Hope & Fury: MLK, The Movement and The Media | NBC News

this is an NBC News special presentation some of the images and language in the following program are graphic and might be disturbing to some viewers while the images have been available across the internet they have not been seen nationally in their entirety on NBC fifty years ago the nation lost an extraordinary leader right a warrior for justice his fight is our fight it was one of those fateful intersections in history that was very important one of the reasons why Martin Luther King was so successful was that he understood television packet I think he understood that imagery was everything show the pictures show the images violence is that visual prompts people Oh action shameful rested children for what the right to vote dr. King understood that you need to make people own their shame looks like the tears come here story of struggle and triumph they took them into Carter's and alleys and began beating them is the American story a story still being told dr. King said you have to create a crisis so that the power structures are forced to answer [Music] on July 6 2016 outside st. Paul Minnesota officers pulled over 32 year-old falando Castillo on a routine traffic stop we got pulled over for a busted taillight in the back and the police just he's he's covered he they killed my boyfriend just 40 seconds after the last shot was fired her four-year-old daughter in the backseat Castillo's girlfriend diamond Reynolds began streaming video live on Facebook from her cell phone while the world watched keep them up where's my daughter you got my daughter face away from me we know how the story goes he was reaching for the gun I had to shoot him we know that she knew that and she refused to let that be the narrative she is going to force people to bear witness to this and to see something that has largely been rendered as being invisible in this country before the world ever heard of falando castile or any of the other young black man whose public killings awaken the consciousness of the nation there was fourteen year old Emmett Till and his grieving mother Mamie livestreaming your loved ones death is a 21st century version of what Emmett Till's mother did she live streamed her son's yes Mamie till stunning decision to publish a photograph of her murdered son Emmett forced the country to confront the horror of racism and set in motion the modern civil rights movement Americans they can tell you where they were when John F Kennedy was assassinated or when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon for many African Americans they'd remember that moment when they saw Emmett Till photographing I don't know a black person who doesn't know the name Emmett Till I don't know it's single black person who has not seen an image about the same age the same age matter of fact it's horrifying it was my 9/11 it was basically you know an act of terror in 1955 Mississippi was ground zero for racial terror in the American South when 14 year old Emmett Till arrived from Chicago to visit his great uncle Mose Wright in a town called money he was a big city kid he wasn't familiar with the dark heart and the social taboos of the Jim Crow South black people and white people interacted only on a transactional basis but they were largely two different worlds you stick to your own kind we'll stick to our own kind one day Emmitt and his cousin's go into town and they go to a little grocery store Bryant's grocery store and something happens inside according to Carolyn Bryant the wife of the proprietor the woman who ran the store Emmett Till alone in the store with her comes on to her and whistles at her four days later Bryant's gun-toting husband and brother-in-law went looking for the boy at his uncle's house and mosrite begs him to leave him alone please don't take him but they take him and he never returns it's thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a 70 pound cotton gin fan attached to his neck with a barbed wire a few days later a boy fishing in the river discovered a body beaten beyond recognition father was so badly damaged that we couldn't holla just tell who we walked but he happened to have on a rein with me in Chicago Emmett Till's grief-stricken mother meny waited at the railroad station for the casket containing her son's body to arrive Mamie till is essentially confronted with a sealed wooden casket nailed shut by the sheriff it was Mamie Tale who demanded that that box be open so that she could see her child she kind of staggers in and sees this body and she can't believe her beautiful child is this lump of flesh that's lying in this casket and she said to herself the country is going to have to confront this I'm not gonna suffer in this by myself if this is what you're gonna do to black boys you're going to look at it not only did Mamie insist on keeping Emmett's casket open for the funeral she invited photographer David Jackson from the weekly black news magazine jet to take pictures of his body she and the editors of Jet magazine made the decision that they were going to display this for the country all issues of jet sellout they published it again the next week all issues sellout and it's only in the Black Press owned by Johnson publishing the white press didn't even see it at first it was quite a controversy about why would Jet print this terrible picture they wanted to make a point just to show you how bad things were Mamie till had something very important to teach show the pictures show the images she wanted the world to see the ravages of racism the brutality of bigotry I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me and if the death of my son can mean something to the other unfortunate people all over the world then for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have died Mamie till I think God more viscerally than anyone that if she didn't show those pictures he would just be another black boy gone dead Roy Bryant and his half-brother JW Milam were arrested and accused of murder their trial was held in Sumner Mississippi just two weeks after the funeral although black reporters were kept separate it was one of the first times in the South that they were permitted to sit in the main courtroom with the rest of the press instead of being up in the balcony frequently called the Crowsnest they were allowed to sit at a table on the ground floor not that far from where the white press was seated that was considered a breakthrough among the journalists covering the trial were jet reporter simeon booker and freelance photographer ernest withers withers photograph of mosrite on the witness stand defiantly pointing to his nephews murderers captured a rare moment a black man bearing witness to racial terror in a southern courtroom the Ernst withers photo of Moses right standing up at the trial of tills murderers was taken surreptitiously I think that's the number one image that most people remember the trial lasted four and a half days one journalist called it the first great media event of the civil rights movement I've just received information on the murder charge after little more than