A Word on Words; 2229; Richard Couto

calderon works program delving into the world of books and their authors this week richard hugo talks about lifting the veil of political history of struggles for emancipation your host for a word on words mr john c compiler chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university and a lot more once again welcome to word on words i guess that is valuable for richard kolko haven't eaten you're very welcome it's great to see you again it's going to be here it's nice to have you back to talk about this new book lifting the veil the study of distraught over emancipation in one county one small southern county rural majority black and all that it's in a real sense of a revelation to me to talk about civil rights movement and understand that it's not something that started with lingo we boarded

the bus boycott and took goes through brown versus board of education and central high school in little rock and all of the violence of the sixties and the early seventies a struggle that goes on today when you look at that one county haywood county tenn it realizes that the struggle for civil rights is as old as insufficient corrupt institution of slavery is correct and you tell that story are quite well you look at it and you say as you look at it many people think of so i flew in terms of leaders charismatic figures might be the king of the symbol because of his life and that the mandate met so many others medgar evers the list of martyrs says is number schwerner chaney

and the rest you say also that song look at it in terms of montgomery in selma birmingham but in a very real sense you've taken so rights movement and put it inside the haywood county tenn about why well precisely because our study of the civil rights movement very often do has a timeline beginning in nineteen fifty four was saying going to nineteen seventy five and revolving around a few people but in fact that those folks that we've we see as charismatic and national leaders dependent very heavily on local people who were organizing and who have their own history which people which goes back to a previous nineteen fifty four and i think that inside is very important to let us know that we are part of a social movement today and then in the nineteen nineties just as people were part of a social movement prior to nineteen fifty four

social movements have that their peaks and the troughs and as long as we are human as long as we're making history we are affecting the way people enjoy the liberties or poor people have restricted liberties and the part that we play and that is a very important part of solve social movements night you came up during my generation and your virtual most of your money to me about two three generations behind him but but during euro our generation's oh you came out thinking oh i'll ask americans as a people oh because they were so pressed down by jim crow laws so intimidated by a century of lynch law and justice that they rarely asserted their rights that they weren't given in some instances share of the vote in some instances excluded from it but not from all other aspects of first class of a friendship even second class citizenship you think of the of the

of those end in and in the generations that preceded the movement as being almost docile and how unfair that is i think of them because as to get a sense when you read lifting the veil the ferment was there and the hostility was there an anger was there and what was building was the eruption that finally i came about one mccain couldn't marcelo and what he did was trigger smaller options and places like like a wiccan a throwback go from nineteen fifty four to a hundred years writing because that's really where your story trouble from my point of view has its as if troops got a little bit about the conditions that existed as sung salty gone free and find some

salt found their way out into freedom law through other means fleeing escaping others have done a lot of really interesting work about the spirit of resistance even with end slavery and and as you say that was going on all the time an important part of the anger and hostility was also a certain amount of wisdom how much can i resist without without bringing on retaliation and some kind of reprisal against slavery that that was a very controlled institution so people resisted as best they can sometimes making barton is well bargains with slave owners about the uk keeping their families intact sometimes changing chores among themselves were giving giving the slave owner to agree to changing and some of the chores so so that they could establish a better relationships work with one another or would do or game whatever they could within the restrictions of slavery and what so when slavery ended

especially after eighteen sixty five and going into to reconstruction found a lot of a lot of that a lot of that and he was really are released and all of a sudden african americans free people were very active in establishing schools for the children we're eager to enter into wage labor and we're also very eager to exercise their new civil rights especially voting the eight of the eighteen sixties a parallel the nineteen sixties very much and just an explosion of undemocratic experimentation in the south with the free people got you you want and deal in theory with the ability to resist or allying to some extent on some research by james scott which i found compelling that that study of a lion village

and then the resistance as he says and as you say the level of oppression sometimes gauges level of resistance or break that out but well armed the the external conditions whether they be political changes and economic changes crates an environment where resistance can be more effective or less affective and people who are in or repress condition make a pretty astute calculation as to what can i walk how much can i get how much resistance contract offer before the reprisal the reaction will be doing more than i want to incur within the year with the you know a lion presents it was of forms of resistance to government calls plans are dragging their feet because they didn't want change to dish old methods of of farming

without evidence that there was something for them it's is very interesting social science or social scientist too to try to understand a social oomph goes out on the two aren't we have almost two opposite views one is that the american political system is so open that any group can express itself and make gains without dramatic efforts rat radical efforts and then on the other hand those who disagree with them very often emphasize the degree of oppression so that you're left wondering either why change can occur at all because the leaves have so much power that they're that the repressive oh why people take dramatic action to achieve change because the political system seems seems of free enough that at that at that is not taught that it's not required but somewhere in the middle would we actually have social movements people maintain the ability to resist people

