American History Tellers - Civil Rights - The Unfinished Journey | 6

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

Seeking to build upon the gains of the early 1960s, Civil Rights activists pushed forward on a series of ambitious efforts. Voting rights activists returned to Alabama and again faced violent reprisal—this time televised for the country to witness. A shocked nation watched the violence in Selma in horror; Congress took action, passing the Voting Rights Act.Off of this success, Martin Luther King Jr. began building a coalition of activist groups to turn the nation’s attention to the fight against poverty. Gathering support for a massive march on Washington, Dr. King visited Memphis, hopeful and in high spirits. He did not leave alive.“America does move forward and the bell of freedom rings out a little louder. We have come some of the way, not near all of it. There is much yet to do.” President Lyndon B. JohnsonSupport this show 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 it's a cool mid-February evening in 1965. You're a 60-year-old black woman at the Zion's Chapel Methodist Church in the town of Marion, Alabama, about 80 miles west of Montgomery. The church is packed tonight, with nearly 500 people here well after dark. The plan is to march to the city jail in support of the activists from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference being held there. As the pews start to empty and folks file out of the church to begin the march,

you spot one of your younger neighbors. He waves and steps towards you. Mrs. Davis, I didn't expect to see you tonight. Well, Mr. Williams, there's no place I'd expect to be. Well, it's just, you know, these night marches are a lot more dangerous. I don't mean any disrespect, but are you sure that you should be out here? Even if nothing happens tonight, they're liable to throw you and Mr. Davis off your land if they see you. Young man, I lived in Perry County my whole life. You point toward the doors of the church. And I know what's outside there. Now, we have been the majority in this county for as long as I can remember, but the folks outside that door

have always been the ones in power. I've never even so much as cast a ballot. Forty years I'm supposed to have that right, and I don't know how much more time I've got left. So I aim to vote even if it's just once. And do you know why, young man? Why is that, Ms. Davis? Because I'm going to walk into that polling place

and cast my vote, and know that mine counts just the same as Chief Harris or Governor Wallace or any one of those troopers outside. And that, that's going to feel just a little bit like freedom. I expect you're right, ma'am. I think Dr. King and the rest of them over in Selma right now have the same idea. But if you don't mind, may I walk with you? So long as you don't slow me down.

You both make your way down the aisle and out the doors into the cold and the dark. But as soon as you step outside, you see hundreds of white men, most of them in uniform, at least a hundred in riot gear, brandishing clubs. The police chief grabs a bullhorn. This is an unlawful assembly and a danger to public safety. Y'all go back inside now or you'll be under arrest. No one around you moves. You peek through the other members of the congregation and see Reverend Dobbins out front. He starts to kneel in prayer, dropping out of view. But you can see the two troopers closest to him lunge forward. You can hear the blows land, heavy and fast. Suddenly, all the streetlights go out. The wall of officers jump at their cue. They press forward, shouting and

swinging. Mrs. Davis, get back. Your neighbor grabs you, pulling himself between you and the retreating crowd. You quickly move back inside, hoping that they might think twice about charging into the church. At least with the lights on in here, you can see them coming. A few minutes later, you hear an unmistakable sound. A single gunshot somewhere down the street. Oh Lord, I pray they didn't kill anyone. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of monopoly introducing the best idea yet a brand new podcast about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with listen to the best idea yet on the wonder app or wherever you get your podcasts from the team behind american history

tellers comes a new book the 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. Today, we conclude our series on the American Civil Rights Movement. In this final chapter, activists push forward on a series of ambitious efforts seeking to build upon the gains of the early 60s. Civil rights workers will return to Alabama in pursuit of voting rights,

launch new campaigns for economic justice, and wrestle with the ongoing challenges of racial inequality. This is Part 6, The Unfinished Journey. The state troopers in Marion that night shot 26-year-old Jamie Lee Jackson, an Army veteran and the youngest deacon at the church. The bullet left him in critical condition. Jackson held on to life for a few more days before eventually succumbing to his injuries. His death would inspire the voting rights activists already at work in nearby Selma, Alabama to launch a symbolic march to the state capital of Montgomery. Those efforts

