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(chiming sounds)
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(piano notes) (fabric rustling)
(static)
(static continues)
(car engine humming)
(intense wind)
- [Ella] Those in power, don't abdicate early easily.
It's such a
Such a sort of, satisfying thing, I guess,
to be in power.
(overlapping chatter) (whistle blowing)
(footsteps falling)
Everybody waiting for the great person
to tell you what to do.
And they usually, the great persons usually told you to do.
If you looked around, they weren't there
when the showdown came.
(whistle blowing)
- [Officer] Go home or go to your church,
this march will not continue.
- [Ella] What I do,
- [Officer] See that they disperse.
- [Ella] is supposed to speak louder than what I say.
(marching footfalls)
(siren sound)
(screaming)
(whistle blowing) (screaming)
(horns honking)
(hooves beating on pavement)
(drum sounds)
(siren)
(drum sounds) (screaming)
(overlapping shouting)
(shouting continues)
- [Speaker] Last Sunday,
a group of negro Americans in Selma, Alabama
attempted peacefully to protest the denial of the
most basic political right of all.
The right to vote.
- People have to have faith in themselves
and they can only gain that faith by being given the
opportunity to grow.
And when people value what they can do,
they don't have to look around,
find a great leader
to do it for them.
(helicopter blades whirring)
(intense music)
- [Reporter] Carrying nap sacks,
bed rolls, and air mattresses,
they stream onto Highway 80, walking briskly.
Their day's journey, 17 and a half miles.
Putting them halfway from Selma to Montgomery.
The marchers then passed from Dallas County
into Lowndes County,
where until this month
not a single negro was registered to vote.
- [Arthur] You always hear Selma to Montgomery.
The most mileage of the march from Selma to Montgomery,
took place in Lowndes County.
That dash in your life is,
when you were born and when you die,
but the dash will make the difference.
(somber music)
Lowndes County,
was one of the poorest counties in the country,
and we was right next door to Montgomery
where the capital city sits.
So it was kind of rough growing up and we didn't have
running water in our homes.
First shower that I took was in,
at Havre High School in the gym.
This was in the early sixties.
- [John] During that time
we were looking for better education.
We didn't even have library,
didn't have a lunch room,
didn't go to school half the year.
Cause we had to work at the age 3, 4, and 5.
It was cotton fields.
- [Arthur] My parents were sharecroppers.
We had five acres of cotton that we had to pick.
And once we finished ours, then
we had to help the land owners get their
cotton out of the field.
- [Catherine] Sharecropping replaced slavery.
It was another type of caste system where in order to live
on the property, one had to work the land.
And there was usually a store that was owned by the
plantation owner and whatever goods that they might need
were on credit.
- [Arthur] And some years, you would have a bumper crop.
A bumper crop is when you have extra,
you know just grow, grow, grow,
and you do real good,
but you never had enough
to get yourself so you could be free of debt.
- [John] This county was around 80% Black,
but there was no Black police officers, no nothing.
The reason we're not doing anything
'cause we don't have any power.
People are scared, people lost their jobs.
People lost their family hood,
because they wanted to go and register to vote.
(hammers hitting metal)
(indistinct chatter)
- [Carolyn] I don't remember ever talking about race
growing up.
It felt like sort of the safest possible world a young child
could grow up in.
(somber music)
(gate clacking)
(cash register rings)
- [Margaret] It was a very peaceful, almost idyllic place.
The only Black people that I knew were the ones who worked
for us in our family. And we loved them.
- [Carolyn] When I was 17,
I had an experience that
kind of pulled the curtain back for me.
A girlfriend and I were riding around on country roads.
Like, that's what we did for entertainment.
I mean, there wasn't any entertainment.
There was a young Black man who tried to,
did like that,
tried to wave us down.
I didn't think anything about it,
but my friend got really upset,
thinking he was trying to stop us.
She wanted to go tell somebody about it and
he was killed that night.
I'd heard that he
lived on the land that some white people owned
and that often they would give him a ride
if he waved them down,
and that we had a car that looked like theirs.
- [Catherine] You know, I was a kid,
but I knew that there was a reputation of violence.
In my home, we had guns in every corner.
My father taught all of my brothers how to shoot.
And that was common in every home in Lowndes County.
- [John] A lot of Black people came up missing.
That's why it was called Bloody Lowndes.
- [Hasan] Lowndes County was 80% African American.
Then at the start of 1965, had zero registered Black voters.
And that's not hyperbole, right?
I'm not saying that there were a couple
and we're just saying zero.
There were no Black people
registered to vote in Lowndes County, Alabama
out of some 5,122 who were actually eligible to vote.
- [William] People were followed.
They would write down people's license plates.
People could lose their jobs.
Your car loan might come due in its entirety, for example,
if you were found to be trying to
register African Americans to vote.
(indistinct chatter)
- [Hasan] John Hulett is native of Lowndes County, Alabama.
After high school, graduates from Lowndes County
Training School, leaves Lowndes County, Alabama,
and heads to Birmingham.
There's a very active NAACP chapter
in Birmingham, Alabama
and John Hulett joins, becomes a part of it.
And then in the 1950s, he returns to Lowndes County.
Not because he was driven by a desire
to transform Lowndes County,
but because he had some family issues to take care of,
but he also comes back as a registered voter.
And when he comes back and he's sort of surveying the land
and taking a sense of the pulse of the community, he's like,
"You know what? We need to be doing some stuff down here too."
March 1, 1965, John Hulett, his wife,
a group of 39 others that he had been talking to decide that,
"We're gonna go down to the county courthouse and see if we
can't get registered to vote."
He goes right into the registrar's office, Carl Golson,
big old former football player, car dealer.
You know, he's one of the county registrars.
And he sees Hulett and these three other Black man
barge in, "Don't you know how to knock?"
And Hulett's like, "I didn't come here to knock,
I came here to register to vote."
I mean, that's throwing down the gauntlet.
You know, Golson can't do anything, but throw him out.
and he also says,
"If y'all are serious, y'all wanna register,
y'all wanna do this? Then leave all your names.
We wanna know who's showing up,
which of y'all have the gall to challenge white power."
They were literally putting their lives on the line.
Every single one of those folk who showed up,
they put their names on a sheet of paper and they brought it
back and they gave it to Golson and said, this is who we are.
And then two weeks later,
a slightly larger group show up again, saying,
"Look, we're back, right?
You have our names. You sent people to visit us.
We lost some loans. We lost some business, but we're back."
And then after that second meeting,
they realize, "If we're gonna do this,
then we need to be organized."
(somber organ music)
And so in late March they formed
the Lowndes County Christian Movement for Human Rights.
- [Lillian] We were Lowndes County Christians,
and we wanted human rights.
That's all we wanted.
27 local people came.
We met there every Sunday night and every Wednesday night.
And I became the secretary,
and as fast as they could say it, I could put it down,
and they could call it back, say,
"Ain't never seen, nobody could do that like you."
- [Ed] John Hulett was the President.
The first meeting was held
at the Mount Gillard Baptist Church,
which I was a deacon at.
- [John Hulett] They control the equipments
that goes into these schools.
