the head of Nashville Police's intelligence
Speaker 1: division went to Washington to testify about a riot that
Speaker 1: had taken place in Nashville in April, and John Sarach
Speaker 1: blamed SNICK for those riots. He was having hard time
Speaker 1: moving on, so when he saw volunteers from that organization
Speaker 1: tutoring children in a church, he told the Senate committee
Speaker 1: that the group was using federal funds to train ten
Speaker 1: year olds how to engage in violent riots. They weren't.
Speaker 1: They weren't doing that, I mean, obviously right. Federal officials
Speaker 1: visited the school and found no evidence of Sarach's claims,
Speaker 1: but it didn't matter. He'd already won. The volunteers from
Speaker 1: SNICK were hardly strangers who attempts to thwart their efforts,
Speaker 1: so they adapted. They couldn't use the church anymore, but
Speaker 1: kids can learn anywhere, and they moved the classes to
Speaker 1: a public park. In the summer of nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: SNICK was involved in active litigation against the city of Nashville.
Speaker 1: The trial had been held in May, but the panel
Speaker 1: of judges wouldn't issue their decision until October. Back in April,
Speaker 1: there had been several days of unrest that coincided with
Speaker 1: the week that stokely Carmichael gave speeches at three Nashville
Speaker 1: area colleges. This is often abbreviated as race riots ensued
Speaker 1: after a speech from Stokely Carmichael or Stokely Carmichael gave
Speaker 1: a speech that sparked riots, But that isn't entirely true.
Speaker 1: The civil disorder in Nashville in April of nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven started at a bar across the street from Fisk University,
Speaker 1: where Carmichael had given a speech several days earlier. So
Speaker 1: I think it's less that his speech directly caused police
Speaker 1: to overreact to a drunk bar patron, leading to a
Speaker 1: crowd of angry college students escalating into police responding poorly
Speaker 1: to that crowd of protesters. And it's more likely that
Speaker 1: Stokely Carmichael chose to give his speeches in places where
Speaker 1: conditions like this already existed. He's not telling those black
Speaker 1: college students in Tennessee that racism exists and the police
Speaker 1: treat them unfairly. He's there talking to them because they
Speaker 1: already know that. It's likely that whatever happened there that
Speaker 1: weekend would have happened anyway. Stokely Carmichael's speech didn't cause
Speaker 1: this to happen, and whatever kicked it off, the violence
Speaker 1: that followed wasn't unique. It happened in more than one
Speaker 1: hundred other cities that summer, and Stokely Carmichael wasn't giving
Speaker 1: speeches in all those towns, but in Nashville and in
Speaker 1: quite a few other cities, SNICK got the blame. Several
Speaker 1: of the people arrested that weekend in Nashville were SNICK organizers,
Speaker 1: including George Ware. The group quickly filed a lawsuit challenging
Speaker 1: the constitutionality of the state's riot and disorderly conduct laws,
Speaker 1: and Where's criminal charges were put on hold pending the
Speaker 1: outcome of the lawsuit. So in Where arrived in Nashville
Speaker 1: in August of nineteen sixty seven, he hadn't actually been
Speaker 1: indicted yet on the charges from his April arrest. He
Speaker 1: had testified at the civil trial in May, but the
Speaker 1: case wasn't decided yet. And here's where the newspaper reports
Speaker 1: get a little spotty. I mean, it's strange. Actually there's
Speaker 1: information that's missing here, and no one seems to acknowledge it.
Speaker 1: On August twenty first, nineteen sixty seven, George Ware was
Speaker 1: the guest lecturer at the Liberations School in the Park,
Speaker 1: and it seems like reporters were not allowed close enough
Speaker 1: to actually hear what he said to the children. Evening
Speaker 1: editions of local newspapers published on August twenty first say
Speaker 1: no reporter got close enough to hear anything until the
Speaker 1: very end of the lesson, and no reporter published anything
Speaker 1: that sounded particularly inflammatory. But the next morning, George Ware
Speaker 1: was arrested. According to those same newspapers, two local attorneys
Speaker 1: in Nashville had gone to a judge to request that
Speaker 1: an arrest warrant be issued on a charge of sedition.
Speaker 1: Jack Kershaw told reporters that he and his friend Charles
Speaker 1: Galbraith had acted on their own as citizens, a cryptic
Speaker 1: sort of comment that he doesn't elaborate on, but Kershaw
Speaker 1: says they took it upon themselves as private citizens to
Speaker 1: petition Judge Daniel Boone, that is a real judge, apparently,
Speaker 1: to issue this arrest warrant. So these same papers that
Speaker 1: had just the day before all agreed that no reporter
Speaker 1: got close enough to hear what was said at the
Speaker 1: Liberation School appearance. They're now publishing Jack Kershaw's claim that
Speaker 1: George Ware had made a very inflammatory comment to a newsman.
