A Word on Words; 2334; John Egerton

in oregon where round delving into the world of books and their elders this week jon gauger to talk about the speech now against the day when your story were downward mr john keegan voller chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university in one single welcome once again to award own words were talking about heroes it's a story of unsung heroes and i guess as john anderton that great southern writer the award winning southern writer congratulations on winning the robert f kennedy book award for nonfiction thanks john it's always a pleasure to be on the show i think we go back about twenty five years together go back a long way through most of your books in one volume you created this i think jon has is a monumental work i had to work that's being claimed accurate it's all across the country not just begin by congratulating you on it sits on paper

books are not easy for volunteers fish book show once a week or i have said sometimes unless it as they now stand a big book already re just don't rub it on tiptoe this one is wonderful to read because it tells a story of my heroes end these are the people who paid a price most of the floor leaning away in the decade or decades leading up to seoul writes revelation by serving as groundbreaking as they really sort of paved the road down which martin luther king march and on sunday was not that they are they in every generation we have people i think can see farther than most of us in our profits in a

sense and these people and they're very different ways they were not all alike and all they were white and black rich and poor later benign lettered people men and women from all parts of the south but they had this the common denominator of being southern and looking at the society and saying something's wrong it work it's got to be changed and here's why and then they paid the price as you say for the book is up is told not only in terms of individuals heroes is told in terms of the anecdotes you're a great storyteller a distant and m and there's a little story that barrie sits in the big deep in the book there was a book called the flaming sword or a madman named dixon thomas to come dixon had written twenty one twenty two books you tell us later on but

but the flaming sword was his last talk about thomas dixon and the african americans subtle but pointed response to a flaming sword well thomas dixon was a white north carolinians who had their racial disease that white people get in such abundance he saw it as his mission to write novels that warned white people about the scourge of blackness in this culture and the heat he was the guy who wrote the book called the klansmen the beginning became the birth of the nation movie that terrorized lots of people in the south and so he became famous says the author of these kinds of books that were work though a very popular recovery accepted by the white culture

so deeply resignation was a raging where we are not just in the south but all with an athlete it was that a measure really of how how bad the disease had gotten so near the end of his life he wrote this last book called the flaming sword which is a scurrilous novel about invasions in of mexicans and africans hordes of people sweeping across this country in and how the whites are fighting to the less stine of course they provide allen even then it was a main book it wasn't a terribly deliberately main book in it to look for added insult to cook as it's titled the flaming sword dubois glitch which showed the bbb boy said tuesday it was a symbol for ham of of the evils of racism and so this was kind of an in your face cafe so along comes duke ellington

ellington out a washington seasoning supposed to be aaron rice says it's gotten care about race even care about all this stuff so what he does is like music he sits down and composes the us grabbing piece of music instrumental instrumental peace and names at the finding it a savior way back in your face yours oh yeah just thought it was one of a storage unit baby at the central force of this boat's engine it out in his own is rooted more and culture man in any other aspect for him religion or politics but culture revolution was taking place long before jackie robinson ever had a dream of

breaking into baseball r n and you sort of make that one and again the area music that benny goodman and gene krupa teamed up with lionel hampton table terry wilson and had fled henderson been hearing and these were the first to integrate a jazz band's early on saying with charlie barnett that up billie holiday sign with white with white man's and that and that and that the culture began to move was before we knew we were being moved into literature manager for the media just take up and just take on one hand the black authors who are writing largely far you're a black culture war

sort of literati there are clear but i but if you did that then you come south lillian smith strange fruit jacquet his mind and carson mccullers was in color that little body of white writers in the south as well as those who had been southerners but who left lighter skin color charts and her skin color so at that essay in here i was shot this were original with me i don't know who first said this but i read that some place some rider talk about how in in the simplest terms we're were three kinds of people were leaders a few of us were far worse the mass service and enters a little handful who are scouts and they're the ones who go out ahead look over the mountain and then come back and tell us what's over there what we're going to run into and to me the duke ellington's the

liam semester but bj caches these people and in music can art and literature in the culture where the scouts they were the ones who were saying this is why it's not gonna work never man what you feel about race that that's irrelevant it's not gonna work because it's an absolute contradiction of what this country says it's all about when you talk about turkish there is so as an irony is that jacket you offer the month so the broker which as you point out there's not print for fifty or i love the book which ship the soul of the south i think which helped the south's realized that there was a wakeup call and as you point out it was a haunted man a depressed human being while being a great literary talent and then shortly after a very few minutes or so he went to

