The Matt Walsh Show - August 20, 2026


The Real History of Civil Rights Part 1： A New Constitution


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 8 minutes

Words per minute

159.33

Word count

10,868

Sentence count

639

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

25

sentences flagged

Hate speech

32

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:30.000 If you ask American teenagers basic questions about American history, you'll quickly discover that they don't know much about it.
00:00:37.140 One Gallup poll found that most American teens are unaware that Columbus arrived in 1492,
00:00:43.300 more than two-thirds don't know that states' rights were an issue in the Civil War,
00:00:47.100 and three-quarters are unaware that the United States gained independence in 1776.
00:00:53.300 More interesting is what they do know.
00:00:55.420 In May 2008, two college professors gave 2,000 American high school juniors and seniors a simple prompt.
00:01:03.560 Starting from Columbus to the present day, jot down the names of the most famous Americans in history.
00:01:10.280 The only ground rule is that they cannot be presidents. 1.00
00:01:13.120 The top three answers were all black. 0.99
00:01:15.460 Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and, in first place, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.,
00:01:21.540 who was named by two-thirds of the students.
00:01:24.200 Benjamin Franklin, by comparison, was named by just 29%.
00:01:28.000 Thomas Edison made the top 10, but was outranked by Oprah Winfrey.
00:01:32.840 A similar survey of college students between 1975 and 1988 had radically different answers.
00:01:39.560 Their top choices, Betsy Ross and Paul Revere, didn't even make the top 10 by the mid-2000s.
00:01:45.980 This is because sometime between 1988 and 1995, things radically changed.
00:01:51.480 national heroes like George Washington and Ben Franklin were replaced with a new class of central
00:01:58.440 figures in American history. As the authors of the study put it by the mid-1990s, quote,
00:02:04.140 African Americans and women had moved to the center of American history. Ask any American
00:02:09.360 who went to public schools between 1995 and today, they'll tell you the central feature of their
00:02:14.380 social studies classes, as history became known, were the histories of slavery and the Civil Rights
00:02:20.640 movie. They likely remember watching videos like this one in school. We wanted to show you a clip
00:02:31.160 of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech there, but it turns out we couldn't.
00:02:36.360 That's because King's family owns the audio from the speech, and they wouldn't let us use it. You
00:02:41.320 might think that's weird. This is America. Surely you can use a short soundbite of an extremely
00:02:45.840 famous speech in an educational video and in most cases you'd be right but according to our lawyers
00:02:51.680 we can in fact we can't show quotes or read on air any portions of speeches owned by king's estate
00:02:59.040 it turns out his family has done all sorts of things to stop people like us including amazingly
00:03:04.160 releasing the speech as an album so they could secure special music rights they published his
00:03:09.920 life's work as a book to secure additional rights and recently blocked open ai from allowing users
00:03:15.360 to recreate King's likeness.
00:03:17.400 These gimmicks gave them total control
00:03:19.360 over how King is portrayed in media today.
00:03:21.960 Why would they rig our legal system like that?
00:03:24.540 Well, money is one reason.
00:03:26.260 When CBS broadcast portions of the I Have a Dream speech on air,
00:03:30.260 the family sued and the company settled.
00:03:32.560 King's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets.
00:03:35.720 But another reason is that they want to silence critics like us.
00:03:39.260 They need to protect his legacy and keep making money off him.
00:03:41.940 What they're doing makes it very difficult to honestly re-evaluate Martin Luther King Jr.,
00:03:48.200 and you're about to see why they don't want people to do that.
00:03:52.140 It turns out, the King you've heard of is a carefully curated creation.
00:03:57.100 His estate's efforts perfectly illustrate what the civil rights movement has become, 0.57
00:04:01.820 and as we'll show in this episode, what it always was, a gigantic lie.
00:04:06.800 Over the course of this video, we are going to judge Martin Luther King Jr.
00:04:11.060 not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
00:04:15.880 What you will see will shock you.
00:04:18.160 Some of it isn't suitable for young children.
00:04:21.260 We'll also confront the movement that he spearheaded.
00:04:23.920 Were his true aims a colorblind society or something far more radical?
00:04:29.400 Who bankrolled him?
00:04:30.920 What did other civil rights leaders think of him?
00:04:33.840 What unfolded behind the scenes in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963?
00:04:37.720 three? Was civil disobedience actually peaceful? And most importantly, is America today stronger,
00:04:46.020 more unified, and racially equal than before King's rise? These questions demand answers,
00:04:54.020 and as Americans, we are entitled to a full accounting of the civil rights movement and
00:04:58.020 its consequences. King's movement fundamentally transformed our country and our system of
00:05:03.160 government. That's why we're tackling the topic in two parts. First, the hidden history of the
00:05:08.680 civil rights movement, its key figures, agendas, funding, and scandals. And second, the profound
00:05:15.120 lasting changes to our society and their consequences. This is the real history of
00:05:22.380 the civil rights movement, part one, a new constitution.
00:05:33.160 Soon after making Martin Luther King Day a federal holiday, President Ronald Reagan
00:05:44.340 had some very nice things to say about the civil rights leader.
00:05:47.780 Today is Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.
00:05:51.040 Let us honor him by living the kind of lives that will make this dream, his dream, a reality.
00:05:57.720 But behind the scenes, and as late as 1983, when Reagan created the new federal holiday,
00:06:02.160 it wasn't always certain that it would come to be.
00:06:04.880 The proposal was controversial enough
00:06:06.540 that congressional leaders bypassed committee hearings
00:06:09.060 and rushed to vote on it.
00:06:10.480 They didn't want committee hearings.
00:06:12.240 This outraged North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms,
00:06:15.240 who delivered a speech on the Senate floor
00:06:16.940 in which he made some bold accusations.
00:06:19.760 He claimed, for example, that Dr. King, quote,
00:06:22.200 kept around him as his principal advisors and associates
00:06:25.140 certain individuals who were taking their orders
00:06:28.020 and direction from a foreign power,
00:06:30.300 referring to Soviet communists.
00:06:32.160 Dr. King, he said, was a highly controversial figure during his lifetime and remains so today.
00:06:38.140 Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy called Helms' speech a last-ditch stand against equal justice
00:06:43.620 and said that he would not dignify the comments with a reply.
00:06:47.980 They reflect no credit on this body.
00:06:50.720 When Helms gave fellow senators binders full of background research on Dr. King,
00:06:56.460 New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan described it as filth that has been distributed in this
00:07:02.320 chamber. The obscenity of putting on the desks of United States senators this packet of filth.
00:07:15.440 The bill ended up passing, but it was hardly unanimous. So what was so controversial about
00:07:20.840 someone who wanted everyone to just get along? Well, as it turns out, there's a lot more to
00:07:26.000 King's story than we've been told. Even Ronald Reagan knew this. Today, the job that Martin
00:07:31.400 Luther King Jr. started is ours to finish. While Reagan was praising King in public,
00:07:36.880 he was attacking him in private. When a former New Hampshire governor confronted the president
00:07:41.720 about King's communist ties, Reagan responded, quote, I have the reservations you have,
00:07:48.040 but here the perception of too many people is based on an image, not reality. He added that,
00:07:53.520 Quote, we will know in about 35 years whether Dr. King had communist sympathies.
00:07:59.040 And now, eight years later than Reagan expected, we do know.
00:08:03.800 It turns out Helms was right.
00:08:05.660 In 2019, following one of President Trump's declassification orders, thousands of pages of documents related to Mark Luther King Jr. were also made public, primarily FBI transcripts.
00:08:16.560 That's how we know that in October 1962, King's top advisor was a man named Stanley D. Leveson.
00:08:22.760 He was, according to the FBI, a shrewd and dedicated communist, and King has long been
00:08:28.240 aware of this.
00:08:29.460 The FBI launched his investigation into King not because he was a civil rights activist
00:08:34.080 or because FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover hated him, though that's true, but because King
00:08:39.960 was in constant contact with known members of the U.S. Communist Party.