Speaker 1: The AP story says, without evidence or outside corroboration quote,
Speaker 1: Gershaw said the warrant was based in part on Where's
Speaker 1: statement to newsmen that black people have to achieve power
Speaker 1: by any means necessary. I mean, first of all, we
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that that's a really innocuous statement. But
Speaker 1: that's apparently not the issue here. So maybe George Ware
Speaker 1: said this in an interview he gave after his speech.
Speaker 1: That's totally possible, right, But if he said it to
Speaker 1: a reporter, Gershaw is saying this remark was given to
Speaker 1: a newsman. If George Ware said this to a reporter,
Speaker 1: why didn't anyone report it? It only appears in print
Speaker 1: coming out of Jack Kershaw's mouth. No reporter published a
Speaker 1: story about hearing George Ware say this or anything like
Speaker 1: it in a speech or interview on August twenty first.
Speaker 1: So Jack Kershaw made it up, fine, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the Jack Kershaw episodes, you know
Speaker 1: he's a liar. He's a racist and a liar. Of
Speaker 1: course he would make something up about George Ware. What
Speaker 1: difference does it make? It sounds like something George Ware
Speaker 1: would say, and he had said much spicier stuff on
Speaker 1: the record many times before. But this is so odd,
Speaker 1: and the thing I think is the actual truth here
Speaker 1: doesn't seem worth lying about unless you're very afraid of
Speaker 1: being caught hanging out with civil rights activists.
Speaker 2: George Ware had said to me sometime a week or so,
Speaker 2: I had him the man.
Speaker 3: He had.
Speaker 2: I decided to have a little snake fundraiser at my house,
Speaker 2: and so we invited a number of my friends over
Speaker 2: to just hang out, meet, to snack. People, get on
Speaker 2: the list, contribute to money, people hoped.
Speaker 1: And where were these friends?
Speaker 3: Are these childhood.
Speaker 2: Friends, friends from college, law school?
Speaker 4: They were maybe then current friends, some lawyers, some just
Speaker 4: people on you and who weren't lawyers, the sort of
Speaker 4: a liberal set of sort of a liberal.
Speaker 1: Set, I thought, that's Reber Bolt, the white Nashville area
Speaker 1: attorney who represented George Ware back then. The two were
Speaker 1: good friends, and Bolt was involved in the civil rights
Speaker 1: movement for many years in the mid nineteen sixties, George
Speaker 1: Ware often stayed at Bolt's house when he was traveling
Speaker 1: through the Nashville area.
Speaker 4: And what he's.
Speaker 1: Getting at in that oral history recorded in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: is that George ware did say whatever it was that
Speaker 1: Jack Kershaw told that judge, but he didn't say it
Speaker 1: to a reporter. He said it to State Legislator Charles Galbreth,
Speaker 1: the other attorney who swore out the warrant with Kershawvalbreath
Speaker 1: had somehow gotten an invitation to the fundraiser that they
Speaker 1: were holding at Bolt's home this Saturday night before where
Speaker 1: a speech on Monday, and Galbreth hadn't simply overheard this remark,
Speaker 1: He'd approached where at the party and asked him to
Speaker 1: explain the Black Power movement. Charles Galbreth and Jack Kershaw
Speaker 1: set him up on purpose, and the the best they
Speaker 1: could bait him into saying was We're going to win
Speaker 1: by any means necessary. But Jack Kershaw managed to convince
Speaker 1: Judge Daniel Boone that this again very innocuous statement somehow
Speaker 1: met the standard for sedition a Tennessee state statute that
Speaker 1: outlawed any advocating, abetting, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability,
Speaker 1: or propriety of the overthrow or destruction of the United
Speaker 1: States or Tennessee State government. Again, it just seems so
Speaker 1: odd that Kershaw went with the by any means necessary,
Speaker 1: comment and even stranger that he went for the sedition charge.
Speaker 1: It just seems like there would have been easier ways
Speaker 1: to catch him up. Declassified FBI files for Stokely Carmichael
Speaker 1: and Snick show that J. H. R. Hoover was getting
Speaker 1: multiple memos a day every day for weeks around this
Speaker 1: time about the feasibility of charging Stokely Carmichael with sedition
Speaker 1: after his recent trip to Cuba, a trip that George
Speaker 1: Whare accompanied him on. So it's strange timing that Jack
Speaker 1: Kershaw would invent a fake sedition case against Where the
Speaker 1: same week that Jay Hadgar Hoover was blowing a gasket
Speaker 1: about the impossibility of charging Stokely Carmichael with sedition. The
Speaker 1: FEDS did strip both men of their passports that week,
Speaker 1: though a weird coincidence. Maybe Where spent a few days
Speaker 1: in the local jail before a pastor paid his five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bond. A week after his arrest, his attorneys
Speaker 1: filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Tennessee's sedition law,
Speaker 1: but they made it clear they'd dropped the case if
Speaker 1: Where wasn't indicted. That same day, August twenty eighth, a
Speaker 1: Florida congressman invoked Where's name and a speech on the
Speaker 1: House floor. Representative William Kramer of Florida was a huge
Speaker 1: proponent of the Anti Riot Act, a bill that would
Speaker 1: pass the following year, and in this speech in August
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty seven, Kramer argued that the Riot Act
Speaker 1: was necessary to thwart the outside agitators responsible for the
Speaker 1: race riots that had been happening all summer, outside agitators
Speaker 1: like Stokely Carmichael and George Ware. Kramer noted that the
Speaker 1: pair had recently visited communist Cuba, and now where is
Speaker 1: back in Nashville. Just a day later, a grand jury
Speaker 1: in Tennessee declined to indict where on the sedition charge,
Speaker 1: and the whole saga was over. Snick lost their lawsuit
Speaker 1: against Nashville over the unrest in April. And Where did
Speaker 1: end up getting indicted on the inciting a riot charge
Speaker 1: for that incident? He paid a fifty dollars fine and
Speaker 1: the sedition charge incident never really comes up again. It
Speaker 1: was just a strange side quest. In my notes about
Speaker 1: Jack Kershaw, the racist lawyer who built the world's ugliest
Speaker 1: Confederate monument out of spare parts from a bathtub factory.