mexico with his new wife he had everything really of four year the new bradley had done a good in hand did he get a new book contract this book was been well received they went to mexico on vacation nineteen forty one in january i think forty one hiya became delusional he thought nazi agents are tracking duty just we went crazy any act he hanged himself in his hotel room with islamic cap and none what happened after that is his is piano part of this sort of southern brain that we all carry around with us in and great day exam and burdens on our shoulders and whatnot his wife was taken to the mexico city police station the police took this new business about nazi agents serious and they didn't

have to go to write they did not want to let her go this was just months before the war broke out in wood pearl harbor and course the war was already on in iran you just hadn't formally entered it so the ambassador to mexico soon a car to pick her up and took her to safety there and the ambassador got on the phone and called back to the charlotte news and might always contacts arrangements to have jack cases body taken back and it wouldn't just him doing his ambassadorial duty this was his his southern beauty eventually was a southern gentleman this was jonathan daniels and the other arrow safe as any irony of ironies is that cash in dixon the awful when the total burton took his body back to shelby north carolina and buried him and a plot just a short distance from where his parents live and within a matter of months this other is another shelby north carolina this very self sighing thomas dixon the other all of the awful

hillside a flaming sword bad and they brought him in very dangerous with an almost that you could reach out and touch those two grape the racism and the integration of the us now let's talk a bit about that time goes here in the nineteen nineties it's impossible to imagine the cell like this year i guess the nearest thing to maybe the images that we have search and racial unrest in south africa before the more recent group move away from its traditional past lynchings were commonplace to and forty riots outbreaks of racial violence in one year of daily abuse heaped scorn on black citizens by whites phenomenal number black's became

expatriates and went north so my friday reload the country but i'm in but the harlem renaissance was really was not driven more by a seven blacks and left and gone practically all of the leading lights of the harlem renaissance were expecting southerners are on charles johnson's years later to be praised in a fierce good james weldon johnson who was here until he bad in a tragic car model as a trombone all these people appear in the gleason lakes and langston hughes who had strong connections on top one was for many many years the labyrinth at fierce can integrate the powerful figure in the fisk history on a bump on you so the south was a it was a it was a battleground except it was a it was a was it was really a field florida quite often and that's not an exaggeration that is not an

exaggeration because it was not it was not just emotional psychological political discrimination and abuse it was about those physical was very physical in the year after world war two and nineteen forties are waiting more liberating warren in that year of nineteen forty six even though the official statistics at tuskegee were the records were kept of lynchings the official record indicated there were six lynchings in nineteen forty six in my research i found twenty five they just weren't reported ideas you know here and there maybe add up a story and a little weekly paper mississippi twice to las vegas now i am quite you're honest and that's what every other week you know that's right now in the background of this there are these unsung hero

constantly moving pushing prodding then gradually making gains where they emerge little ol they're described as radicals and some of them are indie rock in some of them were socialists and some of them work on this but many many of them were mainstream so the americans committed to change the vast majority of them were people who had listened to their sunday school lessons who had believed what period in your newspaper are a lot of economists about thirteen and our what they got from their university you know they were basically people who who said well gosh if the declaration of independence is this if the constitution says this and then happily justify these things and i was asking those unthinkable questions that was unthinkable thoughts can express an app that got him in trouble i don't know i mean i don't know where exactly it comes from that two people can

read a declaration guns are ten people can read the declaration of independence none of them read it the wrong way one of li's it the right way you know nine ten people can go to sons to nine people will go one way and one will go another one of those to one another with a man and we'll alexander nashville in part of his party earlier this virginia and then won on our pencil here and he was pastor of the belmont methodist church in nashville over hills where a village in nineteen men to one of his parishioners a man named debbie be weatherford and he got together in an organized a charity for people who were suffering mightily in the city from from malnutrition hunger got him started on a life of service to needy people in and we'll alexander ended up organizing the heat their commission on interracial cooperation in atlanta in nineteen ninety which was nongovernmental ride

on gravel commission and it was the forerunners of the regional council which you still in our polling on made such riot games and is still allow bolivia well alexander had a phenomenal career live game a real force the height of the depression but foreign security of security administration and well and trying to work it out for people to live on the land and farm in and be viable family farmers these were the family values of nineteen thirties this is what this was about i mean i hear that phrase today in and i think people hadn't read their history this is not some new family and you know that they did it with two as i read the book there are two schiebel at continually emerge as prop one sector of yellowstone you know i mean

there was the year of that you know i show mary roach their racial quote sex close quote despite the rate of say women and plantation that was not undermine alliances the whole fear was that any kind of contact with lead to sexual consequences that that everybody would would be worried about and fearful of that and i wouldn't be able to control but the worst sexual transgressions were the those of white man against black women historically always through the civil war pre civil war term post civil war time and into this time and then the other and then the other fear was that there was a calmness under under every