00:08:44.040 The evidence regarding King's communist ties was so strong that the wiretap was personally
00:08:49.620 approved by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a liberal and political ally of King's. On a visit
00:08:55.160 to the White House Rose Garden, John F. Kennedy told King that the FBI considered Levison a
00:09:00.200 conscious agent of the Soviet conspiracy and that he was under very close surveillance.
00:09:06.560 Kennedy urged King to end his relationship with Levison because it threatened King's reputation
00:09:11.480 and Kennedy's political career. King continued to communicate with Levison anyway, mostly through
00:09:17.560 an intermediary. When the Kennedys discovered King didn't keep his word, that's when they
00:09:22.800 began wiretapping King's office and his home and his hotel rooms. Why did King insist on staying
00:09:29.120 in touch with a known communist who the president asked him to stop talking to? One reason is
00:09:34.780 because Leveson, who also served as a fundraiser for the Communist Party, was central to King's
00:09:39.680 operations. According to the FBI, Leveson was instrumental in making King a national and
00:09:44.680 international figure. James Wood, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's public relations
00:09:50.520 director from 1960 to 1962, quote, said that during that period, Leveson acted primarily as
00:09:56.420 King's business manager and donated large sums of money to him when funds were low. According to
00:10:02.000 Wood, Leveson was very close to King, had his confidence, and was one of the few people who
00:10:08.100 could get King alone, give him advice, and always have the advice accepted. King is a Marxist.
00:10:14.680 IRS documents show that in 1957 and 1958, Stanley Leveson, who had first met King only
00:10:21.560 at the very end of 1956, had arranged for King to receive a total of $10,000 in cash
00:10:27.160 gifts from himself and a close friend, 70-year-old Alice Rosenstein Lowy.
00:10:32.820 That's the equivalent of nearly $120,000 in 2026.
00:10:37.520 Leveson was so close to King that he played a role in determining the date of King's famous
00:10:42.040 March on Washington. Nine days after the march, on September 6th, 1963, a federal agent named
00:10:49.800 James Bland, chief of the FBI's subversive control section, wrote to headquarters that
00:10:55.320 Levison described King as a, quote, wholehearted Marxist who has studied it, Marxism, believes in
00:11:01.500 it, agrees with it, but because of his being a minister of religion does not dare to espouse it
00:11:07.060 publicly. King's communist ties were part of a concerted effort to destroy the United States.
00:11:12.620 In the process of surveilling King and his communist advisers,
00:11:16.100 the FBI discovered that, quote,
00:11:17.700 King, who is married, maintains intimate relationships with at least three women,
00:11:22.020 one in Atlanta, one in Mount Vernon, New York, and one in Washington, D.C.,
00:11:26.920 and that King's extramarital affairs while posing as a minister of the gospel
00:11:31.420 leave him highly susceptible to coercion and possible blackmail.
00:11:36.280 Most important, in view of his continued close association
00:11:39.440 and willingness to accept advice and submit to the influence of such communists as Levison
00:11:44.060 and his assistant Jack O'Dell, we should have as complete coverage as possible of King's
00:11:49.820 activities.
00:11:50.820 In early January 1964, the FBI placed a recording device in a room at the Willard Hotel in
00:11:56.380 Washington, D.C., where King was staying.
00:11:58.600 According to the transcripts, King and a Baptist minister from Baltimore were recorded discussing 0.99
00:12:03.400 which female parishioners, quote, would be suitable for natural or unnatural sex acts
00:12:09.180 When one of the women protested that she did not approve of this, 0.99
00:12:12.260 the Baptist minister immediately and forcibly raped her. 0.81
00:12:15.280 Handwritten notes in the margin state that King looked on, laughed, and offered advice. 0.99
00:12:21.260 During the course of his stay at the Willard, King is described as engaging in a sex orgy 0.86
00:12:25.660 with other reverends, excessively consuming alcohol, 0.78
00:12:29.320 and engaging in acts the FBI described as degeneracy and depravity.
00:12:33.860 And on the night before King was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, in December 1964, 0.74
00:12:40.520 police were called to King's hotel because a white prostitute was caught stealing money from King's brother, 0.57
00:12:45.740 the Reverend A.D. King. 0.98
00:12:47.480 An aide later confided to a friend that King's group was running naked, drunk white prostitutes up and down the halls of the hotel. 0.98
00:12:54.060 In total, the FBI transcripts we have access to suggest that King was a drunk, a pervert, 0.99
00:12:59.400 the likely father of a bastard child, and a hot-tempered boss who once threatened to 0.99
00:13:04.740 jump out a window when a woman refused to tell him she loved him. 0.98
00:13:09.080 The audio recordings of these events were bizarrely sealed by a federal judge named
00:13:13.380 John Lewis Smith in February 1977 for a period of 50 years, presumably to protect King's reputation.
00:13:23.720 Time is nearly up.
00:13:24.920 On January 31st, 2027, we'll finally get to listen for ourselves and millions of Americans
00:13:30.980 will likely realize that it's far past time to reevaluate King's legacy and that it might
00:13:36.880 be time to stop force-feeding the myth of Martin Luther King Jr. to American school kids.
00:13:43.940 If you spend your days thinking about history, you start to notice that people in the past
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00:15:14.360 The United States in the 1950s was a radically different country than the one we live in
00:15:24.040 today, and not in the ways most people would think.
00:15:29.040 For one thing, it was a biracial country with an overwhelming racial majority.
00:15:32.920 89.5% of the population was white, and 10% black, 90% of the population identified as
00:15:40.160 Christian.
00:15:41.160 country's population, roughly 150 million at the time, was less than half the population of the
00:15:46.960 country we live in now. New York, not California, was the most populous state. Cleveland was twice
00:15:52.700 the size of Miami. At the time, the city of Detroit was roughly the same size as Los Angeles.
00:15:57.980 You are about to witness the very exciting story of a city and its people. That city is Detroit,
00:16:06.600 Home of nearly two million people.
00:16:09.240 Detroit was known then as the Paris of the Midwest,
00:16:12.860 and back then was 84% white.
00:16:15.600 It was among the most prosperous cities in the world,
00:16:18.180 with some of the highest standards of living for both black and white residents,
00:16:21.640 thanks to America's post-war economic supremacy and a strong manufacturing economy.
00:16:27.500 Car manufacturing required large workforces,
00:16:30.220 so auto companies offered high wages and colorblind hiring practices.
00:16:34.400 They have been doing the kind of job that sprung the luxuries loose for every man.
00:16:39.980 Luxury and freedom.
00:16:42.860 According to political scientist Kevin Slack's book, War on the American Republic,
00:16:47.320 black workers constituted, quote,
00:16:49.400 20 to 30 percent of automotive workers in Detroit.
00:16:52.480 At the Dodge Assembly plant, black workers constituted an estimated 60 percent of the workforce.
00:16:57.520 Detroit in the 1950s was the closest America would ever be to economic equality.
00:17:02.080 In 1951, the median income for a black family in Detroit was $3,500, which was just barely below the national median of $3,700.
00:17:12.060 The nation had come a long way since the 1860s.
00:17:15.360 Detroit, an exciting place to be, to live, to grow, to work shoulder to shoulder, regardless of national origin, color, or creed.
00:17:25.540 As it turns out, the mid-20th century was an economic boom time for black Americans.
00:17:32.460 In 1940, 87% of blacks lived below the poverty line.
00:17:37.140 By 1960, that number had dropped to 47%.
00:17:40.380 In northern and western states in 1959, the mean earnings of a working married black woman were higher than a working married white woman, according to the United States government.