Speaker 1: But if you'll indulge me for a minute, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about how I ended up thinking about George
Speaker 1: ware in nineteen sixty seven again this week, because again
Speaker 1: I filed this away from minisode and then I moved on.
Speaker 1: Wasn't writing about Jack Kershaw anymore. This little tidbit was
Speaker 1: going to stay stuck in my notes, But these little
Speaker 1: snippets of history keeps sneaking back up on me. If
Speaker 1: you haven't already seen the other episode in your podcast
Speaker 1: app of choice today, there is a brief tribute to
Speaker 1: my friend Laura Sullivan. She passed away last month and
Speaker 1: I went to her funeral last week. She was an
Speaker 1: absolute legend in the field of anti fascist research and
Speaker 1: a genuine force of nature. I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: a huge loss for the whole world, even if you
Speaker 1: didn't know her. After the funeral, sitting in a little
Speaker 1: plastic chair in the reception space of the cemetery, we
Speaker 1: were just chatting remembering Laura, of course, But given the
Speaker 1: kind of person Laura was, you can probably guess that
Speaker 1: it was a room full of people whose passions matched
Speaker 1: hers tracking right wing extremism. I couldn't tell you how
Speaker 1: the topic turned to George Lincoln Rockwell, but I swear
Speaker 1: I wasn't the one that brought it up. Maybe because
Speaker 1: we were gathered there to honor our friend, an anti
Speaker 1: fascist whom we'd all loved dearly and lost too soon.
Speaker 1: Maybe that reminded some one of Rockwell, the Nazi leader
Speaker 1: assassinated by his own best friend. Because loving each other
Speaker 1: is something we've always had Over the Nazis. They just
Speaker 1: can't do it, but it's part of the fabric of
Speaker 1: what we do. But of course, as soon as someone
Speaker 1: brought up Rockwell, I offered up a few Rockwell facts
Speaker 1: for the table. You know, I'm up to date on
Speaker 1: my lore. I'd forgotten to tell you this listener's. But
Speaker 1: George Lincoln Rockwell's assassin died on Christmas Day last year.
Speaker 1: John Patler, who by then had perverted back to his
Speaker 1: original Greek surname pat Solos, died two weeks shy of
Speaker 1: his eighty eighth birthday. That whole story, how the son
Speaker 1: of a Greek immigrant became an American Nazi, shot his
Speaker 1: hero and lived out the last half of his life
Speaker 1: in obscurity. That was all covered in a series of
Speaker 1: episodes last fall. But I was thinking about Rockwell's death.
Speaker 1: So on our way home from the few roll, my
Speaker 1: friend God and I stopped off at a nearby landmark
Speaker 1: of sorts, this strip mall where George Lincoln Rockwell was
Speaker 1: assassinated in nineteen sixty seven. It's in Arlington, Virginia. It
Speaker 1: was on the way home. I'd studied maps and pictures
Speaker 1: of the area pretty extensively when I was writing about Rockwell,
Speaker 1: but i'd never been. It turned out it was very unremarkable.
Speaker 1: We took a selfie. The funeral was on Friday. Usually
Speaker 1: by Friday, I've got a really good idea what I'm
Speaker 1: writing about. I'm deep into my research, my notes are
Speaker 1: a mess, but I've got a vision. I didn't when
Speaker 1: I got up Friday morning, knowing I was going to
Speaker 1: spend most of the day in the car. I'd read
Speaker 1: half a book and then decided I didn't want to
Speaker 1: write about it, and I didn't have any other ideas.
Speaker 1: But when I got home that night, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about the summer of nineteen sixty seven. I mean, I
Speaker 1: started thinking about it because I'd gone out of my
Speaker 1: way to go stand in a strip mall parking lot,
Speaker 1: just to see if it made me feel anything because
Speaker 1: a Nazi got shot there in August of nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 4: It didn't.
