American Experience; 1964; Interview John H. Bracey, Historian, part 1 of 3

So, you know, 64 is a kind of a tricky year to put your arms around. In some ways, it started in November of 63, didn't it? Yeah, a little bit earlier, yeah. I mean, Kennedy, where were you when... Are you old enough to remember the Kennedy assassination? Yeah, well, it actually starts with the kids in Birmingham. Before kids in Birmingham, before Kennedy. That was the key. Kennedy was a build-up to that, you know. If you're an African-American, you're thinking about, well, you're used to African-Americans being killed, because the number of people murdered that year is quite high. But you realize that this open season on white liberals, and you know the country's movement pretty strongly over the age of some age. And that's the way you kind of read it, you know. Now, I remember I was sitting in... I was at school, Roosevelt University in the cafeteria. And somebody came in and said,

the president was shot. And everybody said, oh God, I hope it wasn't a black guy. And it wasn't. And then you tried to figure out what it meant. And then they had the news accounts, which they haven't shown since, school kids in Dallas cheering when the president got shot. And that kind of got dropped real fast. There was, you know, we got him, we got him, kind of stuff. And you realize, like, there's something weird going on that you couldn't quite sort out. And so you just kind of sat still for a while. Just kind of wait and see, well, what is this? Is there some sort of cool, is it, you know, what? You know, you didn't know what was going to happen. Because it never happened before. I was talking to Hot and Carter on the film the other day. We're going to interview him later in the month. And he was on the desk of his family paper in Greenwood and sent his young reporters out to get reaction for that kind of intention.

And they came back in and one of the reporters was crying. And he said, what's wrong? And the kids said, everyone's happy. Yeah. People forget that part. And also the minute they shot Oswald, all the guys I know in Chicago said, this mafia, mafia hit, you know, you shoot the person, you shoot the person. So you can't trace it back up the line. And that kind of settled it in the airman. From that point on, that was the explanation. So it didn't matter what all the commissions and all that said, it was, some of the guys I worked within the street gangs were lower level criminal types, who were very much attuned with organized crime behavior. And he just looked at and said, it's a hit. He says, what'd you do? You know, you had a dummy to shoot somebody and you shoot the dummy. So that the person actually shot Kennedy. It's totally not credible. You know, this guy couldn't find his way around the corner. But he never taught because somebody didn't shoot him.

And so you still don't know what that means. You know, like what is the mafia taking over the government? And why would they do that? You know, I mean, it's very uneasy kind of time to be living. Yeah. You know. Let's talk about 1964, a big picture for a minute. And then we'll get to some specific stuff. How separate were blacks and whites in 1964? Depends on what you mean. There was more probably interracial act, political activity than ever before, because of the civil rights movement. There was more interaction in terms of confrontation with whites. So in fact, there's more, you know, kind of touching and feeling in acting with whites. But I wouldn't... It's kind of hard to fix it in a static kind of way that way. I would say it's a period where the African-American population is kind of worn out.

It's 10 years since Brown. You have to remember that. 1954, we won. You know, the... You know, white American said, you have to follow the law, if you go to court, you and if you win, it's okay. Well, NAACP did that. They went to court. They won. You figured, well, if we won, then that's just solved the problem, right? Well, didn't happen. You know, it's... So you won in the law, but now you have to go actually win it on the ground and say, what kind of law is that? So you realize that white Americans were kind of hypocritical about the law. And so then you have to have a movement, in fact, to make the law work, which is usually not the way it works. Usually, if there's a law, then you call the police and they make it work. In this case, we had to make the law work. And so you begin to do that, and you ask 10 years. You know, from 54 to 64, it's 10 years. And if you say, oh, we'll give you another law. And so, wait a minute. We already... I thought Brown said everything. We're going to give us some more words, and who's going to enforce those words.

