American History Tellers - Civil Rights - Prairie Fire | 4

Episode Date: October 24, 2018

As the Civil Rights movement entered the Sixties, a new generation of activists took the fore. Frustrated by the pace of progress but emboldened by strides made in the previous decade, students embraced “nonviolent direct action,” protest techniques that were provocative but peaceful. Soon, a wave of sit-ins hit lunch counters across the South. The response was caustic, often violent; but the protesters’ persistence led to negotiations with business owners and civil authorities that led to successful desegregation.The next wave of direct action - the Freedom Rides - met much worse and more violent resistance. Protesters were beaten, busses burned, and hope was nearly lost. Then, when activists moved into the rural South to organize the black vote, white supremacists’ ire turned murderous.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine you're a young black woman in Nashville, Tennessee. It's February 13th, 1960, and it's an unseasonably cold winter day. You pull your coat tighter around your neck, trying to keep out the wind. Your friend Maxine is walking with you. I can't believe it's finally happening. I know it.

All those months of preparation and waiting, I could hardly stand it anymore. Well, in a couple of more blocks, you can put all that waiting to rest. You look in front of you and then behind at a long line of black faces stretching back along the sidewalk with a handful of white ones sprinkled in too. How many are there today? I heard somebody say there are more than a hundred. Sure looks like it. At the corner, your line starts to break off into smaller groups. Each of them is headed toward a different store. You and Maxine make your way with about 40 others toward the Woolworths. A young man up ahead of you, a student you recognize from one of your classes at Fisk University,

holds open the door leading inside. You feel the warmth hit you as you file through. You grab some toothpaste from the shelf, pretend to browse the rest of the aisles for a few minutes, and then walk to the register. As you count out the coins, you look from the shelf, pretend to browse the rest of the aisles for a few minutes, and then walk to the register. As you count out the coins, you look at the clerk, who nervously collects them while glancing at you and the other black students in the store.

You take your receipt, and then make your way with Maxine toward the lunch counter. Half of the other students who came with you are already sitting there, quietly waiting, no one moving. You step forward and join them, sliding onto an open stool. Just then, a waitress, a white woman in her 30s, comes in from the kitchen carrying a tray full of dishes. Her eyes go wide as she looks up and sees you, dozens of black students at the counter with more following close behind.

Oh my lord, they're everywhere. She spins quickly and hurries back into the kitchen. Someone further down the counter stifles a laugh. You sit silently for a while, until the whole counter is filled. Curious white shoppers keep walking by slowly, staring almost in a daze. Finally, the waitress comes back out from the kitchen, apparently recovered from her shock. Well, mostly.

She still shoots worried looks as she pulls out a metal sign reading, Sorry, we're closed, and places it in the waiting area. She hurries away, dropping her apron by the counter as she trots out the back. You look at the other students, who nod and stand up, almost in unison. You turn back toward the door and exit out into the cold air of the street. It's only then that you break into a smile. Once you're safely down the block, Maxine shakes her head. You'd have thought they were seeing the apocalypse happen in real time. You look at each other. They're everywhere! I'll tell you something,

though. What? They may not know it yet But this whole city is about to change With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice Any genre you love You can be inspired to imagine new worlds New possibilities New ways of thinking And Audible makes it easy to be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking.

And Audible makes it easy to be inspired and entertained as a part of your everyday routine without needing to set aside extra time. As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their ever-growing catalog. Explore themes of friendship, loss, and hope with Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Find what piques your imagination. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. From the team behind American History Tellers comes a new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, intimate moments, and

shocking scandals that shaped our nation. From the War of 1812 to Watergate. Available now wherever you get your books. From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history. Your story. We are continuing our six-episode journey through the American Civil Rights Movement. Today, we'll hear what happened as the movement entered the 1960s and a generation of young Americans launched a new wave of protest efforts. Harnessing the strategy of non-violent direct action, a student-led movement confronted

Jim Crow in spectacular fashion and once again captured the attention of the nation. This is part four, Prairie Fire. Diane Nash was a 21-year-old college student when she arrived at Nashville's renowned historically black Fisk University in the fall of 1959. A child of Chicago's black middle class, Nash was very aware of racial discrimination, but had lived somewhat sheltered from it. Now, she confronted Tennessee's Jim Crow customs with fury and looked for a way to battle back. Nash discovered that she was not alone. An interracial group of students in the city had already begun preparing to launch a wave of demonstrations.

