Throughline - Dare to Dissent

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Sometimes, the most dangerous and powerful thing a person can do is to stand up not against their enemies, but against their friends. As the United States heads into what will likely be another bitter and divided election year, there will be more and more pressure to stand with our in-groups rather than our consciences.So a group of us here at Throughline decided to tell some of the stories of people who have stood up to that kind of pressure. Some are names we know; others we likely never will. On today's episode: what those people did, what it cost them, and why they did it anyway.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. When I was a kid, my father took me to see the film Malcolm X by Spike Lee. I had begged him to take me because I'd just read Malcolm X's autobiography. And I can think of no other movie experience that had such a profound impact on me. And there was one scene in it that I carry with me until this day,

a scene that never fails to give me goosebumps. It's towards the end of the film. The scene begins with a shot of five black men riding in a Cadillac. It's the 1960s. Their faces look sullen and determined. The song by Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come, provides the score. Then it cuts to a shot of Denzel Washington as Malcolm X driving his own car. His face is stoic as he stares into the distance. He and the men in the other car are headed towards the Autobahn Ballroom in New York City, towards a point where their timelines will collide. When Malcolm X parks his car and gets out to walk to the ballroom, Spike Lee uses his

famous dolly shot, which makes him look like he's floating towards his doom, almost like fate is pulling him magnetically. For the entire movie, he was defiant, rebellious, and strong. But here, in this scene, Malcolm X looks resigned and heartbroken. Malcolm X never seemed afraid of the U.S. government. What seemed to worry him was the threat from his own brothers and sisters in the Nation of Islam, the organization he'd belonged to for more than a decade. Months before he drove to the Audubon Ballroom to give his final speech, Malcolm X openly and aggressively criticized the Nation of Islam's leaders for their corruption. He'd been suspended and then decided to leave the group. Malcolm X had made the impossible decision to

criticize the organization that had helped him change his life, that had made him one of the most influential people in the world. And he did it because he felt he had to tell the truth, no matter how much it cost him. And it was that action that made him a target for the Nation of Islam, a member of which would assassinate him at the Audubon Ballroom on February 21st, 1965. For me, the lesson of that scene in the movie was that in life, the most dangerous and powerful thing a person can often do is to stand up, not against their enemies, but against their friends. To question and criticize the beliefs of their in-group, the people who are on their side. In the next year, as the United States heads into what likely will be one of the most bitter and divided elections ever, that lesson may be an important one for us all to

remember. Because the reality is, the more we cordon ourselves into sides, choosing to ignore our conscience simply in order to win, we are taking on a posture of war. And the outcome of that will only bring pain and loss. So a group of us here at ThruLine decided to tell some of the most powerful stories of people who stood up against their in-group and took the ultimate risk for what they thought was right, no matter the cost, just like Malcolm X did. I'm Ramteen Arablui, and on this episode of ThruLine from NPR, producers Christina Kim and Anya Steinberg will join me to tell you three stories of people who did that brave thing, what it cost them, and why they did it anyway.

Coming up, Christina Kim brings us the story of Sophie Schull. Hi, this is Suniti Sridhar calling from Los Angeles, California, and you're listening to ThruLine on NPR. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. Part one. Spring will come again.

There are two roses on my bedside table. Strings of tiny beads have formed on the stems and the foil which hangs down into the water. What a pure and beautiful sight. Imagine you're a college student on your way to class at the University of Munich in Germany. It's Thursday, the 18th of February, 1943, and the sun is breaking out from behind the clouds. It's wartime, and even though you can't escape the reality of Hitler's regime, I ask you, do you want the total war? as you head to your lecture in the main building, you find yourself laughing and enjoying the sunshine, as the Third Reich continues to double down on its ideas of total war and obedience.

The minute class ends, you pour out of the building with a waterfall of papers cascading from the sky. You timidly catch one in your hand. It says... For us, there is only one slogan. Fight against the party. You instinctively throw the paper down to the ground. It's calling for the end of Hitler. It's urging you to wake up. It's dangerous, even to look at.