an hour of deliberations the all-white jury acquitted both defendants it took 67 minutes and one juror said it wouldn't have taken us even that long except we stopped to have a soda while the defendants escaped punishment they would not escape judgment after the trial this man journalist William Bradford Huie persuaded them to sell their true story for $4,000 Huey sold the story to Look magazine it's the ultimate insult to injury having just been exonerated in this sham of a trial only two with no fear of double jeopardy tell their story yeah we did it here's how we did it deal with an American remarkably sixty-two years later in 2017 Emmett Till's accuser carolyn Bryant recanted much of her story admitting that she lied about what happened that day in the store Look magazine never published the graphic photographs of Emmett Till's mutilated corpse and few white Americans saw them at the time but soon a leader would emerge who understood how images of racial violence could bring about change and he would force the nation to face them you [Music] is this just the fish that we are getting ready that's what we've done long ago it will be grill this is rare early footage of the 27 year old man who before long would become a legend but in 1956 Martin Luther King jr. was a little-known Minister and the leader of a bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama that started when activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man Martin Luther King was a man of huge thoughtfulness about the strategy that he had asked those who followed him to use and that strategy was that in the face of violence you had the moral high ground if you did not return violence with violence Negro has been humiliated intimidated at first the young Minister who went by the unassuming name of m.l.king was only covered by black journalists writing for black papers in particular the Birmingham world of black newspaper and its editor Emery Jackson he writes about long before anyone else that dr. King is invoking Gandhian principles it becomes referred to and the Black Press as the black Moses the white editors they were just living in a different world the majority press the white press basically ignored African Americans and not just episodes of violence against them but achievements anything to do with their daily life basically flat-out ignored them they didn't even often use the names of black people because that would be a sign of respect it's galling now how to look at the level of disregard and oblivion that was in the media at that time Montgomery bus boycott unbelievably successful from the very first day and it took weeks to get a national reporter in there I think it was six weeks before a news magazine came in and then 12 weeks before a major newspaper came in King developed a strategy of resistance that was designed to challenge the status quo while never making white America feel threatened he consciously set about creating a character palatable to all of America Martin Luther King understood that if you're only telling the story you know among the black press and among black people you're preaching to the choir you've got to get outside the church what special instructions or advice has been given the Negro people if there is violence that must not come from Negro people king's efforts to woo the media started to pay off soon King was the story and the story was the movement [Music] have been engaged in a nonviolent protest the boycotters face death threats and persecution but under the leadership of dr. king they mounted a successful and peaceful campaign facing financial crisis and failing in the courts the city of Montgomery relented and ordered that black passengers be allowed to sit anywhere America likes a winner media loves the front-runner one could argue that if if dr. King's first foray into our national television had not been a success would the media have turn around and gone home I don't know we'll never know thank God it's early morning here at 11:21 cross street in Little Rock and a new school day is dawning a year after the Montgomery bus boycott Little Rock Arkansas became the stage for the next great drama of the movement when local n-double-a-cp leaders hand-picked nine black students and pressured the school board to enroll them at all white Central High School they were challenging the city to comply with the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown versus Board of Education where the court ruled that all public schools must be integrated when they said are you interested in transferring to central I said hey why not my attitude was that change was coming I want to be a part of it I'm ready to change the face of the South the story took an unexpected turn when the governor defied the courts and ordered the National Guard to block the black students from entering the school the first day we face the Arkansas National God with bayonets they let the white students into the campus and barred us from entrance it was surreal outside the school an angry crowd gathered to the nine black students arrived together that first day only Elizabeth Eckford whose family didn't own a telephone arrived alone Elizabeth didn't get the message that we were going to meet at the 14th Street side of the school and not the 16th Street side of the school we had the protection of each other and this group of Ministers Elizabeth didn't have anybody she really took the brunt of it that day this black young teenager all by herself being frightened and screamed at it's the first of a series of images showing how powerful and and virulent southern white racism was traumatized by the reaction of the crowd Elizabeth refused to speak to news crews and you tell me your name please are you gonna go to school here there was one journalist Elizabeth agreed to talk to Moses newson a newspaper reporter for the Baltimore afro-american when I heard about it and rushed over and she recognized me she said she would talk to me you know and she said they're talking about what had happened to her and hmm and there she says soon as it bakes it if we can go back I'm going back and it just always stuck in my mind something that is 15 y/o Gorillaz and after a three-week standoff in Little Rock a federal judge ordered that the Arkansas National Guard be removed the following Monday September 23rd the black students once again attempted to enter the school photographer Earl Devi and three black reporters including Moses Newson follow the students there will walk in a 16th Street somewhat up front yell there in our school and all hell broke loose Earl Devi runs someone tackles him they take his camera and they smash it to the ground l Alex Wilson the editor of the tri-state defender just keeps walking still photographs caught that well take that and just magnify it a hundredfold to show you what television was giving you know looked at television and there was somebody beaten mr. Wilson mr. Wilson was just being politic in fact one of the guys said run damn you run and he just kept walking Bose increases his hat and puts it back on and he keeps walking his expression doesn't change