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Speaker 8: You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 8: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 8: written about them.
Speaker 4: Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK.
Speaker 8: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 8: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 8: your host journalist and author Dan Zufansky, The New York
Speaker 8: Times best selling author of The Kennedy Women, chronicles the
Speaker 8: powerful and spellbinding true story of a brutal race based
Speaker 8: killing in nineteen eighty one and subsequent trials that undid
Speaker 8: one of the most pernicious organizations in American history, the
Speaker 8: klu Klux Klan. On a Friday night in March nineteen
Speaker 8: eighty one, Henry Hayes and James Knowles scoured the streets
Speaker 8: of Mobile, Alabama in their car, hunting for a black man.
Speaker 8: The young men were members of Clavern nine hundred of
Speaker 8: the United Clans of America. They were seeking to retaliate
Speaker 8: after a largely black jury could not reach a verdict
Speaker 8: in a trial involving a black man accused of the
Speaker 8: murder of a white man. The two clansmen found nineteen
Speaker 8: year old Michael Donald walking home alone Hayes and Knowles
Speaker 8: abducted him, beat him, cut his throat, and left his
Speaker 8: body hanging from a tree branch in a racially mixed
Speaker 8: residential neighborhood. Arrested, charged, and convicted, Hayes was sentenced to death,
Speaker 8: the first time in more than half a century that
Speaker 8: the state of Alabama sentenced to white man to death
Speaker 8: for killing a black man. On behalf of Michael's grieving mother,
Speaker 8: Morris D. S, the legendary civil rights lawyer and co
Speaker 8: founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a civil
Speaker 8: suit against the members of the local clan unit involved
Speaker 8: and the UKA, the largest clan organization, charging them with conspiracy.
Speaker 8: DS put the clan on trial, resulting in a verdict
Speaker 8: that would level a deadly blow to its organization. The
Speaker 8: lynching brings to life two dramatic trials during which the
Speaker 8: Alabama Clan's motives and philosophy were exposed for the evil
Speaker 8: they represented. In addition to telling a gripping and consequential story,
Speaker 8: Lawrence Lehmer chronicles the KKK and its activities in the
Speaker 8: second half of the twentieth century and illuminates its lingering
Speaker 8: effect on race relations in America.
Speaker 4: Today. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Lynching,
Speaker 4: the epic courtroom battle that brought down the Klan, with
Speaker 4: my special guest, journalist and author Lawrence Lemur. Welcome to
Speaker 4: the program and thank you for a Greeniness interview. Lawrence Lemur,
Speaker 4: thanks for having me, Thank you very much for coming on,
Speaker 4: and we're going to get to talk about an incredibly
Speaker 4: important book about an incredibly important time, if not the
Speaker 4: most important time in American history. Unlike your book. Let's
Speaker 4: go back to February nineteen fifty six. Morris DS is
Speaker 4: in his second year at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa,
Speaker 4: and he's married with a newborn and trying to get
Speaker 4: his college and law degree in four years. Tell us
Speaker 4: about Morris D's a little bit about his background and
Speaker 4: what is he doing in nineteen fifty six. I mentioned
Speaker 4: he's trying to get he's in school. Tell us more
Speaker 4: about Morris these a little bit about his character and
Speaker 4: what is he doing in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 7: Well, Morris Jesu is a tall, sort of incredibly handsome
Speaker 7: young man. His father is a tenant farmer in the country,
Speaker 7: in the cotton country outside outside of Montgomery, Alabama. He
Speaker 7: grows up a segregationist, says, did every practic everybody wipe
Speaker 7: every other white person in Alabama. Although he had a
Speaker 7: lot of black friends, and most of his friends are black,
Speaker 7: and I know that because several of his friends for life,
Speaker 7: and I interviewed a couple of them from my book.
Speaker 7: But he was a segregationist. He had black friends, but
Speaker 7: those friends wouldn't come in the house and sit down
Speaker 7: with their family for dinner, that's for sure. So Morris Morris,
Speaker 7: you know, he realizes that racial things are not right.
Speaker 7: He has a there's one of the workers, one of
Speaker 7: the field hands that his father has on his land
Speaker 7: and he stopped by a state police trooper who says
Speaker 7: that he's drunk, and he's not drunk at all. Something's
Speaker 7: happened to his car and they find in this enormous amount.
Speaker 7: And Morris is just a teenager. What does he know
Speaker 7: about the law. But he decides to go to help
Speaker 7: this this this black fellow, go into court and and
Speaker 7: you know, and try to get this fine, this try
Speaker 7: to get this get off this thing because he didn't
Speaker 7: didn't really get anything wrong, and then go into the courthouse.
Speaker 7: It's just in a it's just in a country store
Speaker 7: there and he tells his case and the state troopers says, no,
Speaker 7: he's drunk. There's no evidence against him. But they find
Speaker 7: him three hundred dollars. And this man made about a
Speaker 7: dollar a day, and three hundred dollars was you know,
Speaker 7: it's just a devastating amount for him. And at that point,
Speaker 7: Morris just saw that the life was unfair and black
Speaker 7: people weren't treated right in Alabama. He understood, he understood
Speaker 7: that he was a segregationist, but he knew things weren't right.
Speaker 4: So he enrolls in college trying to get his law degree,
Speaker 4: and at that time at the University of Alabama, there
Speaker 4: is a protest. Again we're talking about aggregation and everyone's
Speaker 4: a segregationist, and it was the issue at that time,
Speaker 4: and it was a black woman named Authorine Lucy was
Speaker 4: trying to become the first black student to attend the school.
Speaker 4: So this sets up all of the You introduced a
Speaker 4: lot of characters because they come into play right at
Speaker 4: this time. So tell us about this protest and this
Speaker 4: author and Lucy.
Speaker 7: Well, this is crucial in the history of the clan
Speaker 7: and in the history of the fight against integration because
Speaker 7: the clan came out and along with college students got
Speaker 7: out and started rioting against this young woman. It only
Speaker 7: want in education. She really wasn't a civil rights activist.
Speaker 7: She wanted a kind of library education and the University
Speaker 7: of Alabama was the only place you could get what
Speaker 7: she wanted. And she says, kind of push, she got
Speaker 7: pushed into this activist's role that she didn't even want.
Speaker 7: And Morris had gotten married when he was a senior
Speaker 7: in high school. His bride got pregnant. He was he
Speaker 7: had a brand new baby. He didn't have any money.
Speaker 7: He had to struggle to get through, get through get
Speaker 7: through college. He did everything he could to make money.
Speaker 7: He uh, he went to the dorms and he and
Speaker 7: his wife made sandwiches and they took him around in
Speaker 7: the dormitories at night. And when he went that night,
Speaker 7: all they talked. They were talking about was this black
Speaker 7: woman trying to get into school and what and what
Speaker 7: could they do well? The protest was so extreme, like
Speaker 7: they pushed her out and she did not enter the school.