We have grown up in a state which ruthlessly gags all freedom of expression. The Hitler Youth, the SA, and the SS have tried to homogenize, radicalize, and anesthetize us. It was 1943, and those words were part of a series of pamphlets written by the White Rose, a group of German students and one professor, who opposed the Nazi regime. So the sixth pamphlet really is calling on students to rise up, to escape from the shackles of Nazism. This is Alexandra Lloyd.

I'm a fellow by special election in German at St. Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford. She's also... The author of Defying Hitler, The White Rose Pamphlets. On that day in Munich, if you dared look up, you would have seen a young woman, her hair cut short, throwing the papers off the highest balcony in the building. Her name was Sophie Scholl. Sophie Scholl was in many ways a typical girl of her generation.

Sophie was a very enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth Organization. Sophie did not begin her life as a radical. Far from it. But within her own household, she was exposed to other ideas. She was growing up in a house with a father who was an anti-fascist. He was absolutely opposed to Nazism, but he was also a true liberal. So he allowed his children to discover for themselves what was wrong with Nazism rather than simply dictatorially telling them that they couldn't have anything to do with the Nazis.

And when she was 16, something happened to Sophie that would spark a change in her. The Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, arrested her brother Hans for his alleged homosexuality and for participating in youth groups that were not Nazi-sanctioned. They also arrested Sophie and two other siblings. And I think this is a really important moment because it brings home how dangerous the regime is. And it brings home the idea that really no one is safe. And the Scholl children are, and this is what's so remarkable in some ways about this story, The Scholl children are really ideal Germans for the Nazi regime. They're strong, healthy. They like all the right things.

They're Aryan. They tick all of these kind of Nazi boxes. But at this point, there's a shift. It's a shift that's evident in Sophie's letters to her boyfriend, a German soldier. My dear Fritz, I just can't grasp that people's lives are now under constant threat from other people. I'll never understand it, and I find it terrible. Don't go telling me it's for the fatherland's sake. I'm trying hard to remain as impervious as possible to current influences, not the

ideological and political kind, which have ceased to have the slightest effect on me, but atmospheric influences. Il faut avoir un esprit dur et un coeur tendre. It's necessary to have a hard spirit and a tender heart. To be honest, I rather hanker to be on my own, because I have an urge to act on what so far has existed within me merely as an idea, as what I perceive to be right. And what she perceived to be right was that people needed to stop being cogs in the Nazi machine and pay attention to what was happening. Thousands of German soldiers had died in Hitler's war. Jewish families had violently disappeared. And freedom of speech and thought were dead.

Sophie was ready to do something. So on the eve of her 21st birthday, she moved to Munich to be with her brother Hans and study at the University of Munich. Once there, everything changed. As Sophie's role in the White Rose began. The White Rose Resistance Circle was a group who took action against the Nazi regime by producing anti-fascist, anti-war pamphlets. Sophie's brother Hans co-founded the movement.

The first pamphlet was produced in June 1942, and Sophie was there almost from the very beginning. She's one of a collective, but she is the only woman right at the heart of the White Rose. Sophie was tasked with the dangerous job of making sure the resistance pamphlets were reproduced and reached as many people as possible, which at the time was no small feat. Getting paper, getting a duplicating machine, a typewriter, ink, all of these things that you need is really difficult because it's wartime, so there are shortages. You can't go into a post office in Nazi Germany and say,

I'd like 100 stamps. Sophie scoured for envelopes and stamps wherever she could find them. She even asked Fritz, her boyfriend, in some of her letters. P.S. Could you get me a pack of envelopes sometime? Once she'd gathered enough supplies without drawing suspicion, she and the other members would leave the pamphlets around Munich, as well as randomly select addresses and mail the pamphlets directly to Holmes. It might sound simple, but even walking to the mailbox was very dangerous. You are always at risk of being stopped and searched.