In fact, they control the entire counter.
They controls everything.
- [Ed] We started by,
I believe around 1960 I believe it was.
I'd served in the army for a couple of
years and still didn't have the right to vote.
And I wanted that right.
- [Lillian] We wouldn't charge our own movement,
and that people trying to vote either was run out,
frightened out or terminated out.
(footsteps falling)
- [Martin Luther King, Jr.] I believe you've heard of Lowndes County.
That is an attempt on the part of the white power structure
to keep any kind of organization from taking place there and
to keep our workers out,
but I want you to know that this isn't going to stop us.
We are going to Lowndes County in a few minutes.
(applause)
- He had a boy's money, and you know
if he come over there and register
ain't gonna let him have it so that's holding a lot of people up.
- [MLK] So they're not gonna let 'em have the money if they're registered.
- Correct. - [MLK] Mm-hmm.
- I'll try anything one time, see how it works.
If it don't work, I ain't gonna bother no more.
- But you really believe that if you keep trying
you can register?
- I believe so. If I keep enough with me now.
- [Hasan] Black folk in Lowndes County
are not waiting for somebody to
descend into the county and lead them to freedom.
They are looking for help.
They are looking for those who have some experience
and know how to sort of navigate
this treacherous terrain to help them
do the things that they need to do to get to freedom on
their own terms.
But Dr. King,
with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
wouldn't establish a presence.
You know, King was like, "Yeah,
y'all need to, don't mess with Lowndes County."
You can't do anything down there. It's too dangerous, right?
It's too crazy. Bloody Lowndes you're a fool with that.
We don't even know where to begin.
- [Lillian] We'd been out here a hundred years,
nobody had come,
and we were able to put enough together
to a massive meeting.
And the church would be flowing over till
we had to get a second crowd.
Without their help, so
- [Hasan] While participating
in the Selma to Montgomery march, SNCC,
which stands for the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
they're talking to local people
and local folk in Lowndes County, They said, "You know what?
You need to talk to some of these other folk who just formed
this movement organization. They're doing something."
SNCC activists reach out to John Hulett and some of the
others. And they say, "Hey, we're here to help.
What can we do?"
(funk style music)
- [Reporter] During the early weeks of February, 1960
The demonstrations that came to be called
the Sit-in Movement
exploded across the south.
- I'm sorry,
our management does not allow us to serve niggers in here.
- [Reporter] For the first time
the community was confronted with negros
in places where they had never been.
- [William] SNCC comes out of the sit-in movement
that began in the spring of 1960.
Ella Baker, a veteran organizer
sees this and she calls together a conference
of some of the student leaders from the sit-in
movement, and they create this organization,
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
- Young people working with the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee or SNCC,
as we call it are characterized by restless energy,
radical change in race relations in the United States,
their world is upset
and they feel that if they are ever going to get it straight,
they must upset it more.
- [Ella] And this was SNCC.
Now how they got that way,
it didn't happen overnight,
but there was a need.
- [Courtland] I would say the two dominant groups in the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
are the people who came out of the
Nashville Student Movement.
That's John Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette,
and the Howard University people,
Stokely, Cleve Sellers, myself.
And the one thing Ms. Baker said to us
"Do not become a youth
division of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference."
- [Ella] What was needed
was not what we had been working with before.
I knew enough about the egos that were involved.
I better stop me from talking. I might tell the truth.
- [Stokely] The method of SCLC,
was to come through to a town
that was suffering under oppression.
Rabble rouse the town, agitate the town,
bring out the town, and mobilize activity to hit against
levels of injustice.
Here, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King,
being one of the greatest mobilizers
played a crucial role.
And so once you knew that Dr. King was coming to a town,
that was it. That town was going to turn out.
There was no question here.
You would come mobilize the people, kick up a lot of dust,
and then leave. Maybe a legislation would be passed,
but where there would be no organized force here,
even to take proper advantage of that legislation,
which was passed.
- [James] You know, we wanted, you know,
a movement that would survive the loss of our lives.
And then therefore then the necessity to build a broad based
movement and not just a charismatic leader.
- [Hasan] Atlanta would house the headquarters of SNCC
with Ruby Doris Robinson and Judy Richardson,
making sure the organization as a whole ran efficiently.
- [Judy] When I first come in the organization,
I don't know any of the stuff all these people know.
They're all brilliant to me. Everybody's brilliant.
There was such courage.
There was this sense of
"We're not gonna let anybody stop us.
And we're changing the world."
- [William] There was no age limit.
People involved with SNCC were like four and five years old
in some cases, or they could be in their eighties.
You know, SNCC just touched
every single person in a community that
wanted to become involved.
- [John] The majority community was positive about SNCC,
but they were afraid.
Some of 'em didn't want to get caught up in
They didn't know what was gonna happen.
- [Judy] We know
that there's a reason why it's called Bloody Lowndes.
It is called that because of the absolute unrelenting
violence, if you're trying to get Black rights.
If you're trying to register to vote,
if you're trying to get more land, I mean,
some of it is just random violence.
(siren)
I'm amazed that Black folks,
somehow knowing the violence they've been experiencing all
this time before we ever get there,
and they still organize, and still they try and vote,
and still they do all the things
that are about being a vital part of this democracy.
- [Hasan] Stokely Carmichael is the project leader.
By that time he was a veteran organizer himself.
He's still only 22, 23 years old,
but he had been organizing for four or five years.
You know, he's been arrested you know,
almost two dozen times.
I mean, he knows how to do what it is he's trying to do,
but he's also committed to Ella Baker's philosophy of
democratic organizing, grassroots organizing, bottom up organizing.
And Carmichael talks about this. He's like,
"There will always come a moment early on where the
people on the ground are going to observe you in your
interactions with the powers that be."
(children chattering and playing)
While Carmichael and SNCC are handing out flyers
for a mass meeting,
the Black principal at the segregated Black high school in
preserving his little fiefdom of power, calls the police.
And so the police come in and they're like, you know,
"What are y'all doing?"
And Carmichael he's like, "I know exactly what to do,"
right? He's like, "I'm gonna call these police out."
So the police have come in and they're like
"Look you", you know "You can't do this."
And he's like, "Why can't I do this?"
Right? He's like, "I have a right to be here."
- [Wendell] We hadn't heard anybody
that would talk to white people,
the way that SNCC talked to white people,
straight to their face in a language that they understood.
- [Hasan] So they fall back and they huddle up.
It's like, "Okay, well we're gonna tell them to figure out what we gotta do."
And Carmichael is like, "Hey, y'all need to hurry up.
You either gonna arrest me or you need to let me do what I gotta do."
- [John] And he wasn't afraid.
And all those SNCC people knew how to work together and help
each other and taught us that.
- [Carolyn] I heard about Black people
coming from outside the area to organize.
Just a lot of anxiety about what that was gonna mean.
- [Margaret] The implications of voting
meant that there would be
different people in control
and very, very much worried about outside agitators.
(funky music)
- My name is Ruby Sales and I'm a SNCC field secretary,
worker in Lowndes County, Alabama.