Speaker 7: That Morris was a very good Baptist. Some people think
Speaker 7: because his name is Morris, sees a lot of people
Speaker 7: think he's Jewish. He's not Jewish. His grandfather named his
Speaker 7: three sons after three Jewish businessmen he admired. But but
Speaker 7: he but he was he was a Baptist and uh
Speaker 7: he he was the leader of the uh the of
Speaker 7: the marriage students and the Baptist shirts are on campus.
Speaker 7: And that Sunday he got up in church and said,
Speaker 7: you know, this is not right what was done to
Speaker 7: to to to missus Lowsey. I mean, it's not it's
Speaker 7: not what we in Christians, that's not how we should
Speaker 7: behave Well it was kind of murmuring in the in
Speaker 7: the church that day, and the minister came to him
Speaker 7: next week and said, Morris, you know, we don't think
Speaker 7: you're really that prepared to be the head of the students.
Speaker 7: Uh have the role you have in the church, and
Speaker 7: you better back off of that. So the Morris learned
Speaker 7: right then what would happened to be stood up?
Speaker 4: Now you talk about his father. The father was a
Speaker 4: tenant farmer, but his father did have a great interest
Speaker 4: in politics and was a gregarious guy and had some connections.
Speaker 4: So you talk about in the book the first time
Speaker 4: that des Is inspired politically or interested in politics was
Speaker 4: with a friend of his father, a Big Jim Folsom.
Speaker 4: So tell us about that event and how it inspired
Speaker 4: Morris D's with.
Speaker 7: Big Jim Folsom was the kind of character you don't
Speaker 7: see anymore. It was a bigger than life in every way.
Speaker 7: It was a six six, wildly overweight, heavy drinker, very
Speaker 7: much of a populist he was. He was He thought
Speaker 7: that one day he thought that the white establishment had
Speaker 7: done everything to keep the poor whites in the poor
Speaker 7: and the poor blacks from understanding that they had a lot.
Speaker 7: They had, they had more together then they had more
Speaker 7: to gain the working together than they did work in
Speaker 7: the part and and the and the establishment figured it
Speaker 7: knew that they created if they flamed racism and kept
Speaker 7: and kept the white working class and having them to
Speaker 7: do with blacks, that that was the one way they
Speaker 7: could keep power. And that's that's what that's what Jim
Speaker 7: big Folsom said they were doing. But one day he
Speaker 7: said that the white working class in the back black
Speaker 7: working class would get together and there would be a
Speaker 7: different society, and that's what he was trying to do.
Speaker 7: His governor was a very very popular governor, and he'd
Speaker 7: come out to the the's home for just sit there
Speaker 7: and get drunk, and just sit there and drink and
Speaker 7: drink until he could finally hardly walk, and his black
Speaker 7: aid and chauffeur, you know, picked him up and put
Speaker 7: him back in the car and drove drove him back
Speaker 7: to the mansion in Montgomery. But that's the first time
Speaker 7: that Morris got interested in politics and in the idealistic
Speaker 7: part of.
Speaker 4: Politics, and that interest in politics was not just a
Speaker 4: passing thing. He was very he was he was seen
Speaker 4: as very ambitious. So what was his political life and
Speaker 4: his future as a result of this ambition.
Speaker 7: Well, he was terribly ambitious. He wanted to make a
Speaker 7: lot of money. He had all these uh businesses going
Speaker 7: with his friend Millard Filler, who eventually started Habitat for Humanity.
Speaker 7: They were in college together. They had all kinds of businesses.
Speaker 7: They did the student Guidebook, the student they did, they did,
Speaker 7: they did cakes. They figured out that you could see
Speaker 7: that you could write letters, send letters to the parents
Speaker 7: and tell him about your son's having his birthday next month,
Speaker 7: and for five dollars will deliver a cake to his dormitory.
Speaker 7: And made a lot of money, made all kinds of money,
Speaker 7: but he's politically ambitious too, and in nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 7: he took a semester off from school and was George
Speaker 7: Wallace's campaignman student campaign manager in the state in Wallace's
Speaker 7: first run for governor. George Wallace was another poor boy.
Speaker 7: George Wallace was University of Alabama student and got his
Speaker 7: law degree from the University of Alabama. Ad did morris Es,
Speaker 7: and George Wallace knew a smart guy. He had the
Speaker 7: most brilliant cent of politics of anyone of his generations,
Speaker 7: other than probably Lyndon Johnson. He understood the white working class,
Speaker 7: and he knew that segregation was going to end after
Speaker 7: the nineteen fifty four Supreme Court decision. It's just a
Speaker 7: matter of time before he's going to end. But he
Speaker 7: realized that if he became a militant segregationist, that was
Speaker 7: the quickest bight of power. He could manipulate these people
Speaker 7: and motivate them and tell them they'd never be integration,
Speaker 7: and he could rise to the governorship and maybe the
Speaker 7: Senate Senate. Who knows where he could go like this,
Speaker 7: But he was very cynical. He could have been the
Speaker 7: the clerk of Alabama doing what the president of Clerk
Speaker 7: of South Africa did in working with Nelson Mandela to
Speaker 7: end their part the abhorrent system of apartheid. George Wallas
Speaker 7: maybe could have done that, it would have been very difficult,
Speaker 7: but he chose a very different route. In nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 7: Morris was there behind him as a student campaign manager.
Speaker 4: And Morris not only learned the ins and out of
Speaker 4: politics in terms of campaigning and what it took to
Speaker 4: really get out there and get votes and organize people
Speaker 4: and get them to get them to the vote that day,
Speaker 4: but also he was privy to exactly what George Wallace
Speaker 4: thought at the same time the strategy that he employed.
Speaker 4: So he was aware of the reality behind George Wallace, wasn't.
Speaker 7: He well more as these days like to say, well,
Speaker 7: you know, Walst wasn't that bad. John Patterson's opponent was
Speaker 7: a lot worse. Well, if you look at the clippings
Speaker 7: walls during that campaign criticizing Patterson for not being tough
Speaker 7: enough on segregation, So that doesn't hold. That doesn't hold Lotter.
Speaker 7: To run for offices in those days, you pretty much
Speaker 7: had to be a segregationist, and Morris these was supporting
Speaker 7: a segregationist there's no question about it. And three years later,
Speaker 7: three years later, it's a young lawyer. In nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 7: there was the Freedom Rides, remember the Freedom Rides, and
Speaker 7: the racial mixed groups came down to the South on
Speaker 7: the interstate buses and when they reached Birmingham, they were
Speaker 7: beaten up, bludgeon to get to bludgeons half to death
Speaker 7: by members of the United Clans of America. And then
Speaker 7: another bus rises Montgomery, Alabama, the capital of Alabama, and
Speaker 7: they get out their bludgeoned there just with some some people.
Speaker 7: With his injuries they never recovered from. Leading them was
Speaker 7: a man that Morris ends up his lawyer as a
Speaker 7: young lawyer. He defends this man. He defends them. Now
Speaker 7: Morris says, well, I didn't know he was a member
Speaker 7: of the clan. Well, I don't know how he didn't know,
Speaker 7: but he says he didn't know. He defended him in
Speaker 7: the courtroom, and there were some there were other defendants.