So transporting copies of illegal pamphlets is in no way a safe nor sensible thing to do. For Sophie, the message she was spreading was worth it. We are attempting to reawaken the gravely wounded German spirit from within. Since the conquest of Poland, 300,000 Jews have been murdered in that country. This rebirth must, however, be preceded by full recognition of guilt with which the German people have burdened themselves. To have a piece of writing like this in this period calling out so directly the persecution of Jewish people is incredible. Here we see the most horrific crime against human dignity, a crime unparalleled in all of human history.

We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The white rose will never leave you in peace. And that's what brings us back to that sunny Thursday in Munich in 1943. The White Rose had just finished making their sixth pamphlet, but they'd run out of stamps and envelopes. So they concocted a plan to go to the University of Munich and leave copies in the main building. And it was decided that Hans and Sophie would be the ones that would do this.

They had to time it correctly when all the students and professors were in class so that no one saw them. So the night before they're going to do this incredible thing, at home in the flat that they share, Sophie writes a letter to her friend. Dear Lisa, I've just been playing the trout quintet on the phonograph. And she describes listening to Schubert's trout quintet on the gramophone. In that piece of Schubert's you can positively feel and smell the breezes and scents and hear the birds and the whole of creation cry out for joy. And when the piano repeats the theme, like cool, clear, sparkling water,

oh, it's sheer enchantment. You would never dream from reading this letter what is going to happen the next morning. The next morning. On Thursday, the 18th of February, 1943. At about half past 10. Hans and Sophie left their flat. They walked to the university.

They had with them a suitcase and a briefcase that were full of copies of the pamphlet. Their plan was to discreetly deposit the pamphlets all over campus and get away undetected. So they work really quickly. They follow the plan. They leave copies of the pamphlets all over campus and get away undetected. So they work really quickly. They follow the plan. They leave copies of the pamphlets. But just before they leave... Sophie, for whatever reason, decides to push one of these piles of pamphlets

over the balcony, and they cascade down. A janitor sees Sophie do this and accosts her and her brother Hans. They call the Gestapo, who turn up, arrest Hans and Sophie and take them into Gestapo custody. That's Thursday. On Monday, they're sent to trial. They're tried for treason. For undermining the war effort with these pamphlets.

The trial starts in the morning on Monday and ends around lunchtime. At 4 o'clock, three hours later, they're told that they're going to be executed that day at five. At 5 p.m. on February 22nd, 1943, Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl are executed by guillotine for their involvement in the White Rose wanted the war to end, and it didn't. They wanted Hitler and his regime to fall, and it didn't. I mean, it would take another two years after they were executed. But it matters that they tried. It matters that they made the attempt. And I think that today is inspiring.

Sophie Scholl and the other core members of the White Rose paid the ultimate price for standing up to their tyrannical government. They were executed, but their pamphlets and their ideas lived on. The sixth pamphlet was in fact smuggled out of Germany and made its way to Britain, where copies were produced and then they were dropped by planes over Germany. So that image of Sophie scattering the pamphlets over the balcony is then somehow reproduced over the whole of Germany

as these pamphlets rain down from planes over all the people. Almost immediately after the fall of Hitler, the White Rose was remembered and commemorated with monuments, street names, and even stamps bearing Sophie and Hans likenesses. Today, the courtyard outside the main building at the University of Munich bears their last name, and bronze versions of the flyers are embedded in the cobblestones.

You can't help rejoicing and laughing, however moved or sad at heart you feel, when you see the springtime clouds in the sky, and the budding branches sway, stirred by the wind, and the bright young sunlight. I am so much looking forward to the spring again. Coming up, Ramtin brings us a story that flips everything you thought you knew about an American icon. Thank you for an incredible show. The stories you tell have made me see the world through new eyes. This is Ella Kramer, based in Berlin, Germany. You're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Hey, it's Ramti. Before we get back to the show, we want to take a minute to say thank you so much to our ThruLine Plus supporters and anyone listening who donates to public media. Everything you hear from the NPR network really does depend on your contributions. And for anyone listening who isn't a supporter yet, right now is a great time to get actively involved in creating a more informed

public. If you like perks, ThruLine Plus offers sponsor-free listening and behind-the-scene bonus episodes every month. If you just want to make a tax-deductible donation to your favorite station or stations in the NPR network, that's great too. Listener support is a powerful resource. Thank you. Part 2. No Country for Young Men. On April 3rd, 1968, a man sits in his motel room, collecting his thoughts. He reaches down and grabs a cigarette, puts it to his lips, lights it up, and inhales. And he's exhausted. He's depressed. But he still has a job to do. He was supposed to speak to a rally.