would transform Selma into one of the movement's most memorable battlegrounds in the weeks ahead. The flurry of activity within the movement from April 1963 to August 1964 had left activists throughout the nation struggling to decide what their next steps would be. Advancements like the passage of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964 had opened important opportunities, but the continuous violence, the persistent inequalities in the North and South made it clear to everyone involved that their work was far from finished. The campaign that had taken shape in Selma and Marion was a culmination of activists' efforts to secure the right to vote. Increasingly, civil rights workers had sought new federal legislation

to protect voting rights, a way to ensure not just access to jobs or public accommodations, but a real voice in their political future. As recently as 1962, however, most civil rights workers had written off Selma as a hopeless place to organize. It was too resistant, too hostile, too violent to make any headway. But a few organizers from SNCC had still tried, working alongside local Black leaders like Amelia Boynton, a businesswoman and political organizer who had dedicated nearly three decades of her life attempting to get Black voters registered in the city. Together, they painstakingly built a local movement. But after two years,

they had little to show for their efforts. It was Boynton who drove from Selma to Birmingham in November 1964 to meet with Martin Luther King Jr. and other officials from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The SCLC leaders had been debating where their next major demonstration should take place. Boynton convinced them that Selma was worth the risk. Like Birmingham in 1963, King and the SCLC saw an opportunity in Selma's awful conditions. The city exposed the glaring inequalities of Black disenfranchisement in powerful ways. Like several neighboring areas, Selma had a majority Black population, but fewer than 2% of eligible Black voters were registered.

Between 1952 and 1962, every single Black resident in Selma who had tried to register to vote had been denied. A climate of violent intimidation and procedural obstacles had kept Black citizens almost completely locked out of the political process. As Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s wife and a formidable activist in her own right, described it, Selma was rock bottom, a place where words such as democracy, representative government, and citizenship had no meaning. The town was nothing more than a police state. Indeed, SCLC officials took particular notice of County Sheriff Jim Clark.

His penchant for violence and full-throated defense of segregation rivaled that of Birmingham's notorious former commissioner Bull Connor. They believed that non-violent demonstrations in Selma would face the same kind of police violence that captured the country's attention and spurred reform in Birmingham. So the SCLC planned to join Amelia Boynton's local coalition and SNCC activists in Selma by January 1965. In the weeks leading up to the campaign, Martin Luther King worried about the violence that lay ahead. At the age of 35, he had just become the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. But as he received the award in Norway, he seemed preoccupied with the coming events in Alabama. He told friends and family,

When we go into Selma, someone is going to get killed. Protesters hit the streets in early January. But just like in Birmingham, Selma's police initially hesitated to engage in violence in front of the news cameras that followed King to the city. By January 18th, though, Sheriff Clark was barely able to contain his fury. He confronted a line of 100 marchers with SNCC Chairman John Lewis in the head. The demonstrators, mostly elderly black women, stood as Clark paced back and forth, pointing his nightstick at each of them menacingly. His other hand hovered near the pistol and the electric cattle prod he carried on his belt. Clark threatened arrest and shouted

for Lewis and the others to disperse. Lewis refused, telling the sheriff that they weren't going anywhere. The marchers were stunned when Clark backed down and allowed them to continue, but the following day, the sheriff decided to start using a heavier hand. At a protest the next morning, cameramen captured images of Clark arresting Amelia Boynton, lunging as he grabbed her by the coat collar, nearly dragging her off her feet. The pictures made the Washington Post and the New York Times. Within a week, Clark's men had carried out more than 2,000 arrests. But still, not a single new voter registration had been processed. Reporters started to wonder if the

SCLC and SNCC had reached the limit of what was possible in Selma. As January ended, it was unclear whether activists could hope for anything more than the headlines and generally sympathetic coverage they had already received. SCLC organizers quickly regrouped. They repeated a strategy that they had used when the Birmingham campaign started to fizzle two years earlier. On February 1st, the SCLC's leaders, with Martin Luther King Jr. at the forefront, marched in hopes of being arrested. Jim Clark was happy to oblige. King's arrest quickly made national headlines and the evening news,

helping to reinvigorate the protests and generate momentum behind the voting rights bill in Congress. Two delegations of lawmakers visited King in the Selma jail and pledged their support for the new legislation. Meanwhile, Clark's violence continued to escalate. In mid-February, Clark and his deputies attacked a group of more than 160 students when they protested in Selma. Trying to avoid press coverage, Clark's men forced the teenagers to march several miles outside of the city using nightsticks and cattle prods on those who couldn't keep up the pace.