Speaker 7: One of the other defendants was Robert Shelton. Robert Sheldon
Speaker 7: was the Imperial Wizard of the United Clans of America,
Speaker 7: the most powerful clan leader clan leader in the United States,
Speaker 7: and he too had gone to the University of Alabama.
Speaker 7: He dropped out, but he was a pre law student.
Speaker 7: He was a smart young man and became such a
Speaker 7: rabid segregationist that he decided he would make his career
Speaker 7: through the clan. And when he sat in that courtroom
Speaker 7: and he sees Morris The's defending one of his fellow
Speaker 7: clan leaders, he thinks legitimately enough that Morris is is
Speaker 7: pro clan and most of the lawyers a defendant clansmen.
Speaker 7: They were either klansmen or their pro plan. No, Morris wasn't.
Speaker 7: And Morris says, well, I just defended him because I
Speaker 7: think the lawyer defends everybody. But in those days, you
Speaker 7: really couldn't do that. When you when you defend the plans,
Speaker 7: when people said thought certain things about you in any case.
Speaker 7: When that when that case ended in the courtroom, one
Speaker 7: of the one of the freedomrunners, came up to Morris's
Speaker 7: and said, how could you do this? Morris? How could
Speaker 7: you do this? How how could you be on this side?
Speaker 7: And he realized how wrong he was. He realized he
Speaker 7: had to go he had to go different, he had
Speaker 7: to go a different route. And three years later, when
Speaker 7: when four little black girls were killed in Birmingham and
Speaker 7: the bombing up done by the United Clans of America
Speaker 7: and done under the instigation of Robert Shelton. Morris saw
Speaker 7: that and he saw how terrible that was. He went
Speaker 7: to his Baptist church in Montgomery, outside the country, in
Speaker 7: the countryside that Sunday. And he was a lay preacher.
Speaker 7: In those days, you didn't need credentials to be preacher.
Speaker 7: You could just get up and preach. He did many Sundays.
Speaker 7: And he got up that Sunday and he said, you know,
Speaker 7: my fellow Baptist, you know, we've got these fellow Baptists
Speaker 7: in Birmingham. We got these fellow Baptists are in trouble.
Speaker 7: We've got to help them. And the people shouted out, yes, brother,
Speaker 7: brother Morris, tell us we're gonna we want to help
Speaker 7: our fellow Baptists. He said, well, there were these four,
Speaker 7: these four little black girls were killed in the sixteenth
Speaker 7: Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. We got to help them.
Speaker 7: And they shout out, Noah, Morris, no, Morris, be quiet.
Speaker 7: We don't hear about this. We want to hear about this.
Speaker 7: This is in our business. Stay of your own business.
Speaker 7: And Morris kept on talking and talking, and they wouldn't listen.
Speaker 7: And finally he said, well, let's uh, let's pray. Let's
Speaker 7: shut her eyes and pray. So Morris bowed his head
Speaker 7: and shut his eyes and prayed for quite a while.
Speaker 7: He raised his head, opened the eyes and looked down
Speaker 7: in the church, and everybody was gone. Everybody's gone. He
Speaker 7: was ostracized.
Speaker 4: He was ostracized by his own family as well well.
Speaker 7: He was upset. The next year, the time of the
Speaker 7: Selma March, famous Selma March. At the beginning of that
Speaker 7: march UH with Martin Luther King, Morris and his fellow
Speaker 7: friend and partner Miller Filler Drove drove a bunch of people,
Speaker 7: civil rights activists who had come flown down. Your ministers
Speaker 7: basically mainly Lutheran ministers, drove Drove and Selma to take
Speaker 7: part in the march. That's all I did. He didn't
Speaker 7: take part in the march himself. But at that time
Speaker 7: a state trooper came to his mother's house and says,
Speaker 7: your son, Morris, he's getting himself in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 7: He's with us communists. He better stopp being with those communists.
Speaker 7: There's no telling what's going to happen to him? So
Speaker 7: that was the thing every everybody's been watched in those days.
Speaker 7: You went a little just a little bit off off
Speaker 7: the straight and arrow in term segregation. You were in trouble.
Speaker 7: And Morris had walked a little bit off that road.
Speaker 4: Now in nineteen fifty six when Morris D's was in
Speaker 4: the University of Alabama and he was witnessed to this
Speaker 4: black woman authoring Lucy not being able to get into college,
Speaker 4: and then you know, a couple thousand people, as you
Speaker 4: write in your book, cheering and jeering at her, and
Speaker 4: she was they used some excuse to make sure that
Speaker 4: she was excluded from that university. Among the protesters you
Speaker 4: say that day was the important character Robert Shelton, and
Speaker 4: also Asa Carter and Robert Chambliss. And he had saw
Speaker 4: the film Birth of a Nation, you said, and he
Speaker 4: was an explosives expert. And there was a couple bombings
Speaker 4: like in Martin Luther over the bus boycott and that
Speaker 4: they thought might be related to him. So let's talk
Speaker 4: about Robert Shelton, Asa Carter, Robert Chambliss and what they
Speaker 4: were doing in nineteen fifty six before we talk about
Speaker 4: what they're doing in nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 7: Okay, they are these socially ditective people. Okay, they they're
Speaker 7: not church goers, they're not union members, they don't belong
Speaker 7: to the Rotary Club, they don't have too many friends.
Speaker 7: And in the Klan they founded to find an identification
Speaker 7: and purpose. They're lower class, are working class whites, and
Speaker 7: the whites, most whites look down on them. I think
Speaker 7: they're white trash. The only people they can look down
Speaker 7: on are black people, and they don't want black people
Speaker 7: to rise up. And at that at the time of
Speaker 7: Lucy trying to the University of Alabama, Robert Sheldon was
Speaker 7: a young clansman and he was there and he was
Speaker 7: taking part in this riot and he just loved it.
Speaker 7: And a Carter was there. He was a very smart
Speaker 7: young man, a very talented young man and a clansman.
Speaker 7: He was there and Robert Chamlis was there. And Robert
Speaker 7: Chalmers has become notorious later is a bomb maker. We
Speaker 7: talk about the bomb makers now in terms of the terrorists,
Speaker 7: and isis now important role they play? Well. Robert Shelton
Speaker 7: was the bombmaker for the United Clans of America. He
Speaker 7: made the bombs that blew up the Birmingham church at
Speaker 7: the direction of Robert Shelton. Robert Sheldon was there and
Speaker 7: Asa Carter was a member of He was a member
Speaker 7: of a clan in Birmingham that castrated a black man.
Speaker 7: I mean, these were terrible people, the things that they did,
Speaker 7: but they weren't stupid people. They weren't stupid at all.