l Alex Wilson's decision not to run in defiance of the mob was rooted in an incident from his boyhood in Florida as a kid Alex Wilson had seen the Klan come to town and he ran and he hated himself for having done that and he said he would never run again he's 49 years old he's got nerve damage from what happened in Little Rock that day three years later in 1960 aged 51 he is dead good evening my fellow citizens for a few minutes this evening I should like to speak to you about the serious situation that has arisen in Little Rock mob rule can not be allowed to override the decisions of our courts within hours of Eisenhower's announcement as the American public watched in shock and disbelief a thousand federal troops marched into Little Rock and the Arkansas National Guard was federalized it was a huge television event the president speaking on TV ordering federal troops into an American city so some black kids could go to school the fact that he used a thousand paratroopers to provide protection made a hell of a statement especially in the black community that people were used to the government being against them not for them so the notion of troops being used for African Americans was a revolution a revelation and a novelty we were blessed by the fact that these images were shown by the media because there probably were other cases before us in which there was no media no image you know the tree falls in the forest does anybody here before long millions of Americans would hear it and see it [Music] you nearly every American heard about the Little Rock Nine the story gave a boost to the movement and the movement gave a boost to the fledgling industry of television news television was just breaking through to being the national medium for news not every American home had a television set we were sort of making it up as we went along I feel pretty good about it although it is sort of a nervous glad to be here this was the world of 15 minute news people like Mike Wallace tonight we bring you and John Chancellor we can't report this morning is that we're in Little Rock they begin their careers then what you like football well there are people who come up to me and say yeah they begin their evenings by seeing what we were doing reality TV we were early reality TV before we knew it it was one of those fateful intersections in history that was very important both for journalism and also for the African America and the cause of human rights in America Martin Luther King strategy of non-violent direct action inspired a wave of young activists to take up the cause King was able to energize young masters young students he said of tone of let's come out of these cathedrals has come out of these offices and let's do something in the streets beginning in February 1960 in cities from Greensboro to Nashville black students sat down at lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served sit-ins introduced a new more confrontational tactic to the movement that provoked white segregationists to violence [Music] then in May of 1961 13 activists black and white calling themselves Freedom Riders boarded two buses in Washington DC at railways and a greyhound their goal to desegregate interstate bus lines in the South among the groups organizers were student leaders John Lewis and Diane Nash by now the activists knew the crucial importance of media coverage and were leaving nothing to chance we knew that if one of us did not interpret what we were doing to the press somebody would step in and and try to do it and get it over own and so I was elected to be the coordinator there is the story when Diane Nash and these guys are on the Freedom Rides Seigenthaler who worked for Kennedy said they plan to kill you when you go to Mississippi my father he and Diane Nash had a conversation he didn't want her to continue the Freedom Rides he said you're gonna get somebody killed you're gonna get somebody killed if you keep this up and she said you don't understand sir we signed our last will and testament last night we understand exactly what we're facing in my capacity as coordinator several of the students who were about to get on the bus gave me sealed envelopes that I was to mail in the event of their death their route would take them from Virginia and the Carolinas into the very core of the Deep South Alabama and Mississippi in Atlanta Martin Luther King warned the Freedom Riders that he received word the buses would be attacked before they reach Birmingham undeterred the riders continued on the Greyhound was the first to arrive in Alabama when they get to Anniston some Klansmen white thugs stopped the bus they firebomb it is a reporter Moses Newson on this bus neither he nor anyone on that bus imagines that they're going to be able to get out alive editor has a close brush with death when I found myself in that burning bus set on fire by the bomb that cold chilling realization that this might be it came over me they were using Borge and change daring people to come out and integrate Alabama I decided the best thing for me to do was to stick the camera up onto my seat I had no thought about stepping off the bus with a camera hanging around my neck Moses noose and quite reasonably figured out that if they knew he was a journalist and not a freedom rider that he would suffer an even greater punishment than the Freedom Riders reporters gathered at the birmingham bus station to await the arrival of the second bus a mob of club wielding segregationists waited there - the bus came in they collected around it they dragged about six of the passengers out both Negro and white they took them into corridors and alleys and began beating them again hitting them with lead pipes at that point someone behind me whispered in my ear and said someone here has identified you from having seen you on television they're hunting for you now you'd better get out the segregationist power understood that the press doing its job had become their enemy in every way as strong and as dangerous to them and to Jim Crow and segregation as the civil rights protest information media including the TV network have publicized and dramatized a race issue far beyond its relative importance in the days of the people who hated us called us outside agitators thought that we were of a peace with the civil rights people that we were handed one of their favorite epithets was to call his white Negroes except they didn't put it quite that way white bystanders harassed us with homemade cursing us and blaming the press as the cause of the demonstrators standing against them with a segregation I cover the nighttime demonstration in Marion somebody walked up behind me hit me with an axe handle somebody came up and asked me he said you need a doctor put my hand behind my head and it was all bloody and I said yeah I think so and he thrust his face right into my knees that we don't have doctors for people like you it was personal it was you it was not bullets flying in the air that could hit it it was you that they wanted to do harm to of course it was dangerous but the truth is that the number of times that we face danger and the kind of danger