Just eight days later, Jim Clark stood alongside the state troopers in Marion where they shot Jimmy Lee Jackson, the young deacon at Zion's Capital Methodist Church. Jackson's death at the end of February prompted SCLC organizers to launch their new demonstration. Quickly, they made plans for the mass march from Selma to the state capitol building in Montgomery, just over 50 miles east. They were set to depart on Sunday, March 7th, four days

after Jackson's funeral. But as Sunday drew closer, disagreements among the organizers began to mount. Despite their cooperation thus far in Selma, SNCC and the organizers began to mount. Despite their cooperation thus far in Selma, SNCC and the SCLC increasingly found themselves at odds over strategy, both in Alabama and throughout the movement. Many SNCC organizers were concerned that Martin Luther King's presence at the march would distract from the local campaign that they had been building. SNCC finally declined to participate, telling its members that they were free to march as individuals, but that SNCC would not help organize the protest. On the Friday before the march, the man at the center of these tensions wasn't even in Selma. Instead, Martin Luther King was

meeting with President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson privately assured King that he supported new voting rights legislation, but he refused to commit to a timetable for the bill. King now worried that the march might make Johnson reluctant to move forward at all. With the march less than 24 hours away, King huddled with SCLC organizers in Atlanta and discussed the idea of postponing. He wavered, back and forth, eventually deciding to sleep on it. He would make his decision at the last possible moment. When Sunday morning came, he told his aides to cancel the demonstration. They hurried to try and call it off, but more than 600 people had already gathered, ready to take the journey. King was still in Atlanta, but rather than try to send the crowd home, the leaders chose to make

their move then. At a little after 2 p.m. on Sunday, the marchers set out, two by two, on their way out of town. Slowly, they approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As they crossed over the Alabama River, the marchers saw an army of blue-helmeted state troopers blocking the road about 200 yards past the end of the bridge. Some were astride horses that pawed the ground restlessly. Jim Clark and his deputies were there too, hundreds of armed men, and they looked ready for a fight. The marchers made it over the bridge and then stopped about 15 yards shy of the human barricade. They were

ordered to disperse, given two minutes to turn around and retrace their steps. A rubbery snap of troopers putting on their gas masks, one after the other, hung in the air. The marchers waited, preparing to kneel in prayer rather than to give in. But even before the two minutes were up, the troopers charged. They plowed into the line of marchers,

swinging their nightsticks wildly. A crowd of white onlookers, who had packed into the nearby parking lot to witness the events, cheered each blow. Amelia Boynton fell after being struck in the head. A trooper stood over her, screaming and striking again and again until she was unconscious and then hitting her some more. Then the tear gas canisters popped. Battered marchers choked and vomited as they staggered back across the bridge. The mounted officers chased them into town

and rode through the streets attacking any black body unlucky enough to be in their way. It was, in the words of those who saw it, an inhuman display of violence, and it would soon be broadcast to the rest of the world. Imagine you're a 40-year-old white woman at home with your family in Cleveland. It's a little after 9 o'clock on a Sunday, and you've spent the evening hosting your weekly family dinner. You're in the kitchen, quickly pulling a sheet of cookies from the oven,

while the rest of the family is sprawled out throughout the living room. Your daughter calls to you from the other room. Mom, I'll be right there. The movie must be coming on. You've been looking forward to tonight in particular. ABC is airing a Hollywood masterpiece, Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster. And it's just as good as you remembered. Mom, you've got to see this. You transfer the cookies to a plate and leave them to cool. Wiping your hands, you hurry back into the living room, not wanting to miss any more of the movie. I'm coming, but you know I've seen this before. As you enter the room, you're met with silence. Everyone is staring intently at the TV, but this scene doesn't look familiar.

Did you change the channel? No. It's a special report from Alabama. What's happening? The footage rolls without narration from a reporter. You see tear gas wafting, nightsticks flying, raw, startling violence. How can they do this to people? I don't know.