Well, I ended up in Lowndes County
cuz that's where Stokely was working.
I joined SNCC because Stokley made it sound so liberating,
so exciting, so much what I wanted to do.
And the first day that I was in the county registering
voters and the sheriff put a gun to Stokely Carmichael's
head and said, "Nigger, tonight you'll be in Hell.
Stokely said, "And tonight Hell will be integrated."
That was it for me. I was in.
I had come from this very sheltered environment and suddenly
I'm face to face
with all the hedonist crimes of white America.
It was nothing to be riding down Highway 80 and suddenly a pickup truck,
of white men pulled from the side of the road and start
chasing us with their guns, hanging out the window.
And Stokely Carmichael would have to drive
90 miles an hour to
make sure that they wouldn't kill us.
- [Stokely] I mean, fear is just gonna immobilize you.
You're dead already.
So there's no fear here.
I just have to learn to drive effectively so that when they
chase me, I'll be able to dodge them
and they would have run into a truck,
or run into a ditch or leave them in the smoke.
There was no fear here. It was just clever response.
Survival instincts at its best.
(laughs)
- [Ruby] Everywhere we looked there was danger.
- Do you want these people taking all these pictures?
- Well, it's fine with me if it's not going hurt us.
- It's not gonna do you any good.
I'll tell you now.
- Yeah sir.
- No, no.
- [Ruby] And to them we were not citizens,
to them we were not human beings.
We were enemy combatants.
I was there about five months before I got arrested.
After seven days we were released from jail.
No one had come there. We had not been let out on bail.
We were just suddenly released.
And we had understood what had happened
with Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney.
When that happened with them.
(ominous piano music)
That day we were released, it just didn't feel right.
And the sheriff says, if we didn't leave,
he'd blow our brains out.
So we left against our will.
And it was one of those hot, hot Southern summers
where you could literally see the heat
palpitating from the cement.
Jonathan Daniels,
who was a seminarian who had joined the Lowndes County struggle.
We would drag race together in his Volkswagen,
we would put the pedals to the metal
and we had to go fast
and we were friends.
And we were walking with Father Morrisroe who had come down with Jonathan
and a local young woman named Joyce Bailey.
The environment felt heavy,
but you know, we dismissed it and kept walking.
And we were thirsty.
And when we got to the front door of the store,
This man was standing in the store
whom I had never seen before.
And he says, "Bitch, I'll blow your brains out."
(gunshot)
(ominous music)
The assassin pulled the trigger and Jonathan pulled me back almost simultaneously.
That's how incredibly fast it happened.
- [Carolyn] Well somebody called me right after it happened and said,
"Tom Coleman just killed one of those civil rights workers,
and this town's gonna go off in flames."
- [Ruby] And before we could turn around
the next thing I knew someone had pulled me from behind
and I stumbled down the steps,
and I fell to the side, and then I heard a shotgun
blast, and I saw Jonathan Daniels fall down to the ground,
fall backwards on the ground from the top of the,
from the steps and he grabbed his stomach.
- John Daniels pushed Ruby to the ground.
And Father Richard caught me by my hand and jerked me around the car.
- And the man came out of the store,
hollering "All you Black mouths to get off of my property."
And then time he said that he fired again and shot Father
Richard in the back running.
- So I start running, and Ruby was on her knees crawling,
trying to escape.
- And she picked me up off the ground
and we both went across the street,
and we saw this guy that had shot Reverend Jon,
Jonathan Daniels and Father Morrisroe, standing over their
bodies as if, as if he was daring,
anybody to come and help them.
And we
All the time we could hear Richard lying in the street,
moaning, "Water, water, help, help."
And nobody came to help him.
- [Carolyn] And then I got a call saying, "Well,
now they're saying that one of the civil rights workers had
a knife and that it was self defense."
The town regrouped real quickly and the story got changed.
- [Bob] It was a murder.
It was a blatant, outright murder of Jonathan Daniels and the shooting of
Father Richard Morrisroe.
- [Carolyn] He was able to do that
because all the people who went to church,
and held respectable jobs,
they didn't confront him and challenge that.
It's not like Tom was acting in a vacuum.
- [Margaret] I feel sure that was not
the only violent thing that he ever did.
His family grew up next door to my family.
And I knew that Tom Coleman was prone to
I knew how he felt about Black people
and his job for the State of Alabama
was to maintain a prison camp.
In those days, low level prisoners worked on the yard, on the roads.
We were at a picnic as at his house one night when,
there was a telephone call and he came out of the house and said,
"I've gotta go.
The prisoners are out and I've gotta get the dogs."
And it seemed that he was looking forward to that.
- [Ruby] My parents had been threatened
by a group of white men who
had come from Alabama and told my father,
if I went to testify, they would kill my family,
but my parents didn't listen, listen to that.
They encouraged me to testify.
White people in the court were having fun yelling across the
aisle at each other, just, it was like a picnic.
Nobody was taking it seriously.
- [Reporter] Confident defense lawyers,
including the defendant's nephew had spent only 70 minutes
yesterday in presenting their case.
They argued Coleman acted in self defense in killing a
white Episcopal seminarian,
Jonathan Daniels and wounding father Richard Morrisroe on
a Hayneville street.
- [Margaret] The town gathered around him
and gave money to support his defense.
It's almost as if the town felt "He's one of our own and we need to protect him.
And he stands for what needs to be done that we can't do."
- [Reporter] The jury had met for an hour last night,
highway engineer and Special Deputy Sheriff left the
courtroom, a free man.
- [Ruby] All white jury, found him not guilty.
- That's the way it was, that you a deputy sheriff,
you could do anything you wanted.
There was no Black police officers, no nothing.
- [Ruby] Jonathan's death in the movement
showed the extent to which
White America was willing to go.
That they were willing to kill their own.
That whiteness demands a certain conformity,
not only from Black people,
but also from white people and anyone who steps outside that
line becomes an enemy for the ruling class.
(intense drum beating)
- [Stokely] We were not gonna back down.
They were not gonna destroy our will to resist.
(drumming continues)
(machine whirring)
(indistinct chatter)
- [John] SNCC would go in and listen to you,
and see what you wanna do, and wouldn't push you.
They didn't go by saying, "Hey, you done ready to vote?"
"Oh, hey governor, how you feeling?"
You ain't, you ain't sick today is you?"
If you didn't feel like you wanted to go register today,
they would laugh and say,
"Well we be back tomorrow and talk to you. See if you be ready."
- [Hasan] When SNCC first comes into the county,
they're not staying in Lowndes County, Alabama.
They're going back to Selma
where SNCC's regional headquarters was
and they're spending the night there.
And then they're getting up early and coming back into the
county and that's dangerous.
It's dangerous to be on the highway.
- [John] I said, my daddy got a empty house.
Y'all come down there and take a look at it.
They came down
and my father and Stoke and them hit right off.
First thing he said to him,
"There's no restroom in that house, that's the condition,
but y'all welcome to stay here,
and you don't have to run back to Selma,
they're not gonna come here and mess with you.
- His land was clear.
He didn't owe any money in financing his crops.