And so there was an increasing skepticism about the commitment of the laws of our white Americans to any kind of racial equality at all. I mean, it wasn't happening. Liberals were fueling for all between the people that stood up were not that many. And they were attacked by other whites, and they said, I mean, white people died in a civil rights movement. And so you figured, well, maybe integration is not what you really want anyway. Why don't you just hold on to what you have and work it back to control. That's where you get to know self-determination. What was it at 64? It's really interesting. Did 64 become kind of a watershed moment, almost like a hinge moment? That period from the end of 63, after the March on Washington, the March on Washington was King's last shot. It was like, okay, you know, my went,

I was at the March on Washington. This is okay. Here we are. You make the nice speech. And if white Americans listen, okay. Well, then what, months later, they blow up these kids in Birmingham. So obviously, they didn't get King's message about non-violence. And the president didn't know anything. And then the president got shot. She said, okay, now what does this mean? And then you're looking at it. You really begin to think that you're going to have to figure out a way to get control over things. If she really does become a power issue, that language comes into play. LeBron Bennett, who's the editor of Ebony Magazine, a book called the Negro Moon, published in 1864, and he talks about power. He says, we ought to have a moratorium talking about love. He says, we talked about love for five years and it doesn't seem to be working. I'll be talking about power, because what we need is power, not love. And that's a kind of very big shift in the African-American community, that the casualties aren't what you're getting. I mean, people are dying.

More and more people are dying. We're taking all the losses. We'll be getting for it, you know? So you figure like, wait a minute. Why don't we figure out something else to do? You take a sip of water? Yeah. Five days after the assassination, LBJ goes in front of Congress, gives a speech. What are the stakes for him at that moment? And why is that speech significant? The way we saw it, you know, I'm speaking again from a younger kind of... You want me to push your glass back a little bit, just a little bit up here. Okay. Speaking from the point of view of Canada, a younger black kind of nationalist left, which is what I was kind of situated. We saw it as LBJ being the person necessary to scramble to hold a system together, because I don't think he knew anyone else what was going on.

I don't think anybody was going on. There had to be some kind of, you know, holding pieces of the society from flying off. And I think LBJ said, well, the biggest piece that might come apart is the whole thing about African Americans. You know, it's 10% of the population. If they really get totally disaffected, then God knows what's going to happen. Right? And so, okay, I will try to hold this piece down. And it costs them, it costs them on this white southerness. But it's like, look, I know what you all are going to do. You've already shown that. You've killed a bunch of people. That's not going to work. You know, black people are not buying that. You know, they're not afraid anymore. So, we're going to have to ship this thing. And so, he led that shift. He said, no, no, no. It's not the old way it's not going to work. We have to do something better than that. It's a pretty high stakes game. Yeah, the whole country is up for grabs. I mean, it's hard to, you know, it's survived now because we're here now. We look at it 40 years later and say, I went to the time you didn't know what's going to survive. You have, if you just, you know, I was reading back over the chronology of the period, there's, you know, racial violence

and mayhem virtually every week. You know, north, south, east, west. You know, Pennsylvania, New York City, and so forth, Jersey City. A black family moves until white neighborhood. A mob comes and tries to burn him out. They resist. So, it doesn't look as if there's an easy answer to the question of racial equality. And there's no one group that has the answer. NAACP is trading water because people are saying you're moving too slow. And they're saying, we did what we do, and we won. Like, why are you mad at us? And they say, well, it didn't get what we wanted. And so they say, well, what did they do? It says, well, we do legal work. That's what we're good at. We're very good at it. And they were. Young people are saying, you're not moving fast enough. Snickers saying, you're not moving fast enough. You Malcolm X leaves the nation of Islam. I mean, Malcolm was to figure that kind of transform Negroes to black people. You know, we were Negroes until Malcolm said that you really weren't a Negro. You were so-called Negro. And at that point, you didn't want to be a Negro anymore. You don't want to be black. That's a big shift in people's consciousness.