You watch the screen as the images continue to roll. It feels unreal. Your daughter stands and walks past you toward the kitchen. I can't look anymore. You put a hand on her shoulder and try to think of something to say, but the words catch in your throat. The images from what came to be known as Bloody Sunday were broadcast to the 48 million viewers who were watching Judgment at Nuremberg. Millions more saw the footage on the other major networks. The visceral experience of watching the events in Selma

inspired new outrage and a rush of support for the voting rights campaign in Alabama. A call to rally in Selma drew hundreds of religious leaders from across the country. As they gathered and prepared to resume the demonstrations, however, white supremacists attacked a small group of ministers who traveled prepared to resume the demonstrations, however, white supremacists attacked a small group of ministers who traveled south to support the campaign. Reverend James Reeb, a white 38-year-old minister from Boston, was brutally beaten and hospitalized. Two days

later, he died. While Jimmy Lee Jackson's murder had been barely noticed outside of Selma and Perry County, the images from Bloody Sunday and Reeb's death shortly after prompted a national outcry. Speeches, letters, and telegrams to government officials demanded federal intervention in Alabama and a commitment to voting rights legislation. Civil rights workers promised larger demonstrations to come. And a few days later, President Johnson took to the airwaves and threw his support behind a voting rights bill, echoing one of the movement's most famous battle cries. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American

life. Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it's not just Negroes, but really it's all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome. The week after Johnson's speech, 3,200 marchers set out from Selma on the way to Montgomery. They would complete their journey four days later. As they reached the state capitol, their ranks swelled to more than 30,000. In an atmosphere that was both solemn and celebratory,

three generations of civil rights leaders joined together. Among them were 75-year-old A. Philip Randolph, Rosa Parks, Diane Nash, and an even younger set of student activists from the 1960s. They demanded not just the right to vote, but an end to racial inequality in America. Martin Luther King told the crowd, The end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. Back in Washington, the Voting Rights Bill was now making its way through Congress, but the swift push in the wake of Selma lost its momentum as debates dragged on into the summer. Privately, civil rights leaders worried that the bill had stalled.

But in early August, seven months after the start of the Selma campaign, both houses of Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation. Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law on August 6th. The act removed obstacles like literacy tests from the registration process. It allowed federal intervention to help voters register, bypassing segregationist local officials, and it required any new regulations affecting voters in areas with a history of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval before they enacted the changes. Black Americans would have new avenues to exercise the political power that had been denied them for more than 70 years. With these new protections in place,

organizers renewed their efforts to get Black citizens registered. Years of hard, dangerous work had paid off. Selma went from just 2% of eligible Black voters registered in 1965 to more than 70% four years later. It was a pattern repeated in communities throughout the South. The Voting Rights Act had given activists their second major legislative achievement in just over a year. The movement had helped secure a remarkable expansion of legal rights. It was another powerful testament to the dedication of leaders like Amelia Boynton, John Lewis, and Martin Luther King. It was a victory shared by local communities that had long endured the violence and dignity and exclusion of white supremacist rule. But it was hardly the end. endured the violence and dignity and exclusion of white supremacist rule.

But it was hardly the end. The energy, the sacrifice, the success of the movement in 1965 didn't simply go away. If anything, African Americans now had opportunities for even more political power to sustain their activism. And organizers turned their focus to one of the most elusive and ambitious goals yet, the fight for economic rights. Barbie movie today. Who created that bottle of red sriracha with a green top that's permanently living in your fridge? Did you know that the Air Jordans were initially banned by the NBA? We'll explore all that and more in The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy. This is Nick.

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Featuring incredible performances from Tracy Letts, Mary Lou Henner, Thank you. ad-free, and Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. For some of the civil rights workers in Selma, one of their most vivid memories was when they visited Jimmy Lee Jackson's home shortly after his death. Three generations of Jackson's family lived under the same roof, in a shack without electricity or running water. A stream filled with raw sewage flowed through the yard and back of the house. While he was alive, Jackson had made $6 a day cutting timber, an annual salary that was less than half of the federal poverty level for his household of four people. In the midst of the legislative victories the movement had achieved, the faces of poverty that civil rights activists encountered haunted them. Access to decent jobs