- [Courtland] There was no indoor plumbing,
there was no water,
there was a pump in the back.
They had a roof that leaked,
and they had one butane gas heater in the house.
So when it got cold,
you had to go into one room,
but it was very, very important to us
because it allowed us to be in the county.
- [Hasan] And this becomes their freedom house.
This becomes the base of operations
for SNCC activists for the next year and a half.
- [Mukasa] They protected us and kept us alive.
And all the neighbors,
people around had guns and they would protect us.
And they gave us guns to protect ourselves.
- Since the federal government is not going to protect us,
since the state government is not going to protect us,
and since the local government is not going to protect us,
then we have the right and a responsibility to protect ourselves.
- Non violence as a tactic in a public demonstration is at
this point effective.
But if you're an organizer you are talking about being on
the road to 3, 4, 5, o'clock in the morning,
sneaking on a plantation with the Ku Klux Klan laying in
wait for you.
The tactical name of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
stayed there.
But most organizers in the deep south
who worked for SNCC were carrying guns.
And these contradictions were clear.
- [Ruby] We were in a war.
America declared war on Southern freedom fighters.
(drums beating throughout)
- [Lillian] People were evicted from their shacks
that they were living in
because they were attempting to get registered to vote.
And the white people put 'em off of there.
So they didn't have anywhere to go.
And we were able to acquire tents and set up Tent City.
- [John] There were some people in Detroit
started a Lowndes County Christian Movement
for Human Rights, in Michigan.
So what they did was raise money and funds to keep us going
and to also provide the tents.
- [Hasan] Tent City becomes a shooting gallery
for white folk.
Black folk had to respond to that,
posting armed sentries, and guarding Tent City
just like they did the homes of movement leaders.
- [Wendell] You turned on that road and wasn't blinking your light and
blowing your horn, and it was night,
if you didn't get shot, you was gonna sure get shot at.
They were there to defend themselves,
their families and their community.
- [Josephine] The white peoples, they would be mouthing off, and hissing,
and calling us niggers and things like that.
They would shoot at us and try to scare,
but we wouldn't let that bother.
(children laughing)
The Blacks had been hidden behind the whites for so long.
And that was something we could make a start for ourself
and get out to register to vote,
and help others become registered voters.
And to find the word for themself.
(dramatic music)
- [Jennifer] Sometimes at night
in the freedom house, with our sleeping
bags scattered around the place,
terms like empowerment, liberation,
started to become a more frequent part of our discussions.
It was like being in a university
right there in that one little house in Lowndes County.
We were now tossing around ideas and tossing around the
question of "What happens next?"
Is it possible that what is happening in Lowndes County
could also take place in other places?
(funky music)
(crowd noise)
- [Arthur] I was a little kid. I might have been 12 or 13.
My mama would drag us, me, my sister and I.
Would take us to those mass meetings.
And of course they would inspire us talking about
registering to vote and a better day is coming.
- [Jennifer] They took us in, they welcomed us in our blue jeans and with our Afros.
Wonderful, honest conversations of local women,
feeling comfortable enough to sort of say
"Now, why do you all dress like that?
And with your hair, what does your family think about that?"
And then it wasn't surprising at all
that you'd find young
women in the county beginning to wear Afros
and beginning to dress like us.
- [Josephine] Each time we went
we learned something different you know?
And the peoples in Tuske
would come down and they set up schooling for the people you know?
And we went to school, like I said,
we had classes down here at the little road,
down here at the little school house.
We had sewing classes, we had cooking classes,
and we had schooling, math, arithmetic.
- [Catherine] My parents were often going to meetings.
And I just remember every time they went to a meeting and
Stokely was there, they would come back, fired up.
Yeah, my parents were the jailhouse lawyers of their community.
My mother did taxes,
I think a lot of people of a certain age group in our area
when they got social security benefits is because my mother
filled their paperwork out for them.
- [Lillian] We didn't have anything, but each other,
everybody helped everybody.
You may not know one thing. I may know something.
If I can help you get what you need done and you can help
me get what I need done,
and we both can help him get Everybody, get it done.
- [Jennifer] Ella Baker, the statements that she made like,
"Strong people don't need strong leaders."
The emphasis was on the organizing.
And if people are organized,
the strength will come from the work together.
- [Judy] You never become hierarchical.
You had to have everybody at least say that there was
consensus that even if they didn't agree with the particular
decision, they would at least not oppose it.
That was the whole idea,
because their lives were on the line.
- [Lyndon B Johnson] The real hero of this struggle,
is the American negro,
his actions and protests, his courage to risk safety,
and even to risk his life,
have awakened the conscience of this nation,
we shall overcome.
- [Hasan] This is when we often look away from,
sort this moment of civil rights.
We say the voting rights act has passed, right?
The white folk around the country, you know, in the north are like,
"Well, what else you negroes need?"
Right? "You got the voter rights.
You know we're done, right?"
- [Courtland] We weren't just interested in the vote.
We were interested in changing who ran the county.
If we're 80% of the county, why don't we think about power?
Because our view was,
if you wanted to end the brutality of the sheriff,
you needed to become the sheriff.
If you wanted better education,
you needed to control the mechanisms of education.
If you wanted to do the various kinds of tax assessors, tax
collector, you needed to assume all those positions.
- You weren't talking about overthrowing anything,
you were talking about being Becoming a part of it.
This was a drill and an effort to have Black people participate in government.
- [William] The organizers who came into Alabama
had been battle tested in Mississippi before, in 1964,
they appeared to challenge the entire political power
structure of the State of Mississippi.
- [Officer] Here you are
one one oh six Greenwood mobile unit one.
Here you are one one oh six Greenwood base station.
We got report about a Freedom House.
We were told that it was smashed in last night
by number of white men.
We're gonna check it out.
- [Lillian] We moved the whole national office
from Atlanta down to Greenwood, Mississippi
the summer of 1964.
- [Reporter] SNCC is conducting classes all over the state,
courses on the voter registration test,
literacy classes, courses in nonviolent action.
- [Courtland] Basically Roy Wilkins
and the leadership of the civil rights movement said,
all you could do with Mississippi is pave it because it was
such a dangerous place.
- Now are we subject to be arrested?
- [Speaker] Well.
- We could be arrested for trespassing,
but I think they'd rather shoot us than have us arrested.
- [Courtland] Freedom Summer was about
bringing the country to Mississippi and
creating the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that
eventually made the challenge in Atlantic City.
(ominous piano music)
- [Ella] The message that the Freedom Democratic Party believes, that a
political party should be open to all of the people who wish
to suscribe to its principle.
- [Hasan] The Democratic National Convention,
which occurs in Atlantic City in August of 1964
is really a pivotal moment
in the evolution of SNCC organizing in particular.
SNCC activists, just like local people are hopeful.
If they make the case,
that the reason why African Americans are not participating
in mass in the electoral politics in Mississippi is because
segregationist white Democrats are purposefully
and intentionally excluding them.
Then the National Democrats will have no choice,
but to replace the all white segregationist Democratic
Party with the newly organized Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party.