00:17:51.000 mean family incomes where both spouses worked were close to the same between both races outside of
00:17:57.580 the South. The economist Thomas Sowell points out in his book Civil Rights Rhetoric or Reality
00:18:02.720 that in the decade before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, quote, the number of blacks in
00:18:08.340 professional, technical, and similar high-level positions more than doubled. In other kinds of
00:18:13.180 occupations, the advance of blacks was even greater during the 1940s when there was little or no
00:18:19.240 civil rights policy. According to Sowell, quote, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented no
00:18:25.220 acceleration in trends that had been going on for many years. The percentage of employed blacks who
00:18:31.160 were professional and technical workers rose less in the five years following the Civil Rights Act
00:18:36.720 than in the five years preceding. The percentage of employed blacks who were managers and
00:18:41.580 administrators, was the same in 1967 as in 1964 and in 1960. The key factor in Black economic 0.97
00:18:49.420 improvement between 1940 and 1960 was the massive migration of Black Americans from low-income areas
00:18:56.380 in the South to high-income cities in the North. The scale of the migration is comparable in scale
00:19:02.360 to the mass influx of European immigrants to Ellis Island. As Slack puts it, quote,
00:19:07.860 Blacks took industrial jobs in cities like Chicago, whose black population rose 77% during the 1940s and another 65% in the 1950s, an increase from $278,000 to $813,000.
00:19:22.080 Non-white median annual income had risen faster than that of whites, almost quadrupling from 1939 to 1951, a fact not lost on American business, which estimated a black market of $15 billion.
00:19:35.620 dollars. Blacks started making major cultural inroads. Jackie Robinson made his debut for the 0.92
00:19:41.460 Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. The same year, Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed
00:19:51.000 forces. The American people as a whole know what's right, they know what's wrong, and they act on
00:19:57.740 what's right and what's wrong. And in the long run, this equal rights thing will become a part of the
00:20:03.960 custom of the United States as well as the law. In the 1950s, Hollywood started reducing overt
00:20:09.960 stereotypical exposure of blacks in films and started releasing all-black movies,
00:20:14.460 including Porgy and Bess and St. Louis Blues. The music I play is the music of our people.
00:20:20.140 It's not mine, it's theirs. Attitudes in northern and western states were shifting. Between 1951
00:20:26.340 and 1959, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, Colorado, South Dakota, Nevada, and Idaho
00:20:32.740 repealed laws against interracial marriage.
00:20:36.000 Minneapolis Mayor and future Vice President Hubert Humphrey
00:20:39.080 proclaimed this at the 1948 Democratic Convention.
00:20:42.620 There will be no hedging and there will be no watering down,
00:20:46.280 if you please, of the instruments and the principles
00:20:48.820 of the civil rights program.
00:20:53.640 As the North shifted, some parts of the Deep South 0.96
00:20:56.520 remained radically old-fashioned on race relations.
00:20:59.560 only about 4% of adult Blacks were eligible to vote in Mississippi in 1950. By 1960,
00:21:05.900 it had risen to just 5.3% due to poll taxes and literacy tests and intimidation. Public and,
00:21:12.920 in some cases, private spaces were segregated in Mississippi and Alabama. However, in major cities
00:21:18.940 like Atlanta, enforcement of segregation was less extreme than in rural parts of the Deep South.
00:21:24.900 In 1959, Atlanta Mayor William Hartsfield called Atlanta the city too busy to hate.
00:21:31.320 Atlanta wasn't the only place in the South where things were trending towards equality.
00:21:35.940 In 1954, in Washington, D.C., which was then a majority white city,
00:21:41.120 segregated public accommodations were voluntarily desegregated
00:21:44.600 two years before the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, according to Sowell.
00:21:50.740 The number of blacks registered to vote in Louisiana rose from 10,000 in 1947 to more than 160,000 in 1956.
00:21:59.560 In Texas, the number of black registered voters doubled from 1947 and 1956.
00:22:05.600 In Florida, it tripled.
00:22:07.540 These are the conditions that not only allowed activists like Martin Luther King Jr. to thrive,
00:22:12.220 but also set the stage for massive nationwide racial conflict.
00:22:16.500 It was life getting better for blacks, not worse, that provoked the most destructive and racially divisive riots in the nation's history.
00:22:28.040 You know, I recently saw The Odyssey, as you may have heard, which is one of the worst movies ever made.
00:22:33.300 But if the movie accomplished anything, it reminded me that you should actually read Homer.
00:22:37.660 Because the Iliad and the Odyssey aren't just old stories for English class.
00:22:41.740 They're foundational works of Western civilization.
00:22:44.500 For thousands of years, people have read these stories to understand courage, honor, loyalty, sacrifice,
00:22:50.780 what it means to be human.
00:22:52.040 And unlike whatever Hollywood decides to do with them, the originals are actually worth your time.
00:22:56.240 That's why Mount Titano Media, the company we've been telling you about behind finding our words,
00:23:01.280 words that made America, has created the story of the Iliad and the story of the Odyssey.
00:23:06.040 They're beautiful, accessible editions designed to bring the Homeric tradition into your home.
00:23:10.460 Each book is paired with other works from that tradition, along with a reading guide by Allison Ellis that helps you explore these stories with your family.
00:23:18.500 Most people get a brief introduction to Homer in school if they get one at all.
00:23:22.160 These stories deserve better than that, and they certainly deserve better than Hollywood.
00:23:26.740 Read the stories themselves. Find out why they've endured for thousands of years.
00:23:31.580 Go to MountTitanoMedia.com and bring the Homeric tradition home.
00:23:40.460 When we opened the episode, we talked about the American icons who high school students consider the most famous in American history.
00:23:48.360 Number one was Martin Luther King Jr. Number two was Rosa Parks.
00:23:53.300 This is the story most of those students were taught in school. 1.00
00:23:57.560 Parks was a seamstress who was tired after a long day at work. 1.00
00:24:01.180 A seamstress, slight in stature, but mighty in courage.
00:24:07.660 The story goes that Parks sat down in a whites-only section of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.
00:24:16.160 When the driver asked her to move, she refused and was arrested and went to jail.
00:24:21.320 This action sparked a torrent of outrage and inspired spontaneous protests,
00:24:26.260 making her the first domino in what led to a total transformation of the country.
00:24:30.120 But here's the problem. 1.00
00:24:31.200 Rosa Parks was not just some meek, quiet seamstress who didn't know what she was getting into. 0.99
00:24:38.420 She was a professional activist.
00:24:41.280 She joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP as its secretary in 1943, more than a decade before the bus boycott.
00:24:48.760 Five months before her arrest, she had attended the Highlander Folk School in Newmarket, Tennessee,
00:24:54.720 which had been set up by the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a major labor union, for training agitators.
00:25:01.760 Declassified FBI documents show that the Highlander School's co-founder, Donald Lee West, was likely a member of the Communist Party. 0.90
00:25:10.500 Nine months before Parks was arrested, another black woman named Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery when she refused to give up her seat for a white passenger.
00:25:20.720 The NAACP rejected her because she had an out-of-wedlock child.
00:25:24.520 They wanted someone who'd be more sympathetic. 0.99
00:25:27.220 Rosa Parks was perfect. 1.00
00:25:28.320 She was a model citizen. 0.99
00:25:29.640 She was polite.
00:25:30.840 She was employed, and she had extensive training.
00:25:34.320 The reality is that Montgomery in 1955 had draconian laws that treated blacks like second-class citizens.
00:25:41.520 Using professionals to confront that system made sense at the time.
00:25:45.580 It also illustrates the level of energy that's been poured into propaganda-making.
00:25:50.800 That Rosa Parks is the second most famous figure in American history to American high schoolers,
00:25:55.780 but that most of those students also don't know her actual story
00:26:00.080 is an insane indictment of America's education system.
00:26:03.900 It's also worth pointing out that Parks was a radical.
00:26:06.700 Parks and her husband attended Communist Party meetings for years.
00:26:10.760 She collaborated with socialist organizations and domestic terrorists,
00:26:14.700 including the Black Panthers and Black Liberation Army.
00:26:18.380 In 1995, she attended Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March.