maintain an understanding of the necessity of changing their condition and that the american political system needs every once awhile to be renewed by people taking a look at our institutions and sighing and i'll broaden often offer enough well it happened at a mechanic and sixty eight happened in nineteen forties so it happened the beginning of course and then in the nineteen sixties that area of west to see that you know wants a fertile cotton country really has been bathed in blood and an end and the story you that love that's really a cover decades has not has not been has not been tolling if you think of fort pillow and the massacre of black soldiers live by a neighbor farms to get you think about the oppression that occurred has

moved from slavery to so the repression of sharecropping just the economic result of that the financial final hole of that quote on blacks that's another aspect of your story but there also is a lynching there was a kidnapping you mentioned a hair the trenton massacre the riot in fayette county you know there is a there is a mean is a broken life a broken family of a broken heart in almost every year we're all household all of those over those decades talk about some of those anecdotes because it seems to me that the ham the social scientists theory is one part of the story and that's their model of the dynamic in the flesh and blood reality is also being in your book

and the senate says it's a story where political gain seemed to come about all would be crushed by the ideal of the reconstruction this is very interesting that term it's a first of all we embody politics of maine we live about an and i had to do my very best to get firsthand accounts that really grounded some these large events in people's lives he gave their perspective on it as a as they lived it and again in terms of american pop local traditions which we don't think of terror as as playing a role in american politics but in fact says it had a great hand in tennessee politics and eighteen sixty nine overturning a state government and p much changing the state's legislature and ushering in an age of reaction about was a lot of the radical

reforms are low louis the governor the success of this case of sudan or johnson at the johnson went off to become what lincoln's vice president parsons brownlow iowa republican following the normal what happened after the civil war following in a sense the lincoln johnson policies but never an abolitionist know at the same time you do get that ben that their sudden emergence of very talented black remembering that were in that five year period of well talk a little bit about some of them well one of the most interesting part to look for me at least was that discovering sam actually obama yes amazing graduate of fisk university then then graduated from a law school here a national all the time that he was serving in the us general assembly three term returns a teenager to eighteen at eight am was one of the few african

american legislators at that time to have been born a slave many of many of those who have served have been born a free man and his task was pretty much fighting the tide of jim crow it was it was a rising tide and his efforts to get it he made efforts to he public services especially transportation integrated sent to increase funding for the school schooling of three children but he also for the increased nature of lynching which by a teenage seven eighteen at a was becoming a ritual which she recognized early and quite an orator booker t washington invites him to i think the sixth commencement at tuskegee before frederick douglass got it got invitation at all of what was in his twenties i think was a really symptomatic of of what happened and that part of the nineteenth century that after a teammate at eighty eight he is his career outcomes are pretty amazed that the public portion of his

career come serve pretty abrupt end becomes more more private person until it goes to chicago and nineteen oh one and his law practice they know that that is because center becomes governor the legislative the nature makeup of the legislature changes first gradually then perceptibly now and and depression sets sets in reaction begins a fascinated that you then take those laid off give us a glimpse of his heirs one is air is bringing grandchildren on her back from a loss to view the square in haywood county not aware of the historical marker live and interactive he's not now is on the campus of this university you'd think in this age or lightning and to be

room for two markers what about i suppose less awkward kidnapping to know how frightening story by a great man one sixth a decade later this allotted davis who represented the the african american who achieve a self sufficiency had risen about as high as you could within the caste system economically their family owned land and he operated a car repair shop in brownsville he was part of a professional lead among african americans in the county many them school teachers and some of them how professionals at center who knew in nineteen fourteen and begin an inquiry about how to re register to vote they seem to have in their own mind they had done everything that white said or i were

necessary to gain the vote so it's been educated they own land our responsibilities and says no trouble with the markets after that they did all of those things but no vote no joke and i was always a distinguishing characteristic retrain in the caste system that the right person no matter what their income what their education level could vote and megan may not know that time if you had just gone fifty miles to the west oh you found that the black media they're voted on how what was a large a community of how you get the haywood county and black union vote in haywood county that we're all agrarian community phenomenal number of black swivel old and in nineteen forty eight even before today it would you had a cultural revolution right melman mitchell is one of the side characters that

time described as a johannesburg kind of situation that it was a black majority and there was fear that a black majority up the poles would usher in a government with a majority african american representatives know that when i looked at that but that story or a leading into that you do talk about the nineteen forties and that rang a bell in my mind because i knew that there had been that after war to their head then not something close to a social revolution and many communities black soldiers came back and asserted their rights are remarkable thing about this story is that his pre war a war to those blacks were seeking to find a way into the voting booth and into first class citizenship even before that went off to war fight for those rights right so clearly which they weren't and you have a lynching tragic story