A rally in Memphis, Tennessee. He said he didn't want to go because he wasn't feeling well. He's too tired. And so he asks someone else to take his place on stage that night. He gets into his pajamas and heads to bed. Then his phone rings. It's the guy who went to give the speech in his place. He called him from the hall and said,

these people don't want me, they want you. The tired man puts down the phone and makes up his mind. He was going to go. He was in bed in his pajamas at that point, but he got dressed and went over there and gave this incredible speech. Thank you very kindly, my friend. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction

and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. And many people feel like he was predicting his own death that night when he gave that speech. Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. He even says, yeah, like anyone else, I'd like to live a long life, but that doesn't matter anymore.

Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now. Because I just want to do God's work. I just want to. I just want to do God's will. See this through. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you.

But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the last of Martin Luther King Jr.'s career. The next day, at 6.05 p.m., he was assassinated by a gunman while standing on the balcony of his motel in Memphis. Like many Americans, I was raised to believe in a certain version of Martin Luther King Jr. We remember him as a martyr for justice and nonviolence,

the eloquent preacher whose prophetic vision redefined how the U.S. viewed itself. A person who was loved by most and hated only by the racist few. But that's just not the entire truth. We have all taken him for granted in a way. This is Jonathan Icke, author of the biography King, A Life. And turned him into a monument and a national holiday and forgotten about the person. Civil rights, King, Van Ocker, roll 20, sound 36. In 1967, 11 months before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. gave an interview to NBC News at Ebenezer Baptist

Church in Atlanta, where he was the pastor. The segment was called, After Civil Rights, Black Power. Dr. King, this church is as good a place as any to go back over your commitment to the civil rights movement. In the video, Martin Luther King Jr. stands in front of a stained glass with a golden cross in the middle, a crown emerging above it. He was 38 years old at the time, but the look in his eyes belonged to someone much older. Many of the people who supported us in Selma, in Birmingham, were really outraged about the extremist behavior toward Negroes. But they were not at that moment, and they are not now,

committed to genuine equality for Negroes. In the interview, King comes across more frustrated than usual, a bit edgier. He is measured in his words, but very confrontational in his criticism of America. When King rises to fame, he's mostly talking about Southern segregation. And that's something that a lot of northern white liberals can stand with him on. But when he starts talking about economic inequality, when he starts talking about white flight in the northern suburbs and segregation of schools in Chicago and New York and Philadelphia, suddenly people start getting nervous. It's much easier to integrate a lunch counter than it is to guarantee an annual income, for instance, to get rid of poverty for Negroes and all poor people. It's much easier to integrate a bus than it is to make genuine integration a reality in quality

education, a reality in our schools. He was really determined to make this his big shot across the bow, to declare a new wave of his movement, that he was moving from civil rights to human rights. And I think we are in a new era, a new phase of the struggle, where we have moved from a struggle for decency, which characterized our struggle for 10 or 12 years, to a struggle for genuine equality. And this is where we are getting the resistance because there was never any intention to go this far. Martin Luther King Jr. understood that criticizing American capitalism and northern racism would potentially upset some of the same people who had supported his civil rights efforts in the South. But he still did it.

And according to some polls, by 1968, nearly three-fourths of white Americans disapproved of him. It's because they were worried that, you know, Black people were coming to the neighborhoods and Black people were coming for their jobs, and that King's idea, his message of equality might actually be put into action. It's a lot easier to say, I support Martin Luther King and even to get on the bus and go down and march with him in Selma. But when you get back and he's actually talking about your hometown fighting to get black kids enrolled in your kids' all-white suburban school, you know, suddenly it's a different story. From late 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by

the FBI to neutralize him as an effective civil rights leader. The FBI surveillance of King is a hugely important factor in his life and an important factor in his legacy. Much depends on him still in these times when racial tensions have created an atmosphere of fear and foreboding among many Negroes and whites alike. The FBI had a years-long effort to monitor Martin Luther King Jr. and to use the information they gathered to publicly discredit him. This is a reading from the actual FBI files.