00:26:22.520 She blamed white people for the Detroit riots and said that
00:26:25.680 widespread looting was, quote, understandable. In her autobiography, Parks described her time 0.85
00:26:31.660 at the communist-tied Highlander school, saying, quote, I spent 10 days at Highlander and went to
00:26:36.960 different workshops, mostly on how to desegregate schools. One of my greatest pleasures there was
00:26:42.120 enjoying the smell of bacon frying and coffee brewing and knowing that white folks were doing 1.00
00:26:48.220 the preparing instead of me. According to Parks's biographer, Gene Theoharis, in the mid-1990s,
00:26:54.320 Parks had a conversation with a black nationalist lawyer who asked who her hero was,
00:27:00.220 assuming she would say Martin Luther King Jr., given that they worked together.
00:27:04.220 But in fact, she said her hero was Malcolm X.
00:27:07.160 Because of boldness and clarity, his affirmation of what needed to be done for black people made him her champion.
00:27:13.800 We are not nonviolent with anyone who is violent with us.
00:27:20.100 In her own autobiography, Parks wrote, quote,
00:27:22.560 we always felt that if you talked violently and said what you would do if they did something to
00:27:28.340 you, that did more good than nonviolence. To this day, I am not an absolute supporter
00:27:33.960 of nonviolence in all situations. One civil rights leader who disagreed with King and Parks was
00:27:40.220 Reverend Joseph H. Jackson of the Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago. Jackson was a major figure
00:27:47.280 at the time. In 1953, he became president of the National Baptist Convention, the largest black
00:27:53.440 religious body in the nation, with roughly six million members. His own church had the largest
00:27:58.880 black congregation in the country, with more than 20,000 congregants. In 1964, the New York Times
00:28:03.960 profiled him on a full-page spread of black civil rights leaders that included Martin Luther King
00:28:09.180 Jr. beside him and Malcolm X below him. The historian Taylor Branch called him the Negro
00:28:15.860 Pope and the sociologist E. Franklin Frazier compared him to being the black president of
00:28:22.120 the United States. What made Jackson different than the others is that he opposed civil disobedience,
00:28:27.480 which he saw as, quote, not far removed from open crime. He thought civil rights should be
00:28:32.540 advanced legally through the courts and political system. Jackson also worked with Chicago's city
00:28:37.880 leadership, including his political ally, Mayor Richard Daley, to preserve the racial distinctness
00:28:43.620 of Chicago's neighborhoods.
00:28:45.240 Basically, he wanted to keep the South Side black. 0.78
00:28:48.280 He, along with six black aldermen known as the Silent Six,
00:28:52.520 voted against integrated housing initiatives
00:28:54.820 and other civil rights reforms in the city.
00:28:57.920 Reverend Jackson didn't want to end housing segregation
00:29:00.640 because he believed in economic self-reliance.
00:29:03.660 He strongly supported the idea that black Americans
00:29:06.040 should focus on building themselves up individually
00:29:08.960 and through self-help efforts,
00:29:11.140 rather than relying primarily on white people or external forces for advancement.
00:29:16.180 It came from a long line of black intellectuals, including Booker T. Washington,
00:29:20.460 who believed self-help was the best model for improving black lives.
00:29:25.240 It was this kind of thinking that resulted in a lot of black progress
00:29:27.960 that happened between the Depression and the early 1960s.
00:29:31.420 Within Chicago, Jackson's approach of civil rights through law and order was effective.
00:29:36.700 Along with Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago's black residents got expanded public housing,
00:29:41.140 access to prime city jobs, favorable contracts from the city government,
00:29:46.620 and municipal investments into primarily black neighborhoods.
00:29:50.140 Jackson's views must have been at least somewhat pervasive among American blacks
00:29:53.800 who kept re-electing him by massive margins to his position atop the National Baptist Convention.
00:29:59.560 Jackson's strategy infuriated Martin Luther King Jr., who hated Jackson
00:30:04.080 and believed the weight of the National Baptist Convention should be used to push his political agenda.
00:30:10.060 In 1960, King decried Jackson, saying he was, quote,
00:30:14.180 For his part, Jackson described Martin Luther King Jr. as a powder keg philosopher 0.54
00:30:29.480 who was part of a new breed of hoodlums and crooks in the pulpits today.
00:30:34.580 King may not have been a hoodlum, but he certainly was a radical, especially later in his career.
00:30:40.440 The king most students learn about was the one who called for people to be judged by the content of their character
00:30:46.040 and insisted on non-violent civil disobedience.
00:30:50.580 Less taught is the king who called for, quote,
00:30:53.020 a radical redistribution of economic and political power.
00:30:56.920 In private, King declared that there must be a better distribution of wealth
00:31:01.140 and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.
00:31:05.600 In his book, Where Do We Go From Here?,
00:31:07.380 King called on Western nations
00:31:08.920 to give 2% of GDP to countries of color,
00:31:12.160 a global redistribution of wealth for the sin of racism.
00:31:15.760 King writes, quote,
00:31:16.500 In short, white America must assume the guilt 0.93
00:31:19.660 for the black man's inferior status. 0.99
00:31:22.520 You must acknowledge your white guilt, he says. 0.99
00:31:25.080 Quote, 0.91
00:31:25.980 Redemption can come only through a humble acknowledgement
00:31:28.720 of guilt and an honest knowledge of self. King didn't believe in judging others by their
00:31:34.280 individual character. He believed in judging them for their collective sins. It was literally the
00:31:39.480 opposite of the I Have a Dream speech. It was a racial shakedown. It was a call for reparations. 0.62
00:31:45.240 By the late 60s, King openly hated the United States. On April 4th, 1967, at Riverside Church
00:31:52.200 in Manhattan, King said this. His mandate started in Selma and Montgomery, and by the end of his
00:32:14.320 career, had creeped into the rest of the world, of which he said he was a citizen.
00:32:22.200 as it stands aghast at the path we have taken.
00:32:26.680 Even the media at the time were appalled by the speech.
00:32:29.180 Life magazine called that speech a demagogic slander
00:32:32.700 that sounded like a script from Radio Hanoi.
00:32:35.980 The Washington Post said King has done a grave injury
00:32:38.800 to those who are his natural allies
00:32:40.760 and an even graver injury to himself.
00:32:43.300 When Congress passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts
00:32:46.620 in the mid-1960s, it whetted King's appetite
00:32:50.380 for, of all things, revolution.
00:32:53.140 He told organizers at a conference,
00:32:54.980 We have been in a reform movement,
00:32:57.520 but after Selma and the voting rights bill,
00:32:59.940 we moved into a new era,
00:33:01.460 which must be an era of revolution.
00:33:04.040 In short, we have moved into an era
00:33:05.820 where we are called upon to raise certain basic questions
00:33:09.360 about the whole society.
00:33:12.040 He then noted that,
00:33:13.280 We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now
00:33:16.060 until there is a radical redistribution
00:33:18.320 of economic and political power.
00:33:20.720 In his last essay, which was published posthumously
00:33:23.400 by Playboy magazine, King said, quote,
00:33:26.660 America is deeply racist and its democracy is flawed
00:33:30.280 both economically and socially. 0.83
00:33:32.800 The Black Revolution is much more than a struggle
00:33:35.580 for the rights of Negroes.
00:33:37.520 It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws,
00:33:41.640 racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism.
00:33:45.220 It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply
00:33:47.500 in the whole structure of our society.
00:33:50.000 It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws
00:33:52.660 and suggests that radical reconstruction of society
00:33:55.860 is the real issue to be faced.
00:33:58.880 Would any of this rhetoric be out of place
00:34:00.920 during the woke up evils of 2020?
00:34:03.720 Are those the words of an America-loving moderate?
00:34:07.440 Someone deserving of a federal holiday?
00:34:09.860 No, not at all.
00:34:11.260 Joseph H. Jackson realized that
00:34:13.020 and his critique of King had been proven right.
00:34:16.120 In July of 1968, the Chicago City Council renamed South Parkway, the major thoroughfare fronting Olivet Baptist Church, to Martin Luther King Drive as a tribute to the recently assassinated leader.