of the kidnapping talk a little bit about the mostly to an adult actually that that's that's the genesis of the whole book is a nation that the book that we've talked about before i think they let nobody turn me around and i knew that there had been a lynching and in haywood county and i was looking for details of that for this book now you know he ran across a lynching when you were doing last time you hear we would talk about am i right and so you ride across the traces of that lynching in the legendary without writing at the year at the libre congress the end of like cp filed out on the brown's for chapter was was an inch thick and i had after davidson all kind of evidence about this lynching medlin at the lynching had been only one part of an attempt to suppress the and ugly city chapter being formed in nineteen forty nine s and that repression had the participation and the support of law officials alike should davis was the first person taken from his home at about midnight by

a mob of about thirty five are white men taken to either a river bottom and now i'm a wood county and a question about other members of the end of lacy pay and i'm frightened and he asked if he could go home to get some clothes and leave town they said no and he scored a video at the riverbank and fled into the night of weeks later members of the same or a net at about williams' home another member of the end of basically took him interesting way that was it was rip emilio after joe lewis fight where i was had fought again i think's so often there was is this false white pride at stake and looking looking to express hostility at people that african americans who were close by of weightlessness to click turns out they took him and they

took him to the jail released one of the other members of that same night and wins two days later and in the river beaten almost beyond recognition so much so that they can tell it was a bullet hole or stab wound that killed them is they're going to some really good day this goes off to the north which was one of a couple of the worker applies this is not an actual loss of the tradition of rice are joking that you're both right as character detroit signs on the zipper the postal worker began to go and work there right on the subversive organization which was into lacy played piano and there was a very interesting story the end of a lacy pete was in the middle of its anti lynching legislation effort will it last for a long time but in nineteen forty eight they felt that they had a chance to get some lynching legislation

passed and this was evidence that the lynching legislation was donated so the local chapter and in cooperation with the national office i was trying to get an fbi investigation and finally two fbi agents come to know michel in his office in jackson tennessee and mitchell says greater having the fbi investigation but it turned out it was at fbi was looking into a communist influence in all the servers of influence within the end only lazy and mitchell looks at the research on knowing about hunger is on the method as i so what if allowed but the book is for one of law and so you saw the continuum then brings a seller in the fifties and the sixties we were into we're heroes of the civil rights movement really unsung heroes john dorman nineteen fifties is in a wooden fayette county is searching through investigation on the part of the justice

department the right of blacks to vote the oppression in that period is economic some bounce strong economic pressure from sharecroppers off the land keep him from voting in the daytime no tally of a book on the mind of an analysis of the study as they stream of resistance sometimes very visible sometimes so a covert depending upon the circumstances what people what people thought what was the best strategy to achieve what they wanted talk a bit about john doerr because i think having not been and they were in the reaction of that voter registration effort my bond yes i think there is quite remarkable figure first of all it indicates that the key to his actions suggest that there were things going on in the eisenhower administration sometimes we date the civil rights movement with the kennedy administration but within the justice department of the

eisenhower administration will begin taking steps and he changed procedures have previously the justice department to come upon the fbi to look into things but they're as the fbi didn't the lynching of nineteen forty they very often took local authorities are worried and anne darwin co op to the scenes himself and began investigating and i was no procedure for the justice department and he also listened to people listen to the people the complaints a lot to see people like to be around to various churches and the county and he asked at one point how many of you have received eviction notices and he's talking to a group of about forty fifty four rest all put up with their hands and so it was then that i realized just how severe the problem was and how economic retaliation would take place and hear ingeniously decided to seek an injunction against the bankers and money

lenders with only within the county who had cut off credit two farmers which is to life and see people got into an argument with with them he wanted them punished for violation of the civil rights and ball point out that the trial would involve an all white jury and replicate the kinds of justice that african americans were accustomed to seeing at that time and that is people being being let go of its this lonely curious historical ironies within the year and within the book that time sam mac always lisa's topic in law school wasn't injunctions the very very start that about eighty years later john doerr involves you know i mean when i read about snow in your book i thought about carlos analogy twain him and sam actually by he saw politics ultimately as a method of

asserting his right ryan for a political elected school board are endlessly state senate and alpaca haywood county is dramatically different today than it was in the sixties was the forties somewhere that was the eighteen seconds for her talk about that moment well i guess one of the interesting irony is that dirty people worried so grandfathered cd love the b boy board was bored grandfather was one of the last elected black officials in haywood county indicating eighties and one boy who goes to register to vote he's sixty approval and permission of the head of the election board who was the grandson of the freedoms bureau agent postum so if you have two generations later two men who had represented the hour a pinnacle of political participation and eighteen sixties nineteen seventies not talking about

political action that would renew the political participation and the nineteen sixty nineteen seventies morton was much much more aware of that richard trudeau author of lifting the veil of political history of struggles for emancipation it's been our guest on a word on words your host has been john seguin dollar chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university this program was produced in the studios of wbez in nashville system