A Word on Words; 3710; Eric Etheridge

geezer geezer geezer geezer liz from national television studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades and this is the word on words with johnson and johnson and the law welcome once again to word on words our guest today is american surge he has been an editor for harper's the new york observer and rolling stone and he is the photographer and writer of this remarkable new book breach of these portraits of the nineteen fifty one most of the freedom riders are welcome to work on workdays inside it was great to be here thank you were talking about the history here and done and i have this an actor and writer

much of whose career has been focused in the media get lower only owed thirty five days way into mississippi to write this book recording much of the trauma from wayland trouble and was visible the freedom riders in nineteen sixty one well i'm from mississippi or insulate endowed i i spent that have been most of my professional career in new york city working in magazines and and several internet businesses and as i got a little older i was warning more more to do my own projects and that photography was something that i'd been supplying western and sort of working out more and more with ambition an intention and i've seen several historical projects that i thought were very successful and i thought that might be a way for me to to make a transition in my own career i knew that the files of the state agency known as the mississippi state sovereignty commission had been made public

a few years ago a night in the late nineties that was sort of our stasi in mississippi they were basically a spy agency informed two years after brown versus board in nineteen fifty six to basically preserve the sovereignty of mississippi from intrusion by the federal government and more planners face they were you know that was to preserve segregation and the and out i went to the mississippi archives in two thousand and four not to wear where the sovereignty commission files are no house i said are there any photographs and in these files and that the woman i spoke with cbs about five hundred but most of them are just mug shots as it's just not as much as it i'm sorry to have to tell you but as soon as i heard that i perk up mug shots or are been a very current today in the photography world in our world and the album and and then once i saw a few of them i knew that they were these remarkable images of

of him and a complete set of every one of the three hundred and twenty eight freedom riders arrested in jackson sixty one answer you have is this great sort of historical in addition to the historical record of the freedom rides in the savoy and as an editor i saw below will bingo this is great and i just need to try to find as many of these people as i can to day make a new picture by canoe portrait of a man and to do an interview with them and so as an editor and as a publisher of a you know i'm a person of it was very appealing project in and as i went through it and work on a rip about four years it became you know a very sort of personal status of star status on private because i learned my own history that as the mississippi and i didn't really know what had gone on in it i was four and sixty one but even as i got older and then did four years an actual event or up in the

late seventies i didn't really know what happened in his day was a focal point of the nasa was hugely important artists in the civil rights movement the student movement here played a crucial role in the freedom rides and and i know i'm going to take you inside the book and it will take five separate reached or great hand them and the first one is a melon singing oh helen is about was a woman to put on the cover of her mug shot was the first one i did you know it was when it really fixed on very early on its history think a remarkable image and really all of those eyes something to save them in the end going on behind that batchelder when i first met i somehow in here so you know he's so present in that moment you know you're here in this you know jail and in jackson mississippi had been arrested for foregoing of snow white waiting room that was her crime and that at the train station and that and you're

anticipating six weeks in maximum security jail cell in parchment the american from the state prison up in the delta and yet year you're very present you know it's you know to me it looked like he knows exactly what is doing it and then she knows he's doing exactly the right thing and to set i was really scared but i think you can be both at the same time again and she still has that look today i think in the new shorter it's just a very odd commanding presence and i think that you know what the quality that really concern a lot of these mugshots is in this moment of really in the heat of battle the most of the freedom riders really gauge the camera and an essay like we're here and it may look like were losing right now but what we really know is were when it's so your freedom riders didn't make it to jackson and therefore didn't make the book but so many of them did another one that is notorious alex weiss was was from california that he's recently born in nineteen thirty six in

austria and he escaped the war nineteen forty through tree us with his mother and father and sister and they resell been in the services go to swear out screw up he'd been in the navy for a couple years in and out in the late fifties it was a coincidence and sixty one and he was just incensed when he saw the news coverage of what was happening the attacks in anniston and birmingham to montgomery and when he had the chance to go and purchase a paid when they're when they put out the call come to jackson he wear and before he went out he went and had a conversation with his father on a regional dilemma right now here wants all the stuff started happening down south i just couldn't believe that one of the motivations for joining corn volunteered to go on the free rides was i did not want to be one of those good germans who just look the other way i talk to my father i said i want to go he was totally against it you're going to get killed it's not us this timeless distraught since i said hey you