we faced was very small compared to that with those who took part in the movement we bore witness to what was happening we were not participants what we did was say here it is you face it in your living room because individuals as a family as a country [Music] you [Music] [Music] you six years after Emmett Till's murder the state where he was killed Mississippi emerged as a fortress of southern white racism is Mississippi had always been just a place apart to me it was the South Africa of America it was a place you didn't really want to put your foot now a civil rights maverick would strike at the venerable all-white University of Mississippi known as Ole Miss University Mississippi had not had any black folks as students ever extremely single-minded young veteran james Meredith decides he's going to go to Ole Miss and will not be deterred one impediment is removed after another by the courts who keeps saying you can't keep the guy out Mississippi's governor Ross Barnett had no intention of complying with a court order he stood defiantly in the door of the registrar blocking Meredith's way Ole Miss he said would remain all-white [Music] governor great and sovereign state of Mississippi denied to you JH Meredith admission to the University of Mississippi [Applause] this was such a strong crazy reaction to this long Negro entering the University of Mississippi being on the Ole Miss campus this weekend there's something like being in the eye of a hurricane there was a real sense of foreboding among many people including reporters including myself of no good can come of this on the side of opposing james Meredith you have people flooding in from Alabama and other states who have nothing to do with University of Mississippi literally hundreds of outsiders came pouring into the campus armed with shotguns pistols clubs it was like a Nazi rally the mood was total anarchy I was the first black woman full-time reporter at the Washington Post I was not part of the team that was covering the events on campus there is no way black reporters we would have all been dead we had tried to be on campus hundreds of US Marshals sent by President Kennedy to protect Meredith poured onto the Ole Miss campus there was this amassing of forces federal forces coming in from Memphis military troops coming in federal marshals that seized control of the Lyceum which was the chief administrative office on campus it was where we assumed that Meredith would come to register as security so a crowd of several hundred people gathered in front of gelasio their first arrival on the campus was read without incident but Benjamin word spread but Negro Air Force veteran james Meredith woods on the campus the fighting starts it developed into this gunfight that went on for four hours I sought refuge in a girls dormitory the photographers did not want to use flashes anymore than a television camera person wanted to use a big light because you would beat up someone who was using flash and in fact they did before the night was over the violence had claimed two lives one was a French journalist named Paul geared he had a bright red beard and red hair probably part of the reason that he died is because he was clearly identified as a member of the press this body was found over near behind a women's dormitory and has been shot at close range unsolved to this very day by the next morning the riot was quelled under heavy guard james Meredith was finally allowed to register and attend class at the University of Mississippi he remained enrolled under the protection of US Marshals until he completed his coursework the following year becoming the university's first black graduate Mississippi mood hope and fear the hope is that Meredith signals the coming of the light for all of them the fear is that the inevitable changes will bring further death destruction and repercussions [Music] Oh what can the pass tell us about the future this city [Applause] as writer William Faulkner said the past is never dead it's not even past I think anybody who witnessed what happened on the campus of UVA couldn't help but think that maybe the hands of time have swept backwards all mists and UVA with the two have in common of course was this violence this hatred on display unapologetically [Music] things that we thought we had moved past and a lot of people thought how far we really come [Music] you fewer guards chilled we ain't will let nobody turn off arrived one of the reasons why Martin Luther King was so successful was he understood television we deliberately had demonstrations before 12 o'clock in order to get the film to New York they had to leave by one we cannot in all good conscience such an injunction dr. King and his staff were very very savvy they knew exactly what was going on you want me to just make a statement and not interview you don't run in and they strategized how they could use their coverage to their advantage there's nobody that could make an hour-long speech any better than you but for the 6 o'clock news you had to get your message across it had to be 30 seconds unless the time is always right to do right and we cannot wait we cannot continue to accept these conditions of oppression Kingwood dramatized and force the media to deal with this I've got to grab your attention without losing your interest in respect and King mastered that but for all of Kings sophistication he could still be outmaneuvered by a clever adversary and risk losing control of the civil-rights story I've often been told that I was welcome down here but I didn't know whether would be it not Laurie Lau RIE Pritchett is the police chief of Albany Georgia and he set about doing things differently King used the students method of direct confrontation in Albany Georgia however police chief Pritchett cleverly counted the nonviolent demonstrations was nonviolent arrest dr. King thinks he's going to draw violence onto protesters but the police chief found there was actually very savvy he decided he was not going to play to the television cameras a ban on demonstrations has brought more than 1,500 arrests of desegregation is so far [Music] Pritchett jails dr. King and a lot of other demonstrators but his goal is not to let them have their way and stay in jail long enough to generate a lot of press and a lot of publicity this is one time that I'm out of jail and I am not happy to be out out of jail and out of the headlines King seemed momentarily out of options and the national press corps knew it reporters present all Benny as a big defeat it's viewed as as a serious political setback for dr. King and in part because there had been absolutely no white violence whatsoever against black demonstrators in all been this long gasps civil rights activists were just being quietly and respectfully jailed the media didn't really care about that story King knew he had to get the movement back on track and to really make this notion of non-violence work he had to find a place where there would be resistance where people could really see the ugliness of what they were confronting he recognized that nothing was going to change until and unless most Americans were exposed