Under the guidance of a young African-American minister named James Lawson, they had attended weekly workshops throughout 1959 where they practiced the techniques of non-violent resistance. Lawson was a devout pacifist who had studied the philosophy and tactics of non-violence while on a three-year mission to India in the early 1950s. He brought those lessons to the Nashville workshops. They discussed strategy and philosophy, debated how and where to start their protests, and rehearsed how to deal with violent harassment. The students practiced keeping their composure

as other participants screamed, shoved, spat, and insulted them. Nash soaked up these lessons eagerly and soon established herself as a leading voice in the group, though she wasn't sure she was ready for such a role. I really didn't want to be a chairperson. I declined and offered every excuse I could think of, really because I was afraid. I'm not sure I did overcome my fear. I just kept doing what had to be done. The fear was definitely there, but fear was also a great motivator, because I knew if we were not efficient, someone could get killed. Ultimately, they decided to target discrimination at downtown retail stores. They knew the stores were happy to take black customers' money, but still refused to provide equal service at their lunch counters.

The practice was humiliating. It represented the unremitting cruelty and shame that segregation forced upon African Americans in any number of daily experiences. Just as importantly, lunch counters presented an ideal target for direct-action protest tactics like the sit-in. Black activists had used sit-ins since at least the mid-1940s, when Howard University students had targeted segregated restaurants in Washington, D.C., and this kind of protest continued to pop up in local communities during the late 1950s,

though they received little attention. Late in 1959, the Nashville students conducted practice visits to the stores they intended to target. Everything was in place. They planned, trained, recruited, and then waited, preparing to start their protests in late February of the next year. But then, suddenly, 450 miles to the east, students in the city of Greensboro, North Carolina launched their own sit-in protest. That sparked a movement that spread like wildfire among a frustrated generation of young Black Southerners. In the fall of 1959, as Diane Nash entered Fisk University, four freshman students at Greensboro Historically Black North Carolina A&T College arrived on campus. Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richman

had all grown up in North Carolina, frustrated by the daily insults of Jim Crow segregation. At A&T, they became fast friends, spending night after night deep in discussions about the state of black life in America and the need for boldness on the part of civil rights activists. Then, one day in January 1960, their talk began to turn to action. The young men began planning an act of civil disobedience, something to force a confrontation with Jim Crow practices. At a Sunday dinner with his family in Greensboro, Blair told his parents,

Tomorrow, we're going to do something that will shake up this town. On the afternoon of Monday, February 1st, 1960, the four students began their walk from the A&T campus toward the Woolworths Department Store in downtown Greensboro, a little over a mile away. Once inside, the students purchased some small items, school supplies, toiletries, and went with their receipts in hand to the store lunch counter. They sat down and requested food, only to be told that the store would not serve black customers. Pointing out that they had just been served at the retail counter,

the students insisted that they would stay until they received the same service as white patrons. The store manager came out and pleaded with them to leave. They refused, expecting at this point that they might be arrested. But the manager didn't call the police, perhaps hoping to wait them out. He just ignored them. The students sat quietly as closing time approached and then arrived. They left the store that night without being served, but they hadn't given up their ground either. The first sit-in of the 1960s had ended uneventfully, but all four of the young men

were thrilled by the result and even more determined to come back the next day. That night on the A&T campus, word of the protest spread. When the students returned to the Woolworths the following day, 25 other young men and women had chosen to join them. They arrived with books in hand, prepared to wait out the entire day if necessary. This time, they filled up nearly half the seats at the long L-shaped counter. By Wednesday, protesters had caught the attention of newspapers all over North Carolina and brought enough people to occupy almost every seat. And it kept growing. By Thursday, the demonstrations

had become interracial, as a small group of white students from the local women's college had joined their ranks. Now, the New York Times and other major papers sent reporters to cover the unfolding drama. Tensions came to a head over the weekend. By this point, the original group of four numbered in the hundreds, enough to overflow the Woolworths' counter and form massive picket lines at the store and other Jim Crow merchants downtown. But the local branch of the Ku Klux Klan and a mob of segregationists had also descended on the area. As the mob heckled, threatened, and shook Confederate flags at the demonstrators,