00:34:28.900 Jackson reacted with fury. He reoriented the church's main entrance and official address to the Cross Street at East 31st, ensuring that neither the church's stationary, denominational materials, nor daily operations would carry King's name.
00:34:45.420 The new address remained until Jackson's death in 1990.
00:34:49.140 That's what one of the 20th century's most popular black leaders
00:34:52.440 thought about Martin Luther King Jr.
00:34:56.560 There was a time when owning a cell phone required strategy.
00:35:00.020 You had a limited number of minutes, text messages didn't exist.
00:35:03.860 Then they did, and there was a character limit,
00:35:05.520 and you had to pay for each text.
00:35:06.900 And if you wanted to have an actual conversation,
00:35:08.600 you waited until nights and weekends
00:35:10.160 because apparently phone calls became cheaper after 9 o'clock.
00:35:13.200 This was considered advanced technology,
00:35:15.400 Then came unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited data.
00:35:18.540 The phones got dramatically better.
00:35:20.320 Somehow, the bills stayed dramatically expensive.
00:35:23.800 So here's the latest development in the history of wireless service.
00:35:26.560 PureTalk is offering any plan for just $15 a month for your first three months.
00:35:31.420 Any plan.
00:35:32.220 That includes their unlimited high-speed data plans,
00:35:34.320 even their top-tier $65 plan, $15 a month for your first three months.
00:35:39.880 That's savings of up to $150.
00:35:42.020 And unlike the cell phone contracts of ancient history,
00:35:44.400 There's no service contract, no cancellation fee.
00:35:47.380 Pure Talk also has 100% US-based customer service
00:35:50.320 if you need help making the switch.
00:35:52.160 So we've gone from paying by the minute
00:35:53.900 and waiting until nine o'clock to call somebody
00:35:55.780 to unlimited high-speed data for 15 bucks a month.
00:35:58.820 I'd call that progress.
00:36:00.560 For a limited time, you can get any Pure Talk plan,
00:36:03.160 including unlimited data for just 15 bucks a month
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00:36:07.020 Simply go to puretalk.com slash Walsh
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00:36:12.560 to start saving today.
00:36:14.040 most american students spend considerable time learning about birmingham alabama in 1963
00:36:27.380 if a black person wanted to vote in birmingham he had to pay a poll tax demonstrate steady
00:36:33.560 employment own at least 300 in property clear a vague moral assessment and pass a literacy test
00:36:41.220 that included questions like,
00:36:43.300 if a person charged with treason denies his guilt,
00:36:46.040 how many persons must testify against him
00:36:48.200 before he can be convicted?
00:36:50.220 Local ordinances segregated everything
00:36:52.440 from restaurants to theaters
00:36:54.400 to very famously drinking fountains.
00:36:57.560 Willie Mays was playing for the San Francisco Giants,
00:37:00.180 but in Birmingham,
00:37:01.520 he wouldn't have been able to play against white athletes.
00:37:04.920 When the city was ordered to integrate the parks,
00:37:07.660 it just closed them instead.
00:37:09.740 Birmingham in 1963 was uniquely bad.
00:37:13.200 It was, according to Martin Luther King Jr.,
00:37:15.340 the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.
00:37:18.560 Against this backdrop, on October 20, 1962,
00:37:22.580 King announced that he was going back to Alabama
00:37:25.000 to make a people-to-people tour to recruit a nonviolent army
00:37:28.880 for a new front of the attack on the system of segregation in the whole state.
00:37:33.140 The key word he used was nonviolent,
00:37:36.540 the term King used over and over again.
00:37:38.820 His strategy of civil disobedience meant breaking unjust laws in non-violent ways.
00:37:45.300 This, he believed, would help convince moderate white people to join his cause.
00:37:49.920 When King got to town, Mayor-elect Albert Boutwell, moderate, 0.78
00:37:53.960 quote, warned Birmingham Negro citizens against strangers whose sole purpose
00:37:58.500 is to stir strife and discord here and then who will leave our citizens to pay the penalty 0.80
00:38:03.920 of this discord.
00:38:04.900 The mayor-elect noted, quote,
00:38:06.580 I do not need to tell the people of Birmingham that this is an attempt to stage a big show, to make headlines throughout the country.
00:38:14.280 At first, the protests didn't generate much news.
00:38:17.120 The local paper, the Birmingham News, reported that King's first march on City Hall, quote,
00:38:22.340 fizzled with only a handful of Negroes following him to the municipal building.
00:38:26.640 Over time, the crowds grew. With them, so did the city's desire to maintain order. 0.89
00:38:31.700 On Sunday, April 7th, a significantly bigger crowd marched on City Hall.
00:38:36.580 From page two of the paper, quote,
00:38:39.240 more racial demonstrations were planned for Birmingham today
00:38:42.180 following a march on City Hall Sunday
00:38:44.260 in which police dogs were used to scatter a crowd of 500 Negroes.
00:38:49.120 Why were police dogs at a nonviolent protest?
00:38:52.960 According to the paper, quote,
00:38:54.220 police set up a roadblock two blocks away from a church
00:38:57.620 where the activists were organizing
00:38:58.700 and told them they would be arrested if they crossed the intersection.
00:39:02.640 Demonstrators crossed the street and were halted by police captain G.V. Evans, who told them they were under arrest.
00:39:09.260 While the demonstrators were being loaded in the paddy wagons, police scattered the large crowd of Negroes with police dogs.
00:39:15.620 The dogs were used only after the crowd of Negroes refused to obey officers' warnings to move back.
00:39:22.320 A 19-year-old Negro, Leroy Allen, turned to fight a canine dog with a small piece of clay pipe. 0.63
00:39:28.620 The dog downed the youth and the crowd started surging forward.
00:39:32.700 Another Negro pulled a knife and about 15 policemen, joined by police dogs, moved in and forced the crowd back on the block.
00:39:40.520 Context here is important. Alabama at the time was bursting at the seams.
00:39:45.760 Just below that article was another about someone taking a shot at the governor's mansion.
00:39:51.660 President Kennedy announced he was monitoring the situation in Birmingham from his compound outside Palm Beach, Florida.
00:39:58.180 Interestingly, Birmingham's chief of police saw his role as maintaining order by keeping angry white people away from angry black people.
00:40:06.180 Quote, there has been no violence or bloodshed.
00:40:09.460 This has been true because Birmingham police have not permitted white or Negro citizens to come in conflict with each other.
00:40:15.520 Good judgment has been used by all of our citizens in cooperating with police officers.
00:40:19.880 Those who have refused to obey the lawful commands of officers have been properly arrested.
00:40:24.740 By April 10th, the city had had enough. 0.89
00:40:27.200 At their request, a state court issued an order in joining 136 Negroes and eight of their leaders, including King, from further participation.
00:40:36.600 King and the Reverend Ralph Abernathy called the order unconstitutional and immediately called for a mass march at noon on Good Friday.
00:40:45.180 That day, April 12th, King and Abernathy attempted to march to City Hall and were arrested for contempt of court.
00:40:51.620 next to the pictures of King's arrest in the paper
00:40:54.640 was a statement from local pastors and rabbis
00:40:57.900 who complained, quote,
00:40:59.020 we are convinced that these demonstrations
00:41:00.580 are unwise and untimely,
00:41:02.900 just as we formerly pointed out
00:41:04.560 that hatred and violence have no sanction
00:41:06.760 in our religion and political traditions.
00:41:08.900 We also point out that such actions
00:41:10.900 as incite hatred and violence,
00:41:12.980 however technically peaceful those actions may be,
00:41:16.000 have not contributed to the resolution
00:41:17.800 of our local problems.
00:41:19.700 Referring to the fact that the city
00:41:21.020 had just adopted a new governance model
00:41:23.100 that had taken power away
00:41:25.080 from hardcore segregationists.
00:41:27.460 They said, quote,
00:41:28.420 in Birmingham, recent public events
00:41:30.100 have given indication
00:41:31.140 that we all have opportunity
00:41:32.320 for a new constructive
00:41:33.640 and realistic approach
00:41:35.020 to racial problems.