You know? January, like, 18, and WCP, Whitney Young, Farmer Ongessor invited to the White House. What's, what's, set that scene for me? If you can. And help me understand why that's a significant moment. Or maybe it's not involved. No, it's part of trying to get a fix on where things are. You know? You say, okay, you're the leaders. You come in. You tell me what's going on. I'll tell you what I can do. Let's work this out. It's like Roosevelt in the March on Washington's in 1941. You know, get some people in here. Like, what do you want? What can I give you? And you come up with FEPC. It says, well, I can't go to Congress. What I can give you, FEPC, because that's an executive order. Well, Johnson is figuring out, well, what do you want? What can I give you? You know? And he says, okay, I've got the Congress. I came out of the Congress. I can get something to Congress. You know? He says, I'll propose it. And so he, in fact, combines the legislative and the executive roles because, in the back, he came out of the Congress,

speaking of the House and all. And said, okay, if I can get this through this sort of whole things and then he started twisting arms. But again, it shows you the nature of the crisis. You know? If you have to bring in people that you didn't really care that much for, or didn't like that much, and are saying, what do you want? I mean, that's what the meeting was about. I was like, what do you want? How do you think civil rights leaders saw Johnson prior to that? And were they surprised that the southerners was doubling down? Yeah. There was no particular reason to trust him. You know, I mean, I couldn't know what white policy didn't trust him. I mean, he was a Texas, you know, kind of Wheeler Dealer. That's how he made it. He believed what was necessary to get him to the next step. You know, if you gave him enough, he would help you out. If somebody gave him more, he'd drop you. But on the other hand, it's better to have him than a liberal who doesn't believe anything. You know? So if you really, you know, a system survives because, in fact, it has people like that. If all you have is somebody that has a fine lofty opinion

but doesn't have any politics, then they're useless to you. And, you know, I'm on your side, but what can you do for me? You know? Johnson describing candy. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, you know, like I love you, but I can't help you. And it said, well, thanks a lot. Johnson is saying, look, you know me, I can get things done. You know, let me do it my way. You know, because standing out there, you know, potential race rise, potential violence, potential chaos. And I don't want that. You know, I need to get the country back together again. And nobody trusts me. People don't trust him. Conservatives don't trust him. Kennedy family hates him. I mean, he has no legitimacy in that job. You know, he's there because somebody got shot. He wasn't elected. Somebody got shot, you know. And so he asked to get some legitimacy. And one way to do it is, look, I can handle this. This is the biggest problem I can handle this. You know, now you blew it, of course, because later in the year you had to talk and go resolution. So you blew it on Vietnam as soon as he won it on civil rights. You know?

We'll get that. So what's going on? You just mentioned that people are tired. And it's just prior to freedom summer, you know, when folks are gathering in Oxford. What's the big debate going on in the movement, right then, in the spring, 64? And why is that significant? I'll take one more step. Because if you hear a little bit of dryness, let me know. Again, it's the question of, do you want power? Or do you want integration? Do you want enough control to have the resources that black people can live equally? Or do you want to have physical contact with whites as a sign of equality? And the cost of, say, buying a, getting enough money to buy a big house in a fluent black neighborhood, say Chatham in Chicago, middle-class black neighborhood, or parts of Washington, they see. Is that, is it better to have a job if you can do that than to move until all white neighborhood and risk getting shot at in your house bombed

and all this kind of stuff. And there are two things, but you want the right to do that. You know, so you don't give up on the right. I mean, I always ran these two tracks in my life. I would go integrate places I didn't want to go to and I never went back. But you can't tell me I can't go. You know, so you go into Billy Bob's rebel cafe to get a hamburger. I'm not coming back, but you can't tell me I can't come in. Once I get the right to go in there, you can have it. You know, because your food sucks. You know, but don't tell, don't put a percent whites only. You know, because like, I'm not buying that. Right? So you're running both of these things. I want to write the equality, but I also want to write the choose how I want to live. Right? And I want to live in equality wherever I choose to live. I should not have to move until white neighborhood to have a good school. I should not have to move until white neighborhood to get a decent house. You know, I want the resources where I am if I choose to live where I am so I can survive. You know. What's going on specifically with the decision about Freedom Summer and about choices, Bob Moses and the other folks are grappling with?