and support for the economically marginalized had long been part of the movement's agenda, and as organizers looked to make further strides toward racial equality in the 60s, the issue of economic justice loomed large. Coretta Scott King would write, We believe that just as segregation was immoral in a democracy, poverty was immoral in a nation as wealthy as the United States. For a movement that had labored so hard and sacrificed so much in pursuit of human dignity, it simply could not ignore poverty like the Jacksons endured. The fight against poverty and the mobilization of poor people in pursuit of their rights was a critical step in the ongoing battle

against inequality. And it wasn't just in places like rural Alabama that poverty reigned. In America's major cities, families of all races regularly struggled to feed, clothe, and safely house their children. In New York during the 1960s, nearly one-third of mothers who lived in poverty reported having to keep their children out of school at some point because they lacked clothes or shoes. Even as America's social safety nets expanded, many were left without the ability to meet the basic needs of their families. In Los Angeles, California, a 37-year-old woman named Johnny Tillman had found herself and her children among the millions of Americans living below the poverty line. Tillman had grown up in a sharecropping community in Arkansas and worked in a variety of blue-collar jobs before migrating to California.

She found employment in a commercial laundry, became active in the Laundry Workers Union, and became a political organizer in the public housing community where she lived. But in 1963, chronic arthritis and a lengthy hospital stay had caused her to lose her job, and she had applied for welfare assistance. Tillman quickly saw the shortcomings in the state's social safety net, and so she turned her talent for political organizing towards anti-poverty advocacy. She formed a citywide coalition of mothers who relied upon welfare. Their organization promoted new efforts to secure a basic minimum standard of support, as well as job training and access to daycare options for those who could work. Within a few years, nearly 200 similar groups had formed in various communities across the country. By the summer of 1967, these scattered local efforts had coalesced

to form the National Welfare Rights Organization, or NWRO. It was the first-ever national political organization of poor people in the United States. Tillman would be elected as chairwoman of the new group. The NWRO would advocate a broad program of economic empowerment, calling for decent jobs with adequate wages for those who can work and adequate income for those who cannot. Members also organized to protect the legal rights of poor citizens, insisted upon respectful treatment from social welfare agencies, and drew attention to the hardships that Americans in poverty faced. They staged rallies, launched petitions, lobbied Congress,

and marched by the thousands in mass demonstrations. Soon after the NWRO's formation, Martin Luther King and the SCLC would launch their own anti-poverty campaign. King had been discussing the issue of economic justice for several years by this time, but the idea for a new march on Washington crystallized at the urging of a young woman from the NAACP's legal staff named Marion Wright. Wright had worked closely with poor communities in rural Mississippi over the previous years. She saw up close the terrible conditions and economic deprivation they faced. Now she urged the SCLC to launch a wave of demonstrations in the nation's capital to dramatize the plight of poor Americans. By December 1967, King announced plans for a Poor People's Campaign to converge on Washington the following year. From the start, the undertaking

was ambitious, risky, and controversial. The campaign organizers announced an expansive economic agenda. Among their demands were massive new federal investments in anti-poverty programs, legislation aimed at eliminating unemployment, a guaranteed annual income for all Americans, and the construction of millions of affordable housing units. King insisted upon a radical rethinking of the nation's economic policies and priorities. At the same time, he sought to build the broadest possible coalition behind the campaign. Poverty, after all, affected people of every race. King helped bring together Black, Native American, Latino, and white anti-poverty groups as 1968 began.

But targeting Washington was a real risk. Directly confronting Congress and federal agencies might alienate the campaign from federal support. By 1967, King had already lost some of his sway in the Capitol because of his increasingly vocal stance against the Vietnam War. Indeed, King remained deeply unpopular throughout most of the country. Fewer than 30% of Americans described their opinion of King as favorable at this time. The campaign could easily make things worse. Further difficulties came from trying to hold together the massive coalition that King had rapidly assembled. The campaign wrestled with personal tensions, competing priorities,

and the logistical difficulties of mobilizing groups from so many locations at the same time. With his plan struggling in the early months of 1968, King looked to gain as much support and momentum as he could. In March, he headed to Memphis, Tennessee to help with a local protest by black sanitation workers in the city. Conditions for the 1,300 men were dire. They earned less than $8 a day for their 12-hour shifts. This meant that full-time employees were still poor enough to qualify for public assistance. They'd gone on strike the previous month, demanding recognition

