i have a hunch this is going to

be an animated conversation. so so joe and i we've had a lot of guest speakers over the years and from all different walks of life there hasn't been a conversation i have looked forward to more than this. so i am honored. i hope i don't disappoint. i don't think you will. i think you will. let me just give a little background on joe and then you and i are going to have a conversation. oh, i bet my son wrote this trying to please his mom for a change please and for a change. i should introduce your son. where is loki? he's over yonder somewhere in arizona. he's won a number of of emmys. he's a film producer and wrote a

book that i'm going to recommend to you a terrific read. and we're going to talk about it. it's out there. a terrific. that is the story of joan's journey in the civil rights movement. but you could substitute the words war on poverty and the experiences here. here we are joined so closely. their journey is our journey. and it is. we're going to talk about this book and joan is recipient of the. 2015 national civil rights museum freedom award. she is. a giant a an icon. civil rights, youth participate in over 50 sit ins. that's what he says. i don't i wouldn't swear by it, but a few. but we don't want to argue with him right now. we'll just we'll just accept a

50 and and and all of those since he was 23. she's freedom rider a producer in the jackson woolworth sit in. talk to you about the jackson movement the march on washington the meredith march and the selma to montgomery march. so for her actions and are activist in her passion she's disowned by her family attacked shot at sworn at put on death row and hunted down by the klan for execution. you've crossed paths with some of the legends harry figures in american history. martin luther king, medgar evers, fannie lou farmer. john lewis. fannie lou hamer. lou hamer. yeah, what i say hamer probably but that's what people usually say. john lewis, diane nash, julian bond and stokely carmichael.

stokely was my man. you know, we're going to don't take that the wrong way, but stokely and i were friends to the end, no matter what you've heard about him. and i'm the person that got him into the deep south with the freedom rides. yep. i want to talk about that. so so you've seen it all. you've experienced it all. very few people have had the courage or the impact to. try to change a country the way you have. so i want to i want to talk to you about. oh, i want to say also that i am a white, southern owner and proud of it. robert lee is my homeboy, and i'm the mother of five ordinary sons. i survived a lot. yeah, yeah. well, okay okay. anything else you want to say

before? get to the question that i'm to ask you. go back to you and we're going to cut off the coffee after this cup for sure. okay. tell about the significance of the title. it's called get back to the counter. what's the significance of that title? well, i was sitting in at that jackson sit in and we got pulled off a stools and pulled to the door of the woolworth's woolworth's. my thought was, when my son is get back to the counter, you're safer and you got to keep that sitting going because there was a mob outside. and at the counter, you, the press right there. following things right behind you and your buddies on either

side of. you. so safety. safety. you're in your eighth decade of life. yeah, i've been around a while. been around a while. your parents were from the south? oh, my mother was. your mother was. that is another story. it is another story. i'll tell that if you'd like. well, let me get through. at least the first question. okay. i cut people off a lot. you know. okay, here we go. your great grandparents had been enslavers. your mother was a staunch segregationist. oh, definitely. so your story is sort of unexpected. fascinating story. how a white from the south became icon and a leader in the civil rights movement. there were a few of us white girls who knew what to do. yeah. so i want to go back to oak oconee county. oconee. not the fancy resort.

this is an old company owned logging town. oh, and there was a train track that went down the middle of the dirt road that went through town. and the train was named the nancy hank's. anyone know who nancy hank's was abraham lincoln's mother. you got it. you're pretty good. so, you know a yankee on that train, you probably looked it up. okay. so we only have an hour. yeah. and you got a few questions? yeah. yeah, i have. so i need to shut up fewer than i wrote. let me tell you terms of number. so you're nine years old. you're walking down that dirt road. you come to the part of town that whites don't go to. well, particularly white kids. white kids got your friend with you. and you see that shack of a schoolhouse where black kids went school? it made an impression.

you. right. and that impression, that first glimpse. that was your first exposure, i believe that that impressions stuck with you your whole life. that's unusual. you know, lots of people have impressions with a nine or ten and they change when they're a teenager in their twenties. why do you think that was? well, that was because ed took what we learned in sunday school about loving your neighbor as yourself and treating people the way you want to be treated. i took that serious early and this shack of a colored school was the polite term then black was fighting words. some of you may remember that i knew out the other side of town was the fanciest building for miles around a brand new brick school for the white kids and i just sort of knew this was wrong wrong. so it's a i've been curious about this. so you you have this epiphany

and you see the school and it changed your thinking. how was the conversation with the mother that night? i didn't have a conversation with momma that night. i didn't tell anybody because i knew. when i had the chance to do things to make the south, i didn't about the yankees, you know, but to make the south the best it could be for everybody. i would seize the moment. and that came with the sit ins. so let's let's talk about the sit in at duke. you went to duke university at mama's insistence. yep. and why did she insist on you're going to do well? i wanted to go to this little church college where my sunday school teacher and her husband. you've probably heard of husband? who was john glenn and glenn you're talking about? yeah, well, i wanted to go to their college, oberlin. no, they went to wilberforce.