a line of black students formed a protective barrier and waved American flags right back at them. Finally, a bomb threat forced police to evacuate the building and close the Woolworths store completely. To the student protesters, this still felt like a victory. They marched back to the A&T campus triumphant in a single-file line more than a mile long. After a week of rapidly mounting protests, the Greensboro students now paused the demonstrations to negotiate with store owners and city leaders. But the firestorm they had ignited began blazing its way across the South at a

furious pace. Fueled partly by press coverage of the initial demonstrations, sit-ins appeared swiftly in city after city. Within a week of the first Greensboro protest, student-led sit-ins had begun all across North Carolina. Soon after that, they appeared in Virginia, South Carolina, and Florida. Then Nashville's long-awaited campaign of demonstrations began. Maryland, Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia all followed. By late March, nearly 70 communities across 11 states had launched sit-ins. They had become a phenomenon throughout the South. The protests also expanded beyond store lunch counters. There were wait-ins at segregated beaches, read-ins at Jim Crow libraries, and kneel-ins at all-white churches. With college-age

students leading the way, the practice of non-violent direct action took hold and became a powerful tool in the fight against segregation. Still, sit-in protesters would often need every bit of the training they had received. A commitment to nonviolent tactics tested the limits of personal endurance. This was especially true when the segregationist mobs confronted the protesters. After all, the mobs had never agreed to be nonviolent. Imagine it's late February 1960 in Nashville. You're a senior at Tennessee State, a historically black college in the north end of the city. Two weeks ago, when the sit-ins started here, you hadn't yet joined the movement. But today, you're marching downtown with 400 others

for the next wave of demonstrations. You walk past anxious white faces peering out from storefront windows and store clerks speaking urgently into telephone receivers. You turn to the woman next to you, a fellow protester named Jill. I'm worried. My parents called me last night. My daddy's a pastor. He told me not to get mixed up in all this. Told me to go on and worry about graduating, not getting arrested. But you're here. I'm here. Just remember the instructions.

Whatever happens, just sit up straight, keep facing forward. Don't even pay them any mind. They'll wear themselves out after a while. Walking through the line of segregationists outside, you enter the store. Policemen are slowly walking the narrow gap between the large group of cross-armed white people and the protesters at the counter, keeping a three or four foot wide buffer that hardly seems enough. You and Jill take seats on a pair of open stools next to a classmate, James. You find a spot on the wall ahead of you and lock your eyes on it. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see the policeman walk out of the store. Almost immediately, a young white

man, probably no older than you, breaks from the crowd and leans in between you and Jill. Don't you have the sense to know when you ain't welcome? He snatches a bottle of ketchup off the counter. I think that dress of yours could use some color. You feel the heavy, wet splatter of ketchup on the back of your hair. It drips in thick clumps onto your shoulders, and the crowd snickers. You just stare ahead, keeping your eyes fixed on the wall. What about you, huh? He shoves the classmate seated next to you.

James doesn't break his stare at the wall either, but you see him grip the counter with both hands. I'm talking to you. James doesn't break his stare at the wall either, but you see him grip the counter with both hands. I'm talking to you. James doesn't respond. Suddenly, two more men grab him by the shoulders. James' fingernails scrabble at the counter, trying to keep a grip. He is pulled off the stool, hits the floor with a loud thump,

and is dragged backwards. He groans and whimpers under a barrage of fists and feet. You keep staring straight ahead. You don't see the beating, but you can hear it and the cheers of the mob. The sounds of the beating quickly brought the police officers back into the store. There, they stopped the violence and began making arrests of the protesters for disturbing the peace. But as the arrested protesters were marched into waiting police vans outside, the jeering crowd was in for a shock.

Another 40 demonstrators immediately marched into the store and took the emptied seats at the counter. Eighty-one protesters, including Diane Nash, were arrested in Nashville that day. A massive crowd gathered at the Nashville courthouse to protest the violence against them and the injustice of their arrests. Another wave of demonstrations prompted the city to begin negotiating, but the lunch counter still remained segregated as April arrived. That month marked a critical moment of transition, not just for Nashville, but for the sit-in movement as a whole. As the protests continued to spread throughout the South, veteran organizers called for a meeting of

student leaders to try and coordinate these wide-ranging efforts. The driving force behind the meeting was Ella Jo Baker, a 56-year-old activist and a key figure in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of the most influential civil rights groups in the country. Baker spent the month of March meeting with hundreds of student protesters and community leaders, listening to their concerns and their goals. She saw an opportunity to help the students channel their energies into a more permanent organization. On Easter weekend, in mid-April 1960,