Speaker 1: But thinking back to sitting there in those little plastic
Speaker 1: chairs at the cemetery, reminiscing about Nazi rallies and police riots,
Speaker 1: where we'd bumped into each other over the years, chatting
Speaker 1: about current events, parting ways with well wishes for continued
Speaker 1: safety at the rallies. We'll probably see each other in
Speaker 1: the future. I was thinking about the whole summer. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this summer, the summer of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the summer of twenty seventeen, and the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven. They have a lot in common. The summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty seven got the nickname the Long Hot
Speaker 1: Summer because between April and August of nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: there were outbreaks of violent unrest and over one hundred
Speaker 1: cities across the country. I'm not gonna call them race riots,
Speaker 1: because what does that even mean? A race riot, racial tension,
Speaker 1: racial violence, racial unrest. These are useless terms designed to
Speaker 1: erase the reasons people were protesting and the motivation for
Speaker 1: the violent reactions to those protests from law enforcement. But
Speaker 1: it was a long, hot summer, and I wonder if
Speaker 1: we're due for one.
Speaker 2: Two.
Speaker 1: I got home, I was thinking about Darryl Lamont Jenkins.
Speaker 1: He's Laura's longtime friend and collaborator, the founder of One
Speaker 1: People's Project. He gave such a beautiful eulogy the funeral.
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen him in years. Those years have not
Speaker 1: been kind to most of us. But as we said
Speaker 1: our goodbyes, he told me he was headed back out
Speaker 1: to Delaney Hall to cover the protests outside the iced
Speaker 1: attention facility in Newark, New Jersey. Reports of cruel treatment
Speaker 1: inside the facility and hunger strikes of sparked protests outside
Speaker 1: the facility, and things have been getting pretty violent. Federal
Speaker 1: agents and state police are hurting people inside the facility
Speaker 1: and outside on the streets. On Saturday, New Jersey Governor
Speaker 1: Mikey Cheryl gave a press conference about the ongoing situation.
Speaker 5: We know that people from outside the state have been
Speaker 5: interfering in the protests and escalating them. Five of the
Speaker 5: six people arrested last night by state police were from
Speaker 5: outside New Jersey and some national extremist groups have become
Speaker 5: involved in the protests here today, to the people coming
Speaker 5: from out of state to create chaos and dangerous situations,
Speaker 5: you should not be.
Speaker 1: Here outside agitators. Huh, that's what she's going with. It's
Speaker 1: such a tired trope. I mean, you hear it all
Speaker 1: the time. It's very popular. A lot of people believe
Speaker 1: in it, sort of no true Scotsman fallacy for protesters
Speaker 1: you don't like, And I'm sure you can come up
Speaker 1: with a few anecdotes to support a belief in the
Speaker 1: idea that all misbehavior at political protests is the work
Speaker 1: of a dastardly outsider. But it isn't true. You can
Speaker 1: believe it, you can feel it, but the data shows
Speaker 1: it's not true. And I would argue it wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: if it were. It's a concept we've always carried with us,
Speaker 1: this desire to blame unknown outsiders for bad things that
Speaker 1: happen in our communities. We are good people. Our home
Speaker 1: is a good place. Bad things do not happen here
Speaker 1: because we are good people. We treat our minorities well.
Speaker 1: If something bad has happened here, it's because some wicked
Speaker 1: external force has disrupted our peaceful way of life. Right.
Speaker 1: We heard it all the time in the summer of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Anytime a protest went sideways, it was outside agitators.
Speaker 1: There's no need to point the finger at police violence,
Speaker 1: because then we'd have to talk about the fact that
Speaker 1: that's what the protests are about. So just blame someone
Speaker 1: from out of town. But the idea wasn't new then.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, plenty of commentators pointed to the history
Speaker 1: of the phrase and the Civil rights movement. Southern cities
Speaker 1: were all quite sure that their black populations had been
Speaker 1: perfectly content until those rabble rousers showed up. Black panthers
Speaker 1: and communists and big city agitators from up north, and
Speaker 1: before that, well, factory workers and farm workers and working
Speaker 1: class people all over the country in the nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: and thirties never would have organized for better working conditions
Speaker 1: if not for those damned socialists and communists and Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: and paid professional organizers coming from the big cities to
Speaker 1: stir up trouble. Everybody was perfectly satisfied with the way
Speaker 1: things were before those outsiders showed up. Nobody here in
Speaker 1: our town ever wanted a union, ever wanted integration, ever
Speaker 1: wanted civil rights, ever wanted freedom until those outsiders came
Speaker 1: to town. I was well familiar with the way the
Speaker 1: trope worked in the sixties against civil rights activists, and
Speaker 1: I asked my husband where he thought it came from,
Speaker 1: and he suggested the thirties, recalling that it was leveraged
Speaker 1: against union organizers. We were both right, but we were
Speaker 1: both wrong. I mean, the idea is probably as old
Speaker 1: as civilization itself. Right, We've always feared the outsider, the
Speaker 1: unknown change. But I was curious about the phrase, so
Speaker 1: I popped the words outside agitators into the search bar
Speaker 1: in a few places where I might find old newspapers
Speaker 1: and books and magazines, it's slavery. The answer is slavery.