00:41:36.700 The letter infuriated King,
00:41:38.520 who from his solitary confinement cell
00:41:40.580 in the Birmingham City Jail,
00:41:42.280 wrote, quote,
00:41:43.400 I have almost reached
00:41:44.240 the regrettable conclusion 1.00
00:41:45.280 that the Negro's great stumbling block 0.96
00:41:47.480 in the stride towards freedom 0.93
00:41:49.380 is not the white citizen's counselor or the Ku Klux Klan-er,
00:41:53.860 but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice.
00:41:58.460 King noted,
00:41:59.520 While Mayor-elect Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Conner,
00:42:03.900 they are both segregationists.
00:42:06.080 It is an historical fact that privileged groups
00:42:08.360 seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.
00:42:11.540 As time passed, the protests kept coming, and so did the rest.
00:42:14.980 On April 20th, King was released from prison.
00:42:17.920 His first move was to hold a press conference.
00:42:20.700 He filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court to block the state courts from preventing protests.
00:42:26.360 Mayor Boutwell promised to give immediate and determined attention to resolving the difficulties that face us. 0.82
00:42:32.720 King responded to the overtures by unleashing black children upon the city.
00:42:36.960 May 2 marked the start of the Children's Crusade, in which over 1,000 black students skipped school to march downtown.
00:42:44.540 On May 3rd, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy issued a statement saying,
00:42:47.840 The timing of the present demonstrations is open to question.
00:42:51.940 Schoolchildren participating in street demonstrations is a dangerous business.
00:42:56.240 An injured, maimed, or dead child is a price that none of us can afford to pay.
00:43:00.800 Kennedy noted that the new mayor had already made clear his intention to resolve the difficulties facing the community.
00:43:06.920 King didn't care, kept the pressure on and the children out.
00:43:10.620 On May 4th, the paper reported,
00:43:13.020 Firemen reportedly hosed down a crowd of Negroes, waving and throwing rocks, sticks, and bottles
00:43:18.100 as racial demonstrations flared in Birmingham.
00:43:21.860 Police dogs were brought up, but most of the time were held behind the firemen.
00:43:26.660 They chased away two Negroes armed with rocks who attempted to climb on a car.
00:43:31.120 Several firemen were struck in a barrage of missiles, but none was injured seriously.
00:43:36.460 Police wore hardhats for protection.
00:43:38.680 The Reverend James Bevels, a civil rights leader himself, told the paper,
00:43:43.100 I saw at least 25 Negro men with guns.
00:43:46.400 According to the article, one Negro teenager ran toward a group of policemen 0.66
00:43:50.380 and struck an officer in the chest with a rock.
00:43:53.540 The policemen chased the youth down and hacked him across the back with his billy club and let him go.
00:43:59.320 It was, as we like to say now, a mostly peaceful protest.
00:44:03.940 Now, it's worth pointing out that spraying down protesters wasn't a novel tactic.
00:44:09.520 Cops had been using it against white people to disperse riots, protests, and strikes for decades.
00:44:15.460 In 1912, officials in Lawrence, Massachusetts, used fire hoses on striking workers at a textile mill.
00:44:21.840 When communists led a rally against a Ford Motor Company in 1932,
00:44:26.120 the Dearborn, Michigan Fire Department sprayed them down with fire hoses.
00:44:29.900 In 1937, striking autoworkers in Flint, Michigan,
00:44:33.000 turned fire hoses on cops to prevent them from stopping the strike.
00:44:37.220 But let's go back to Birmingham in 1963.
00:44:39.560 If Mayor Boutwell was right that outside agitators had come to town
00:44:43.820 with the goal of making headlines around the country,
00:44:46.180 then they had accomplished their mission.
00:44:53.360 Photographs and video footage made the national news and horrified northerners.
00:44:58.500 On May 9th, the Birmingham News reported that, quote,
00:45:01.920 at least 18 officers and firemen, two newsmen and five Negroes have suffered injuries requiring medical attention
00:45:07.700 in racial demonstrations beginning here on April 5th.
00:45:11.040 The city's fire chief had been struck by bricks and many more firemen were struck
00:45:16.300 but were protected from injury by their helmets and thick coats.
00:45:19.880 The next day, on May 10th, protest leaders, city officials and business representatives
00:45:24.160 reached an agreement that included the desegregation of lunch counters, fitting rooms, drinking
00:45:29.000 fountains, and restrooms in downtown stores, the hiring of black workers, the release of jailed
00:45:35.100 protesters, and the formation of a biracial committee for further talks. The local paper
00:45:40.260 reported that some 300 Negro demonstrators were still in custody and were being released as rapidly
00:45:46.520 as bonds could be made as a racial truce eased tensions in Birmingham Saturday. The reduced
00:45:52.940 tensions lasted just one day. On May 11, 1963, multiple explosions rocked Birmingham, targeting
00:46:00.420 the hotel where King was staying as well as his brother's home. The police used tear gas to
00:46:05.600 disperse crowds of black and white people. The mayor declared that this city will not tolerate
00:46:11.140 violence, especially the dastardly hit-and-run bombers who wreak vengeance without regard for
00:46:16.720 life or property. It wasn't enough. Race riots broke out immediately. According to the Birmingham
00:46:22.500 News, quote, a white woman, Mrs. Dora Hanks, was taken to university hospital after being hurt
00:46:27.500 when a rock was thrown through the windshield of a car in which she was riding. A white taxi cab
00:46:33.140 driver was reportedly stabbed. Tires were slashed. Police were attacked. Within a day, 28 blocks were
00:46:40.200 sealed off by law enforcement after rioting, arson, and hand-to-hand fighting by Negroes and 0.53
00:46:45.860 police. President Kennedy sent federal troops to bases near Birmingham and drafted an executive
00:46:51.400 order to federalize the Alabama National Guard. The point of going over the details of King's
00:46:57.380 Birmingham campaign is to point out that the civil rights movement was not peaceful. King
00:47:03.320 constantly paid rhetorical tribute to the idea of nonviolent protest. This made King more moderate
00:47:09.440 than other civil rights leaders, some of whom were openly militant. The Black Power activist
00:47:14.120 H. Rap Brown told his supporters that violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's 0.97
00:47:19.400 culture. It is as American as cherry pie. He died last year while serving a life sentence for the
00:47:26.020 murder of a sheriff's deputy. Part of King's mainstream appeal is that he preached nonviolence,
00:47:31.620 but as the Birmingham campaign shows, even nonviolent protests led to the hospitalization
00:47:37.980 of police officers. As Christopher Caldwell notes in The Age of Entitlement, quote,
00:47:42.420 the riots were the civil rights movement. Not the whole of it, certainly, but an important element
00:47:47.260 of it. Over time, a new cycle was born. Whether it was justified or not, when police killed a
00:47:53.520 black person, the media would cover the story. Race grifters would come to town and cry racism, 0.97
00:47:59.800 and the black population would rise up, and then they'd burn their neighborhood down. 0.98
00:48:04.320 Usually the worst violence happened after civil rights leaders had major victories. 0.95
00:48:09.240 Two weeks after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, a New York City policeman shot and
00:48:13.280 killed a black teenager named James Powell. The cops said Powell attacked the police officer with
00:48:19.240 a knife. Powell's friends said that he was attending a peaceful protest. Body cameras
00:48:24.440 didn't exist back then, so for six straight nights, Harlem burned. Hundreds were hospitalized.
00:48:31.000 Then riots broke out in Rochester and Jersey City. In an August 1964 survey, 87% of respondents said
00:48:38.800 they hurt the Negro cause. Now, they were wrong, of course. In every case, violence led to major
00:48:45.440 concessions to the demands of the rioters. What started as riots in Watts in 1965 and in Detroit
00:48:51.980 in 1967, and eventually became a full-fledged rebellion by 1992 in Los Angeles, when police
00:48:58.780 officers were filmed severely beating Rodney King, a career criminal who was high and drunk,
00:49:03.560 a regular PCP user, and had led police on a 110-mile-per-hour high-speed chase.