to the reality of what was going on so if that's what he needed to do was provoke a reaction on the part of bigoted southerners who were all too willing to play their part he just had to bring them to the fore you can never flip debug if you don't keep human them separate you've got the right in the back step Theophilus Eugene Connor Bull Connor he was the police commissioner in Birmingham and he was large and he was in charge uniformed forces of Birmingham led by Commissioner Eugene Bull Connor who says we were trying to be nice to them but they won't let us be the decision to do protests in downtown Birmingham is a very calculated decision to see what Bull Connor is capable of doing that will attract the attention of northern white journalists that if we can get a breakthrough in but really break down the walls of segregation it will demonstrate to the whole South that it can no longer lose this impression King said we've got a go-for-broke we have to do something dramatic and the first thing is his advisers told him is don't tell your father don't tell any of your immediate advisers they don't want you to go to Birmingham they think it's too dangerous and and and you don't have a chance to win grown adult protestors get attacked the media covers it but after a while that tactic doesn't draw the media anymore so then Kane thinks what can I do now that's when he decides to have the children's March that was very very controversial to put children in a situation where you knew that there was going to be violence visited upon them we had never done that before we had never had children before and we didn't know what could happen these are some of the 1,100 children of Birmingham who demonstrated in the streets and went to jail and then we're either suspended or expelled from school these were eleventh and twelfth graders who were mostly 16 to 19 they were very mindful of a fact that in another year they could be sent to Vietnam to die for freedom abroad for somebody else following dr. King's tactics of going to jail deliberately who dramatized the Negro protests against segregation unlike Albany the supply of the truth the so-called nonviolent army was unlimited during the weeks long Birmingham campaign King himself was arrested from his cell he composed one of the movements seminal documents his letter from a Birmingham jail he wrote we know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor it must be demanded by the oppressed for years now I have heard the word wait it rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity we must come to see that justice too long delayed is justice denied [Music] more than a thousand school children first high school students then much younger ones left school and headed downtown where bull Connor's troops waited with fire hoses and dogs dr. King realized that if you have embers and you have gasoline all you need to do is get a spark and things will burn [Music] [Music] we had instructed people you don't run from dogs you back away from continue to look at them I was 16 and I was stupefied by those images I see these six year old kids are marching in the dogs and fire hoses singing freedom songs and when they see the dogs and the fire hoses they don't run they would ten us to the light pole to keep us from going any further down the street and you had to hold on to keep from being rolled down the street you'd have to describe it as what hell must look like to see human beings being treated that way screaming especially little kids I've got tears in my eyes right now it's just it's it's hard these were children with ribbons in their hair little dresses on who were getting beaten up they weren't dressing up in their finest Sunday clothes to get blood all over them just for kicks they were dressed that way so that they were the maximum amount of sympathetic when violence is that visual prompts people ooh action gets people's attention in a way that any amount of intellectual discussion can't even approach the constant pressure of these stories the pictures of the police dogs and the fire hoses and the kids being arrested those were all powerful firecrackers if you will unpoliced in washington you start to see that country as a whole saying this is intolerable this has got to stop and that puts the pressure on by now the mainstream press was covering all the horrible things in the movement and particularly what had happened in Birmingham and that's an important moment in time because it kind of opens up the door for Lyndon Johnson it gives him the space needed to to pick up the torch from President Kennedy and push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 you in August 1963 King staged his greatest production of all this time the drama did not come from images of violence but from the astonishing sight of a quarter million peaceful protesters from all walks of life descending on the nation's capital around the world watched transfixed as a parade of celebrities black and white called for unity in the struggle for racial justice mr. Brando what sort of an impression has this day left with you it is possible for all men to come together in a sense of goodwill and to saw come in a democratic way the truth of it is that the march on Washington was what transformed a southern predominantly black movement into a national movement it meant that we were not just an isolated movement this movement became a universal movement there were whites protesting alongside blacks the news cameras couldn't look away and ultimately it really changed the evening news as we know of it late today the news was only 15 minutes during the sit-ins and the Freedom Rides even the Birmingham crisis but by the fall of 1963 CBS first went to 30 minutes NBC huntley-brinkley went to 30 minutes speed and efficiency in the new york and washington nerve centers of NBC News please now make possible the expansion of the famed huntley-brinkley report to a full half-hour television became a bigger presence in people's lives just in time for Freedom Summer and the peak of the civil rights era the explosion of media attention inspired a surge of new recruits mostly young and white into the movement we are going to be able to do something something really will come out of the summer what areas will your main activities be in registration political education and then what we call freedom schools one of these young leaders was Bob Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee snick snick was thinking about how to get their point of view in front of the press we understood that it didn't matter that black people got killed we saw that what attracted the media to the all campaign was the influx of Stanford and Yale we have been invited and we're simply helping people the students representing the elite structures of the country I really believe in these things that may sound idealistic the Constitution the Bill of Rights and I think it's important for everybody to have it was clear at the orientation that the media were latching onto every young little white girl they could find who would be you know post the picture back home that's what the press was