Speaker 1: The American concept of the outside agitator was invented to justify, defend, protect,
Speaker 1: and uphold the institution of chattel slavery. The phrase starts
Speaker 1: occurring with the exact same meaning it holds today, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden in the mid eighteen fifties. Most of
Speaker 1: the uses of the phrase I found in the mid
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties were specifically in reference to Kansas at the
Speaker 1: height of the Bleeding Kansas Conflict, the bloody battle over
Speaker 1: whether Kansas would be admitted as a free ray slave state. Now,
Speaker 1: in the eighteen fifties, he wasn't yet as famous as
Speaker 1: he would go on to become. But they're talking about
Speaker 1: people like John Brown. The original outside agitator in American
Speaker 1: politics is John Brown, and the phrase became a part
Speaker 1: of the standard vocabulary for talking about meddlesome abolitionists in
Speaker 1: the years leading up to the Civil War. In April
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty, almost exactly a year before the war began,
Speaker 1: Caleb Cushing, a Democratic politician from Massachusetts, gave a speech
Speaker 1: that was published in quite a few newspapers. He was
Speaker 1: ostensibly responding to a rather odd book, a pro abolition
Speaker 1: text written by an extremely racist white Southerner, Hinton Helper's book,
Speaker 1: The Impending Crisis of the South made a purely economic
Speaker 1: argument for abolition without recognizing any inherent dignity or humanity
Speaker 1: in black people. But that's a strange journey for another day,
Speaker 1: because it barely matters what Helper wrote, because Cushing's speech
Speaker 1: quickly went off the rails and became a rebuttal to
Speaker 1: abolitionists thought more generally right. So he starts out talking
Speaker 1: about this book, but really he's just saying all abolitionists
Speaker 1: are incoherent and wrong. I can kind of tell he's
Speaker 1: not speaking to Hinton's book directly, because he makes a
Speaker 1: snide remark about how all abolitionists love Toussaint l'vature, and
Speaker 1: I don't think a white supremacist wrote fondly about the
Speaker 1: hero of the Haitian Revolution. Nevertheless, in his speech, Cushing
Speaker 1: rails against the foolish abolitionists, saying, quote, all these visionary,
Speaker 1: scatterbrained abolitionists who parade up and down the country with
Speaker 1: their imaginary self conceited, self sufficient, omniscience and omnipotence, All
Speaker 1: these outside agitators of slavery have given us no solution. Abolish, abolish,
Speaker 1: they say, but they have no solution how to do it.
Speaker 1: And when the war was over and slavery had been abolished,
Speaker 1: well it was the outside agitator again, stirring up trouble
Speaker 1: among these newly freed populations of the South. In an
Speaker 1: October eighteen sixty five issue of the Baton Rouge tri
Speaker 1: Weekly Gazette, a bizarre op ed opens with the bold
Speaker 1: claim that the white Southerner cares deeply about the best
Speaker 1: interests of the newly freed black population. Quote this, we
Speaker 1: believe every intelligent member of the colored race will concede,
Speaker 1: nor can they, in reality be made to feel otherwise,
Speaker 1: notwithstanding all the undue interference to the contrary on the
Speaker 1: part of outside political agitators, who from selfish and unworthy
Speaker 1: motives would fain delude the color into the belief that
Speaker 1: they are their best and truest friends. So the author
Speaker 1: of this piece is saying, we you are former slave masters,
Speaker 1: are your best and truest friends. These outside political agitators,
Speaker 1: these abolitionists, these people from the north who wanted to
Speaker 1: free you, they're lying to you. They have an ulterior
Speaker 1: motive in manipulating you. The article warns the freed population
Speaker 1: that things will be worse for them if they trust
Speaker 1: those awful northern agitators. Quote If, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it should unfortunately turn out that evil counsels are allowed
Speaker 1: to prevail, and the Blacks be placed in a position
Speaker 1: to be bandied about as a mere football in the
Speaker 1: hands of artful demagogues, they will make for themselves a
Speaker 1: bed of thorns. There's no author listed I assume it
Speaker 1: was written by the paper's editor. But it's a fascinating
Speaker 1: document language that I don't feel great about repeating, but
Speaker 1: I think it's important. Here here in eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: some Louisiana newspapermen is warning the newly freed black population.