i think it was wilberforce. no, muskingum okay. and where something or other out in the midwest. but wouldn't have it? no one's ever heard of that school. you got to. go someplace important. i think she was probably afraid it was integrated, but so, you know, i gave up and now i. i'll go where mama wants it. at least it'll get me away from mama. and that was her big mistake because when the sit in started my freshman year, duke was just down the road a piece from greensboro. well, it was up the road, a piece and they had sit ins there in durham. and our presbyterian chaplain said next week they'll some students involved in the demonstration coming to talk to us. now, keep quiet and only tell people you think would really want to come because the

administration could lock us of the building, the rowdies could show up, the police could come and arrest us. so these students came explained about the demonstrations, and then, lo and behold, in moral and legal terms. and then they invited us to join them. so a few of did. so you called mother and said, mama, let me tell you what i just know. well, i didn't call her on my own, but when we got out of jail, the administer nation, we had had we had a note in our mailbox on back in the dorm to report to the dean's. so a couple of us. and she said, have you told your parents yet? there's phone. and she had locked the door when we came in her office. so we called our parents. the students from north carolina

central, that the name of the school university. well, now it's the university is north carolina college. north carolina college. and they came down and spoke. what what stirred you in their presentation? um, well, think they're speaking in moral terms as well as legal. so the morality of it all was. yeah, it doing, treating people the way we want to be treated you you know. summer of 1960 your freshman year your first demonstrations you were jailed twice. it was this the spring? yeah. you were jailed twice for many freshman college being jailed twice might be a cause to maybe change course in life. no, i knew.

i was doing the right. you double down, though. you double down. it seems like after being jailed twice in all the experience. why? what? what was. what was still the face and the morality. yeah. or other influences and the students of north carolina college. when knew i was going back up to d.c., they said, well, we haven't heard from those howard students since. spring break when the student nonviolent coordinating committee was formed. go out there and find out what's happening and let us know. so i went out to howard and it turned out there was a group planning to meet with. you know, i forget if it is at night or a few days down the road, but they were planning to meet and plan a sit in in arlington. so when they explained i was from arlington and i'd been in a couple sit ins and they figured i had the drill down, knew my

way around town and they invited me to join them. so we went on out to arlington and sat in a couple places in the nazi, showed up and us and things, but you do get invited to lot of sit ins. i only went to things. i was invited go to. i didn't come barging in saying who i am. and here's what we ought to do. i where i was invited and took the directions from the folks who were most involved and affected by things. in may of 63, you join the jackson movement. what was the jackson movement? well, actually it was in the acp oriented and on campus. we had the regular acp group and we had, our own student group,

the non agitation association of college people and medgar, who was out on campus all the time, he put up with us, but he medgar evers. evers. mr. medgar evers, you know, and. we'd gotten to know each other fairly and actually he and professor salter, who's in that famous picture, he they had planned a sit in at the woolworth and a diversionary group down road, a picket line. and i was what they called a spotter for the picket line. somebody who would watch the demonstration just into the crowd and we had sometimes nickels in our pocket, whatever calls, cause then and we could phone back to make his office

your remember phones we could call back to magu's office and report on what was happening. well, the picket line arrested right away. we didn't expect. and we called him and we hadn't seen any squad cars. me and the other white observer, our spotter, whatever we hadn't seen squad cars or police, paddy wagons down at woolworth's. so we decided to go down and see what was happening and we got in justice and former cop who had been dismissed from the force for being too violent had pulled memphis norman off the stool and kicked him till he was bleeding out of every hole on his head. then the ex-cop and, the and memphis were both arrested. so. so the jackson movement was the

integration basically through woolworth's. that was a strategy nationwide in the south. you have seven lessons in your book or my son wrote the book. i couldn't even tell you what the seven lessons are at this point. boy well, you didn't you did this. he added me. and, you know. i didn't have anything to do with the writing them. i'm assuming to you in writing. no. your life. i didn't know anything it until the book came out. you know you know how kids snake around and do things. so when he said to you can you repeat that and slowly and you write it down, that didn't give you a clue that he's working on a book. no. i mean, i had told him that ages before when he was making a movie. well, regardless whether you were a coconspirator with him that it's a fascinating book.