- [Edwin] Here in Convention Hall,
the Credentials Committee is now hearing the case put
forward by the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
- The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party is in the same
historical position as the Underground Railroad.
- They come seeking the fulfillment
of their dream for democracy.
For here the very idea
of representative government is at stake.
- Is this America,
the land of the free and the home of the brave,
where our lives be threatened daily
because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?
- We're sitting there saying, we'll do the platform.
We'll do the nominee.
And still the Democratic Party would not allow for us to
take those seats because Lyndon Johnson is afraid
he's gonna lose all of those racist white democratic
senators, democratic Congress people.
You know, because at that point,
the races hadn't gone into Republican Party.
They were all Democrats. They were Southern Democrats.
There's a big meeting with Martin Luther King and a lot of
the heads of the civil rights movement.
Some of them try and convince the Mississippi Freedom,
Democratic Party delegates that they should go for what is called the compromise.
Two seats at large,
not representing Mississippi, but at large.
So they won't be the official Mississippi democratic delegation.
And the MFDP delegates say, "No."
You know, as Miss Hamer says, "We didn't go - come all this way for no two seats."
You know, "When all of us are hurting."
- And it is considered a massive betrayal,
they can't count on a Democratic Party to win this for them.
They can't count on Johnson.
They can't count on the National Civil Rights leadership.
They have to be outside of the system in order to win.
(firework explosions)
- [Lillian] So yeah, the MFDP left without it being recognized and they went
back and they continued,
but what they went back understanding was
that politics wasn't about morality.
Politics was about power.
- [Jennifer] Jack Minnis was the primary researcher for SNCC.
He started looking at the laws for the State of Alabama and
realized that you could have an Independent Party
in Alabama. You didn't have to go through the Republican or the
Democratic Party.
And this laid the groundwork for what eventually became the
Lowndes County Freedom Organization.
At this point,
Alabama was horrible in terms of its literacy rates.
And so political symbols were very important because instead
of being able to read your candidates names,
you'd look for the symbol.
The symbol for the white Democratic Party in Lowndes County
was a white rooster,
-with the motto -(rooster crows)
"White supremacy for the right", emblazoned around it.
- [Wendell] So then if you are voting
under that white rooster banner,
then you really for voting for white supremacy.
- [Hasan] And so we ask Ruth Howard,
another SNCC veteran to help us out,
and Ruth Howard thinks about it
and goes away and comes back.
And she presents to the folk of Lowndes County,
a soaring white dove.
(dove coos)
And they look at sister Ruth and they're like,
"You know what? We appreciate the effort.
However, this is not about peace right now.
This is about power."
So she takes a trip back to SNCCs headquarters in Atlanta.
And while she's there,
she makes note of the mascot for Clark College,
which is a Black Panther.
And she presents the snarling leaping Black Panther to the
folk of Lowndes County. And they're like, "There you go.
This is what we're talking about." Right?
John Hulett would say,
"Cats are peaceful animals until they are backed into a
corner. And when they're backed into a corner,
they come out fighting for life or death.
And that's the situation that we find ourselves in."
- And our intentions was not to get out and be rowdy.
We just wanted an emblem and that served our purpose,
but it's frightened the devil out a lot of white people,
and some Black ones too, I suppose.
- [Courtland] All these people had not voted in their lives.
And you're now saying,
you not only want to get them to vote,
you want them to move to run the county?
- You would've thought that it was a standup comedy act.
You know "Me a sheriff? No, no, no."
And why not? He said, "Well, I don't know what the job is."
- So we decide, "Okay, we have to have mechanisms
to really both educate and bolster the confidence of people.
So we decided to use comic books.
We took all the complicated law of, responsibility of
sheriff, of tax assessor,
tax collector and boiled them down
to their essence.
- We had just printing paper, pencil, a few ballpoint pens.
I knew my illustrations were going to be really crude and
Courtland said, "Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that could work."
- [Hasan] And you know, you look at it.
And you say like, "I get the sheriff thing.
You want to end police violence, but a coroner,
a tax assessor, like how is that gonna lead the revolution?
But it was critical to the lives of Black folk.
The tax assessor historically had always overtaxed Black
landowners and under taxed white landowners and white
landowners were the ones who had all the land.
And so part of the reason why the county was so poor is
because taxes were unequally assessed.
- [Jennifer] SNCC held workshops,
both in Atlanta and in Lowndes County
to make people aware of what it meant to hold office.
- [John] We had a mass meeting at the church
and nominated our candidate.
(funky music)
- [Hasan] Three candidates for school board,
a candidate for coroner,
tax assessor,
tax collector, and sheriff.
- [Stokely] We gotta vote for people
who've been in the cotton fields like ourselves,
and they're the ones who are gonna bring us out the cotton
field.
Now the law says that you can't vote in ours
and also vote in the Democratic Primary,
which has to be held on the same day, according to the law.
And if we get one of those candidates picked,
then on November 8th,
their names will go on the ballot box and we'll vote on the
this for Black Panther.
So where you gonna be on May 3rd?
- Right there.
(laughs)
I'll be there.
- Okay, we'll see you later.
- Okay.
(funky music)
(crowd noise)
- I don't care nothing, that
the first thing they say "I was raised with a nigra,
I grew up with colored folks."
That's right, you grew up with 'em,
you out there working in them crackers
fields while some of you ladies in there take care of that
little white nasty babies,
(crowd laughing)
and it's time to stop it.
Right now you got the power, you got the power.
- [Jennifer] People didn't just leave work to come and vote.
They got dressed.
They got dressed in their Sunday finery,
standing tall and proud casting their ballots,
for their candidates,
for the Black Panther Party.
- [Stokely] 80% of the people here are Black people,
and if they're the majority,
this county has been run by 20% of the people who are white,
who have seized power illegally
and who have maintained power
through all sorts of terroristic manners.
The rest of the country ask now that these Black people get
with these white people and reform these white people.
And I say to the Black people that we don't have to bear
the cross for them,
let us form our own party and let them take care of their
own business. So we form our own party and we seek power.
We don't seek integration.
That's irrelevant to what we want. We want power.
And this is the way we get it.
- [Hasan] And they get a lot of criticism from liberals,
white liberals,
but then also from Black moderates who are like,
"No, no, no, you're supposed to be supporting the Democrats,
you can't go your own way."
- [Courtland] All of the establishment,
the white establishment, newspapers,
the Washington Post, New York Times,
were saying that what we
were doing in Lowndes County was reverse racism.
That our desire to have Black people, not only vote,
but being in control,
was something they saw as a fundamental threat.
We saw it as a fundamental necessity.
- [Hasan] They had to meet the same day
as the Democratic Primary, and the May 3rd, 1966,
Democratic Primary was the first primary in the south
since the Voting Rights Act.
You have African Americans who are running against
segregationists.
Well, as it turns out,
those Black Democrats essentially all lose, that white,
moderate, Alabama vote, that we still waiting on,
never materialized.
And so all that's left are these Black Panthers.
They spend that summer organizing support for the party,
trying to get more Black folk registered to vote,
trying to get these folk to commit to vote
for the Lowndes County Freedom Organization candidates,
for the November election.