200 student leaders from across the South gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina. There, they formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, or SNCC. In the ensuing years, SNCC activists would become a crucial part of the growing civil rights movement. When she returned from that meeting in Raleigh, Diane Nash was full of new inspiration from Baker's leadership. She would need it right away. The day after she arrived back in Tennessee, white supremacists detonated a bomb at the home of Nashville City Rights Attorney Z. Alexander Luby. Though Luby and his wife were uninjured, the attack sparked another mass demonstration. An interracial group of more than 3,000 people made a silent march from

the Fisk campus past the State Capitol building to the city courthouse. On the courthouse steps, Nash confronted Mayor Ben West, demanding to know whether he personally supported desegregating the city's lunch counters. West stunned the marchers by saying yes. By May, three weeks after the mayor declared his support, Nashville's downtown lunch counters began serving their first Black customers. The sit-in movement had scored a remarkable victory, and it wouldn't be the last. That summer, back in Greensboro, the protests had resumed and now finally broke through. The Woolworths and the other stores dropped their policy of segregation. All told,

dozens of southern cities had integrated their lunch counters by fall 1960. The sit-ins had shifted many young Americans' ideas about what was possible in the years ahead. Now it was time for the next stage of the fight. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses,

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infamous scams of all time, the impact on victims, and what's left once the facade falls away. We recently dove into the story of the godfather of modern mental manipulation, Richard Bandler, whose methods inspired some of the most toxic and criminal self-help movements of the last two decades. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid and Kill List early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening. By the spring of 1961, SNCC was barely a year old and was still trying to establish itself as something more than a temporary organization. And while there was now a significant number of dedicated young organizers like Diane Nash throughout the South, it wasn't clear where they should focus their energies next. With the summer of 1961 approaching, however, a new wave of protests took shape that would ultimately help solidify SNCC's mission and its status within the movement.

These new demonstrations, known as the Freedom Rise, targeted Jim Crow transportation in the South, the buses, station restaurants, waiting rooms, restrooms, and drinking fountains available to interstate travelers. But SNCC wasn't the organization that kicked off this new phase. Instead, the first Freedom Ride in 1961 was organized by activists from the Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE. CORE was an interracial civil rights group established during World War II that had long maintained a commitment to nonviolent demonstrations. Back in 1947, CORE activists had led a protest called the Journey of Reconciliation, traveling through the South to test a 1946 Supreme Court decision prohibiting segregation of interstate passengers. The

demonstration had been forgotten fairly quickly, and CORE's nonviolent tactics had struggled to gain a following in the years after. But the success of the sit-ins in 1960 offered CORE renewed hope for their methods. So in early May of 1961, CORE sponsored the first interracial group of freedom riders. They set off from Washington, D.C., split between two buses headed through the Deep South. It was just five days into their journey in Rock Hill, South Carolina, when the Riders first encountered violent resistance. Several of the activists were beaten when attempting to enter the terminal's whites-only

waiting room. Injured, but still able to continue, the riders sensed that as they ventured further, the resistance would only get worse. They faced additional harassment in South Carolina and Georgia over the next several days. But it was what might happen in Alabama that had everyone worried. On May 14th, they sat in near-perfect silence as their buses rolled across the Alabama state line. Despite all the training they had received and the prayers they had offered, nothing could truly prepare them for what lay in wait. Alabama's Ku Klux Klan, working together with police and highway patrol officials along

the bus route, had planned to stop the riders in their tracks. The attacks would take place in two stages. An initial wave of violence at the riders' first stop in Anniston, and a second wave in the city of Birmingham that would crush whatever was left of the protest. The first bus pulled into the Anniston station parking lot a little after 1 p.m. A mob of 50 people immediately rushed forward, some of them still in their church clothes.