Speaker 1: But if they don't cozy up to their former masters
Speaker 1: and tow the line, if they start getting big ideas
Speaker 1: about equality and get in bed with these big city
Speaker 1: northerners and their promises, they'll be replaced by immigrants. I mean,
Speaker 1: this could have been written today. You just swap a
Speaker 1: few words out, dumb it down a little bit because
Speaker 1: people aren't quite so literate. These are reactionaries saying to
Speaker 1: the black population, stay in your place, or things will
Speaker 1: be worse for you. Right, they're pitting them against a
Speaker 1: different oppressed population, in this case Irish immigrants. It's really
Speaker 1: no different than the way they talk to black people
Speaker 1: today about Latin immigrants. Stay in your place, deal with
Speaker 1: what you can get, because someone else will do the
Speaker 1: job cheaper, will exploit someone else. If we have to quote,
Speaker 1: if the Negro would remain here as an inferior, not
Speaker 1: demand too much, and perform for reasonable compensation end quote,
Speaker 1: He'll be fine. But if he quote listens to the
Speaker 1: few fanatics who preach political and social equality to him
Speaker 1: and aspires to govern rather than be governed, end quote,
Speaker 1: he'll be driven out by the flood of immigration. The
Speaker 1: author is threatening to replace freed slave labor with cheap
Speaker 1: and abundant Irish labor. Again, this is the way the
Speaker 1: Republican Party talks to Black voters about Latin immigration. The
Speaker 1: people who are preaching political and social equality, right the
Speaker 1: Democrat Party with their DEI, they're bringing in the illegals
Speaker 1: that are replacing you. It's the same one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years later, they're saying the same thing. I could
Speaker 1: go on. There's an article in March of eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven in The Times picky un in New Orleans blaming
Speaker 1: a disturbance at the polls on outside agitators. The city
Speaker 1: was at the time rather violently resisting reconstruction again and
Speaker 1: again from the eighteen fifties through the twenty twenties. The
Speaker 1: outside agitator is blamed for instigating the conflict. Without this outsider,
Speaker 1: everyone would be happy with the way things are. The
Speaker 1: people here were fine with slavery. They were fine with exploitation,
Speaker 1: they were fine with low wages, they were fine with segregation,
Speaker 1: they were fine with police brutality, they were fine with
Speaker 1: people being abused in a detention center. Everyone here was
Speaker 1: fine until someone came down here and put ideas in
Speaker 1: their heads. They're being manipulated. They don't want these things
Speaker 1: on their own accord. The idea took shape in defense
Speaker 1: of slavery, and that's still its truest form. It's not
Speaker 1: just this general idea that outsiders are to blame for
Speaker 1: our problems, and the American conception of the outside agitator,
Speaker 1: it carries with it the baggage of the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: this idea that the black population just isn't smart enough
Speaker 1: to want anything, to do anything, to organize themselves in
Speaker 1: any particular way, unless they've been riled up and pointed
Speaker 1: in a particular direction. And obviously that's not true. Obviously
Speaker 1: all people have intrinsic value and dignity and the desire
Speaker 1: for freedom. But that's what you're saying when you look
Speaker 1: at these uprisings in nineteen sixty seven and you say, well,
Speaker 1: that's the work of outside agitators. That's what you're saying,
Speaker 1: when you look at the uprisings in twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: you say that that was the work of outside agitators,
Speaker 1: you're saying that people cannot look around themselves where they live,
Speaker 1: in their own lives and see injustice and want something else.
Speaker 1: Before the long hot summer of nineteen sixty seven was
Speaker 1: even over, President Lyndon Johnson established the National Advisory Commission
Speaker 1: on Civil Disorders, better known as the Kerner Commission after
Speaker 1: its chairman, Otto Kerner. Johnson wanted to get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of these riots, what's causing them, whose fault were they,
Speaker 1: and how can we make them stop. Johnson was a
Speaker 1: big believer in the outside agitator theory. In nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: the Commission released a four hund page report. The report
Speaker 1: was based on months of investigation, including sending teams of
Speaker 1: field researchers to twenty three cities where unrest had occurred.
Speaker 1: Those field teams interviewed more than twelve hundred people, people
Speaker 1: who'd been arrested, people who'd watched the riots through the
Speaker 1: living room windows, city officials, police officers, national guardsmen, leaders
Speaker 1: in the Black Power movement. They talked to people on
Speaker 1: all sides and people on no side, And they took
Speaker 1: formal depositions from another one hundred or so people and
Speaker 1: solicited testimony from experts in various fields. Do you know
Speaker 1: what they found? Do you know what this government appointed
Speaker 1: commission concluded was the cause of these one hundred sum
Speaker 1: odd race riots in the summer of nineteen sixty seven. Racism,
Speaker 1: the unrest was the result of systemic inequality. That's what
Speaker 1: the report says. In the report's introduction, they put it
Speaker 1: pretty plainly, quote, our nation is moving toward two societies,
Speaker 1: one black, one white, separate and unequal. Reaction to last
Speaker 1: summer's disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division.
Speaker 1: Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life.
Speaker 1: They now threaten the future of every American. This deepening
Speaker 1: racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed.
Speaker 1: Choice is still possible now it was the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: So throughout the report there's language that isn't what I
Speaker 1: would choose today. But I was shocked that a government
Speaker 1: report in nineteen sixty eight came to conclusions like this.