and the and there for sale here. yep. got to support my boy even if he is tricky. yep. or he is. name loki. the norse god of mischief. the trickster. thor's thor whose hammer makes the thunder. yeah. he's named after this sidekick and he's lived up to his name and i bet you have some interesting sunday, don't you? i'm sure at your house. but you talk about adaptability, and the civil rights movement had to adapt over the time. what what are some of the major changes you think had to occur? you were involved from particularly the critical years of 60 to 60, 68 or 68, which was we're going to talk about 1968, that few minutes. how did the civil rights

movement have to change over the course year after year? well, more and more white folks got involved and a lot of them were yankees that came down with clue how to sing like they were in church. they sang like. they were on picket lines like they had to we had to adapt our food a little bit for them because they didn't know what grits and collard greens were and. so that was. that was a big adaptation dealing with them. white yankees, when we got a few white yankees out here in new actually the so and folks in need to learn about grits i have for better or worse i thought it was oatmeal actually when i first data that turned out it wasn't oatmeal but i've had grits and good i think it after

this conversation i'm going to go out and get more right just so your experience in mississippi the heart of darkness going down there, were you afraid? no, i don't deal with fear. fear paralyzes brain and keeps you from thinking what you need to do to stay as safe as possible in the situation. fear will get you killed. we are nervous. not really. you got to be cautious. yes. you have to be aware of what's going on. you got to be supportive of your buddies. yeah. you correct. how important was the spiritual element to the civil rights fight? it was primary for the

southerners. sitting at that lunch sometimes who were teas and professor salter that you didn't really cover all that information that you had on the final exam sir. but sometimes we were holding hands and praying and the the church, the black church was the center of the civil rights movement. it was not they were not owned by the white folks who could evict you. they were the spiritual. they were for anything. they were where the community gathered and that's where we always had our meetings and the ministers were often more often than not, the the leaders of the civil movement think of ralph abernathy, dr. king, you know, all these good folks, c.t.

williams and. mm hmm. well, the war on poverty, which sees this is the front line of the war on poverty. these agencies, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary, this year, the religious element, the role of churches is when it was launched, the moral outrage, poverty and inequality, a very much of an element. and this network, this movement as well. is that still the case in the civil rights movement. i don't really know. i think it is probably has a strong impact as group, but i'm not really involved. moved so much in the civil rights movement. now. but i'm marched a couple times. but i've gotten so old and arthritic, can't march much anymore. i can, but i can run my mouth. as you may have noticed.

well when you were out marching, you participated in the march in washington. i worked in the d.c. office all summer, and i was up in the press tent day of the march on the monument grounds you were at the lincoln memorial somewhere near there were were we started out at the washington monument with the press tent. but then when it got, you know, about time for the speeches, we got a van, something took us up closer. but also in that year you had the bombing in birmingham, alabama. oh, that was an awful year. well, we had fire hoses and police, not just in birmingham, but first in danville, virginia. anybody here from danville, we've heard of it. and we had a sit in. we had the assassination of medgar evers.

yep. we had the church. what we and then we had the assassination of the president some. did i forget anything? you know. okay, i got it covered. if i forget, he generally remind me if i left out a little detail and so it was not a good year i mean, the only bright moment was the march on washington. the yearbook your son's connects, of which i had not looked at all those events in secret and in the sequence that that occurred. and then if you take it out further, it. 1968, martin luther king, bobby kennedy. yeah, these seem to come in the series. you you've had one of the unique opportunities to to know and

meet and work with some of the amazing figures, the civil rights movement. i even met bobby kennedy. we had a sit in at his office. really? oh, we wanted him to enforce the civil rights act a little more. this was as attorney? yeah. yeah. but the kennedy from 64. there are two bobby kennedy's and the kennedy up until president kennedy's assassination. and bobby, when he was on his own, really emerged as just a forceful leader for for change in america. so i was thinking of sit ins. yeah. the one that generally gets left out. anybody here see the movie selma? oh, yeah. she got that wrong. it. not the they have the president calling martin luther king saying we can't have these sit ins. you know, in the white house,

man king didn't have a thing to do with it. it was my idea to organize it. and it was the howard university that i had become part of that. did the sit, but it got, you know, carefully by the press and i've only seen one book that it was mentioned in, and that was by a black author. so. well, let me get back to my question and it's this. oh he wants me to stick to the topic. no, no, no. i'm i'm enjoying this journey through. lots of subjects and it's great, but but you knew martin luther king, you knew medgar evers. you knew stokely carmichael. you knew john lewis. you knew how ralph abernathy, lots of people. give me your snapshot impressions when you hear the name martin luther king, what

comes to your mind? good preacher. good preacher. when you hear medgar evers, what comes to your mind. oh, well, he was the lone ranger for a long time in mississippi as seeps represen native. yeah, i oh, he was my number one martyr. yeah i agree. aren't martyrs list? yeah. and you had close relationship with stokely carmichael. well we were good buddies when the freedom march was stopped. the church bombings, i mean, with the bombing, bus bombing and the. problems at the church in montgomery, i got a phone call in the middle of the night because people who were trapped in the church could only make one family, one car per family unit. and it was time, 2 minutes.