Speaker 4: Now it's important because you tie in Shelton, and we
Speaker 4: talked about the governor Patterson versus Judge Wallace trying to
Speaker 4: be governor and them both using segregation, the issue segregation
Speaker 4: to their benefit, but also accusing each other of belonging
Speaker 4: or having ties with the KKK, which actually worked out
Speaker 4: for Patterson, you know amazingly. In your book you chronicle,
Speaker 4: the thing is is that Shelton had meteorical Ron, as
Speaker 4: you say to grand Dragon, but there's a really close
Speaker 4: relationship with Wallace and Patterson. Tell us about that relationship
Speaker 4: and how much power does Robert Shelton have as a
Speaker 4: grand Dragon.
Speaker 7: Well, in fifty eight, Robert Sheldon directs the United Clans
Speaker 7: of America to work for Patterson, who and in the
Speaker 7: runoff election, Patterson and Wallace with the number twe and
Speaker 7: two candidates, the runoff is between them. Right before the election,
Speaker 7: Wallace criticizes the plan. He says that Patterson has the
Speaker 7: Plan clan support and that's terrible and if he's so,
Speaker 7: if he wins, the Klan will clan will be in power.
Speaker 7: Patterson won, and so Wallace changes too, and he thinks,
Speaker 7: I want that clan support, and so he goes to
Speaker 7: Robert Sheldon and four years later he has that support.
Speaker 7: And it's very important because these clans people, not only
Speaker 7: the thousands of them, but they'll do things that ordinary
Speaker 7: supporters won't do. They'll go out at night and they'll
Speaker 7: rip down the the advertising and the signposts and the
Speaker 7: billboards for the for your opponent. Don't just rip it down,
Speaker 7: they don't care. They'll and they'll threaten people and scare people.
Speaker 7: They'll scare people in the voting for you. You know, they're
Speaker 7: very important. And so they helped Wils win election in
Speaker 7: nineteen sixty two on a very racist, segregationist tech. The
Speaker 7: famous story in fifty eight when Wils loses and that
Speaker 7: night and he's just devastated and he goes to the
Speaker 7: hotel where he's got to talk to his supporters and
Speaker 7: who were who are there and to thank them. And
Speaker 7: he's just in a terrible mood, and he uses the
Speaker 7: N word and says, I will I will not be
Speaker 7: out and end again. I'm not going to be out
Speaker 7: and not end again. And he wasn't. And he took
Speaker 7: that racist segregation of his theme and built it as
Speaker 7: strong as he could. He got Robert Sheldon the United
Speaker 7: Clans to get behind him. They helped him get election
Speaker 7: in sixty two. He paid Shelton back. Sheldon was a
Speaker 7: UH tire worker and the good good Rich plant in
Speaker 7: tu scussals right on the line, a real worker and
Speaker 7: Uh well Scott got that company the contract for state tires.
Speaker 7: And and so Sheldon got out of the plant, got
Speaker 7: out of doing that, he got a more executive job.
Speaker 7: He drive around the state UH doing contracts and talking
Speaker 7: to those clansmen, and in Wells, Scott Sheldon's father a
Speaker 7: job as well, and the and then then the Klan
Speaker 7: was willing to do just what what George Wells wanted.
Speaker 7: But nobody knew this, and that was the truth the
Speaker 7: story of the South in those days. People pretended the
Speaker 7: Klan was this outcast near Duell organization. But the Klan
Speaker 7: did for the most part what the establishment wanted it
Speaker 7: to do.
Speaker 4: Now, let's get back to uh where Morris D's is
Speaker 4: in terms of the formation of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Speaker 4: When does that happen and what is the impetus for that?
Speaker 4: Why does he do that? You talked about him being
Speaker 4: an entrepreneur, so that's where he gets his money, finances
Speaker 4: this thing himself. So tell us about the reasons for
Speaker 4: this and the formation of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Speaker 7: Well, he makes a fortune, a very smart guy. He
Speaker 7: and his partner, Millier Frailer, they do book publishing and
Speaker 7: there there for a time the largest publisher of cookbooks
Speaker 7: in America. Very smart guys. They make a fortune, they
Speaker 7: sell the business. I forget I think it was eight
Speaker 7: or nine million dollars, you know, in the sixties. A
Speaker 7: lot of money. And he can do what he wants
Speaker 7: for the rest of his life. And he realizes that
Speaker 7: there's a role the civil rights movement, which which we did,
Speaker 7: modern day civil rights movement, which which we tend to
Speaker 7: think starts at the time of the Montcoming bus boycott
Speaker 7: in fifty five sixty six and ends with the death
Speaker 7: of Luther King. But there's a lot of work to
Speaker 7: be done, and it wasn't to be done primarily by marchus. Okay,
Speaker 7: he was to be done with the law, and the law.
Speaker 7: Often the role of the law in the civil rights
Speaker 7: movement has been downplayed because it's much more dramatic and
Speaker 7: romantic to talk about the marches and the parades and
Speaker 7: all this and brave people standing up and that they did.
Speaker 7: But the courts are very important, and particularly the federal courts.
Speaker 7: Without the federal courts, we would sell have segregation in
Speaker 7: the South, in a very different America. And so Morris
Speaker 7: then starts to start the civil rights law firm in
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy one. He calls it the Southern Poply Law Center.
Speaker 7: It's gowing out about poverty, that's what it's called. That's
Speaker 7: what the civil rights law firms were called at that time.
Speaker 7: He brings down five young, very smart, young lawyers and
Speaker 7: they start filing all these lawsuit say, I mean there's
Speaker 7: just a wealth of things they can follow us. In Sell, Ma, Alabama,
Speaker 7: for example, on the white part of town, the roads
Speaker 7: are all paved. On the black part of town, they're
Speaker 7: all gravel or dirt. They sues to say that they
Speaker 7: they got to pay the blacks part of town. They
Speaker 7: sue to get to integrate the state troopers. There was
Speaker 7: not a single black state trooper at that time. All
Speaker 7: kinds of lawsuits do a lot of good work. And
Speaker 7: Morris is a brilliant fundraiser, and he sends out these
Speaker 7: letters and gets all of money. Can't believe all the
Speaker 7: money that cuts pouring in, mainly from northern liberals, to
Speaker 7: fund this organization.
Speaker 4: At the same time, he's not only criticized, he's not
Speaker 4: only ostracized. It's more serious than that, isn't it.
Speaker 7: No. I mean the Southern Popuy Law Center, the offices
Speaker 7: are firebombed by klansmen, by members of the United Clans
Speaker 7: of America. At one Christmas he is there with his
Speaker 7: daughter putting the ornaments on the Christmas tree, and there
Speaker 7: are two intruders out in his ranch in camouflage uniforms
Speaker 7: and carrying the software, and they're they're carried off by
Speaker 7: by by by his own security people. But it was
Speaker 7: a serious business, and uh, it was scary, and and
Speaker 7: he just he's a very gutsy guy. He's uh, you know,
Speaker 7: he's up helped. He's like he's not even people think
Speaker 7: of Atticus Fitch. Okay, every every lawyer would like to
Speaker 7: be Atticus Fitch, the famous hero of Harperlis Killer Mocknberg.
