A Word on Words; 3341; Karl Fleming

ellen johnson you know once again welcome to word on words i guess is a call from an old friend one of the nation's most distinguished journalists and its great then you'd hear some yourself good to do well and the book is solar cells and so many more and you're a man who covered and social rights movement for so many years and suffered blood shed on the streets of watson the height of the riots there you call this know more about yourself on civil and now having read it understand why well it was it was an un uncivil time and i was definitely an ensemble person much of that time i had not known much about your childhood and we had mutual friends and you know you hear this story of that story but i had not known there's that you raise an orphanage

and i must say in those early chapters that deal with your life in an orphanage and how your family was roof and ripped apart your sister and you both goes terribly difficult and the mother was having health was money was i had known about that it must've been paying for it it was very painful write about because i had buried much of that memory and you know going to the ritz to waive the innocence given away by my mother and put into this very harsh place at a fairly tender age it was truly sparred over three hundred of us there is tough and not to of course with three hundred children they're not to march showed room for him so called tender loving care so

it was very lonely at first and and also a the worst thing that happened was that almost made me lay my nickname became pretty boy you look like a movie star those are those like fifty pounds heavier i'm a year older than i was and his name is fadi clark said he was you know and freddie beat me up and i was bullied a lot and it was tough because it was no one to turn to the worst and you could commit would be to squeal on somebody you had to learn to fend for yourself and i was the tender little kid kind of a mama's boy really who had spent my life pretty much alone with my mother until i went there my father died as you in the book when i was five months or so it was tough but the good news was that i came out of their bellies goodness britain

into what happened to me in the civil rights movement was that i came out of their ad bullets and aiding the misuse of power and hating people taken advantage of low people who were powerless to defend themselves and so that value the real you was very much that kind of dominated who i became so that when i did get involved in the civil rights movement or at least when i was first exposed to racism right away i got it just wasn't right well you know and i'm so lucky did because there were so many journalists and the south be young and so many people who didn't get it and didn't get it and didn't get it and was held for her people in the media who understood and that helped translate in such a way that the transition at least was successful if not so well i know i should by

all rights given my background coming out of the school literally on the back road at east carolina a growing up in this white methodist parsonage where everybody trusts man all these stereotypical racial views i should have grown up to be burning crosses on people's you're exactly or to be a stereotypical racist southern japan because of my experience because who knows why that son jean's the value of my mother was not a racist but i retreated in this orphanage out the payday loan is in the books and all of the people that i came to admire dickens mark twain and george orwell or such like people that became my heroes because they were all decided you know it is at if you read the book it becomes really sort of a saving grace that retreat to the armor that access the books and somebody was giving you some

guidance on which way to go and which offers to read or maybe it was just reading that led reading it was a discovery there are about three thousand books in this library and i think the most reliable car because that's where i spent my why i didn't like be bullied and so that's where i hid it it out there in fact and a chorus right away our offices genetic i loathe books i loved words and i love the fiction and jack london and this way don't all those people in the red badge of courage and fell in love with stop and also the great reporters and they became my they became my heroes a song about that bridge into journalism because i guess it never really conventional even for even for an informal given second or third generation germans their parents

own a newspaper but your entry with almost accidental almost accidental i had done a lot of sports reporting and i wasn't playing ball and the orphanage and i wrote the i wrote an essay so called low what should raleigh north carolina what should raleigh be like after the war and i want a twenty five dollar war by my boss so i didn't have some predictions for but it was almost accidental that i got a job on this newspaper and then i got thrust into this real world in your fluids everybody behave like they said they were and then i got exposed to this world where they resist the year of soda presbyterian methodist respectability on top and then i rode around at night with this copy he showed me the only jack ray hardest the world oh totally cynical to point out the hypocrisy because he would surely

the doctors and the lawyers have their fish camps out of the labor that their women special like he took me by ann introduced into the mountains of the two local courthouses and it showed the cars of these respectable people so called annie dillard delighted now but he also was a guy that truly introduced me to race is above we ride out at night in his car and we crossed the tracks into nigger town and these black people would be along the streets and they would sort of bow subservient league in the schools there and one night we're riding along and we went up and this mud la rosa shotgun shacks and he stopped at his house and i said ray where you were when he said why are the son of a bitch belongs to bmw sleepy this was nineteen fifty four brown the education would follow us at all and he goes into the house the simple low houses of crime bureau