Speaker 1: I mean, the conclusions and the recommendations of this report
Speaker 1: are so far left of the current Democratic Party PLATF
Speaker 1: that you'd get kicked out. You couldn't run on this,
Speaker 1: You couldn't say this in public. The Commission recommended as
Speaker 1: a solution for the problems identified in the report, massive
Speaker 1: investment in the black community, jobs, education, mass transit, millions
Speaker 1: of new units of affordable housing, police reform, expanding anti
Speaker 1: discrimination laws and enforcement, giving the EEOC and Title seven
Speaker 1: more teeth, Getting the Department of Labor to work with
Speaker 1: unions to expand black membership in trade unions and apprentice programs.
Speaker 1: Expanding the civil service focusing on recruiting, hiring, and training
Speaker 1: people from disadvantaged backgrounds, creating a million new public sector jobs,
Speaker 1: Federal reimbursement for private sector employees engaging in certain job
Speaker 1: training programs, Committing to actually ending segregation, using federal funds
Speaker 1: to hire and train teachers to ensure that all school
Speaker 1: districts and all students have high quality educators. Expanding access
Speaker 1: to early childhood education, universal preschool, more financial assistance for
Speaker 1: higher education, Removing restrictions on welfare eligibility, and establishing a
Speaker 1: system of income supplementation that would lift all working people
Speaker 1: and mothers who do not work out of poverty quote
Speaker 1: to aid in saving children from the prison of poverty
Speaker 1: that has held their parents. Are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty eight, Donald Trump would have had the FBI
Speaker 1: raid Auto Kerner's home at four am and charged him
Speaker 1: with conspiracy to commit DEI. And in nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: President Lyndon Johnson wasn't super pleased with the Commission's findings.
Speaker 1: He preferred the outside agitator narrative. It's easy to arrest
Speaker 1: a scapegoat, It's much harder to invest in black communities,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 3: And Bobby just gave hell today for not carrying out
Speaker 3: the Turner Commission study. Well, I didn't realize when I
Speaker 3: parted Turner that this son of a betch from New York,
Speaker 3: Lindsay would take charge. He did take charge, and he
Speaker 3: recommended I hire two and a half million people on
Speaker 3: federal payroll. And I just I have not worried to
Speaker 3: reflect on Kerner and criticize the commission. At the same time,
Speaker 3: I couldn't embrace it because I've got a budget.
Speaker 1: That's LBJ. In March of nineteen sixty eight, complaining to
Speaker 1: Dick Daily, the mayor of Chicago, The Bobby he's referring
Speaker 1: to here is Robert F. Kennedy Senior, who at the
Speaker 1: time was challenging Johnson in the presidential primary. Johnson withdrew
Speaker 1: from the election a few weeks later, and Kennedy was
Speaker 1: assassinated in June. A Democratic nominee ended up being Hubert Humphrey,
Speaker 1: and segregationist Third Party Canada George Wallace got way too
Speaker 1: many votes for my taste, and Richard Nixon ended up
Speaker 1: being the president. It was a weird year, but the
Speaker 1: commission found that outside agitators didn't cause the unrest. They
Speaker 1: weren't even a factor. They were, by and large, according
Speaker 1: to the data, not even real. Across the data collected,
Speaker 1: ninety percent of people who'd been arrested in these incidents
Speaker 1: were local residents. Of that remaining ten percent of arrestees
Speaker 1: whose home address didn't match the city where they were arrested,
Speaker 1: most of them resided in the Greater Metropolitan Area. One
Speaker 1: percent of people arrested during all the civil disturbances in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven resided in a state other than the
Speaker 1: one where they were arrested. The outside agitator is a myth.
Speaker 1: It's a story we tell ourselves because the real answer
Speaker 1: is too scary or too expensive, or it implicates us.
Speaker 1: The root cause of those uprisings was systemic racial inequality.
Speaker 1: Nobody was tricked into believing that people just looked around
Speaker 1: their own lives and saw what was happening. The solution
Speaker 1: the Commission identified was investing in making society more equal.
Speaker 1: Out of towners didn't throw the first rock, and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have mattered if they did. But I think I
Speaker 1: do have to say a good word for the outside agitator,
Speaker 1: not this imaginary violent instigator, but the protester who felt
Speaker 1: moved to show up somewhere where harm was being done
Speaker 1: to a stranger. It feels a little cliche, I think,
Speaker 1: to quote doctor Martin Luther King, Junior, But maybe that's
Speaker 1: something that I feel because a lot of work was
Speaker 1: invested in making me feel that way. His message has
Speaker 1: been deluded and defanged by this constant stream of bland,
Speaker 1: out of context quotes. When doctor King said injustice anywhere
Speaker 1: is a threat to justice everywhere, he wasn't asking you
Speaker 1: to write your congressmen about some faraway harm. He was
Speaker 1: responding directly to allegations that he personally was an outside
Speaker 1: Agitator from his letter from Birmingham jail. Quote, I am
Speaker 1: in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets
Speaker 1: of the eighth century BC left their villages and carried
Speaker 1: there thus saith the Lord far beyond the boundaries of
Speaker 1: their hometowns. And just as the apostle Paul left his
Speaker 1: village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so
Speaker 1: am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond
Speaker 1: my hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the
Speaker 1: Macedonian call forraid. Moreover, I am cognizant of the inner
Speaker 1: relatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly
Speaker 1: by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens
Speaker 1: in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Speaker 1: We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied
Speaker 1: in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly
Speaker 1: affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live
Speaker 1: with the narrow, provincial outside agitator idea. Anyone who lives
Speaker 1: inside the United States can never be considered an outsider
Speaker 1: anywhere within its bounds. So when I say the trope
Speaker 1: of the outside agitator as a racist myth, I mean
Speaker 1: the idea that all unrest is caused by an outsider
Speaker 1: who stirs up trouble that would otherwise not have existed.