Speaker 7: Every And I think that that image has ruined more
Speaker 7: lawyers than anything else, because there never was an Atticus Fitcher,
Speaker 7: never was such a person. But Morris is more like
Speaker 7: like like Oscar Schendler Senel Schendler, the hero of Spielberg's
Speaker 7: wonderful movie, who was a Wolbanizing Grandiosi's uh self centered
Speaker 7: uh Nazi businessman who ends up saving thousands of Jews.
Speaker 7: And Morris is not a morally perfect man, but he
Speaker 7: does the right thing in the right way. It's the
Speaker 7: kind of guy that he drives. To know years he
Speaker 7: would drive his motorcycle one hundred miles an hour debts
Speaker 7: down the country lanes, and on the weekends he'd go
Speaker 7: up and ride in a rodeo. So he in a
Speaker 7: way liked danger and he and he took chances very
Speaker 7: feet pop would have would have taken. And the other
Speaker 7: lawyers at the Sun Private Law Center really didn't like this.
Speaker 4: And what did he say to them when they they said, listen,
Speaker 4: you're endangering this business. Is this just your own concern.
Speaker 4: They they saw it as his own, his own campaign,
Speaker 4: his own, his own mission, and not theirs. And what
Speaker 4: was it what was his response to them?
Speaker 7: Well, at the time of these murders, this lynching at
Speaker 7: the center of my book. Uh. The two murderers eventually
Speaker 7: were found sentenced, but Morris felt that that wasn't enough.
Speaker 7: That he had to go after the head of the
Speaker 7: United Clans of America, Robert Shelton. And so he went
Speaker 7: to Beulah Donald, the mother of the of the murdered teenager.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 7: And uh he got her to file file a civil suit.
Speaker 7: And that's what he did, and and and the other
Speaker 7: lawyers at the Southern Private Laws and didn't like this.
Speaker 7: They didn't like to be in danger. They didn't like Uh.
Speaker 7: They thought this suit was stupid. They thought the judge,
Speaker 7: the judge would there was no way. There never was
Speaker 7: a case of an organization being found guilty for what
Speaker 7: a couple of its members did. And so they thought
Speaker 7: it would It wouldn't work out. It was a waste
Speaker 7: of resources, was just They eventually all five of them
Speaker 7: ended up quitting, walking away verything going ahead with this.
Speaker 4: Now let's talk about we'll get back to Robert Shelton
Speaker 4: and and Clavern nine hundred and that faithful meeting that
Speaker 4: they have that Robert Shelton where where Benny Hayes, Henry Hayes,
Speaker 4: Tiger Knowles tell us about the meeting you in great description.
Speaker 4: You talk about the altar and the candle. So describe
Speaker 4: that scene of this Clavern meeting in a cabin on
Speaker 4: Benny Hayes's property.
Speaker 7: Okay, these guys are just nothing in society, okay, for
Speaker 7: nothing anybody ever paid any attention to. And in the
Speaker 7: plan they find identity. And in these quasi religious rituals
Speaker 7: with the altar, with the cross, with this with the
Speaker 7: mumbo jungle language. Okay, they just love this stuff. They
Speaker 7: eat it up. They love to come to this meeting
Speaker 7: meeting and take part in this. So there's one of
Speaker 7: these meetings in March of nineteen eighty one, and there
Speaker 7: have been a black bankropper in Birmingham. He robbed a
Speaker 7: bank and when he came out he was trying to escape.
Speaker 7: He had allegedly killed a white police officer. Now the
Speaker 7: authorities in Birmingham knew that that he couldn't find a
Speaker 7: fair trial there, so they brought him down the mobile
Speaker 7: and the trial was heard before a largely black jury
Speaker 7: that evening at the clavern meeting, they just decided that.
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Speaker 7: If if this guy got offered it was a hung jury,
Speaker 7: some of the clan numbers go out and find a
Speaker 7: black person and retribution kill that black person. And so
Speaker 7: that Friday evening, sure enough, the jury came back with
Speaker 7: a hung jury. And so James Tiger Knowles and Henry
Speaker 7: Hays went out looking for a black man. They found
Speaker 7: this old black gentleman ut talking with telephumble that he
Speaker 7: was too far away. And then nineteen year old Michael
Speaker 7: Donald's walking there. He's he lives in the projects with
Speaker 7: his mother. He's the youngest of seven children. He said,
Speaker 7: he's home that evening watching a basketball game. His family's
Speaker 7: sitting there playing cards, and his aunt says, about eleven o'clock.
Speaker 7: His aunt says, Michael, you go out and get me
Speaker 7: a pack of cigarettes. And she gives him a dollar.
Speaker 7: That's all he had in his billfold. And he goes
Speaker 7: out to get the cigarettes. And he's walking on that
Speaker 7: street and on that dark street, and this old black
Speaker 7: this bureau comes up and Tiger Knowles pulled seventeen year
Speaker 7: olds seventeen years old. Tiger Knowles pulls out a gun
Speaker 7: and orders Michael Donald into the car. Now, Michael Donald's
Speaker 7: not stupid, and my gought is black, and he knows
Speaker 7: he's a black Southerner. He knows when what's up. He
Speaker 7: knows what these people are likely to do doing. Obviously,
Speaker 7: he's tear They take him away on the countryside and
Speaker 7: they stop and they order him out of the car.
Speaker 7: And you know what, this guy is the mildest person imaginable,
Speaker 7: but he fights back. He fights against them, and they
Speaker 7: knock him down and knock him down. They beat him,
Speaker 7: beat him, beat him, and he gets up again. He
Speaker 7: gets up again, he gets up three times and finally
Speaker 7: get him down. He's breathing hard. And they go and
Speaker 7: get a lynching rope out of the trunk, bring it
Speaker 7: in and Henry Hays puts his boot on Michael'donald's head
Speaker 7: forehead and pulls the rope tight and strangle him to death.
Speaker 7: And then they're not sure. They want to make sure
Speaker 7: he's dead, so they go and get a knife and
Speaker 7: slid his throat. Now you think, wow, they just leave
Speaker 7: the Why don't they just bury the body or leave
Speaker 7: them in the woods. They're throw them in the ocean
Speaker 7: and get on with it. Well, because that's not enough.
Speaker 7: They got to make a symbol of this. So they
Speaker 7: throw the body back into the trunk, driving back into
Speaker 7: mobile and hanging on Herndon Avenue, hanging on the tree
Speaker 7: there because they want everybody to see see their handiwork.
Speaker 4: Now, where did they the two go directly afterwards? And
Speaker 4: what do as we see later witnesses say, was their appearance.
Speaker 7: Well, they they just go back to their friends. This street,
Speaker 7: there were klansmen the street. There were four houses on
Speaker 7: that street that had been owned by Benny Hayes, Henry
Speaker 7: Hayes's father, who was the most powerful plan official in
Speaker 7: the southern part of the state. So it was known
Speaker 7: as the clan habitat, and there were several apartments where
Speaker 7: the clans went and Tigernoles had blood in his shirt,
Speaker 7: and when he went in one other clansmen saw the
Speaker 7: saw the button the shirt and quickly got him to go,
Speaker 7: got him to go outside and told him about the blood,
Speaker 7: and he trained his shirt and other clansmen got in
Speaker 7: cars and went to went to the courthouse and instead
Speaker 7: of flaming cross there as the symbol of the plans power.