interested that's what brought the press clearly I'm just wondering if people in this room understand one that people should be expected to get beaten they should expect to spend in jail and it may go beyond the summer when they're in jail then that they should expect possibly somebody to get killed I don't believe that one single white person who came there felt that they were being used people came they were warned from the outset they something terrible may happen to them Nick in your own mind have you thought about the dangers in Mississippi that you might come into physical harm as a recruiter I was asking not only for their name they addressed their parents and everything what is the newspaper in your hometown who should we contact if you get arrested if something happens to you even if what some of us are killed even if I am killed we we will have been will have died each death is they're going to bring Mississippi nearer to reconciliation uh-huh I was terrified before during it was terrified [Music] young men and young women take up the burdens of their convictions without ceremony occupied with a paraphernalia of departure they go the media was going to follow the kids in they set forth for a summer in Mississippi the most dangerous time it's the entry point into Mississippi we would have been alright if everybody had gone down together with the whole press that was their protection to enter Mississippi however soon after arriving in Mississippi three volunteers two white one black left the group to investigate a church burning Schwerner Chaney and Goodman two white Jewish kids and a black kid from Mississippi did not come back by the appointed check time people are calling reporters saying they're missing civil rights workers in Mississippi that was one of the reasons that allowed for this real convergence of press interests that went right up into the White House Nash Warner I had talked to the governor there and he is making all the for Childers has paid available the church it became the dominant story of the summer did mr. Schwerner ever tell you in his own words why he came down here he wanted to find what he could do very quickly the media focused on Rita Schwerner the telegenic wife of missing activists Michael Schwerner that the people in this country has had enough they went all over Rita and Rita was about five fourteen she weighed about 85 pounds they went up to her and they said mrs. Schwerner how do you feel and Rita wouldn't play she said you would not even be interviewing me if my husband was black and it was true it was true mrs. Cheney the wife of one the missing Whiteman has said that the only reason this case has attracted national attention is because there are two white northerners involved do you believe that well that's what I feel too because uh if he was by himself I doubt that we would ever know anything the bodies of Goodman Schwerner and Chaney were found in an earthen dam 44 days after their disappearance Western facing everybody under the sound of my voice tonight and every person who lives in this nation not so much who killed those young men but what killed and when we move from the who to the what in a strange sense that death involved all of the reporters in the civil rights movement we're presenting stories that made average Americans question they're accepted reality the bombing of this church claimed the lives of four little girls attending Sunday School people didn't know black people very well they weren't aware of what lives were really like because black people were largely invisible to most of white America there have been live church burnings in the past dozen days all the churches were Negro churches people couldn't believe at the local level but all over America they read about it they saw the photographs they saw it on the news people identify perhaps you from a writer's life some Alabama March 7 1965 it was a sunny but chilly Sunday morning as more than 500 civil rights demonstrators made their way to the main business district of the city ignoring the stares of the white people defying the court order of a local judge as they headed in the direction of the bridge I was sent as one of three reporters for the New York Times to Selma I'm watching with this photographer McNamara a few other reporters we see young John Lewis I don't think he was more than 23 or 24 is a very young man scrawny little guy who didn't seem to be very formidable or enduring but he was will marching today to dramatize to the nation dramatize to the world hundreds and thousands of Negro citizens of Alabama but particularly here in the blighter they're denied the right to vote well in Selma Alabama in 1965 only 2.1 percent of blacks of voting age or registered to vote the only time you could attempt to register to vote with the first and third Monday of each month so we had to do something we had to act I was almost certain that on that Sunday if a couple of hundred people walked across that bridge they would simply be turned around I figured there's gonna be trouble so I found a spot where I could see what was going on and had access to a telephone the counter was right at the foot of the bridge they discharged and they charged throwing tear gas bombs it was quite a shock it came toward us beating us with nightsticks shrimpin us with horses releasing the tear gas [Music] clouds of poisonous smoke rising from the sidewalk high as the bridge itself people in silhouette because you couldn't see very well we will push my Linux Mint from under me went down I was hitting here at about state trooper with a nightstick I thought I was going to die I thought I saw death no matter how what's you describe it how much you so still the words and that still picture do not have the impact of the motion and the viciousness of the attack the whole idea behind direct action particularly the sort of non nonviolent Gandhi and tradition is to produce conflict in a discipline fashion that reveals the opposition to be as morally bankrupt as it is you want them to show themselves and in some of the show themselves I think the civil rights movement understood that you need to make people own their shame you need to embarrass and you humiliate people in order for them to stop doing the thing they thought they had a perfect right to do in 1965 Tom Brokaw was a reporter for wsb-tv Atlantis NBC affiliate NBC said no we need you at the station to coordinate all the videotape Diaz that are coming in I went to the office that day and then we began to get these terrible reports of the violence I was in the editing room was all this videotape and there was a videotape editor that I was very fond of it was a fourth-generation southern or white guy and he was a decent man and he began to look at this stuff and I say Eddie it cannot go on well I anyway would well look here I'd say Eddie look again I'd make him roll the tape back these are cops and they're beating these people beating him nearly to death come on Eddie and he looked again he said it's wrong it's wrong and he lowered his head that was the power of television it could bring it right to your home and to your heart you