know this is what happened to you is not us has done is the shorter get me in the blank at lax and i said hey you know this is what happened to you i'm not going to stand by our wonderful and moving and there is an areas in real life and then later you were back at work for three more years and serves as co head of the direct action team at the local core still very political today a working on the idea of running elections in alameda county lives in oakland let's take a look at more than a half of mars of my favorites of course they're all my favorite you know but i enjoyed that so many large stores march was destroyed in minneapolis he also dialed time in the army i think not to give it to his chagrin into the army should grow as well his living in minneapolis you tell me that hey it was nineteen sixty one we were the beats we were doing about politics and smoking grass and then he came down with a bunch of folks from from minneapolis were still mostly very close so they also live in

minneapolis or so very politically engaged in various ways that market a great description of his trial and a trial for other similar convicted of breach of cases actually here and that the trials took about five or ten minutes and this is how margaret candidate after we were arrested we met jack young are turning he was black and jack said you're gonna be tried today to take that jury about fifteen minutes to convey to captain ray who's the arresting officer is gonna lie and blacks to not sit on juries women though you know you're going to get bad this may be a method mazur presbyterian know catholics know jews and sure enough eleven bad or someone presbyterian mr jiri captain gray came in law i'd say it was an angry hostile mob they're so to protect them i had to arrest simone breach of the peace in england says mark which i thought was a marvelous charge what's their case segregation lansing's brutality unemployment for schooling for nutrition south

africa apartheid town we could see the stars and bars flying aircraft above the us flag are crossed the street while it's gone with a well and it is only when it was like nigeria and it was registered richard stickler it was from my new orleans and that he came in on the train actually and helen singleton's group and that like i said before all that must have realized they didn't bail out right away at a few of them did for for various personally and family reasons the muslim didn't understand it about six weeks in maximum security cells and parchment for adult prisons not a nice place and that was and richard talk to him his day out we've been a schoolteacher los angeles for all of his professional career he is retired now but when we talked a couple years ago he told me about his last day apart and i read to that now when we were really some parts and we

were given our clothes and whatever belongings we had and paper sacks i notice that this officer was watching me he had his eyes on me and i knew he was cause i've heard about his infamy so that officer said to me where is yours meaning as bagger close i said right there over there so he wanted to give up his name was sort of story and he came out recently and he said is this yours and i said yeah and he said you know what and i and i said yeah it's mind he said yes what city officer of the law that's mong he said look poitier they hasn't left syria right at that moment i thought this mother offers gonna put me in this lie with the real deal like he brought that reality back to me i said yes sir that's my back all right now i get your a oneida here who but i hated it and this is richard again i hated to do that

but i felt like there was no choice i gotta get outta here that was one that will stay with me for the rest of my life you know in dunes on interdicting valverde we lose something of the power of the word i'm sorry but we're family let me just say a few that child that student listening to that the intimidation though power and sends a danger those words you know whether there was as triggers a lot of miles and answer for mrs alabama and and then you were a firsthand witness and recipient of that i knew about this and that but but in mississippi there was there was not as much there was some beings during interrogations early on with bump in the head with a black jackson and that sort of thing but most of what mississippi did to them was to try to humiliate them when

when they were free riders who get the parts when the men were stripped and made to stand around and at one of guards got it a lot of the women were searched virtually when they got there lemaitre and dip their hands or gloves sometimes close sometimes not in some sort of disinfectant group but you know it was that sort of saying in and then exactly where richard experiences that sort of you know humiliation or shame or to sort of i still have the power over you even though you know i cant maybe i can't be in the way that i heard them time we were both together with matthew walker well natural woman is anathema to his followers and serious surgeon time they may use a blackjack craps as part of the mission if you fail listeners are you doing