i got this call in the middle of the night. joan, this is paul. i can't talk. we're trapped in the church. send more writers. so i got five of us together, and flew from white into dc to new orleans. and it only cost $52 and change. imagine that. and then we took the train and got know central and got off in jackson and got arrested so. i claim credit for getting stokely into the deep south and cars and lots of good and some maybe some bad travel and no matter what you've heard him we were friends to the end his old friends from early in the civil rights movement is old white friends. and i assume black. he never forgot us and would go out of his way to publicly acknowledges. i know several instances,

including my own, where he did that any other figures from that time. i haven't mentioned that you very special to julian bond julian bond and john lewis was my hug man because you all know some of you know in the south you don't hug when you meet up you being rude and stand office and every time would see john it could be at a congressional hearing. it could be when he a big keynote speaker at some event. i got my hug. john was phenomenal and spoke at our conference over the years six times. wow. and the thing about john lewis is icon this legend this giant although he was short he would walk over the how to this hotel by himself it take him 20 or 25 minutes to get to the lobby. everybody recognized him and he

stopped and talked to everyone and his ability to connect to an audience. oh, he was way ahead of me was was well, you're not doing too bad. and but his ability and and his passion and his leadership was yeah. lewis was a great, great, great man. and the last time i saw my buddy john was on the edmund pettus bridge. i to talk about that. yeah. and i was invited but i wasn't able to do to that tour down to bloody sunday. tell me, were you there. i wasn't there on bloody sunday was with a group that had reservations and so i think we had about two train carloads of us who went down for the last day of the selma to montgomery march. we went down to montgomery and then got bused out to where the

the marchers were gathered and marched in. they were camped. and then we marched in with them a few miles and heard dr. king there. and i like that speech. how long? not long. it was a call to action. it wasn't that pie in the sky dream and thing he had at the march on washington so pitched as neutral on the on the i have a dream speech, but well not even quite neutral. oh, because the speeches had to be censored ahead of time. so the people didn't say anything that offended, you know, the kennedys and john lewis had to take out we're going to march not violently through the south like sherman marched through georgia that was too radical but king went off on that whole i have a dream that and that wasn't in the original speech that had been approved

that was just an add on. and he got away with it and so with john was my buddy, you know. yeah, the. quite a journey and. incredible change many many many long hours and a very difficult walk to bring about this change. what do you take the most satisfaction from in terms of your your life? well, for me, i think that death experience and that's, by the way, who i learned to drink coffee. and it was our big treat of the day. but. i just we've come a long way but we still got a mighty long way to go.

yeah. to did you think at some point in say the last 15 or 20 years, did you think be further down the road than we are today? you can always hope. you can always and pray. are you that were retracing some of our going backwards. those who forget the past are condemned to repeat. and you look at the politics and the candidates and not going to call names. but i think there's a chance of moving backward, way backwards. i mean, emma grant's poisoning our blood blood or where did that man and his wife family come from? oh, loki, sc and omega man over

here. my son over here, he's an omega man to wave. i'm loki or signal to. it's all the divine all rise right. might even be an ak and what have you out there. and they're gone know it's always good to keep control of the discussion. good luck trying oh i gave up about 45 minutes ago so it took a lot of courage what you did and what fellow warriors and crusaders did. do you think america still has the courage that we need to address these issues? the courage is there, but is buried pretty deep. oh, and i want to point out, if

you saw the washing in post the other day with the picture of this civil rights person who died, dory ladner beg, front page obituary with two color photos and she and i were classmates. we were dormitory room mates and we were sorority sisters. so any deltas out there just, you know, y'all, the front page of the washington post, that's not shabby. no, of course you're not from. but other than that, they probably didn't read it, but. well, maybe we'll send it to them. okay. tell me about your foundation. you've got a foundation. i was my son's founder, and i got nothing to do with it. well, i self books and dvds. he set up that foundation with my name on it with asking

permission. but it's good it's to fight racism, to educate nation. it makes teaching materials available for classroom teachers, university types it you know speak and stuff like that and. it's a good thing but he should have asked permission to put mama's name on it, don't you think? i did that? you drive here with him? yes. be an interesting drive home. well, hassle them all the time. but you know, i've had lots of years of practice, 50 years of practice, drama. make that boy behave. but he is. and omega man. so i turned out a pretty good you know, one of the things in his book. there are all his books. yeah, his book.