It is King's contention that the government of the United States does not move until it is confronted dramatically? Robert F. Kennedy, the attorney general, authorizes the FBI to surveil King, to tap phones, because they initially fear that he may be under the influence of members of the Communist Party or former members of the Communist Party. They continue to monitor Martin Luther King Jr.'s every move. Right after the March on Washington, I have a dream, his most brilliant and memorable speech.

Just two days after, the FBI produces a memo that says, given the power of that speech, we must now view him as the most dangerous man when it comes to race in America. But it's not just his stance on race they're worried about. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. A time comes when silence is betrayal.

That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. King spoke at the Riverside Church in New York, New York, at which time he was highly critical of the Vietnam War. Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. He referred to the United States government as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world,

for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours. The speech was called Beyond Vietnam, A Time to Break Silence. He gave that speech in 1967, right in the middle of the Vietnam War. It's just stunning in its beauty, in its foresight, and yet the response to it is brutal. King is pilloried for this speech. The next day, the Washington Post, the New York Times,

almost every major newspaper in America calls him out and says he's a fool, says he's unqualified to speak on these issues. He was shocked by just how harsh the response was to the speech. He's devastated by this. You know, he feels like he can't understand why he's being treated this way. He sees himself as doing the right thing, and he's getting beat up for it. And it has a personal toll. It really leaves him feeling frustrated, sad. I think some of his friends are worried that he's clinically depressed at this point. FBI wiretaps captured conversations King had with his friends and colleagues in the days after the speech.

There's one phone call right after Beyond Vietnam. And he's on the phone with Stan Levison, who's one of his best friends and closest advisors. And he's known him for a decade. And Levison calls him and says, that was a terrible speech. I don't understand why you said those things. That's going to hurt us. That's going to damage our cause. Part of that cause was the Poor People's March,

an action in which King, Levison, Bayard Rustin, and other leaders were trying to organize thousands of people to march to Washington and stage a sit-in to demand more progressive economic policies for the poor and working class. Leveson feared King's stance on Vietnam would alienate some of their financial supporters. It's going to damage our fundraising. And King says to one of his best friends, in essence, don't you know who I am? Haven't you been listening to anything I've said? Yeah, it might have been politically unwise,

but I don't care about that because it was not morally unwise. They were both right. The fallout from King's stand on Vietnam was harsh. The director of the NAACP criticized him, saying that the racial justice and anti-war efforts have, quote, too little in common, and that King should, quote, positively and publicly give up one role or the other. When King tried to get the NAACP to put out a statement against the war, it was strongly rejected.

An editorial in the Washington Post said that he had, quote, diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people. And all of this had a material impact on King's work. The Poor People's March was foundering, struggling to find supporters. He could have just stepped back and said, OK, I did this for 10, 12 years, now it's someone else's turn. But he had such conviction, such belief in doing the right thing,

that that never even occurred to him. And according to Jonathan, even though that conviction cost King popularity and frustrated some of his own friends and fellow civil rights activists, it did actually make a difference for the anti-war movement. I think King's early opposition to the Vietnam War was a huge factor in galvanizing, especially, you know, white college students. They saw King speaking out on this and they began to ask more questions. They began to think more about what they believed. And his courage to speak out on that had huge positive consequences.

That last night in Memphis, almost exactly one year after his Beyond Vietnam speech, Martin Luther King was under immense pressure. He was paying the price for speaking his conscience, for speaking words some of his friends, comrades, and the American people were not ready to hear. And this image, the rebel shunned by much of America, is not the image we celebrate every year. I asked Jonathan why. Well, that's easy, because it makes us uncomfortable. We stick with the stuff that makes us comfortable.