get you noted they will oblige it was in the first day of first buses common into jackson and they really had no idea what to expect you know again this is after arrested beings in attacks in anniston in and birmingham montgomery in the previous wake and that they know they're riding to their death our water and jackson and as it turned out saxena had you know put up the troops and an end and the cops and they were arrested officially and quietly in and they're taken to the jails right away now on the way and that we've based the bus from montgomery jackson stopped at the state line in a contingent of national guard troops got on the bus in and sort of stood in the aisles and then in the ninety minutes or two hours into jackson and that as matthew told me in and said last night you know one of the things that you do in a non violent wei are practicing almost as if you speak to your opponent to speak to the other person you try to engage him in and disarm him a little bit not that the troops were

necessarily there to hurt them but they didn't know that you didn't know so he says to one of the national guard students are absurd national guardsman on the bus they're all carrying his bayonet and rifles so that's a it's a ransom it fancy one weapon have their independent national guardsmen tournament and said hey got one were to say to you and that his city of these are the people here to protect his you know i'm the interesting failures comes early in the canonization president kennedy does not want a little rock you'd get regular your mate with a soviet leader for a summit roady attorney general sent me down to help for free month doesn't want this to happen and the

truth is the other words somebody would be killed then as you have pointed out the kennedy talks to some of the jimmy fallon i don't know what's the most racist but he's as close to the ultimate racist agenda time in the country and hear sharon's kennedy then i read or they will be arrested and our arrested this is you've gone on the book become like to that waiting room in the paddy wagon into the jail into the courtroom guilty many almond apartment president that all you know it's a it's a it's remarkable it is remarkable they were killed it is remarkable and certainly you know looking back what happened to notice a few years later in sixty four the murders of goodman cheney schwerner and and murders in the end attacks elsewhere in his remarkable i think kennedy and aisling thought they had

solved the problem of the freedom riders by making sure they were attacked in jackson and thrown in jail and as dave davis who went on to run freedom summer and was a big organizer in mississippi for a number of years in the early sixties said you know we're basically under arrest from the town last month memory going into jackson because they literally got off the bus march through the station and literally you know stood there for about thirty seconds or even a move on now ok now into the paddy wagon but it was a good way to put it in a different way that before they wore literally under us at that moment remember after the violence a bond only in which i was gonna kennedy sends him for the us marshals to keep the peace even with that on that if we can like martin king combs through jerks to speak and the marshals were also overrun the medical out the national guard this was a life and death situation let's

talk about it and look at as you talk about let's look at some of the faces of sony of it was their words is lawson i mean he was that he was here a natural and he was a summit raised in a very christian home he was going to talk about is you know the language of love of from of christ but he got from his mother when you went to college in the forties he'd he was turned on to a gym musty the language of nonviolence that the pacifist idea and gandhi leading counter gentlemen in the black press as a child and in his parents' home but he was really became taken with that and that in nineteen forty nine he actually withdrew his registration his draft registration and later served thirteen months in a federal prison he went to india as a missionary in the mid fifties and studied gandhi some more he was back in the states and then after that when medicaid i think in ohio and key it's

a wooded in now and then and losses on whether women go to school and another when i go get a graduate degree in some wearable mobile thinking said come south now we need to end out here the natural his abilities in the vanderbilt he was preaching at several churches and in nineteen fifty nine he starts a weekly workshop and matthew walker stuart on nonviolence carmen moreno that's right and in whose use their immune system a zinc influence of people from louis james bevel seated vivian bernard lafayette diane nash you know in addition to folks like matthew walker and rick pattern in a number of other people alan case unfriend or blender also you know made up the national movement and and also bridges paid for your mother of the cell number people were in the student movement here but a new system a zing moment where you have all these people together think because nasa was such a strong a place for black the higher education at fisk and harry and an