against the war and he always a drawer is big and strong self out on the floor and i said what you do today he's someone looking for this on the benches in the boys say picard and the soul and cons of the bedroom one is overall a black man and he said that even the stylus you got a search warrant in a stop turning got ready to face and knocked into florence's that's one side of my goddamn search warrant you wanna see the other one and my heart this guy use you talk about that great sun this great discomfort this is not a place i wanna be that ordinary and that should not be happening but you know that was the real world every police departments out there was some of that in in most pleased to put most of police departments who infiltrated by the

klan and so are the numbers of police deployment where and and that exposure to that top who had been your friend would then use so it's a minnesota opened up a new understanding about a relationship that maybe had maybe had been clothes because he was a source but suddenly there's distance or that had not been there before it did indeed it it put a wall between us and i had to i had felt compassion for this man he was divorced he drank too much he have a sympathetic to him he was an outsider he saw the doctor say i admired that he was honest and a sense of you didn't feel like he was the enforcer and he was in that job because the white people putting their jobs and they wanted him to do whatever was necessary to keep the black community under control and they didn't want to hear a word about it and of course

he was mild compared to what un isola john adams as things heated up further deep south and ask about journalism as i read the book i was reminded of how many experiences and we shared different cities but but there was a sort of sense of camaraderie among journalists and it seems to me it began in the newsroom and you know people you knew later when you're covering a larger story you understand that there is sort of a brotherhood in the journalism business that is it has no geographic boundaries and i it's i think about the stories relating to you in court certain traveling the south soaking from the new york times

you buy that time with newsweek and how and how that bond of friendship almost brotherhood i kept you together through tough times through times when you had to on occasion with some funny stories about about it did your identities in order to cover story and still be safe or tried to the outside world oh first of all i think back then a journalist seymour from the working class and also the best of the reporters were more or less calm a renegade senate took pride in the fact that they didn't belong to my body didn't belong to anything their job was to be an independent tom brokaw said to me once he said well caro you always wear an anarchist thank you for that what is going on into south we have all

that uncommon the fact that we did pride ourselves on being independent and outsiders and not taking anybody's side we were just dare to report their backs on whichever way they failed but then to assert recall and i had this special relationship because not many reporters as you well know we're covering the civil rights area back then and coordinate travel together we were not first more competitive and we traveled together because it was safe up he would drive i would type i would drive he would type we stayed in adjoining motel rooms in the front of the motel which was well lit we use payphones wouldn't sit with their backs to you or in a restaurant where or the windows we did not go out on country roads alone at night because as you well know john we were threatened we were beaten we were shot at we other forms that we will fall around at night so it was not safe so there was

a camera brotherhood is certainly one that developed between concerts myself as a result of that for those who just in them i'm joined by kaufman an old friend and we talk about his summer of south it is announcing no more and that job of covering some rise in those girls times ultimately required that you interact with leeches of the movement on one hand and the law enforcement in cities there were brutalizing the movements on the other end and part of the story is is how that interaction occurs and it's interesting to me and that even though new uncertain and a few others on because of the nature of the story we're covering should've opened a door

is two so it is the truth is that those with some of them a level of suspicion regarding new year institution and of blacks as newsweek employ a great i'm in the region formidable stokely carmichael a mccain was not the whole part of the movement and there were there were there were tensions and ascension inside the movement which people outside the one monolithic well that's true and i when i first met jim foreman of state can and bob moses says that stokely carmichael they weren't really skeptical and were guarded so it was a matter of developing trust with those people and so that they trusted that i would report the facts and not start the stuff same thing of course would be with the white cops and sheriffs always prided myself on carrying this cardinal

one side of it was a complimentary a note from a georgia sheriff saying that i had been fair in my reporting and then on the other side of the guard was a note from low for an naacp official saying the same thing and i use that card when appropriate but i never got accused of being biased and of course i was southern soul that i could walk walk i weighed two hundred and ten pounds and a crew cut hair cut a smoke free packs of camels a day dr alan jack daniels and could talk about it just like those guys so i was kind of woman now the way that that cut the other way harbor was that as soon as they found out what i was writing which was nothing but the facts i became a traitor and we called sutton and i were treated much more harshly in congress from georgia's your major we were treated much more harshly than the northern reporters they were members of the other nigger love and you can just press and the local rednecks and

cheer they don't understand why those guys would do that but for people like me we were but train the self yeah i mean and the southern accent made it first a retrial absolutely and you know when you with a wonderful pictures in the book and there is that picture of king funeral now recognizes you they are on we talk about him because he does stand out i think among all leaders in this country presidents some of the realm of those award three d he does stand out as a singular personality well just to say wait for a second what i decided was