could not deny what was going on you couldn't excuse it in some way by the mid-1960s watching television had become a nightly ritual in most American households Americans did what Americans did on Sunday nights they'd have dinner they'd watch at Sullivan Show and on that night it was the first viewing on television of the movie judgment at Nuremburg we interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin it was one of the rare times that a television network preempted its regularly scheduled programming for a news event you're breaking into the first showing of this Academy award-winning film about tyranny the content made the average viewer say kasha we like Nazi Germany the most challenging picture of our time maybe at the moment nobody really appreciated the irony but you're watching a movie about the trial of Nazi war criminals suddenly the TV switches to innocent unarmed Americans being mercilessly beaten on live television that's a moment that will forever be known as Bloody Sunday this airs on Sunday night March 7th Tuesday morning at 9 o'clock there are over a thousand people from as far away as Hawaii before Expedia they mobilized instantly the shockwaves from Selma reverberate 'add around the world dr. King made an appeal for religious leaders to come to Selma The ministers priests rabbis and nons paint and walk across the bridge to the same point where we had been beaten it was one of the finest hour for people to respond the way they responded without television the civil rights movement would have been like a bird without wings that's pretty amazing the convergence of a media phenomenon and amateur movement coming together to shape politics like Birmingham before it the brutality at Selma shocked the nation compelling Washington to respond ladies and gentlemen the President of the United this time with a Voting Rights Act of 1965 what happens in Selma or in Cincinnati is a matter of legitimate concern to every American this is one nation [Music] on March 7th 2015 America's first black president Barack Obama with John Lewis at his side visited Selma to commemorate Bloody Sunday in one afternoon 50 years ago so much of our turbulent history saint of slavery and anguish of civil war the yoke of segregation and tyranny of Jim Crow all that history met on this bridge just seven months earlier in Ferguson Missouri peaceful demonstrators protesting the shooting of teenager Michael Brown were confronted by a militarized police force all of a sudden three urban tanks came looks like flash grenades there's a smoke rising up now it looks like the tear gas is coming out we just need to open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to know that this nation's racial history still past its long shadow upon us it's not just naked but really it's all of us must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice and we shall overcome [Music] President Johnson's 1965 speech to Congress invoking the movement's anthem marked the peak of a civil rights struggle for a brief moment the promise of a nation united against racial injustice seemed Within Reach but when it last [Music] you after Selma fractures within the movement began to show as a more militant group of activists gain traction do you think you'll be able to keep it nonviolent dr. King yes I think so mr. Carmichael are you as committed to the nonviolent approach as dr. King is no I'm not why aren't you well I just don't see it as a way of life I never have newly anointed snick chairman Stokely Carmichael spoke for a younger generation when he issued a battle cry it was here in Mississippi this summer that Carmichael with his cry for black power first became a national figure and to many a frightening one it's two words that come to capture a whole host of white anxieties about race and about african-american civil rights activism it has taken off like a lightning bolt in the media it sounds kind of aggressive it sounds on the verge of military revolt I mean everybody was full of black power it drew all the news coverage in Baltimore the concept of black black power here in Grenada Mississippi ran watch black power powered black collar black power well the press would have fixated on the notion of violence are you talking in violent analogies because you want to see a Negro violent uprising what Stokely says by power he's not just whistling Dixie three white male journalists as the panel and they're saying him well don't you really mean us about violence and he's saying very I mean very calmly he says when I talk about black power I talk about black people in the counties where they outnumber him to get together to organize themselves politically and to take over those counties from the white racist will now run it we just want what everybody else has and he's looking at three people who every said they know what we're talking about they had to make themselves not understand him hello they wanted to see us as only passive it's like oh the bad movement is taken over 65 that Selma marks that was wonderful you know people lock in arms and singing we shall overcome and stuff [Music] the media tends to be stuck in the narrative that they understand as black activists became less conciliatory to white America the mainstream media began to cool on civil rights a definitive statement on what black power is has yet to be forthcoming except that it is damaging for most of the history of the civil rights movement from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s it was easy for the white press to pick which side they were on they were clearly on the side of the civil rights demonstrators with the advent of black power it becomes a little bit more difficult for the press to cast it in terms of good versus evil the message of black power kind of like the message of black lives matter 50 years later this is a message that is geared to blacks themselves [Music] [Applause] [Music] this movement is not brand new this is the latest chapter in a Liberatore struggle in America for black people and for people of color what's been the response so far the real truth of the matter is that children are the ones who are suffering from his occupation the most my role is to take the demands from the street and make them relevant in the policy space Brittany Peck net a leading black lives matter activists was one of several civil rights leaders past and present invited to the White House in 2016 people like Brittany who served on our police task force in the wake of Ferguson has led many of the protests the beginning of our work in Ferguson was simply to help people understand that there really is a problem that racism is not dead no matter who was in the White House at the time some of our tactics were still rooted in the traditions of the civil rights movement but given that this is the next chapter things evolved we weren't going to sing I shall not be moved and we shall overcome we're gonna play low boo see we are not carrying protest size we're wearing protest teeth to wear your Sunday best that was a strategic move in the civil rights movement but I shouldn't have to dress my best for you to see me as a human