What's significant about that? Well, that fight played out the fight. I'm talking about play down the debates about that. This fight was going on within Snake. I mean, a lot of those people I knew coming out of Western DC. I was more nationalist than they were at this point. Our argument was if you empower black people about putting black people in charge. Right? So if you're going to Mississippi, you'll empower black people in Mississippi by letting them decide what they want to do in Freedom Summer. Right? You don't empower them by bringing in Ivy League white kids. Right? Because they'll have the skills and all the technique and whatnot. That they'll take over because they can do things better and more efficiently. You know. So if you're running a newsletter, who can do it better? The Princeton kid with a degree in journalism versus a shared couple who's trying to put together a newsletter. And if you want to get it out tomorrow morning, you can go to the Princeton kid. Right? If you want the black person to get the power of running a newsletter, it might take another couple of days. Well, that's the choice. But there are implications in that choice. You know, do you want a certain kind of efficiency? Or do you want to empower people at the pace that they become empowered?

You know. And our argument was that Freedom doesn't come right away. And it's not, can't be done to West Bank. And that you have to see this much power with the local people that's possible. You know. And the decision to send white kids in in Mississippi was I thought a mistake, you know. What was behind that decision, do you think? What was the rationale on the other side of the argument? The rationale was you had to not make it a white and black thing. And the other rationale, which nobody said as cold bloodily as it came out, was that white kids, if they get hurt, get more attention. You know, white blood gets more attention than black blood. This is black people are getting killed all the time. Nobody cares. A rich white kid gets killed, you get some PR. And nobody says we need to sacrifice a rich white kid. I mean, they weren't looking for bodies. But the implications of getting attention because you have rich white kids was in everybody's head. You know, a Harvard kid, you know, this white is different from Bob Moses who's from Harvard and they beat the hell on him.

You know, he's from Harvard. Why didn't they treat him like a Harvard grad? Well, they didn't. You know, because he's black. But a white kid from Harvard, that's different. You know, and so there's an understanding of the way racism plays out in the white American mind that they do value your white life more than black life. You know, and if their white kids willing to risk their life, you know, then you don't stop them. You know, and I think that's the other piece. But do you really hold back, and that's the part I was ambiguous about, do you hold back a bunch of young white kids that have prepared to risk their lives in your behalf? And you can't say what I don't want you to do that. Why don't you go and marry your own business? They have every much of right, you know, to participate in the struggle for equality as black people do. And you can't just kind of shut the door on them, and say, well, go back and do something else. And they say, no, no, no. I'm prepared to leave Harvard, or Princeton, or Yale, and come down into Mississippi knowing I will risk my life doing that. And it's pretty hard to say, we don't want that, you know, like, why don't you, you know, stay home and, you know, stay on the beach or whatever.

And so they come, you know, and of course they die. You know, they get beaten up, they get arrested like everybody else. Right away. Yeah, yeah, immediately, yeah. Is there a sense though, in 64, within the movement, I know you say that there are these splits, I mean, you can describe them really well. There's also a sense, I remember Dave Dennis was saying that, you know, felt the exhaustion factor was such that there's a sense, like, we've got to do something dramatic here. It's not working in Mississippi, otherwise. We're just getting killed in nobody, as you say. We're getting killed in nobody's notice. Yeah. Yeah. For my point of view, I wouldn't, that's the snake's notion of doing something dramatic was getting yourself killed. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, what I was doing was organizing street gangs in Chicago. My thing was the more power you got within your own community, the stronger you would be to make demands on the larger system. And there's no point in demanding better schools