that there was not much need for yet another recitation of the bare facts of the civil rights movement that what i wanted to do was write my stories and talk about how i became who i became a witch and so that i would write a passionate and personal store not only about what i saw and i did have my own particular way of seeing things and i think i saw things that other people are that is it is it is a distinctive went off and so i tried to do that and one of the permutations of that was indeed how i responded to cain because of the way i grew up the worst thing i could be was a sissy because prior to going to this orphanage i had been sexually molested by these kids who laughed at me so i had this great it's a shame of being not a man that was my fault somehow so that i had to become a tough go back for a lot and that was the way i responded to situation

and king talked me he personally taught me a new definition of what it meant to be a man because when i saw him in birmingham marching out into the park in the face of the cops and the far hoses and the dogs with the certainty that at the very least he would go to jail and with the high probability that he would be beaten up or to your ipod that's courage one of the dual in the current that's courage so that job as i marched along and that funeral i thought about that and how he had personally affected my life and also the fact that you know we saw so many things bad things happen i'm an eyesore and i say in this book that i saw things that were so repulsive that i would literally go back to my motel room and

i can throw up i was so i shaved and so angry at the things that you know i saw i had this it took for ever to get the sound out of my head one day right after medgar evers was assassinated there was a martian jackson always black people were marching downtown kerri little american flags dressed in a sun did this in these cops waited until he jerked the flags out of her hands through underground and impound and they did and i heard the sound of those clubs so long ago activists just lot of bumps and i was horrible and the riot and the and what happened in philadelphia terrible unspeakable things done by white people to black people but it was something very inspiring in the end about all of that to john as you well know because key and fewer than one hundred young people and i'm talking

about the kids who start here in nashville absurd in raleigh north carolina the second quarter heads who want all through the south they changed this country a tiny handful of people shapes this country and the uterus along i see john lewis in congress now and i remember when he wasn't who he was and as a division ii head ordered nineteen twenty twenty one year old there were children and they chase this country and they achieves the laws oh you know the the civil rights act the voting rights act and after that what happened in philadelphia couldn't happen anymore schwerner chaney goodman learned their grain went to do is read this they alone that men have been convicted of mental this long after that corruption and you know a bit so the south and an led to the murder

of young people like that and then you know when you watch some reaction of some of the people who or in power down there they're so iran and they're still and complex trial and from there their drone you know it's just so mark will remember that racism still abed is not dead and one of the things that contains a bother me which i write about in this book is that the the klansmen home were arrested and you others at the cops as sheriff arrests of the people who were never brought to justice for the unindicted co conspirators and by that i mean all of the political leaders here and the church leaders and business leaders and the people in the media who knew morales licensed and encouraged to stage these kind of things did not take place in a bike you're an enterprising killed those kids and the guy that shot medgar evers and the cops in birmingham

who blew a poll to build the road that the bombings in birmingham before the church was blown up those things were literally licensed by the white power sticker you know to sort of newsweek i ran into was only have room for a few days ago and reminisced about you newsweek in those days was a visionary at the option to go away one to go do what you wanna do cover story where you want to cover this support your way i was very lucky because so if you will know how much of the night most of the national media did more you're about to start and in fact didn't come at all and to their hands were forced birmingham if i remember correctly you can correctly on this was the first real

staged media think that's right and king and his lieutenants were well where they have been in albany the year before and have failed miserably because at a very sophisticated police chief who politely put everybody in jail and had somebody secretly paid king's bail and in effect that drew him out of jail so that there was not any media attention so that king and his lieutenants new but they needed a different kind of adversary it and that's won it that birmingham a bull connor because i knew how he would react and that in fact is why and those white kids came to mississippi because bob moses and jim for money jim farmer of core knew that if aig those white kids founder jewish kids from the north there was i probability they would be hurt or killed and if they get the northern kids were killed that would bring the media which it did and that in fact was a real part of their thinking

but the irony is looking at a picture of you lying on the pavement there and the watts riot victim of an assault by every american riding this white film the it must have in poignant you're mine oh it was unbelievable because don't sell black people were our friends and you're suddenly alice trust in the middle of this black riot was it or they had people tried to stronger growth and when i became conscious realize it was he lived near fort wayne drama lawyers aside but they had more yearly thing about that i was the symbol of everything bad about whites that to that they knew that it was an extremely complicated

emotional issue for me i've never read a book in which an author tell the story of his life which was more candid i'm all the good and all with the goods and i congratulated on that my friend appreciate your comments so much like a giant thank all of you for watching and johnson and go forward on words keep reading