For 20 minutes, the riders were trapped inside as windows shattered, tires were slashed, and rocks and pipes pelted the sides. Finally, police arrived to escort the damaged bus out of the city. Members of the growing mob piled into 40 cars that followed. With only two working tires, the bus was soon forced to pull over. Again, the riders were surrounded. This time, the mob tossed a firebomb through the broken windows and blocked the doors for as long as they could, hoping to burn the protesters alive. The riders barely escaped and were eventually transported to Birmingham later that night by

an armed convoy of black drivers who had raced towards Anniston after receiving the news. As the Anniston attack was underway, the second busload of riders was about an hour behind, and they were already in trouble. A group of Klansmen had boarded their bus back in Atlanta for the journey into Alabama, menacing the riders with open threats of what was in store. There was no mob that met the second bus in Anniston, however. Instead, the Klansmen on board pounced, beating the riders who refused to move to the back of the bus. The riders, battered, some of them barely conscious, were dragged to the rear seats as the bus departed for the two-hour ride to Birmingham. The driver, avoiding the mob

still waiting near the burned-out shell of the first bus, took the back roads toward the city. All the riders could do now was wait. Imagine it's May, 1961. You're a 20-year-old college student from South Carolina on the bus from Anniston, Alabama to Birmingham. Next to you is one of the other Freedom Riders. His eye is swollen shut in a frightening shade of purple. He tries to look out the window and get his bearings. Enjoying the view?

A barrel-chested man, one of the folks who had beaten your friend back in Anniston, sneers at you, casually waving a pistol. Might as well. Well, pretty sure Alabama's gonna be sneers at you, casually waving a pistol. Might as well. Pretty sure Alabama's gonna be the last place you agitators ever see. As the bus slows and pulls into the station, you look cautiously through the front window. Apart from a handful of rough-looking men out front, it doesn't look as bad as it could be. At least they don't have weapons.

Still, you glance at the man next to you and remember that even a few angry folks can do a whole lot of damage. The bus stops and the man with the gun and his friends hurry out the door. They run inside the terminal, leaving you with an unsettling feeling. It's your turn, after all, to act as one of the testers, entering the White's only waiting room to request service. The man next to you is supposed to be a tester too, but he hardly looks ready for it. You don't have to do this. Someone else can go in. He grimaces as he stands and shakes his head gingerly. No, no, let's go. You both step off the

bus, grab your bags from the platform, and head toward the terminal door. The men out front glare, but don't make a move toward you. You grip the door handle, pull it back, and step inside. There they are. Hundreds of men, some holding chains and clubs in their hands. You want to turn around. Everything in you is screaming for you to run. But you swallow hard and take a few steps forward. So does your friend from the bus. The mob in the Birmingham bus station mercilessly beat any of the riders they could get their hands on. And then, just as quickly as it started, they dispersed, having received a signal from local police that it was time to move on. The Birmingham Police Department, led by their devoutly segregationist commissioner

Eugene Bull Connor, had left word with the local Klansmen prior to the writer's arrival, we're going to allow you 15 minutes. You can beat them, bomb them, maim them, kill them. There will be absolutely no arrests. The officers were true to their word. In the aftermath of multiple coordinated attacks, the riders were badly injured and no bus company was willing to take them any further. It looked as though their protests would end in bloody failure. But back in Tennessee, Diane Nash and other SNCC activists had heard about the violence and began rallying students to carry the Freedom Rides forward. Nash called ahead to Birmingham, informing Black leaders in the city that reinforcements were on the way.

Warned that mob violence might be even worse the second time around, Nash insisted, The students have decided that we can't let violence overcome. If they stop us with violence, the movement is dead. We're coming. Three days after the Birmingham attacks, and seven years to the day after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, a new Freedom Ride set out from Nashville. As the 10 students, none of them older than 22,

boarded the bus to Alabama, several of them handed sealed envelopes to Nash, who was staying behind to act as coordinator. The organizers had been blunt. One of them would probably die. The letters were a final word home. All of the Nashville Freedom Riders managed to survive the ensuing protest, though the predicted violence did cut short their journey. The repeated attacks had made national headlines in the nightly news, provoking a crisis for new

President John F. Kennedy mere months after his inauguration. The Freedom Riders still in Alabama regrouped and pressed forward, trying to find a way to Mississippi. Finally, Kennedy's administration intervened, sending federal marshals to Alabama to quell the violence. Shortly after, on May 24, almost 1,000 National Guardsmen oversaw the 140-mile journey to the Mississippi border. Meanwhile, Attorney General Robert Kennedy had negotiated with Mississippi leaders to ensure the riders' safe arrival to the state capitol. A convoy guarded their bus all the way to Jackson without incident. When they arrived, however, they were promptly arrested by state officials and jailed. Even as these arrests happened, volunteers for more Freedom