Speaker 4: Now it took a little while for the people of
Speaker 4: the city, or a part of me of the town
Speaker 4: to realize what had happened. It wasn't an actual lynching
Speaker 4: because he was strapped to the tree. But tell us
Speaker 4: what happens with this crowd, this crowd that has gathered,
Speaker 4: and what's their reaction and who comprises the crowd?
Speaker 7: Mostly well, okay, okay, there were a couple of black
Speaker 7: people who lived in that street, but that was about it.
Speaker 7: But it was in poor neighborhood, and in the South
Speaker 7: at that time, the poorer, the neighborhood more like, who's
Speaker 7: going to be racial mixed? And this was a poor neighborhood,
Speaker 7: and so these black people started showing up and they
Speaker 7: cry and manly out of that sort of religious tradition
Speaker 7: of the South, and they're not embarrassed to show their emotions.
Speaker 7: And they cry, and they got down their hands and
Speaker 7: knees and beat and they beat their fists against the
Speaker 7: ground because they know what has happened. Okay, they know.
Speaker 7: Why do they know? Because there was a tradition of
Speaker 7: lynching in the South. From eighteen seven to nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 7: there was a lynching of an average over once a week,
Speaker 7: and they were psychological, psychologically, a brilliant device to intimidate
Speaker 7: a race. Imagine, if you're a black mother, how do
Speaker 7: you raise your son? Do you raise them to stand
Speaker 7: tall and bold? Or do you raise them when you
Speaker 7: see a white man come on the sidewalk, you get
Speaker 7: off the sidewalk and dup your hat. If you want
Speaker 7: them to stay alive, you'd probably do the latter. So
Speaker 7: the fear of lynching, it hadn't been a lynching for
Speaker 7: twenty five years, but the fear of lynching was in
Speaker 7: the black soul of the South, and they knew what
Speaker 7: had done. Now, Conversely, the white establishment did not want
Speaker 7: to admit that a lynching had happened. Mobile had a
Speaker 7: much better reputation than Montgomery or Birmingham in terms of
Speaker 7: racial matters. There was no national publicity but negative about it.
Speaker 7: They didn't want that to happen. They didn't want it
Speaker 7: to be said that there was a lynching. And so
Speaker 7: four of the five detectives, according to Bob Eddie, who
Speaker 7: was a state investor who came down, four of the
Speaker 7: five detectives were racist, okay, and they weren't about to
Speaker 7: go They weren't looking around to find white people to
Speaker 7: help black people. And three white con you know, properly
Speaker 7: young drug dealers are just near De Willis. They arrested
Speaker 7: them for the crime and said it was a drug crime,
Speaker 7: that Michael Donald had been a drug deal going bad,
Speaker 7: that Michael Donald was buying drugs he hadn't paid, and
Speaker 7: these three guys had killed him. There was no no,
Speaker 7: nothing in Michael Donald's reputation, no evidence that he was
Speaker 7: a drug deal none of this at all, okay, but
Speaker 7: that's what they said. And the rest of these three
Speaker 7: young men and they would have they would have put
Speaker 7: him in prison. They won't even executed them for crime
Speaker 7: they didn't commit. But it had to go before a
Speaker 7: grand jury. Now, grand juries generally do pretty much what
Speaker 7: the pross he wants them to do, and that's what
Speaker 7: they do. They're they're just lame lay people. They don't
Speaker 7: know that much about the law, and they believe in
Speaker 7: the authorities. But that time, when that when this came
Speaker 7: before them, they knew, they knew that this was wrong,
Speaker 7: and so they refused to give an indictment. So so, uh,
Speaker 7: these three young went went went went free. But but
Speaker 7: the authorities and Momobile, they weren't going to go against
Speaker 7: this crime. And that's why people talk about states rights
Speaker 7: and they say, oh, we have to have states rights. Yeah,
Speaker 7: in some ways you have to. Of course they have
Speaker 7: the states rights. But but the right states rights is
Speaker 7: often just a subterfuge. It's just another word for racism.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry. And and in this instance, if they what
Speaker 7: did it take it took that morning to lynching. He
Speaker 7: was the man Michael Figures, who was a state senator,
Speaker 7: the black states citor, the most powerful black politician in
Speaker 7: the southern part of the state. He came that morning
Speaker 7: and he saw and he saw that he took pictures
Speaker 7: of the of the lynching, and he turned around and
Speaker 7: took pictures across the street. And you know what it was.
Speaker 7: We took picture of white men. One was Benny Hayes,
Speaker 7: the plan leader, the big plan leader, his son, Henry Hayes,
Speaker 7: and Tiger Knows, the two murderers and the person, the
Speaker 7: person that set them out to do this part. And
Speaker 7: Michael Figure's brother, Thomas Figure, was an assistant US attorney
Speaker 7: and mobile and he wanted to quit, but he said,
Speaker 7: if I quit, they aren't going to find there, let
Speaker 7: me no justice. So he constantly lobbied the Justice Department.
Speaker 7: He just lobby the Justice FBI, He lobbied the Civil
Speaker 7: Rights Division of the Justice Department until finally they decided
Speaker 7: to come down. And they were the ones, through their efforts,
Speaker 7: through their grand jury and bringing people before the giant
Speaker 7: grand jury not only once, but two times, three times,
Speaker 7: four times, finally broke Tiger Knows. He confessed and he
Speaker 7: was send eventually twenty five years in prison, and Henry
Speaker 7: Hayes was convicted and eventually executed. That never would have
Speaker 7: happened without the Federal governments.
Speaker 4: Now the federal government used every available leverage they could,
Speaker 4: including really digging up a robbery motive, so this would
Speaker 4: be a capital case, which again because of that leverage,
Speaker 4: starts making people talk with that kind of pressure, doesn't it.
Speaker 7: Well, no, the robbery, that's the state case. That's the
Speaker 7: case against Henry Hayes when he goes to trial. Finally,
Speaker 7: at that time in Alabama, you could kill somebody, You
Speaker 7: could kill five people if you just went and slaughtered them.
Speaker 7: That was not considered a capital offense for which you
Speaker 7: could be executed. You had to have committed another crime
Speaker 7: at the same time, generally robbery. If there was robbery
Speaker 7: at the same time, then you then you could be
Speaker 7: could be sentenced to death. Well, well they what were
Speaker 7: they going to do or they didn't have capital murder? Well, well,
Speaker 7: Tiger Knowles had asked Michael Donald to take out his
Speaker 7: wallet when in the back stat of the buick as
Speaker 7: they're driving him out to his death, and in the
Speaker 7: will to Saffy with a dollar bill in it. He
Speaker 7: was found a few days later in a dumpster in
Speaker 7: mobile without the dollar that was that They said that
Speaker 7: was robbery. Well, they had nothing to do with uh,
Speaker 7: Henry Hayes was on who was on trial. It only
Speaker 7: had to do with with his partner the thing. And
Speaker 7: was it robbery, I don't think so. I mean that
Speaker 7: mean that somebody could have just found there was no
Speaker 7: real strong evidence it was robbery, but they wanted to
Speaker 7: find the murderic for it. But even then, the jury
Speaker 7: initially you know, sends him to life imprisonment now in Alabama.