00:49:10.220 When riots broke out, King said this.
00:49:13.100 Can we all get along? Can we get along?
00:49:16.640 By the turn of the century, it seemed like the answer might finally be yes. 0.91
00:49:20.640 But when America elected a black president in 2008, the riots came back.
00:49:25.440 In 2014, Ferguson, Missouri burned down after a police officer shot gentle giant Michael Brown
00:49:31.580 when he attempted to pull the officer's gun.
00:49:33.560 In 2015, Freddie Gray died in police custody.
00:49:36.700 We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.
00:49:41.720 Half the officers who were charged were black.
00:49:44.600 The riots finally reached a fever pitch, of course, after the death of George Floyd in 2020.
00:49:48.700 Even MLK, the supposed champion of nonviolent protests, who looked at Gandhi as a model,
00:49:55.960 had this to say about riots to CBS's Mike Wallace in 1966.
00:50:00.580 I think we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.
00:50:07.260 And what is it that America has failed to hear?
00:50:10.080 It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years.
00:50:19.560 In January 1967, when asked if Negroes would be better off if they would take advantage of the opportunities that have been made available rather than spending so much time protesting,
00:50:29.260 83% of respondents said they'd probably or definitely agree.
00:50:34.060 But to many black Americans, those opportunities just were not good enough.
00:50:38.760 If white people did not deliver everything they wanted, the violence would come back. 0.66
00:50:43.880 Just ask Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
00:50:46.140 I hope that we can avoid riots, but that we will be as militant and as determined next summer and through the winter as we have been this summer.
00:50:57.060 And I think the answer about how long it will take will depend on the federal government, 0.76
00:51:02.060 on the city halls of our various cities, and on white America to a large extent.
00:51:15.180 The version of Martin Luther King Jr. most kids are taught about
00:51:18.920 is a man who believed that making the laws colorblind would save the soul of America.
00:51:25.280 It's conservatives who generally promote this myth.
00:51:28.160 They love selectively quoting from his I Have a Dream speech.
00:51:32.280 He so eloquently spoke of his dream.
00:51:35.720 He spoke of a dream that one day the sons of slaves and the sons of slave owners might sit down at the table of brotherhood.
00:51:43.280 But King did not believe in colorblindness at all.
00:51:47.240 In his I Have a Dream speech, King used for the first time a term familiar to audiences of today.
00:51:53.060 people of color. This was one of the first signs that a movement which had begun in the 1950s to
00:51:59.260 end injustices against black Americans would, by the turn of the 21st century, evolve into something
00:52:05.800 radically different. As Christopher Caldwell notes in his book, The Age of Entitlement,
00:52:10.400 this was a very significant change. Quote, people of color was a harbinger of what later came to be 1.00
00:52:15.740 called intersectionality, a philosophical sounding term of the political strategy of bundling different
00:52:22.200 minorities into a coalition. It was a way to bundle up all the various non-white groups into
00:52:27.200 one package to promote a new narrative of victimhood and oppression. It was all on one. 1.00
00:52:33.060 King championed this vision of white men versus everyone else as early as 1963 when in his letter
00:52:39.400 from Birmingham City Jail, he described, quote, black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow
00:52:44.980 brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of
00:52:50.460 great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. The Yellow Brothers of Asia and South
00:52:56.820 America had nothing to do with the Jim Crow South, and yet here was King, writing from a jail cell
00:53:03.980 in central Alabama, sowing the seeds for a new coalition where the only thing the members had in
00:53:09.760 common was that they were not white. Most Americans at the time didn't pick up on this and probably
00:53:15.440 wouldn't have believed it if you built a time machine to go back and tell them what ended up
00:53:19.640 happening. When King wrote that letter, the Hart-Cellar Law that radically transformed
00:53:24.440 America's demographics hadn't passed yet. America was a 90% white country. The people in it didn't
00:53:30.840 realize that by 2024, white children would be a minority among their multiracial peers. 0.51
00:53:36.440 To the extent that civil rights policy became the law of the land, it was a first primarily because
00:53:41.780 of unelected judges who ruled by decree. The first major case is also one of the most famous,
00:53:47.000 of course, Brown versus Board of Education. The question in this case was whether the policy of
00:53:52.360 separate but equal schools for black and white students was constitutional. The unanimous court
00:53:58.820 found that it was not and ordered the desegregation of every school in the nation. It was a profound
00:54:04.940 move at the time. Regardless of what you think of the outcome, and surely most people today oppose
00:54:09.660 legally segregated schools, the court's decision was not based in logic. Instead, the justices
00:54:16.200 relied on, quote, qualities of which are incapable of objective measurement and intangible
00:54:21.980 considerations, which amount to a feeling of inferiority among black students' status in
00:54:27.120 the community. To support these intangible considerations, the court based its opinion
00:54:32.120 not on precedent or the text of the Constitution, which are tangible, but on a pseudo-scientific
00:54:38.360 psychological study that found that black children preferred white dolls. The study was later
00:54:44.120 disproven. It was a period of extreme decadence and radical judicial activism. Before John F.
00:54:50.400 Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, legislative progress on major civil rights
00:54:55.600 reforms was slow. Kennedy overwhelmingly won the black vote in the 1960 election, but he was
00:55:00.840 hesitant to burn political capital on civil rights legislation. But a wave of protests in 1963,
00:55:07.340 plus pressure from civil rights activists and union leaders, forced his hand.
00:55:11.840 We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.
00:55:15.460 It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.
00:55:20.980 The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities.
00:55:28.360 When Kennedy gave that speech, 49% of Americans approved of a new civil rights law
00:55:33.040 that would promote racial equality in public places,
00:55:36.140 compared to 42% who disapproved and 9% who had no opinion, according to Gallup.
00:55:40.660 Every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race.
00:55:46.420 He was proposing what would become the most significant piece of civil rights legislation in the period, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
00:55:53.180 The law's central feature was the forced integration of public spaces, but it also banned unequal voter registration requirements, segregation in schools, and employment discrimination.
00:56:03.960 Similar proposals had languished in committee for years.
00:56:06.960 The catalyst for its passage was Kennedy's assassination, which his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, used as a pretense to hammer the bill through Congress.
00:56:16.900 A full memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the Civil Rights Bill for which he fought so long.
00:56:31.500 At the time, most Americans believed the country was moving too fast.
00:56:37.560 Christopher Caldwell notes that in August 1963, the month of the March on Washington,
00:56:42.600 when Kennedy was still alive, 50% of Americans said the country was moving too fast on integration
00:56:47.960 versus 10% who said not fast enough, a ratio of 5 to 1.
00:56:52.960 That ratio fell 2 to 1, 30 to 15% in January during the debate on the Civil Rights Act.
00:56:59.320 But in October, on the eve of election, it was back over 3 to 1, 57 percent, 18 percent.
00:57:05.040 The law was sold to voters as something that would punish racist whites in the South, in fact, reflected by how Congress voted on it.
00:57:12.840 More than 90 percent of northern members of Congress voted yes, and more than 90 percent of southern members voted no.
00:57:19.620 Riding the coattails of Kennedy's assassination, and thanks to Johnson's talent for intimidating members of Congress, it passed overwhelmingly.
00:57:26.620 I am about to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
00:57:32.740 To ensure the bill had popular support, its sponsors made bold promises about what it would and would not do.
00:57:39.260 Almost everything they said ended up not being true.
00:57:42.640 When opponents claimed the law would lead to racial quotas and affirmative action,
00:57:47.380 the bill's manager, Senator Hubert Humphrey, claimed, quote,
00:57:50.600 I will eat my hat if anyone can find language which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, race, religion, or national origin.
00:58:00.620 Quotas at the time were extremely unpopular.
00:58:03.140 Even the NAACP opposed them.
00:58:06.040 And yet, almost immediately after the law passed, lawyers and government bureaucrats started instituting systems of racial quotas.
00:58:13.520 I wonder if Humphrey likes his hat rare or well done.