but he quotes you there's quotes it. so it must be legit, right? maybe that strongly disagreed with is a quote from you that said i'm about as ordinary as they come. no, you're not. yes, i am. you're unique. and and you what you have accomplished is what america ought to be. and it's it's just absolutely incredible, your journey and. well, thank you, sir. and. so for the out there. like the war on poverty and these are tough times fighting poverty and inequality in america. yes. with congress and the debates and the two go hand in hand. yes, they do. i read your son's book and as i said on the introduction that

absolutely i could substituted the word war on poverty every time we talked about civil rights the absolute parallel stories. oh part of civil rights was yes fighting poverty. yeah. we had we had a debate, a couple of days ago and that we had some some of the people from the dark on that debate. and that was very much part of their their rhetoric. but what are you as one who takes as you should, rightly so, satisfaction from a very, very substantial that helped change america. what do you say to to young people today who might be in hope and faith that america will continue its long, long effort toward a more perfect union?

well, i encourage young folks when i'm speaking to them, to pick a problem that really bothers them. they still their problems out there. my generation care of segregation by law but that underlying discrimination is still alive and well picked the part that bothers them the get together some friends get a direct plan of action i mean get a specific plan of action. always have your lawyers phone number if you're going to take direct action, it's best to have it like a written your wrist or something and just take it to the streets, get out there and do something and have focus on your on goals with the objective. yeah. and be prepared to take risk. definitely yeah.

life in general is a risk and it's better to die for a cause you believe in than trying cross the street with the light in the crosswalk and get hit by a car and killed and yeah it is. and and i'm also finding moderating those conversations with you somewhat risky so it's it's it is the the other that associate with you you son discusses it in his book is perseverance and it took a lot of person there had to be moments that think it was there that man is this fight worth it is this risking my life worth it and yet you trudged on every single day you're not going to turn know let your friends down. in fact if we see each other

today, the view little is still left alive. it's like old times, you know. we get a hug and we pick up the conversation where we left it off. yeah, that that the person paid paid dividends for america. i want to end with i think we've got a couple of minutes we might be able to take one or two questions from the audience. i want to to end my part of this in saying as similar to what i said a few minutes, and that is what a remarkable, remarkable life you've led. what incredible change you helped bring about in america? not as fast as we all would like it. it's a long journey, but it's a worthwhile fight. and so it is really, really honor to meet a a fighter, a warrior and a person with your

qualities, particularly in these difficult. so i thank you. thank you. let's take one or two questions from the audience. they're speechless speechless. yeah. oh, you got to wait. hurry up and wait. yeah. good morning and thank for just your story and for all that you did for the movement. one question that i have is you named a lot of the well-known leaders in the civil rights movement. there are women such as thea hall with, dorothy height and others. is there a little story that you would tell about women in the movement, particularly black women, the backbone of the movement? it was the women who made it

happen and starting. wouldn't have happened without. the women leading the charge. okay, i think we have nobody else. you ought to hear. and we got time. time. one more. one more question. if there is one from out there. come on, guys. okay. i got the last question from. jan wilson. thank you. i really appreciate you. i'm about 11 years younger than you and always was quite concerned that i was not able to participate like you did because of the age difference. but i have a question now in your reflection, and i know you have an. we'll see if you have an opinion

on this. seems to me a native seems to me that the churches today aren't as involved the pastor leaderships aren't as involved in the social issues like they became then. and i'm wondering what you're since you're still connected, what your thoughts are about that. i mean, that was also a very pivotal engine for the movement. the churches, the pastors, the leadership. i know not all the churches were involved, but it was significant. and i don't see that type of joining together now. so what do you think about that? i think you. right. i think it's moved from the churches to the lawmakers and, you know, that type of thing, civic interest groups. but i think the churches are not as influential throughout society on any topic as they

were and it'd be nice for them to make a little comeback. but we need everybody, the groups, to keep moving us forward. we need moral outrage, which is, in short. yes. and and we need the faith community, too. yeah. and the more conservative branch of the faith community is not going the direction. i would like to see. you think so? yeah, i agree. i agree. well, it's been a fascinating hour. let's give joan warm, warm welcome and thank you. thank you.

welcome back for our c-span viewing audience is history. 134 spies, assassins, martyrs, witches, famous trials in american.

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