Speaker 7: Then a couple of months later the judge then that
Speaker 7: that that that that was oversaw the case, then looks
Speaker 7: over his verdict and confirms it. He changed the verdict
Speaker 7: to it to death to death, which it was very
Speaker 7: very rare, almost unheard of at that time. But that's
Speaker 7: how much at that time the state wanted to execute
Speaker 7: somebody and show show that they weren't racist.
Speaker 4: In your book, you have an amazing tale of this
Speaker 4: Benny Hayes, who is the biggest official in the southern
Speaker 4: part of Alabama at this clavern nine hundred, big influence.
Speaker 4: He's a big man in town because he owned some
Speaker 4: properties and he has the cabin where the clavern meets,
Speaker 4: where the clan meets. But he has his five foot
Speaker 4: high youngest son who he thinks is a loser. Tell
Speaker 4: us about that relationship and the relationship with Benny and Henry,
Speaker 4: and despite that, Henry still does not rat out his father.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well Benny is just on this miserable, evil human
Speaker 7: means you could ever matchine. Okay, everybody said that he
Speaker 7: beat his wife. He tried to have sex with his
Speaker 7: daughter in law. One day, he has his dog called
Speaker 7: White Hope, and the dog tries to kind of get
Speaker 7: under the fence and get out, so he takes and
Speaker 7: just cuts all the paws the ends of the pause
Speaker 7: off the dog. And his son is watching this, and
Speaker 7: his son just cries, starts to cry. He selp all
Speaker 7: of this disgusting, terrible thing his father had done to
Speaker 7: this beloved dog. And his father just thinks his son
Speaker 7: is a whimp. He's just a whimp. And so why
Speaker 7: one of the reasons Henry Hayes goes down and kills
Speaker 7: the black man man is to prove to his father
Speaker 7: that he's a real man. He thinks, finally his father
Speaker 7: will care for him if he kills a black man.
Speaker 4: And meanwhile, he's he is secretly and it's interesting you
Speaker 4: say that his wife overhears that basically it's a reasonable sacrifice,
Speaker 4: his son for the klan.
Speaker 7: Yeah. No, Afterwards, here enemy has done this, done this
Speaker 7: to get his father's love and I and he thinks
Speaker 7: now that he's killed his father with respect and watch
Speaker 7: out for him. But his father says, well, that's okay.
Speaker 7: If his son, his son has to be excuted. Somebody
Speaker 7: has to pay the price. And the best it's the son.
Speaker 7: I mean, just the father doesn't really care. You know,
Speaker 7: it's terrible for the boy. And Henry on death row,
Speaker 7: he imagine what it's like. He's on death row. Most
Speaker 7: of the prisoners on death row and Alabama on black
Speaker 7: and there's this racist clansman going into a cell in
Speaker 7: this in this, in this on death row. He was
Speaker 7: just terrifying. And in the first few weeks he had
Speaker 7: people protect him right and left. But after a while,
Speaker 7: you know, he realizes these black prisoners are his brothers,
Speaker 7: and he becomes friendly with him. He becomes really friendly
Speaker 7: with him, and they really protect him. And the night
Speaker 7: before he dies, who does he talk to but a
Speaker 7: black preacher. He talks to a black preacher and for
Speaker 7: the first time he confesses that he was He was
Speaker 7: indeed one of the two killers of Michael.
Speaker 4: Donald now Morris D's. We didn't talk about the actual
Speaker 4: meeting with missus Donald. And she is a very very
Speaker 4: interesting character, and she never attended the trial, but her
Speaker 4: family did so tell us about that meeting and what
Speaker 4: she had said to Morris and what he had said
Speaker 4: to her to get her confidence that he was the
Speaker 4: right person to handle this and that she could would
Speaker 4: bother to be You know, she's pretty cynical about white
Speaker 4: people in general and especially the law. You said, so
Speaker 4: what convinced her, Well.
Speaker 7: She didn't look a black woman of that generation. You know,
Speaker 7: it's hard to talk about this because I don't know
Speaker 7: who's listening to this. And I know what I was
Speaker 7: like when I went down there to research this book.
Speaker 7: I mean, I thought I knew about the South. I
Speaker 7: thought I knew about slavery and their repression. But I
Speaker 7: didn't know anything. Okay, I didn't know how bad it
Speaker 7: really was. Morrison, I possibly imagined and then for a
Speaker 7: black woman of Missus Donald's generation, I people would just disappear.
Speaker 7: A black person would just disappear. You didn't go to
Speaker 7: the police for that, that person was gone. Those are
Speaker 7: the kinds of things that happened not only Lynch, but
Speaker 7: just disappearances. So all she wanted for her son was
Speaker 7: some measure of justice. She wanted the people that did
Speaker 7: this to become responsible and she, you know what, she
Speaker 7: wanted somebody to remember her son. She wanted people to
Speaker 7: remember her son. And Morris came to her and she'd learned, uh,
Speaker 7: not to trust people. She definitely learned that. And Boris
Speaker 7: says away with people, and you know when he can talk,
Speaker 7: he can talk. And he talked to him and he said,
Speaker 7: you know, we're gonna do this for him. Misus Donald,
Speaker 7: We're going to do this for your son. And she
Speaker 7: and she agreed, and when she went along with she couldn't.
Speaker 7: She wasn't in the She didn't sit during the murder
Speaker 7: trial because she was afraid the terrible things would be
Speaker 7: said about her son, because they said that when they
Speaker 7: tried to pin the thing on a call her son
Speaker 7: a drug deal. It was just ridiculous. He was afraid
Speaker 7: what Henry Hayes might say to going to blame her son.
Speaker 7: He didn't do that, but she wasn't in the courtroom
Speaker 7: for that.
Speaker 4: Now, what is this his strategy? You say? We talked
Speaker 4: about his other lawyers saying that it was impossible to
Speaker 4: do to get this link had never been done before,
Speaker 4: it was unprecedented. If he failed, it would be disastrous.
Speaker 4: So what was his What was one of the breakthroughs
Speaker 4: that he had? What was the thing that he did
Speaker 4: that that helped move this ahead in terms of getting
Speaker 4: a conviction like this an unprecedented conviction.
Speaker 7: Okay, First of all, he had to show a pattern. Okay,
Speaker 7: one horrendous act of violence, one terrible act isn't enough.
Speaker 7: He had to show a pattern. I mean had Look,
Speaker 7: he had the one of what was done to Michael Donald,
Speaker 7: and he knew that he believed that Robert Sheldon had
Speaker 7: put forth the racist philosophy that motivated these people to
Speaker 7: do that. But that wasn't enough soon for ten million
Speaker 7: dollars against the clansmen, and that wasn't going to do it.