if the kids don't want to go to school. So you've got to build up into them, like we have to take over the schools, in fact, so you will go to them and learn stuff, so you have black history and all this at the same time. That was an internal development versus a dramatic kind of thing. Snake people were more courageous in a lot of ways than we were. That's why everybody admired them so much, it's a malecumid mind. They were willing to do things that no guarantee you're going to win. And a high probability that you're going to get your brains blown out. And they didn't flinch. You know, I would have thought long and hard. My family's from Mississippi on my mother's side. I would not be jumping up to go running into Mississippi in 1964, you know, for any particular reason. I say, well, I could pick something else to do. Now, I have been in the South, you know, I was in the South in 65. But I was much more comfortable, you know, working in a northern, you know, urban environment. You know, it was in a southern, rural environment.

And it's a huge, huge, huge contrast. Huge contrast. How do you imagine how dangerous and how tense it must have been to have been in those times? Yeah, there's no order. So, you know, if I'm in Chicago, no white mob is going to attack me. Right, no white mob is going to follow me home. Because I live in a black neighborhood. There's no way that that's not going to happen. Like that is not going to happen. If you tried to follow me into my neighborhood, street gangs would be all over you. Like, if you, you know, I can't imagine a gang of white people running down 63rd street, hollering about. I mean, it's not going to happen. You know, that was threatened when King was there. The Nazi's threatening. If King had marched in Cisro, they were going to march to the black community. And I said, come on. You know, the Black Stone Rangers said, just let us know when and where you come in. And we will give you a wonderful South Side welcome. That's not going to happen. That's different from walking into Mississippi. In fact, there's no order. There's no order.

There's nobody you can call on. There's no authority that you have. And there's no authority that is on your side. You know, you have the phone number of somebody in the FBI and the phones off the hook. You have the phone number from somebody in the Washington DC who cannot help you. You know, every move you make, you're subject to violence. You're subject to a random death. And yet they walk into those environments. The people that help you might be killed. So not only are you risking your life, you're risking somebody else's life. You know, so when you walk up on the front porch of a sharecropper's home and knock on the door and says, head off missone. So I'm here from SNCC. I want you to come and register the vote. You're risking that person's life. You know, an amazing thing is someone else people said, yes. I mean, that's what's staggering about it. The people said, okay, they know what that meant. You're standing here about willing to risk your life. So I can get the right to vote. The least I can do is go with you and try to vote. Right? This is a fan of Lou Hamer. You know, you need a black well. You know, all that group, AMSI more. All that group of people, Aaron Henry.

All those people who could have said, like, get off my porch. Like you're out of your mind. You're going to get me killed. They do, you know, Vernon Dama, you know. They don't have to do that. Medge Elvis. He could have been a middle management somewhere. He had skills. He could have said, like, I don't need this. What's remarkable is that what SNCC did was they moved people to risk their lives because they were there with them. They didn't say, you know, why don't you go do this? They said, no, I will walk with you to the courthouse. And you're thinking, what is it? Two crazy people on this trip. You know, it is you and it's me. But they go. I mean, that's how you get the right to vote. That's the South. Yeah. Why was... Why was voted so critical? This power. Power. In a casual study of American political life, we show you that the Congress was dominated by southerners because why people couldn't vote. The most undemocratic, every single major social legislation

that every other part of the world had in the 1880s, we didn't have it in this country because southerners dominated the legislature. I mean, you know, you know, eight-hour day, you know, workman's compensation, you know, national pension, national health system. Germany had this stuff in the 1880s. Right? Every time you try to do this in the South. Right? White southerners, you know, who didn't have to answer to anybody, you know, except the tiny percentage of white population because they had literacy tests. They applied also to white people. They get 5% of the vote, 10% of the vote, they're in Congress forever. Right? They oppose anything they would raise to stand in a black people because that's their cheap labor, you know. And so that holds the standards down for white people all across the South. So there's no education. There's no compulsory attendance in the South to the 1960s. Nobody has to go to school because if we have compulsory attendance, black people will go to school. It's okay. Nobody goes to school. So you have uneducated white people. Right? And you say, well, at least your white. So you play, you know, well, at least your white. At least your white.