- [Speaker] Pull the lever!
Lowndes County Freedom Organization.
Pull the lever!
- Doing all right? - Alright.
Give your mother and father one.
- [Sidney] Everybody!
This is Sidney Logan, Jr.
Your candidate for our sheriff of Lowndes County.
- I plan to run it straight down the line.
Protect the citizens of the whites, as well as the colored.
- Rob Logan is my name.
You realize that we have several candidates running for office in this county?
I'm one of them,
running on the board of education place number three.
In our school, we'll need
hot lunch program,
good loving-hearted teachers,
and a good principal.
- [Hasan] There are no major demonstrations or marches.
This is a play for power.
Most SNCC activists at the time
believe that the problem of racism,
the problem that Black folk were facing, was political.
And if it was political, you needed political solution.
And John Lewis, who was the chairman of SNCC at the time,
one of the last people within SNCC, you know,
who was still viewing this as fundamentally a moral issue.
So John Lewis is a little bit out of step with SNCC as a
whole. And so in May of 1966,
Carmichael is elected Chairperson.
He immediately has a new platform.
And then the James Meredith March hits.
(airplane engine overhead)
- [Drill Sergeant] Hey, hey, what do you say?
(soldiers shouting)
(Sergeant and soldiers continue)
- [Reporter] It was here that civil rights leaders from around the
country made their pilgrimage to the bedside of a young
negro who was gunned down on the highways of Mississippi.
- [Mukasa] James Meredith was a young student
that integrated to University of Mississippi.
- [Bystander] Go home nigger!
- [Mukasa] Riots broke out, people got killed.
James Meredith felt that even though you passed the Voter's
Right's Bill, people still have fear.
And he decided to walk from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson,
Mississippi 250 miles with a sign saying, "Register to vote,
have no fear."
And when he stepped out in Mississippi,
a white man stepped out the bush and shot him in the back.
- [Hasan] Even though SNCC activists
and SNCC organizers were opposed
to these large scale demonstrations and marches,
they say "We have to get involved."
Because they were guided early on.
This is freedom rise, Diane Nash.
You never let violence stop a protest.
You never let violence stop a local movement.
- [Stokely] My emphasis is in this march,
the momentum from this march is what SNCC is gonna deal
with. We're gonna use that momentum in the counties,
which we go through to organize Black people,
to take over the political structures in those counties.
They're gonna seize the power in those counties.
- [Hasan] As that march begins to take place.
SNCC organizers are fanning out into the cotton fields
saying, "Yes, we need to register the vote,
but we also need to have a program
around which we can organize."
And Ricks is going out and coming back and reporting like,
"Look, we had a mass meeting and I dropped the slogan.
I said, 'Black Power,'
And the people were all ready to go."
- [John] And I hear my dad talking about Black Power,
and what we were gonna do to them white folks
if we had Black Power,
we could burn the courthouse down.
If we had Black Power,
the crackers couldn't beat us. Couldn't kill us.
If we had Black Power. We'd take the land.
And then boy, they were going crazy.
"Black Power! Black Power!"
- [Hasan] Stokley was arrested in Greenwood.
And he's hot, he's pissed, right?
He's like, "I mean, how many times are we gonna do this?"
- [Mukasa] Stokely came back out of jail.
I told Stoke, "We gotta talk about Black Power."
And Stoke said, "Oh man, be cool on that."
- [Hasan] He heads out that night
to the mass meeting that's happening outside.
And so he gets up and he's talking about you know,
"I've been arrested
27 times or so. I'm not gonna be arrested anymore."
And off in the distance is Willie Ricks saying,
"Hit 'em with the Black Power,
hit 'em with the Black Power."
- The fact is they kept us out with their guns in the south
and in the north with their laws.
- Now hit it.
- Now we gonna get something
and we gonna get it to representing.
Now we ain't worried about whether or not it's all Black.
Don't be afraid.
- Now hit it. - We want Black Power.
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- We want Black Power!
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- We want Black Power!
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- We want Black Power!
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- We want Black Power!
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- We want Black Power!
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- We want Black Power!
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- That's right, that's what we want, Black Power.
And we don't have to be ashamed of it.
Now from now on when they ask you what you want,
you know what to tell them, what do you want?
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- What do you want?
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- What do you want?
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- That's right! Who do you want?
- [Crowd] Black Power!
- That's what we gonna get.
- [Reporter] As Black Power is taking over the march
as a rallying cry, its phrase maker,
Stokely Carmichael is seizing leadership from Dr. King,
who more passionately than ever pleads for nonviolence
to a diminishing audience.
- [MLK] This may represent a desire
to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage,
thereby subverting justice. On the other hand,
I want to make it clear that I absolutely understand the
the meaning of the phrase
and the need for power in our struggle.
- [Stokely] Don't let them scare you
with the word Black Power.
Everybody else got theirs, except us.
All we have is the color of our skin,
and we're ashamed of that.
- [Courtland] What we learned in Lowndes
was the whole discussion of power.
Stokely expresses nationally,
what we were talking about locally.
- All this week,
you've been telling the Mississippi marchers,
they must achieve Black Power.
What do you want them to do to get it?
- Well, I think
that what they have to do to get Black Power is to
organize themselves politically, to register,
to vote and to form independent political bases,
which will then allow them the chance to carry out and make
effective the changes they need
to bring about decent lives in Mississippi.
- [Paul B Johnson] Black Power is not a harmless phrase.
Don't be fooled by it.
It harbors the seeds of a hurricane of hate
and hostility that could sweep sanity aside
and introduce an era of anarchy that
would represent a real and present danger to the very fabric
of society in the United States.
- [Courtland] Wherever Black people are talking
about their being in power
or their being able to define reality.
There is always a counter attack.
- [Andrew] When white Americans
heard Blacks say Black Power and
clench their fist, in their mind,
Blacks were now going to do them,
all the evil things that whites had done to Blacks during
the last 200 years.
Now, I don't think that was in the thinking of even the most
militant Black men.
I think Black Power for them meant the right to determine
their own destiny.
- [Stokely] The projection of the term Black Power
came from the white press,
never from Black people in this country.
The debate about that was ranged among white people and the
white press and its in fact attempt to smear
and to distort SNCC.
And that is crystal clear in my mind that any white man in
this country knows about power.
He knows what white power is and he ought to know what Black
Power is and for the newspapers,
which have analyzed the power structure of Vietnam and the
power play in the Cold War,
not to understand what Black Power is in this country is
certainly ludicrous.
- [Ruby] What was the movement for,
if it was not for Black people to get power in a society
that rendered Black people powerless?
Nobody's problem
Has problems with white people having power that's
because white people have always seen Black Power as a
threat to their economic system,
as a threat to their identity about who they are as people
that Black freedom and Black Power is always a threat.
- [MLK] In any movement, you do have those moments when our debate will come into
being, and this is where we are.
We are engaged in debate trying to determine goals,
trying to determine the methods
that will be used to get there.
- [Reporter] Mr. Carmichael supposing the Black Panther
Party loses the election in Lowndes County,
What do you propose to do?