sheet was not planned shi that in every and in every bed where immigration was discussed their slept a communist in nineteen after the dixie crack revolt in and forty eight and on into this period that led up to buy on robert siegel they'll come pretty convinced that the white politicians and south read the election returns and forty eight as a science that progressive liberal where return you'll use social change was was gaining a real foothold in the south and it was at that point that they began to hammer hard on that anti communism issues ann and joe mccarthy came along just at the right time for them they wrote his coattails to an anti communist a purge of any body who was a liberal you know i remember my early days of the newspaper editor professor herman clarence nixon the author of forty

acres of steel newer steel new coming occasionally officers to sit and chat and i ran across his name again again again and in your book you've woven sing sung heroes who paid the price and about teaching and by trying to lead a branded from time to time as a radical as a promise this is the nearest thing i ever knew to a year to total academic on it all he cared about was the education of students in society and yet at vanderbilt worry top they never would give him ten year because they were so fearful that he would be is all radicalism would re emerged that they kept on kind of on the hook that way by not ought not offer name can hear as it was only us nothing john and i didn't realize this as i read the book continually emerges conflict on the side of

right i mean in the in dublin city we do boys n n n and white in other so your accounts jesse ancient and howard along with the struggle for control from the first day and she left smith didn't like ralph mcgill who lived who didn't like a koala bear fur even like and they never could get it together they were they were they spent more time in competitive destruction of one another's games than they did in trying to figure out how to get their common and they have this series of meetings and in the birmingham meeting where the crowd is going to include calmness so people like video and begin his dad named stairway well as avid their meeting and let's come up with in their manifesto because we're not happy about about the weapons rather bunches the other mines had done now let's go to atlanta and have a subsequent meeting

well it's wonderful to have all that history crumpled in bahrain detail what was it then that you would make it when the dj says it would've been an overwhelming force and somehow if they board odds with each other and they you know they came out a war a war to think in that the opportunity was there and as i look back on it i say in the book that that in retrospect it does seem that there was a little window of opportunity there when big change could have taken place but in practical terms they never really had a good shot at it the politicians who dominated southern society head they had tenure in the legislature and congress they had it

worked out through the white primaries and now and the absence of the republican party in the entire south there was with the exception of a cook up a mountain tennesseans are bakers father and one other there were no republicans in congress from south korea it was a democratic bill lock up another gas to control each of the states had all five down they had they had a feudal society that they ran it was not democratic in any city so they kept control and they were not willing to relinquish control and they solve a consequence of the probable consequences of social change after the war as being detrimental to their income or secular five am i think that that was out of a reboot well i should say that that in addition to the stories about changes in culture changes in education changes in religious outlook the book is loaded

with political i felt that are wonderful to read the minutes it's a it is a political history as well as the us as political conflict now i describe this book to somebody of the rio grande river looking to milan m e i don't dig down too much i have to keep the pace golan it impossible to include and cleland the personalities in the book you'll have fallen heroes and still keep it was a co pay that maybe should've gone three watching john and eighty years if i'd had another couple years i could've gotten it down to five hundred pages that might go i can i'm fascinated by the role money at the news the press play and all this aggressive man man the newspapers that all that rice at crimea was in a media was the press and i got the press

because it was printed word and the newspapers played a role for better for worse and sometimes both but mr ashmore later proved he had doubts senate somewhere early in the book many wily was working giant moved forward little rock and presiding really over a leisurely asian of of some who said it took guts plane got one word gets to be they newspaper editor who was on the right side of change as more recognized to later on that even the difference between little rock and say greenville mississippi were rotting carter was was it was a very great and that he had more latitude to say what he said in the arkansas gazette that hodding carter had this i ended up a democrat and very male lead more

leeway to say the saints are what he wonders gil are as maura are carter and because it was true i want a rebuttal of times now i want to wear allah read what i think is the aim in your brain is finally to montgomery at the martin luther king and you quote him in what you call a soaring rhetorical fortunes he said quote if we are wrong the supreme court this nation is wrong and we are wrong god almighty is wrong it where on jesus of nazareth was merely a utopian dream or another came down to earth we're wrong justice is a law now had so many men and women black and why not pay a price not become unsung heroes he never would have a chance to say those words which i do agree with that he was only twenty six years old he said the story the demand for

non edgerton author of sleep now against the date as that our guest unaware downwards your host as ben johnson in voller chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university says this program was produced in the studios of wbez in nashville fb