of a union, safer working conditions, and a living wage. But city officials rejected their demands. When the workers protested, violent reprisals began. Soon, tens of thousands of people from Memphis' Black communities rallied in support and began staging boycotts and other peaceful demonstrations. King found their efforts inspiring. He told the demonstrators that they were doing in Memphis exactly what he hoped to do in Washington a few weeks later. Almost immediately, however, King's optimism faded. When he led a protest march at the end of the month,

a handful of demonstrators began breaking windows along the route. Police quickly moved in and violent clashes ensued. The press described it as a riot by the protesters, and condemnation poured in from across the country. If this is what might happen in Washington, the critics warned, civil rights workers ought to stay away. King retreated from Memphis, but he planned to return a few days later. It was all the more important now. He needed to regain the momentum that had been lost amidst the violence. On the morning of Wednesday, April 3rd, King boarded a flight from Atlanta to Memphis, but a bomb threat nearby prevented his plane from taking off. He eventually arrived later

that day. Checking into the Lorraine Motel on Memphis' west side, he began making plans for a new march on Monday. That night, he spoke to a crowd of 2,000 people. I'm a happy man to have had the opportunity to have experienced life and given service at a time of great struggles. The next evening, King was in good spirits. He stepped out onto the balcony in front of his hotel room, calling out to a few of his aides in the parking lot below. And then, they heard the crack of a rifle. It echoed in the air.

Imagine you're a young black woman in Los Angeles. It's a Thursday evening, April 4th, a little after 6 p.m. You're just arriving home from a long day at work. You push open the front door, kick off your shoes, wincing a little as you step out of them. Mama, I'm home. But something is wrong. The house is eerily quiet.

Mama, are you here? You look to see if she has left a note. It's not like her to be gone without telling you. You lock the door and walk down the short hallway toward the kitchen. If she's not here, then you'll need to get dinner started. You're startled when you see her sitting at the kitchen table, facing toward the window. Mama, why didn't you say anything? I didn't know you were here. She turns slowly, and your stomach drops.

It's clear she's been crying, and you can't remember the last time you saw her cry. You pull out a chair next to her and sit. She's slow to answer. Your mind starts running through every terrible possibility. She reaches out, grips your hands. It practically takes your breath away. She reaches out, grips your hands. They killed him. They killed Dr. King. It practically takes your breath away. Whatever you had imagined, you hadn't expected this. What? How? You sure?

She nods and lets go, turning away again and wiping her eyes. You both sit silently. After a while, you hear voices, muffled cries coming from the street in front of your home. Your mother stands up and heads toward the front door. Mama, where are you going? You get up and follow her. She unlocks the door and pulls it open. Over her shoulder, you can see that the people from all over the neighborhood had wandered outside.

You can see it on their faces. The grief. The shock. The anger. What's going to happen now? On the night of April 4th, Martin Luther King was shot dead at the age of 39. Later that evening, anchorman Walter Cronkite announced his assassination to the country on CBS Evening News. Good evening. Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement,

has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. Police have issued an all-points bulletin for a well-dressed young white man seen running from the scene. King's violent death was a shattering blow to millions of Americans and reverberated around the world. The nation seemed torn and bitterly, perhaps impossibly, divided. It felt like a tipping point. The news prompted an explosion of outrage, fury, and sorrow. Black Americans were already battling frustration and disappointment because of the nation's persistent inequalities. But with King's death, thousands of disenfranchised people

took to the streets. 125 cities witnessed prolonged episodes of violence. Washington, D.C. was engulfed in smoke. Army troops were called in to patrol the capital, and the National Guard was deployed in more than 20 other cities. 21,000 people were arrested, and almost 40 died in the clashes that followed the assassination. To many, the bullet that killed King hadn't just ended his life. It had also ended any hope for the revival of non-violent protest as a moral force for change in America. The collapse of the Poor People's Campaign in the months that followed seemed to reaffirm this. SCLC organizers in the midst of their mourning went ahead with

King's final campaign, but a combination of torrential downpours, leadership struggles, and negative publicity swallowed up much of the protest power. The modest victories it achieved fell far short of expectations. The battle for economic opportunity would be left for a subsequent generation to take up. Those who searched for hope in the wake of King's death found little to hold on to. But there was at least one notable effort, a pending civil rights bill that would provide important new protections against housing discrimination, pressure-mounted for its swift passage. The Fair Housing Act, signed into law on April 11th, would ultimately be the last major piece of civil rights legislation in the era. Even as he signed the bill, President Johnson acknowledged how far the nation still had to go.