I have a dream that we might all be brothers and sisters and sing in harmony and judge each other by the content of our character and not the color of our skin. That stuff's easy. That's safe. As Harry Belafonte said to me, this country only likes dead radicals. Coming up, a radical whose name we'll probably never know, but who nevertheless defined an era. ThruLine producer Anya Steinberg will tell us that story next.

A preacher friend of mine recommended for me to listen to ThruLine and I started listening to ThruLine and I promise you with episode, I feel smarter and smarter and smarter. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication. This is Marcia Drummond from Dayton, Ohio, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Part 3. That Lonely Man. It's June 5th, 1989. A man in a white shirt, holding a shopping bag in each hand, stands on the sidewalk and watches as a line of tanks roll through his city. It's just afternoon, but the streets are empty. And as the tanks get closer and closer,

the man in the white shirt makes a sudden, fateful decision. He walks out into the avenue, right in front of the column of tanks. For a moment, no one seems to know what to do. The tanks are frozen. The man is frozen. And soon, that moment would be frozen in time. Not far from there, another man watches this all unfold from a hotel balcony. He's a photojournalist, so he picks up his camera and starts to zoom in with his lens. One side of me is scared to death, and the other side, you know, you've got to photograph this. This is what you were hired for. He doesn't even have time to adjust the camera's shutter speed.

He just points the camera at the man standing in front of the tanks and shoots. It was like the hand of God came down and steadied my hand. Just a few days before, the street filled with tanks had been filled with protesters. The square is filled with a sea of placards, banners, and chanting groups. China's people, more than at any time since the revolution of 1949, are telling their leadership, we want a different system. This was Tiananmen Square in China. The protests here had begun in the spring as a peaceful student demonstration

against government corruption and authoritarianism. At one time, a million people had crammed into Beijing's Tiananmen Square in a protest for democracy and freedom, which captured the world's imagination. But over the weeks, it turned into a popular uprising that made international news. In the history of communist China, there has never been anything like this. It was a major moment of public dissent. The Chinese government declared martial law in Beijing in a desperate attempt to get control of the situation. This is around the time Jeff Widener, the photojournalist in the hotel room, arrives in Beijing. It was the most amazing experience because I think a lot of these

students, they all knew something incredible had happened. For the first time in huge numbers, the ordinary men and women of Beijing, the old and the young, professors and taxi drivers, have joined the student protests, lending their support to what has now taken on all the appearances of a peaceful popular uprising against the oppressiveness of communist rule. Everything seemed free and wonderful, and there was a wonderful feeling in the air. It was almost like going to Disneyland. This started to get a little bit interrupted when you saw truckloads of soldiers coming in. Confidential. Morning summary for June 2nd, 1989. The soldiers' presence signaled an ominous shift.

Behind closed doors, in the halls of power, China's leaders had reached a decision after intense debate about how they were going to respond to the protests. Their plan was to clear the square by force. On June 3rd, under orders from the Chinese government, People's Liberation Army soldiers pour into Beijing and begin to surround the square. Back at AP headquarters, Jeff and his team prepare to cover whatever is about to unfold. We only had three guys, so we had to draw straws to work the first night shift.

I got the small straw. As soon as Jeff headed out into the street to cover the story, he felt his stomach drop. All of a sudden, people start coming out of the street to cover the story, he felt his stomach drop. All of a sudden, people start coming out of the shadows really quietly. I stopped to get some pictures, and this man comes up to me. He's got a big heavy jacket on, and he opens it up, and there's a hatchet with blood dripping down it. I mean, this is where I realized fear for the first time in my life. And I see the distance, not too far away, maybe 200 yards, something burning.

And it's a burning armored car. And there's protesters all around throwing rocks and putting big steel poles in the treads. And by this time, there was pandemonium. Jeff works his way through the crowd. People are pulling at his cameras. They're getting wrapped around his neck. I think, again, I'm going to die. And I took my American passport, held it over my head and screamed, American, American, I'm on my knees crawling on the ground.