Speaker 1: That's a myth. No one's riling up the locals and
Speaker 1: tricking them into riding. That's fake. But none of this
Speaker 1: contradicts the very real contributions to the struggle from people
Speaker 1: who saw injustice and went where that injustice was. They
Speaker 1: didn't provoke otherwise docile locals to take action against their will.
Speaker 1: They stood shoulder to shoulder with people who already fighting
Speaker 1: because they all wanted the same thing. People like Viola Luzo,
Speaker 1: the white mother from Detroit who drove down to Alabama
Speaker 1: to volunteer with the march to Montgomery. She wasn't announcede hegitator.
Speaker 1: Her own husband tried to convince her that's what she
Speaker 1: was doing. He told her before she left, it's not
Speaker 1: your fight. And do you remember what she told him.
Speaker 1: It's everybody's fight. It's everybody's fight. And she fought that
Speaker 1: fight and she died for it. James Reed Jonathan Daniels,
Speaker 1: James Cheney, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman. They went where the
Speaker 1: fight was because they believed they had a duty to
Speaker 1: do something about it, and they were martyred for it,
Speaker 1: and the klansmen who killed them called them outside agitators.
Speaker 1: Thousands and thousands of people got on buses and trains
Speaker 1: and took turns driving all night to get to the
Speaker 1: Deep South to do their part. Back then, those aren't
Speaker 1: outside agitators. Those are people who believed the world could
Speaker 1: be good. You have to believe that too. We have
Speaker 1: the same duty today. You can't sit idly by in
Speaker 1: your hometown and not be concerned about what happens outside
Speaker 1: of it. Because we are caught in that inescapable network
Speaker 1: of mutuality. We are tied in that single garment of destiny.
Speaker 1: They want you to believe it's impossible, or maybe just immoral,
Speaker 1: to care about things that don't directly affect you. They
Speaker 1: want you to believe it's wrong, it's somehow suspect, maybe
Speaker 1: even a crime, to cross state lines to show you
Speaker 1: care about what happens to our neighbors. Because the people
Speaker 1: being abducted and abused by my federal government are my neighbors,
Speaker 1: no matter where they're being snatched up. So the outside
Speaker 1: agitator isn't real. But at the same time, maybe we
Speaker 1: all have a moral duty to be the outside agitator
Speaker 1: of their nightmares. Just a quick note before you finish
Speaker 1: writing me that email. I have used the name Stokely
Speaker 1: Carmichael throughout this story for clarity's sake, because that was
Speaker 1: his name the time of these events. Stokely Carmichael changed
Speaker 1: his name to Kuame Turre in nineteen sixty nine. The
Speaker 1: majority of the sources I used for this episode, including
Speaker 1: oral histories from those who knew him, used Quame Tourey's
Speaker 1: former name when writing or speaking about this time period.
Speaker 1: I understand some sources do opt to use his chosen
Speaker 1: name throughout, regardless of the time period being discussed, but
Speaker 1: since he was not the primary subject of the episode,
Speaker 1: it seemed more straightforward to use the name that you
Speaker 1: would find if you clicked through to view any of
Speaker 1: the linked sources. Nashville cop John Sarrace died in February
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five. He was eighty seven years old.
Speaker 1: According to a statement from the Rutherfurd County Sheriff's office.
Speaker 1: He died after a thirteen days stay in the hospital
Speaker 1: due to complications from an existing medical condition. Sarrace was
Speaker 1: in the sheriff's custody when he died, following his arrest
Speaker 1: in January of twenty twenty five on charges of reckless
Speaker 1: homicide related to the shooting death of his wife, Sharon Rodgers.
Speaker 1: Sarrace and of course, segregationist lawyer and bathtub sculptor Jack Kershaw,
Speaker 1: died at the age of ninety six in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: George Ware outlived him by two years. Weird Little Guys
Speaker 1: It's a production of Coolshoe Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched,
Speaker 1: written and recorded by me, Molly Conger Park. Executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was
Speaker 1: composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely
Speaker 1: read it, but I probably won't answer it. It's nothing personal.
Speaker 1: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 1: listeners on the Weird Little Guy's subreddit. Just don't post
Speaker 1: anything that's going to make you one of my weird
Speaker 1: little guys.