- [Stokely] Yeah, well first let me say
that the name of the organization in
Lowndes County is not the Black Panther Party.
The symbol happens to be a Black Panther.
The name is the Lowndes County Freedom Organization.
I'm very concerned about that,
you see, because Americans particularly white America have
been referring to as a Black Panther Party and that's their
problem with sex and color.
They do not refer to the Alabama Democratic Party as the
White Rooster Party,
and that happens to be the emblem of that party.
We are fighting for people to have free elections and that
this government and this country has a responsibility to the
Black people in Lowndes County to ensure them free elections.
(tense music)
- [Jennifer] When it came to November,
we were really worried about violence.
And I said, "Well,
we could make billboards," that we then placed around the
county on the land that was owned by Black farmers who would
give us permission to put them there.
They said, "Pull the lever for the Black Panther and then go home."
Don't stay around the courthouse. Get out of there.
There could be violence.
- [Speaker] Well, they uh found a chance of maybe
one or two getting in there.
If the white people don't get out and go to Canton,
they sitting around and not asking people to vote for 'em,
or get out and help 'em get the people to the pole.
But like it is, the niggers are out canvassing.
They canvassing all the time, day and night.
- [Carl] We don't anticipate any of 'em being elected on November the eighth.
Not any that are running I don't think would
Are qualified to hold office for which they seek.
- [John Hulett] They don't have
the experience because this is their first opportunity
to be running for public office,
but the job in which they're running for,
they have had several workshops and they have studied, they're keeping it up.
I feel like if these people are elected,
that they would be able to go into the office
and do as decent a job as anybody who has ever,
here in this county.
- You tell these people,
just what I've been telling them right here.
Hadn't we been your friends for years?
- Yes sir. Sure.
- Had we worked more of them than anybody in this country?
- Yeah, sir. Sure have.
- Right.
So, if you got in trouble. Who did you go to?
The white or the Black?
(laughing)
- Tell the truth now.
- All right. - (laughing)
(person heckling indistinctly)
- The Black Panthers will have slim chance, I believe.
Because they are afraid to vote because the land
owners hadn't told 'em to vote.
What kind of things is the thing would count up in this part of the country?
- We actually is voting for the Black Panther on that date.
And we expecting at least,
eight or nine hundred,
maybe more, negroes to be there on that date.
- [Speaker] Well, I just think
it would be the worst thing, ever was.
- I believe the negros as a whole you know,
they don't trust each other too much in office like that though.
They would rather a white man
would still be leading even in the sheriff
and other places.
Do you think the white people will turn out and vote?
- Yeah, I think they're gonna turn up ahead and vote.
I really think they gonna turn up ahead and vote.
(drum music)
(hooves beating against pavement)
(indistinct crowd chatter)
(crowd noise continues)
- [Wendell] This would be the first time
Blacks could get on a ballot in Lowndes County.
- [John] But there were a lot of people who came out,
white people realized that we had outnumbered the votes
were we to get any white votes or not.
- [Lillian] You're safe in numbers.
And if enough people show up, you'll see who gots fear,
especially when it's wrong.
(indistinct crowd chatter)
(somber music)
- [Lillian] We didn't know about all of these shenanigans that folks pull.
You know, we didn't understand absentee balloting,
white people voting with absentee ballots.
- [John] Dead folks start voting. Couldn't check them.
You couldn't see what was going on or nothing.
- [Hasan] People are beat up.
Large white landowners begin trucking,
Black plantation workers into the polling places and saying,
"Look, you're gonna vote for who we tell you to vote for,
and it's not gonna be for these Black candidates."
- [Arthur] I think they found some of the ballots
was thrown in Big Swamp Creek.
- [Wendell] The federal government wasn't any help at all.
They didn't put in place anything to stop all of those
illegal activities that were taking place around people voting.
So we did, we lost that election.
We lost the first time out.
(somber music)
(music continues)
(engine starting)
(tires crunching on gravel)
(light piano music)
(wind rustling leaves)
(choir singing "Go Tell It On the Mountain")
(congregation applauding)
- [John] Those people knew what happened.
They was ready to go again.
Was waiting on '68. That was '66.
- [Lillian] And every aspect of the political arena,
you wanted some Black person in there to plead our cause.
See what's going on.
- [Courtland] There was no turning back.
The concept that people who lived in that county who were
Black should not only vote, but they should be in power.
- [Ruby] Lowndes County was moving on with its own rhythm.
And it was time for us to begin to think about where we would go.
- [Hasan] SNCC organizers were guided by this belief
that "Our job is to work ourselves out of a job."
"If we do our job right then we won't be needed here."
It's also one of SNCCs last major local organizing projects.
(funky music)
- [Vann] Black Power pulls Stokely Carmichael
pretty distinctly out of step with the big civil rights organizations.
Puts SNCC in a totally different place.
- [Reporter] An organization called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
and as Chairman you say,
"If they touch one of our candidates in Alabama,
Watts will be like a Christmas party compared to what will
happen." That sounds like violence.
I ask you again,
what has happened to the non-violence of SNCC?
- I am non-violent now.
- [Reporter] But you might be violent?
- If you attack me.
- [Reporter] What's that?
- If you attack me,
I might be violent.
- [Reporter] In other words, you really
- In other words,
we're not going to march any longer and just have people hit
on us and just stand there and sing, "We shall overcome."
That's precisely what we're saying.
- [Vann] You see his trajectory from there,
become one that's much more Afrocentric,
that looks for alignment with Black
freedom movement leaders and organizations globally.
- [Stokely] We affirm the need
to reclaim our history and identify from
the cultural terrorism and degradation waged by the forces
of racism and self justifying white guilt.
Very few people get a chance to die for what they believe in,
few people believe in anything.
- [Vann] Many people consider
the end of the civil rights movement to be
when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968,
they consider that at least the end of the non-violent civil
rights movement. But I think if you look at King,
you look at the other organizations in 1968,
you see that they themselves thought that a lot of the most
important work was in front of them.
- [Jennifer] Some of us never left.
Some people from SNCC decided that this is it,
that they were going to stay in Lowndes County and make that
their life's work.
Bob Mants, is one of the key people who did that
and he got married and settled in Lowndes County,
and continued until his death to work there.
- [John Hulett] And after this long struggle,
we still have people who come out here on this Sunday night
and listen to us talk who have waited
faithfully with us in this county,
are still sending their
children to these overcrowded schools.
- [Person In Crowd] Yeah.
- Let me say this,
the elected officials of this county will do everything
possible to keep your children out of the best schools.
- [Person In Crowd] That's right.
- [Hasan] African Americans in Lowndes County
will continue to organize
under the banner of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization,
but the Black Panther recedes to the background
because of the way the Black Panther evolves over time.
(drum music)
- [Speaker] We must arm ourselves,
we have to put a shotgun in every door,
from community to community,
from city to city,
from state to state,
across this racist nation.
So we can have the power in our hand.
- [Hasan] The Lowndes County Freedom Organization
serves as the inspiration
for the Black Panther Party for self-defense
organized in Oakland, California in 1966,
but there are some real differences.