While all this is going on, he's panicking, trying to take photos. There was a man on fire, burning, rolling around on the ground, and there was another man trying to put the fire out. He lifts his camera up to take a picture. I lift it to my face and bam! Everything goes black. I look down, blood all over me, massive concussion. When dawn breaks, Beijing is a changed city.

Top Secret, morning summary for June 4th, 1989. Troops backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers battled crowds of civilians for seven hours before reaching the square shortly before dawn today, Beijing time. Student demonstrators began to leave Tiananmen before the troops moved in. Troops opened fire on those who remained. The government again controls the symbolic center of the country. On the morning of June 5th, a bruised and battered Jeff Widener gets word that he's been assigned to take photos of Tiananmen Square, which is now occupied by tanks and soldiers. He heads for the Beijing Hotel, a building overlooking the square. It's the perfect vantage point.

Other journalists at the Beijing Hotel had been electrocuted by cattle prods from these secret police. They were confiscating notebooks, cameras, film, everything. So he had to find a way to get into a room without being detected. He sees an American student in the lobby. And I walked up to him and I said, hey, Joe, where you been? I've been looking for you. And I whispered, hey, I'm from Associated Press. Can you let me up to your room? And he picked up on it right away. He goes, yeah, come on up. The trick works. Jeff and the student, whose name is actually Kirk, go up to Kirk's hotel room.

Jeff immediately starts to scope out the balcony. There was a wall jutting out, so it wasn't easy to see the street. I had to really lean over, exposing my body. And behind me on the wall was a bullet hole, so I know they could reach up there. I've never been so scared. He spends hours alternating between taking photos and trying to get some sleep when he can It's just afternoon

when all of a sudden Jeff sees a column of tanks coming down the street I'm thinking, wow, that's a nice compression shot You know, when the tanks are all stacked up. Then this guy walks out in the middle of the street with shopping bags. Tank man. And I tell Kirk, I said, this guy's going to screw up my composition. He's standing still, staring up at the tanks.

There are no other civilians in the frame. It's just this one man. He throws his right arm out angrily in the air, almost as if he's trying to banish the tank. The tank tries to go around him, but he moves to block it. Kirk, the student, gets worried. And he says, they're going to kill him, they're going to kill him. You know, he's shouting. Each time the tank moves, the man mirrors it. Then, Tank Man does the unthinkable.

He crawls up on the tank in front of him and leans over the top. It looks like he's saying something to its operator. Jeff waits, holding his breath, for the perfect shot. Tankman climbs down and again runs in front of the path of the tank. He's making his last stand. Three shots. And so it was over. These people came, grabbed him, and moved him away. Nobody knows what happened to him.

To this day, nobody knows what happened to Tank Man. As June 6th dawned across the world, Tank Man's image appeared in newspapers everywhere. The New York Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Washington Post, and soon after, the cover of Time magazine. The Chinese government may have succeeded in crushing the protests, but they couldn't bury this photo. This image of the man in front of the tanks came to define the brave struggle of ordinary people at Tiananmen Square.

And it made clear to the world what the Chinese Communist Party was capable of. Not finding him, actually, is sort of like it made him a martyr because he's like the unknown soldier. It's an image so powerful that it is still censored in China today. Its power endures, despite the fact that Tank Man has never been identified. And despite the fact that we don't know if he's dead or alive.

I think all of us in life don't take as many risks as we should. I think a lot of it is just fear. A guy like this who takes a risk like he did should be an inspiration for all of us who are willing to fight for what we believe in, take those risks. And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. I'm Ramteen Arablui. And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This episode was produced by me.

And me and... Lawrence Wu. Julie K. Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor. Kristina Kim. Devin Katayama. Peter Balanon Rosen. Thomas Liu. Irene Noguchi.

Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel. Thanks also to Amelie Klaus, Niklas Becker, Ela Leshem, Casey Miner, and Johannes Dergi for their voiceover work. And thanks to Colin Campbell

and Anya Grumman. The episode was mixed by Josh Newell. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes

Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani. And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at ThruLine at NPR.org. Thanks for listening. Thank you.