american bible sentences and tennessee state of course was to the cnn that he does well so but but here is the core really a part of the student movement and natural and would later become snack and really you know be a strong player and also returned the next four five years and for all the victories out of the legislation victories and the move in the trees but these guys you know were schooled in nonviolence fight but lawson i think is really you know right up there with barred russian in terms of its importance in the movement and teaching and enter a proselytizing on violence so when the cinema that happened sixty they were ready to go they had very big success here when all the violence happened in sixty one in anniston and birmingham with the freedom rides and diane nash and lawson and john lewis were all quick to recognize that this is a defining moment for the movement and if the freedom ride stopped at this

point the lesson would be violence trump's non violence and the movement really had no other way forward except for nonviolence so diane an end john ende and dave did send in reinforcements to birmingham they got the free rides go again they got into montgomery and on into jackson lawson was on the first or second bus in the jackson and he was there when they were all arrested which is no one was expecting this is a deal as you said nobody can get out which and they slip n and they were sitting in the jail cell there they were intending to go to new orleans which is there are original destination for the freedom rights but they realize this is the perfect time to do jail no bail they refused to bail out mrs gandhi and you know won a one really they refused to bail out they instead they invited you know everyone become the jackson in and jam the system fill up the jails which happen in three weeks and lawson is just crucial that i think the most meaningful

results flew in the face of mississippi authorities in an aging gimme some certainly expect was that that first wave to get the jackson was the first wave of five hundred dreadlocks who were gonna come nobody know nobody expected it and it all happened so quickly within three weeks people come from all over and this is remarkable moment there was no corn and intimidate them and they eventually got one together the us but to its neck n koren and band kings group but it exists was people are watching tv there were looking at newspapers they were really incensed by what had happened in alabama and they were ready to this put themselves forward you're the reason i am so happy to have this book in circulation available for young people and people of all ages and it gives them a chance those mugshots though the

police mug shots those that kid's going to jail for breach of peace not a crime under the circumstances reason i think this book is so important is whether a fourteen of those doom from tennessee state university or expelled for being convicted of a major title breach of the peace convicted and as was also expelled from their skin all this time later there is a movement to give them honorary degrees and the tennessee border regions vote seven to four against doing that but i daresay if they had read your book if they had seen those faces that would've understood those are their students now sit there right now fortunately unfortunately the hands of a binary some other guesses america's player five minute telephone conference call and reversed their position and you know for those are even a few weeks ago

great artist a great great event and one of the fourteen who had been on the ride went to parchment a little ode to get those targeted catherine burks you here do have done to you is that this is in birmingham resign and that she was a summa tennessee state she was very big in the national student movement and had been a big part of the sit ins in nineteen sixty the year for to talk about loss in a non violent summer and and and reverend moss is someone who can really non muslims way of life and the nicest is his total latitude for a lot of the other students in the sixties or the bridges than some free rides ramos made sense as a tactic is a short term thing something they're willing to do in the moment that we're in this early what they were naturally inclined to encounter was but allow the black freedom riders and rode in the south's use rebellious early on and this is a muster a few told

me when i talked to her last year it might've been around the fifth or sixth grade when i began to protest the way that things protest the way things work i refused to step aside and walking downtown when a white person would approach me in high school we rode city buses to school and one day my friends and i threw the colored sign out the window later during the sedan simply giving in nineteen sixty was touchy to have someone maybe push you and to not push back i was kristen everything but i was kind of used to pushing back is to not step into the sodden if you've got the much older brother but that's totally in that phrase is a great pitcher with the nonviolent you're kind of stepped into the side i can or one of the demonstrations the white fellow with the cigarette coming toward my face i was just standing there and i was not gonna move my girlfriend kristin collins was behind me she told me later she was going to put her hand in front of my face he didn't put the cigarette on me but i'd planned in my

mind i was gonna stand there what courage was amazing you know she you among many your person out and confronted bull connor a couple of times and learn the culture in the nicest possible way that she was a human being although she was not sure you know he was he was the police commissioner you know we've we've run out of time it's been great to have you here is it thank you for coming and talking about this important piece of history facts thank you and thanks to all of you for watching for word on words and johnson in dollar degree