While self defense was central to the movement experience in
Lowndes County, they did not organize around the gun,
but in Oakland, California, it was different.
- [Singers] * Revolution has come. *
- [Crowd] Out the pig!
- [Singers] * Revolution has come. *
- [Crowd] Out the pig!
- [Singers] * Time to pick up the guns. *
- [Crowd] Out the pig!
- [Hasan] They're actually using displays of guns
to back down the police, but then also to organize,
to inspire, to rally African Americans.
The impetus was more about community programs and community
survival and policing the police,
than it was electoral politics,
but that's also one of the critical distinctions between
what we see in Oakland, California,
and what we see in Lowndes County, Alabama.
The Lowndes County Freedom Organization,
they merge with the statewide National Democratic Party of
Alabama, and that brings in some additional resources.
So in 1970, we see John Hulett who, you know,
was there at the beginning of the movement,
Chairperson of the Christian Movement for Human Rights,
Chairperson of the Freedom Organization.
He's elected sheriff.
- [Ed] First Black Sheriff of Lowndes County.
That meant a whole lot because they feel like they would be
treated with justice.
And the difference wouldn't be made in color.
- [Wendell] You began to see a change
in local government that no one living
had ever experienced before.
- [Speaker] John Hulett, Sheriff Lowndes County,
Lord have mercy. (laughter)
Power.
- [John Hulett] Truly, I felt one day it would happen,
but I never thought in terms of running for Sheriff,
I just hope it continues.
- [Stokely] It's good to be home again.
It's been quite some time.
We came into Lowndes County,
weren't too many people wanted to come into Lowndes County.
We came into Lowndes County,
we worked hard in Lowndes County.
All of us worked hard. I'm not just talking about Bob Mants,
myself, Scotty B., Willie Ricks, Ralph Featherstone,
and all the other young people.
We were young then, we're a little bit older now.
(crowd laughs)
Most of us are married, but we haven't stopped fighting.
We can never stop fighting.
The only reason you started to get a sheriff was because you
began to think that you could get a sheriff.
That's how you get a sheriff.
When you think you could get a sheriff,
then you get up and get you a sheriff, but before that,
you didn't think about a sheriff.
You didn't know about a sheriff.
You thought only white folk could be a sheriff.
You thought Black people weren't qualified to be a sheriff
until you began to think about being a sheriff.
We will consolidate our power in Lowndes County.
We will work to consolidate our power.
We will work to get more people elected who will speak for
us. We will do that.
We will continue to do that, but in the meantime,
we must set higher goals.
We must set higher goals.
We must seek to build a big nation,
a nation that will protect us.
(crowd applauding)
- [Wendell] And boy, they went jubilant then,
they were ready to take this county over.
- Charles Smith was the first County Commissioner,
and then of course, Miss Uralee A Haynes,
first female was the first superintendent
of Lowndes County that was elected.
- I ran for superintendent, got defeated by a few votes,
but put my head in the ring.
- I decided to run for mayor quite old and won,
and we did a few things.
(somber music)
- [Hasan] Unfortunately,
despite the tremendous gains
of African Americans in Lowndes County, Alabama,
the conditions for everyday Black folk
in Lowndes County have not substantially changed.
- [Catherine] It wasn't just about
taking over the courthouse.
It was also taking over the mechanisms to control the
economy, to make sure that it was equitable.
And that's where we lost out.
- [Vann] The farm committees are still
dominated by white folks,
and there's still rampant discrimination, dispossession,
that was not overturned by that movement,
but we live in a world
that is so heavily shaped by that movement.
If you want to go back and understand
why the racial wealth gap exists,
if you wanna understand why we're having these conversations
about reparations,
if you understand where those ideas came from,
I think you can do no better
than looking back at Lowndes County.
- [Lillian] I'm most proud of how we stuck together.
When I look back and think about it,
it was a dangerous time.
You get so afraid you just get tired of being afraid.
Every time someone try to defeat me I get it and go with it.
I know tomorrow's gonna be a better day.
- [Arthur] Because of what happened during the sixties.
It made an impact on my life and what I've had to deal with
and our families has really made a big difference.
I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you guys,
if these things haven't happened to us early in our life.
So it made a difference.
And we have to just make sure
that we continue to tell the story.
My children tell me all the time, "Daddy,
you done told me that before",
but we have to continue to tell the story of how we got to
where we are today.
- [Mukasa] This is Wendell Paris here.
How you doing right Reverend?
Hey, my friend.
- Stokely, got a neck down.
- Yeah.
- Our slogan was "Pull the lever with the Panther and go on
home." We kept saying that.
And now the whole church is saying,
"Pull the lever with the Panther and go on home."
- [Wendell] And go on home to protect your house.
- [Mukasa] Yes.
- [Wendell] Cause you know they coming.
- This is Matthew Jackson.
- Oh.
- He gave us land guns and his sons.
And this is good looking guy, that's me
when I was a young man
and we saying "Black Power, Black Power!
Black Power! Black Power!"
We had some powerful women too.
- [Wendell] Oh yeah, they were the backbone of the movement.
For every man you had at least five women.
- Whoever thought that me and you would be left standing?
- [Wendell] Oh you ain't kidding.
- [Mukasa] Huh?
- [Wendell] We gonna be here to tell the story though.
- [Mukasa] We telling it now.
- [Wendell] Got to tell it.
- My generation will not see the finish line,
but the generation that comes behind us will,
if they see the finish line, we have seen the finish line.
- [Judy] We know it's a new day, you know?
We know that social media is different from calling on the
telephone. But the basics I think are still the same.
And that is that you have to do grassroots organizing,
that will go beyond any individual demonstration, that will
continue beyond your existence in that community, that will
keep regenerating itself so that you always have some sense
of local people organizing in their communities,
and that you do bottom up,
so that the people who are most at risk,
get to say what those issues are.
- [Courtland] Lowndes County
introduced the discussion of power into the game.
- [Jennifer] Who is going to determine our fate?
This was a movement of the people there,
not something that SNCC created or did.
They invited SNCC in.
- [Judy] As my colleague, Courtland Cox always said,
the vote is necessary, but not sufficient,
but it is necessary.
As they're stripping away in Texas and Florida.
I mean, they are undermining democracy
and that's what they were doing back then.
- [Ruby] The truth of the matter is,
is that democracy has always been a foe
of white supremacists
and Black Power and white power cannot coexist in the white supremacist's world.
It has taken so long,
for us to really understand and significance of Lowndes County,
because the movement was predominantly Black.
The image of the Selma to Montgomery march was more of an
integrated image of Black and white people.
So for white people,
it represented for them a redemptive moment where it's
because Black folk were insignificant,
there was no redemption
in what we were doing in Lowndes County.
There's a danger,
when you allow people to rewrite your movement story and to
tell you what you were struggling for.
We had not asked the fundamental question.
"What does it mean to be free?"
We thought that freedom
meant the right to live like white people.
And we did not seriously consider
what did it mean to integrate into a burning house.
(somber music)
(rapid drum music)
(cymbals crashing)
(bass beats)
(jazzy song plays)
(music continues)