Rides began stepping forward from across the country. Throughout the rest of the year, bus after bus made its way across the South with Freedom Riders on board. Hundreds participated, facing intimidation, harassment, violence, and arrest. Though they were ultimately much smaller in size than the sit-in demonstrations from the previous year, the Freedom Rides had just as powerful an impact on the movement. Indeed, the growing insurgence of non-violent protests, the strategy of dignified and insistent public confrontation, inspired new activists and new efforts. SNCC, in particular, hoped to build on the momentum and organize more in the Jim Crow

strongholds of the Deep South. But the question remained, could they really help create change in places like rural Mississippi? Complicating matters, the freedom rides, could they really help create change in places like rural Mississippi? Complicating matters, the freedom rides, and direct action tactics also brought a backlash. While they ignited a great deal of public attention and debate, many white Americans, in the North and South, found the demonstrations too controversial and disapproved of the direct action approach. The overwhelming majority of Black citizens continued to support these protests, but less than a quarter of white Americans agreed with what the student activists were doing.

Faced with this resistance, the strategies and resolves of civil rights organizers were tested even further as 1961 drew to a close. The work of building the movement still had a long way to go. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history. Inspired by the hit podcast American History Tellers, Wondery and William Morrow present the new book, The Hidden History of the White House. Each chapter will bring you inside the fierce power struggles, the world-altering decisions, and shocking scandals that have shaped our nation. You'll be there when the very foundations of the

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Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video. By the time the Freedom Rides made their way to Macomb, Mississippi at the end of November 1961, SNCC activists had already been working in the area for months. Macomb was a town of about 13,000 in Mississippi's southwest hill country. When it came to enforcing Jim Crow, observers described this part of the state as plain mean, and they didn't dress it up. This was Ku Klux Klan territory, but it was also home to a determined group of civil rights activists who invited SNCC organizers to start a voter registration drive

in the summer of 1961. It was a vote of confidence in SNCC's abilities. The student movement, after all, was still young and just beginning to try its hand at voter mobilization. Despite their preparations, SNCC activists who traveled to Macomb and other communities throughout the South knew they'd be learning as much as they were teaching, figuring it out as they went. It was challenging, often delicate work. They would have to convince people they had only just met to risk their lives by trying to register to vote. The organizers had to rely not only on the courage of these local people, but their generosity as well. Folks in

Macomb opened their homes and their kitchens, offered rides, and kept a watchful eye out for the young people who spent the next several months canvassing their communities. The man leading the team of SNCC organizers was a Harvard-educated 26-year-old former math teacher from New York City named Bob Moses. Moses had left New York for the South after the sit-ins began the previous year, eventually going to work for Ella Baker in Atlanta. It was Baker who pointed Moses towards Mississippi and the fledgling voter registration drive. Registering voters was both dangerous and difficult. Mississippi, like many Southern states,

employed a tangle of restrictions designed to keep African Americans away from the polls. Prospective voters faced a 21-question registration form, followed by a test in which they were asked to interpret the meaning of a section from the Mississippi Constitution. The first catch was that the state constitution had nearly 300 sections. The second was that their answer would be judged by a local registrar, a position usually filled by white segregationists. Hostility toward black voters didn't just show itself on paper, either. In September of 1961, at the courthouse in nearby Tylertown, Mississippi,

SNCC worker John Hardy was pistol-whipped by the local registrar when he tried to help two local farmers get their names on the voter rolls. Hardy was then arrested for disturbing the peace. There wasn't much that SNCC workers could do about the violence, though they reported the incidents to the Department of Justice in Washington. Instead, they focused their efforts on voter education, setting up makeshift schools to help local residents prepare for the registration process and understand their rights. One of the men in these classes, who helped transport Moses,

Hardy, and the other organizers safely throughout Macomb and the neighboring counties, was a 52-year-old farmer named Herbert Lee. The organizers didn't know it yet, but Lee would not live to cast a ballot. Steadily throughout August and early September, more people went to register. Some were even successful. But segregationists took notice, and violent retribution began. Attacks on the SNCC workers in particular escalated. While this was going on, Black students in Macomb wanted to join the movement.

Too young to vote, they hoped to try their hand at direct action tactics. With support and a brief training from SNCC organizers, a group of students launched two sit-ins at local businesses in late August. They were promptly arrested, and several of them, including 16-year-old Brenda Travis, were held in jail for weeks until October. The campaign of violence and arrest began to take its toll on the movement in Macomb. Still, they limped forward, trying to make some headway. And then, on September 25th, Herbert Lee was murdered. Imagine it's September, 1961.