America does move forward. And the bell of freedom rings out a little louder. We have come some of the way, not near all of it. There is much yet to do. By the end of 1968, the movement for civil rights had changed, but it was still alive, still fighting,

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And you'll be in the Situation Room when President Barack Obama approves the raid to bring down the most infamous terrorist in American history. Order The Hidden History of the White House now in hardcover or digital edition, wherever you get your books. Imagine you're a 40-year-old black woman in Montgomery, Alabama. It's December 1975, and you're in the pews at Holt Street Baptist Church. It's a familiar place. Twenty years ago, you were here, a few rows back from where you're sitting now,

singing and cheering with thousands of other black citizens of Montgomery as you celebrated the first day of the bus boycott. Next to you, a young man, a reporter, is scribbling notes. It's amazing, isn't it? Yes, ma'am. May I ask, were you here for it all? I was. 20 years back, I was a student over at Mills College. Joe N. Robinson was one of my teachers.

So I felt right away I had to be part of the boycott. And what was that like? You close your eyes for a moment. The sounds and the thrill of it washes over you as though it happened just days ago. That feeling of thousands of people hoping and believing in unison. It wasn't like anything I'd ever felt before. And what about now? Do you think the city has changed? Oh, I think so. It took time, mind you, but just look up there. You point towards the pews in front. Ten years ago, I was here when they marched from Selma. And because of that, we've got a voice in ways that we didn't before. About half the city council over there is black now, and that means

something. He nods, scribbling some more. But if you've been listening to these speakers, you know we've still got a lot of work to do. Why, just a few days ago, the police shot a young black man, a father of four, named Bernard Whitehurst. Chased him through the streets and shot him down in broad daylight because they mistook him for a suspect. So you see, we're still fighting. And you make sure you write that down too. I will, ma'am. Your conversation is interrupted by murmurs of excitement from those around you. You see the next speaker making her way toward the pulpit.

Hold on a minute. This is who I really came to see. Into the pulpit steps a thin, white-haired woman in her 60s. It's been two decades, but she's unmistakable. Rosa Parks. She speaks softly, confidently. Her speech is brief, but it's powerful. As she reaches the end, the crowd is growing louder.

Twenty years ago, we began something here. For me, it was about only wanting to be a citizen. To be treated like a citizen. So my message to all of you is this. Don't stop. Keep on. And keep on keeping on. By the 1970s, civil rights organizers could reflect on more than three decades of struggle. From the fight for a double-V victory during World War II, through the voter registration and economic rights campaigns of the late 1960s, Black communities had forced the nation to begin confronting the extent of inequality and injustice.

What these activists had achieved was remarkable given the widespread and ferocious opposition they had faced. Through courageous insistence, they had helped to transform the nation's laws, knocking away the legal justifications for racial exclusion and securing new protections from discrimination on the basis of both race and gender. Black Americans won for themselves a greater voice in the political future of the nation. The movement helped secure a steep decline in poverty rates within Black communities. At the start of World War II, an estimated 87% of Black families in the country lived below the poverty line.

By 1970, that had dropped below 30%. Steady protests also dramatically expanded access to housing, educational, and employment opportunities. Over the next decade, the number of Black Americans attending college more than doubled. But some of the movement's most profound effects were intangible ones. And yet they were palpable when the boycotters in Montgomery spoke of the new sense of pride and destiny they felt. When the sit-in protesters talked of the dignity they had realized by asserting their rights. When those who faced crushing poverty described what they had learned and gained by sticking together.