00:58:15.980 When Florida's Democratic Senator George Smathers expressed concern that the bill might lead to busing, Pennsylvania Republican Hugh Scott responded, saying, quote,
00:58:26.720 Does the senator not agree that there is nothing whatever in the bill which relates to the transportation of schoolchildren by bus from one district to another?
00:58:35.220 I find nothing in the bill which pertains to any such provision.
00:58:39.180 Humphrey claimed if the bill were to compel it, busing, it would be a violation of the Constitution
00:58:45.160 because it would be handling the matter on the basis of race and it would be transporting children because of race.
00:58:51.860 New York Senator Jacob Javits said anyone who used the bill to promote busing, quote,
00:58:56.360 would be making a fool of himself.
00:58:58.800 And yet, two years after the law was enacted, it was used as the legal basis to implement nationwide busing.
00:59:05.620 Were the politicians promoting the bill intentionally lying?
00:59:08.540 Or did they not know what they were doing?
00:59:11.280 Well, it's impossible to know.
00:59:12.840 But we do know that their sales pitch worked.
00:59:15.240 One Gallup poll from October 1964 found that voters supported it 59% to 31%, nearly a 2-1 margin.
00:59:23.180 Notably, after the law was enacted, 40% of Northerners either disapproved or were undecided on the law.
00:59:29.380 But bizarrely, they also didn't want it enforced.
00:59:32.700 Three months after it was signed into law, Gallup asked Americans if the government should enforce the law.
00:59:37.520 The results are shocking.
00:59:39.680 62% of Americans wanted gradual enforcement of the law versus 23% who wanted it to be strictly enforced.
00:59:45.960 As Christopher Caldwell puts it, fewer than a quarter of Americans actually did want the law to be enforced.
00:59:52.180 Those findings were replicated by other pollsters, including one that found only 19% of Americans wanted vigorous enforcement of the law.
00:59:59.540 By May of 1965, Gallup found that 45% of Americans believed that the federal government was moving too fast on integration,
01:00:08.040 compared to 14% who said it wasn't fast enough, roughly the same as two years earlier.
01:00:12.280 Public skepticism and the desire to delay enforcement made no difference.
01:00:16.860 Almost immediately after passage, it became clear that the Civil Rights Act was a major coup for lawyers and bureaucrats.
01:00:22.980 It turns out the law wasn't colorblind at all.
01:00:26.200 Or was it primarily directed at segregationists in the South?
01:00:28.840 Exactly one year after he signed the Civil Rights Act into law,
01:00:32.380 Lyndon Johnson announced that it wasn't enough.
01:00:35.560 This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights.
01:00:43.940 We seek not just freedom, but opportunity.
01:00:49.220 We seek not just legal equity, but human ability.
01:00:54.820 Not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
01:01:08.140 In 1965, Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, which ordered government contractors with more
01:01:15.020 than $10,000 in business to set up affirmative action programs, an order that wasn't rescinded
01:01:20.460 until 60 years later, when President Trump eliminated it at the start of his second term.
01:01:25.600 The actual text of the Civil Rights Act includes things that were radical then,
01:01:29.220 but are familiar now. Section 706 notes that if the courts find that a business is, quote,
01:01:34.680 intentionally engaging in an unlawful employment practice, then it could order such an affirmative
01:01:39.560 action as may be appropriate. Practically speaking, that meant the courts now had a role to play in
01:01:45.380 investigating the employment practices of almost every business in the country. This represented
01:01:50.440 the birth of the modern HR department. By 1971, a unanimous Supreme Court completely reinterpreted
01:01:57.140 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by banning race-neutral colorblind aptitude tests and
01:02:03.180 instituting a new framework. From then on, the courts would address systemic barriers that
01:02:07.860 resulted in disparate outcomes, like how requiring job applicants to have a high school diploma made
01:02:13.920 it so fewer blacks got hired. The brief period of colorblind civil rights was over. Like Johnson
01:02:20.900 himself, the court had shifted from looking at fairness to looking at outcomes. Going forward,
01:02:26.940 the Civil Rights Act banned not only overt discrimination, but also practices that are
01:02:31.900 fair in form, but discriminatory in operation. In the words of Christopher Caldwell, quote,
01:02:37.980 just half a decade into the Civil Rights Revolution, America had something that it had
01:02:41.600 never had at the federal level, something the overwhelming majority of its citizens would never
01:02:45.900 have approved, an explicit system of racial preference. It was a total and complete transfer
01:02:52.040 of power from the old constitutional system, which was based on the participation of voters,
01:02:56.760 to a new system, which was based on an emerging group of diversity activists, lawyers, and media
01:03:03.000 figures. Governance, according to Caldwell, was now based on a model of executive orders, litigation,
01:03:09.860 and court redress. In fact, civil rights law is not law in any sense of the word. Law must be
01:03:17.020 universal and enforced, and in America, passed by elected representatives. The civil rights regime
01:03:22.900 consists of layers of agency rules, administrative guidelines, interpretive memos, judicial statutory
01:03:29.260 construction, and cryptic judicial doctrines. And all of these are subjected to special interests
01:03:35.520 that evade the democratic process. The new system was directly at odds with the old constitution,
01:03:40.740 which allowed property owners to assert their rights and guaranteed, among other First Amendment
01:03:45.120 rights, a freedom of association. Those rights were incompatible with the emerging order. If the
01:03:51.200 government could force a hotel owner in the South to have black customers, and surely it could also 0.98
01:03:55.940 force a Christian bakery owner in Colorado to make a cake for a gay wedding. And over time, that's 0.94
01:04:01.140 exactly what happened. The Civil Rights Act, which was supposed to be a remedy for Jim Crow laws in 0.59
01:04:06.180 the South, ended up becoming a new legal framework to advance the rights of Asians, Hispanics,
01:04:12.160 homosexuals, women, transgender people, the elderly, and literally every single group except
01:04:18.500 white heterosexual men. As Caldwell put it, quote, if the spirit of the law was to humiliate
01:04:24.800 Southern bigots, then the letter of the law put the entire country, all its institutions,
01:04:29.680 under the threat of lawsuits and prosecutions for discrimination. Americans may not have realized
01:04:34.940 it at the time, but their country had changed dramatically. The early changes had massive
01:04:40.360 political implications. In the 1966 midterm elections, Republicans seizing upon growing
01:04:46.340 skepticism of the Civil Rights Act and other major liberal reforms of the 1960s, picked up 47 seats
01:04:52.520 in the House of Representatives, three Senate seats, including one in Tennessee, and eight
01:04:56.960 governorships, including in Arkansas and Florida. Liberal Democrats were totally routed. Political
01:05:02.480 upstarts rode a wave of discontent in response to the civil rights law. California elected a fervent
01:05:08.260 opponent of the Civil Rights Act who said, quote, if an individual wants to discriminate against
01:05:12.300 Negroes or others and selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so. His name was
01:05:18.640 Ronald Reagan, and he won Los Angeles County by a 14-point margin because his message appealed to
01:05:25.220 white working-class voters. In 1972, while running a campaign focused on law and order and a Southern
01:05:31.180 strategy, Richard Nixon won a landslide 49-state victory. Twelve years later, Ronald Reagan, the
01:05:38.040 supposedly arch-conservative governor of California, did it again. But both men failed to roll back or
01:05:45.300 even limit the excesses of what had happened to the country in the 1960s. No matter what American
01:05:51.020 voters did, no matter who they elected, nothing seemed to change. There was no democratic way to
01:05:56.060 roll back the new regime of civil rights. The legal and bureaucratic apparatus kept expanding
01:06:01.080 regardless of how they voted. The era of democratic self-determination was over. The old
01:06:07.180 Constitution had been replaced with a new one. If you enjoyed this episode, you won't want to
01:06:16.680 miss its sequel streaming now on Daily Wire Plus, The Real History of the Civil Rights Movement,
01:06:21.620 Part 2, The Looting of America. Watch it now, available only on Daily Wire Plus.
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