You're a 21-year-old SNCC worker in Macomb, Mississippi. But today, you've just walked into a small county church, one county over, for a funeral. You make your way toward an open space in the pews, feeling the eyes of the other mourners on you. Some look worried, the same expression you got when you asked for a ride to the church. You know what they were thinking. Riding around with you was what got Herbert Lee killed in the first place. Now they all wondered who was going to be next. You take a seat next to an older woman in her late 50s. She nods politely as you sit. A moment later, she dabs at her eyes, staring at the sidewall of the casket. You try to comfort her.

He was a good man. He was. I only met him a few weeks ago, but I could tell. Reminded me a bit of my father. He didn't deserve this. No, ma'am. No, he didn't. Shot him dead in a town called Liberty. It's a bitter irony. The woman next to you stiffens and turns towards you. Irony? It's a murder. A savage, senseless murder. He wasn't meant to get mixed up in all of this, with all of you. Look at those children. You look up, and toward the front pew, the man's family, nine children,

each of them grieving, and his widow, staring right at you. She stands, moves forward and touches the casket, lingering for just a moment. Her eyes are filled with tears, but they are clear and they are focused, intent on you and the other SNCC workers in the pews. She steps forward.

You killed my husband. You killed him. You were not prepared for this. You start to open your mouth. You want to say something, to console her, to apologize, maybe just to cry. But nothing comes out. Lee's murder was a gut-wrenching blow for the young activists and for the local community. He had been shot in broad daylight, in a parking lot, crowded with white and black farmers by a local state legislator. His body lay there in the sun for hours. His killer was hastily exonerated by a coroner's jury that same afternoon. The murder brought SNCC's voter registration drive to a near

complete standstill. The violence was escalating and now targeting people from the local community rather than the SNCC workers, making potential voters even more reluctant to step forward. And the SNCC organizers were shaken by Lee's killing, worried for the safety of the people they'd been living with over the past months. But the students in Macomb kept going. Not all their elders were on board, however. After Brenda Travis's release from jail,

the segregated high school she attended refused to let her come back. More than a hundred students walked out in protest, marched to the SNCC headquarters, and then headed for Macomb City Hall. A white mob, joined by local police, attacked the march, focusing their wrath on the SNCC organizers who accompanied them, and especially on Bob Zellner, the lone white person among the marchers. Eventually, all of the students were arrested, though they were quickly bailed out. Brenda Travis, however, was sent to a juvenile detention facility for six months.

For the other students, school officials insisted they could not return to classes until they signed a pledge vowing never to demonstrate again. 103 of the teenagers walked out and never returned. SNCC workers eventually secured places for many of the students at a black college in Jackson. SNCC was still valiantly continuing its efforts in Macomb when the ongoing wave of freedom rides finally reached the town in late November and early December. But even this couldn't save the voter registration campaign. The frequent beatings, arrests, and intimidation that activists encountered eventually forced a strategic retreat. In the wake of the sit-in

movement and the Freedom Rides, McComb felt like a failure. It was followed by a likewise frustrating experience for SNCC organizers in Albany, Georgia. But despite these setbacks, the movement had also laid important roots in Macomb. They had cultivated new leadership and learned a great deal from their efforts. They knew their retreat from the town would only be temporary. They would be back. Still, civil rights activists had to regroup. What the movement needed now was a way to recapture the attention and conscience of the nation, to try and move public sentiment and compel the government to enforce the law or to write new ones. They would stage a dramatic new showdown

with the defenders of white supremacy, and they would do it for all the world to see. On the next episode of American History Tellers, we'll trace activists' efforts through the shocking events of 1963 and 64. In the span of 16 months, mass protests in Birmingham, Washington, New York City, and Mississippi will reshape the movement and remake the laws of the nation. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com

slash survey. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. American History Tellers is hosted, sound designed, and edited by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. This episode is written by Jeffrey Gonda, edited by Jen Chien, edited and produced by Jenny Lauer, produced by George Lavender. Our executive producer is Marshall Louis, created by Hernán López for Wondery. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed. It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt,

and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation,

and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness to do anything to get ahead. Follow business movers, wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen ad free on the Amazon music or wondery app.