In all these ways, they signaled the power of the movement to transform more than material conditions and legal rights. These individuals stood in the face of opposition and insisted that the substance and sanctity of their lives mattered. Rosa Parks was a living example of countless other activists who had made the struggle for civil rights a lifelong mission. Despite being driven out of Montgomery in the late 1950s, during the heyday of pressure tactics from white citizens' councils, Parks had continued organizing and speaking out in her hometown of Detroit, joining an array of causes in the decades that followed. Part of the underlying reason that activists like Parks kept fighting was that they recognized the freedoms they had already won were still vulnerable. It was a fight just

to keep the ground they had gained. Constant efforts at the national and local level to weaken, limit, or ignore the advances that the civil rights movement had secured, forced organizers to keep pressing back. One of the critical battlegrounds remained the arena of public education. NAACP lawyers continued to have to litigate the enforcement of Brown v. Board of Education, decades after the Supreme Court's decision. By 1974, the court's ruling against separate but equal education was 20 years old. The NAACP's chief litigator in that case, Thurgood Marshall, now held a seat on the Supreme Court himself. But large numbers of schools, North and South, remained almost completely segregated and vastly unequal. In 1974, the court considered a new case challenging the racial disparities in the public

schools of Detroit. Local activists had shown that the city's Board of Education had engaged in widespread, purposeful acts of racial segregation. The district courts had determined a solution that ordered the urban and nearby suburban school districts to participate together in a desegregation plan. This, they said, was the only hope of obtaining a meaningful revenue. But the overwhelmingly white suburban districts vehemently resisted and brought the case to the Supreme Court. In a sharply divided 5-4 decision, the court ruled in favor of the suburbs. Suburban districts would not have to play a role in protecting the educational rights of their neighbors. From his seat on the court, Marshall expressed his dismay in an impassioned

dissent. His colleagues had chosen to take a giant step backwards in the slow and difficult process of fulfilling the Brown decision's promise. It was, Marshall feared, the result of a public mood that we have gone far enough in enforcing the Constitution's guarantee of equal justice. In truth, by this point, the vast majority of white Americans believed that the civil rights movement had not only gone far enough, but had gone too far and too fast. Marshall warned of the results.

It may seem to be the easier course to allow our great metropolitan areas to be divided up, each into two cities, one white, the other black. But it is a course, I predict, our people will ultimately regret. The struggle for equal educational opportunities would continue to deal with the fallout from this decision for decades to come. But the fight ahead was not just about re-litigating or defending past victories. It was also about the work left to be done.

Civil rights activists would continue their push for economic justice, demanding solutions for chronic unemployment and working on a variety of anti-poverty efforts. They would tackle the growing abuses of a system of mass incarceration that expanded dramatically in the 1970s. They would charge forward in the protection of civil rights from police misconduct. The 1975 murder of Bernard Whitehurst in Montgomery would be just one example. He was shot, in broad daylight, mistaken for a suspect

of a crime he did not commit. The shooting prompted a public outcry that eventually revealed Whitehurst's innocence and brought the resignation of Montgomery's mayor, police chief, and eight officers. These would be some of the causes later generations would take up and carry forward. But for all that was left to be done, the nation had changed. Through decades of persistent, creative, and courageous organizing, the people who made this movement had defined an era and left an indelible mark on American society. It was a movement shaped by ordinary men and women who summoned extraordinary commitment, who failed even more often than they succeeded, and yet still kept organizing and fighting.

They pointed the nation toward a vision of what it should be. For more than 30 years, in every corner of the country, the civil rights movement imagined a more just future and fought to make it real. The journey is still unfinished. Join us next week as we finish off our Civil Rights series by talking with a former activist from Harlem who traveled to the South in the 1960s to register Black voters. She'll discuss meeting Martin Luther King and facing down Klan violence. In the following week, we'll turn to our next series, The History of Political Parties in America. 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. If you're listening on a smartphone, tap or swipe over the cover art of this podcast. You'll find the episode notes, including some details you

may have missed. American History Tellers is hosted, sound designed, and edited by me, Lindsey Graham, for Airship. Additional production assistance by Derek Behrens. Our voice actor for this series was Trisha Zarate. This episode is written by Jeffrey Gonda, edited by Dorian Marina, edited and produced by Jenny Lauer, produced by George Lavender. Our executive producer is Marshall Louis, created by Hernán López for Wondery. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island.

It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody

watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.