This is dumb as a rap. There's no great white Southern universities. You know, there's nothing great in white coming out of the South during this period. I mean, it's a horrible population. I mean, it's still, you know, comparably speaking, you know, education wise, those universities are still behind. The social services are crap. You know, no health care. You know, nothing. You know, no unions. None of the things that every modern society got in the 1880s. White Southern has kept this country from getting. It fought a new deal, except when it meant something for them, you know, like farm subsidies. I mean, hand-favorable farm subsidies, but nothing else. They kept black people out of social security. You know, every major, you know, progressive step. There's a normal European liberal step. White Southern has held back. So the key to get the whole thing moving is, in fact, to limit, you know, and diminish what the white Southern vote. And you do that by, in fact, empowering the 50% of the Southern population is right, you know. So if you got to appeal to me to get elected to Congress, then you're going to have to listen to what my issues are. My issues are going to be compulsory attendance.

You know, better roles, better highways, better health care, better everything, you know. Great. Meg, can you give us a quick touch up? Yeah, it's good. Help me a little bit from just a narrative storytelling point of view. Because what you're giving me is such great analysis, which is what I really want. But what was the Freedom Project all about? Freedom. There's some very short. Freedom Summer? Yeah. Freedom Summer was, in a nutshell, was to send enough people in the South to register enough black people so you can make an impact on the political system about the next presidential cycle. And it was going to be done rapidly, and you're going to register as many people as possible. So, in fact, you could impact the upcoming Democratic Convention. You know, it like delegates and so forth. And, in fact, in this presidential election. So, in fact, LBJ would have something somebody to vote for. That was SNCCS thing, you know.

That's what that was. And that's why it went in the kind of shock force way that they did it. As a long-range project, you know, everything was long-range, that you thought was short-range. But I think they thought they could get it done pretty fast. If the Civil Rights Bill is moving through Congress, isn't that a good sign? Why? Shouldn't the movement be saying, look, this is what we've been waiting for. It's going to be landmark legislation. This is a huge moment. No, we already had Brown. Why don't we need a Civil Rights Bill? I mean, it's more words. It's like, every time you ask to someone, say, we'll give you another law. Like, how about some police on the ground to help me pick get the stuff that we already want? Words were not, you know, it's hard to overestimate the amount of skepticism doing this period. And you say, okay, they're going through Congress when they get another some more words. The issue is, are they going to enforce it? You know, sure you got a Civil Rights Bill.

We had Brown versus Board Education, right? Are you going to enforce it? Our white American is going to believe in integration enough to stand still, you know, after Brown. You might experience a Western DC going into high school, 56. Integration lasted three years in my high school. You know, I got there. The school was 20% black. When I graduated, it was 80% black. So much for integration. You know, if white Americans want an integration, all they had to do was stand still. Right, we couldn't have taken over the school if they had stayed. Right, it made up, you know, 40, 60 or whatever. But they took off running. So if you look at the figures just in DC, it goes from, I think we, like, 47% of the school system in 1954, and we're 80 something about 10 years later. I mean, come on. You can't have integration without people any great with. So, I mean, who, who believes what? I mean, what, what are you, what are you trying to sell me here? Yeah. Who were Mickey Schwerner and Goodman and James Cheney?

Cheney came out of, was out of Mississippi. Goodman and Schwerner out of New York. You know, liberal Jewish families. You know, kind of left liberal Jewish families. And they were going to spend their summer in Mississippi fighting with black people's freedom. And I think they saw it that way. I think that was what was so kind of touching about it. They weren't radical, radical kids. I mean, they weren't coming down, you know, we're going to take over the world kind of thing. They thought this was just like a lot of young white kids did. You know, before things got really rough. A lot of black people too. That this was right. This is something you can do. It shouldn't take that long because you're doing something that's right. And therefore, people will see that it's right and therefore, they will do what's right. And so, it's an incredible kind of naivete that the system will respond to a moral argument and a moral presence. They also probably will use to getting things done.