being when black lives matter activists objected to the coverage of their movement by mainstream media it's like we got a stash here some Amsterdam New Amsterdam citron vodka they took control of their stories we were not pleased with the media because somebody would be at home watching a channel they would text or tweet someone and say this is the story that's being told about you this is just an excuse to just go out there and rob and loot and I know that's not true cuz I was just out there myself there's a police marching behind us and that's why social media was such an important tool for us because it allowed us to tell the truth unfiltered why do you need me white TV host from New York to be the person that points a camera at your protest people got a lot more control over their own stories and that's profound and powerful it was social media that propelled the black lives matter movement onto a global stage when cell phone images of unarmed African Americans killed by police went viral the body of Michael Brown laying on that ground for four and a half hours shocked America back into its consciousness once again it woke so many people up that thought Emmett Till was a figment of the past and not a very relevant figure of the present Emmett Till is Michael Brown and Tamir rice and Sandra bland and Eric garner and all of those folks because they woke us up once again [Music] you we're tired of our men not being able to be men because they can't find work we are tired of working full-time jobs for part-time income with the rise of black power Martin Luther King's agenda while still nonviolent shifted he began to voice an even more radical denunciation of American society to broaden his message beyond the civil rights platform King took his movement north where he encountered a backlash but if there was progress in the South there was violent resistance in the north the nation suddenly learned what it should have known the racial prejudice was not just the southern problem it was nationwide King takes his campaign to Chicago and he moves into the ghettos there people felt very differently when the microscope was being turned upon their own communities shaken but undeterred King returned south he arrived in Memphis Tennessee in March 1968 to show support for striking sanitation workers a lot of king's advisors tell them don't go to Memphis it's gonna take away from your message it's gonna take away from your planning but King insists we're here help garbage workers these are the exact types of people were supposed to be helping [Music] April 4th 1968 Martin Luther King jr. stepped out of room 306 onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel he told his young aide Jesse Jackson to put on a tie for dinner I said thuds King three records of evening is an is an epithet none time he said you crazy we laugh you never know everything [Music] he didn't suffer at all sir I remember thinking up it up he's my friend Martin hold on mark he was gone he was here he was not here god no this is the most tragic thing that has ever happened and in my life you see some like that you never should never really recover from such a scene [Music] knowing dr. King was a marked man news crews shadowed his every move but at the moment of his death no television cameras were present the only pictures taken that day were by a South African filmmaker Joe Lowe who was at work on a documentary about dr. King I heard the shot rang out and I rushed out on the balcony I saw dr. King lying about 40 feet away I ran to help but there wasn't much anyone could do I have some very sad news for all of you and that is it Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight we are very upset today because we have lost somebody like her father and today many people are out here on the street wondering which way they're going to turn because we don't know where we're going to go do we go to the right do we go to the left we're not sure today and we've lost something and we feel it deeply we feel it our Moses the once in the four or five hundred year leader has been taken from us by hatred and bitterness the white people do not know it but the white people's best friend is dead crowds gathered along Harlem's 125th Street looting and varying degrees and Sun burning was reported in a dozen or more so uncontrolled Carnival of looting began dr. King gets assassinated and cities in the north go up in flames in riots there's a sense that the nation is on the brink of Civil War once the demonstrators were seen out there burning down things and they were seen as violent all of the components that made the white man the obvious bad guy suddenly gets reversed and that was a horrible I was a horrible moment of watching the watching the narrative shift [Music] Martin Luther King's death was not the final chapter in the struggle to overcome racial injustice in America but for a time King changed the plot from disillusion to defiance and despite the hate he saw hope dr. King said you have to create a crisis so that the power structures are forced to answer we had to create crisis rooted in traditions that are far older than our chapter of the movement the shape of the world today does not afford us the luxury of an anemic democracy if you are fortunate his memory and stick to your mind inspired if you move it King used to talk about that a real peace was not the absence of tension but the presence of justice ensuring the presence of justice it's a whole lot more complicated the price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negroes here's the price of its own destruction there was something happening in America that responded to his voice this message it was a moment that galvanized people and brought people off the sidelines made them to speak up and take a stand he never framed this is just about race it was to redeem the soul of America it's a tragedy to me that he's kind of seen as a leader for black people from a different era rather than as our leader dr. King always said you're gonna die you have nothing to say about where we're not how you die your only choice is what is it you give your life for [Music] [Applause] there's a common thread I see every time I'm in the field well this is Brian you were saving other homes neighbors helping neighbors and strangers alike no official first responders here just volunteers going in and bringing folks out what my colleagues did that night was heroic sometimes it's nice to see all the good that's out there we have seen it community after community after community watch NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt

Channel: NBC News

Views: 845,339

Rating: 4.7463269 out of 5

Keywords: nbc news, news channel, breaking news, us news, world news, politics, current events, top stories, pop culture, business, health, Latest news, martin luther king assassination, nbc nightly news, martin luther king jr, martin luther king speeches, mlk speech, MLK Jr, civil rights movement, civil rights documentary, civil rights crash course, civil rights protest

Id: wLUFlZhbXZ8

Length: 85min 49sec (5149 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020