Like, oh, I can do this. You know, like it shouldn't take that long. Like, come on. And so, you're walking to an environment where you're not aware of the danger of an environment because you can't imagine it. Because you can't comprehend being in the United States and having somebody who wants to shoot you or beat your brains out because you want black people to have the right to vote. I mean, this is a simple kind of, you know, we learn in a civics class. Everybody is a citizen. They all have a right to vote. Like, what's the problem? You know, and I think a lot of the, the hard lessons learned by young white kids in Mississippi that later got them into the left and later turned a lot of people very kind of radical was that their parents had been lying to them about what their country was all about. That nobody told them that this is that hard. You know, and these kids paid their lives because they, I don't think they sensed the danger. You know, I think they thought, oh, you can get into college or I'd be on the building. And we're just like, what can happen? Like, we're just, we're not bothering anybody. We're just driving out of highway. Yeah, in Mississippi. Mississippi is part of the United States.

They, they were not aware that hooked on to New York State was a Mississippi where these things could happen. Right. How, what's striking about the way the nation responds to their disappearance? Well, I think, you know, Mississippi was on black people's kind of list of, you know, crazy places at the beginning. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't surprising to us. I think it was surprising at the, that these are two young white kids. I think it really was that, you know, I mean, it's kind of cold-blooded, but it really was that. Black people had been getting shot in Mississippi. It was, you know, immatil and so forth. The white people didn't respond to immatil. Black people did. You know, there wasn't a lot of white response to immatil, getting murdered 10 years before. Black people thought that was very important. The white people didn't. This was like, wait a minute. You know, we understand a certain level of white people being often protected, white supremacy. But you just killed two white kids.

Like, what is this? Like, hop out over the edge of you going. And again, if you look at, you know, I guess, I mean, it's assuming because I, you know, don't have a white point of view. That if you look at, say the murder of a Kennedy, you know, is this, in fact, an internal struggle in the white population between liberals and people that don't want the country to move at all? You know, and white Americans willing to kill other white Americans over social issues. You know, issues of equality for black people. Right? So, you know, last time that happened was a civil war. You know, and so people kept saying, I remember a way out we headed. So that language was used, second civil war, and so forth. But the first civil war was pretty bloody. You know, and the casualties were white people. You know, the majority kept far away with white people, not black people. So I'll be, in fact, facing the circumstance where there are enough white Americans who have prepared to kill other white Americans in order to keep black people down. And how do you know whether this is going to happen or not? Right. What kind of bind is it put Johnson in? I don't know how to bind.

The bind was the same bind anyway. I think Johnson in the back of his mind knew what was going on. You know, Johnson's a white Southerner. You know, I mean, he comes out of a state where people carry guns and they shoot people and so forth. I don't think the violence and of itself bothered him as such. I think what probably shocked him most was the impolitik nature of it. You know, that I'm trying to work out a deal and these lunatics are killing white people. Right. You know, if I'm the president, this is what I'm thinking. I don't think he has anything about them one way or the other. I mean, I might be unfair to him, but he never seemed to care that much about individual deaths one way or the other. But this is very impolitik, because you're trying to make a case for black people that white people can be brought along in a reasonable fashion. And I said, okay, we'll trust you. You know, you can get this done. And you pick over a shoulder and they're waiting me. Hold it. I thought you were getting this done. Right. You're trying to explain the white Americans.

I can get this done. Like, I'm working this out. Everything is cool. And say, wait, no, no, no. People just got a shot. It's like, whatever you're working on, it's not happening in Mississippi. So you got to move. You know, you got to do something. You know. There's stuff going on, not just in the South. Right.