Speaker 7: But so he had to find a pattern. So he
Speaker 7: tracked down James Thomas Rowe, who had been an FBI informant,
Speaker 7: who actually, as an informant, had led had led a
Speaker 7: lot of the clan's most violent actions. I mean, he
Speaker 7: said I had to do it, but I think he
Speaker 7: took it. I think it took a little bit too
Speaker 7: much more pleasure in it. He was in the car
Speaker 7: on the night at the time of the after Selma marched,
Speaker 7: when Villa Luosa, the civil rights were an activist from Detroit,
Speaker 7: was in her car with a young black man. They
Speaker 7: were driving people back and forth in the airport and Selma.
Speaker 7: These four clansmen were in the car and they saw
Speaker 7: this car with the with the middle aged white women,
Speaker 7: the young black man, black man and that, and they
Speaker 7: were going to get this car. And they chased them
Speaker 7: out in the countryside, going very fast, and he pulled
Speaker 7: up beside the car and fired bolts into the car
Speaker 7: and killed Belos. He kills her, okay, and a lot
Speaker 7: of people think that the row was one of the
Speaker 7: people firing those bullets, but because of an FBI infirman,
Speaker 7: he got off. But he could testify that before they
Speaker 7: did that, Robert Sheldman said to them, go out and
Speaker 7: do what you must do. Now, Robert was a smart guy,
Speaker 7: and the reason he never had any criminal convictions was
Speaker 7: he was very careful what he said, go out and
Speaker 7: do what you can do. He didn't set go and
Speaker 7: murder somebody. But that's all he had to say, was
Speaker 7: going what you do what you're doing. That was enough,
Speaker 7: and that was what Roe testified. Rowe's deposition was used
Speaker 7: in the in the courtroom, he found an in the
Speaker 7: THESEUS people found another clansman clans leader, another uh small
Speaker 7: town in Alabama whose clavern had they had firebombed a
Speaker 7: black civil rights leader. They'd fired bullets into the home
Speaker 7: of a white woman as dating a black man when
Speaker 7: the police chief was worried that the civil rights had
Speaker 7: gone to the FBI. They had broken to the civil
Speaker 7: rights leader's house and sold his papers. And he had
Speaker 7: been motivated by Robert Shulden coming and talking to his
Speaker 7: clavern and bragging about the violence against against people's like
Speaker 7: the Freedom Writers. When the Freedom Writers came in Birmingham,
Speaker 7: Robert Sheldon, Robert Sheldon wasn't he wasn't going to get
Speaker 7: out there and start beating up these guys himself. He
Speaker 7: was the leader, and he was in his Catillac instead
Speaker 7: of riding this around the streets right near there watching
Speaker 7: what was going on. But he was the leader, and
Speaker 7: so he had motivated these people that's what they should do.
Speaker 7: So with this, these had the pattern that he needed
Speaker 7: in that courtroom.
Speaker 4: It's interesting he talked about the deal that he had
Speaker 4: with these troopers in twenty one cars and they had
Speaker 4: an agreement do what you want to these protesters for
Speaker 4: fifteen minutes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's incredible. In Birmingham, I mean, look, look one
Speaker 7: of immobile, the Klansmen did what they called missionary activists.
Speaker 7: The favorite missionary activity was to go out and beat
Speaker 7: up a black person. And why don't you beat them up?
Speaker 7: And I don't mean just a few you know, hitting
Speaker 7: them a few times, I mean brutally beating up somebody.
Speaker 7: And the lion they're just lying cringing on the ground.
Speaker 7: And before they left them, the first last thing and
Speaker 7: said to him is you know you don't say anything
Speaker 7: to anybody. You go to the police, and the police
Speaker 7: are klansmen, and we will and we'll kill you. We'll
Speaker 7: kill you because we we'll hear what you did. So
Speaker 7: there was a great fear of the police and the Klan,
Speaker 7: and many of the police in those days were clansmen.
Speaker 7: So when the Freedom Writers came to Birmingham, the Klansmen
Speaker 7: were told by the police, by the top police officials,
Speaker 7: you got fifteen minutes to do whatever you want to
Speaker 7: these people.
Speaker 4: In this time period, that you cover in this book.
Speaker 4: You talk about George Wallace being shot. We don't have
Speaker 4: enough time to go into everything, but George Wallace being
Speaker 4: shot by somebody just wanted to get famous. Robert Kennedy,
Speaker 4: John Kennedy, Martin Luther King assassinated, and the tie towards
Speaker 4: the kind of sentiment that Robert Shelton believed that segregationism,
Speaker 4: segregation was going to be forever. He started being investigated,
Speaker 4: and now he was being he's in court with as
Speaker 4: the grand Wizard or a grand dragon being implicated in this.
Speaker 4: So society had it's, at least on the surface, had
Speaker 4: changed its attitude dramatically in a few short years, to
Speaker 4: the surprise and dismay of Robert Shelton and some of
Speaker 4: the supporters.
Speaker 7: Yes, and in that jury that heard the trial in
Speaker 7: nineteen eighty seven, it was an all white jury. It
Speaker 7: was an all white jury because the clan lawyer made
Speaker 7: sure there were no blacks, but it was an all
Speaker 7: white jury that heard that. And the end came down
Speaker 7: with a seven million dollars verdict. So the South was
Speaker 7: and that's what things. That's one thing that troubles me
Speaker 7: today is you have a lot of young intellectuals, probably
Speaker 7: more black than white. But anyway, who suggests that things
Speaker 7: haven't gotten any better, Well, it's a long road and
Speaker 7: only part way of this there. But things have gotten
Speaker 7: a lot better. If you go back to what the
Speaker 7: South was, how wing you deny and how can you
Speaker 7: deny the struggles that so many people made to get
Speaker 7: us where we are today? Now.
Speaker 4: Morris D's gained a lot of great attention and adulation
Speaker 4: from this decision where he brought down the Klan tell
Speaker 4: us about what Morris D's mother had said and the
Speaker 4: found only had said. And the result of this in
Speaker 4: terms of recognition, which is really what Missus Donald really wanted.
Speaker 4: What about that recognition for.
Speaker 7: Her son, Well, Missus Donald got that. I mean, this
Speaker 7: is what she wants. She didn't care about money. I
Speaker 7: don't want money. I just want justice from my son.
Speaker 7: And across from the Southern Private Law Center building and Montgomery,
Speaker 7: they built the Southern Popery Law Center has built this
Speaker 7: marvelous civil rights museum, this panoramic panorama of the history
Speaker 7: of the civil rights movement. And if you think you
Speaker 7: know everything, believe all that happened, all the violence, all
Speaker 7: the troubles, all the struggles, and Michael Donald's picture is
Speaker 7: right there at the beginning to be remembered forever that
Speaker 7: he's the part of this, just as Martin Luther King was,
Speaker 7: or Mamad Ali or Ben Garvins, whoever.
Speaker 4: What was the fate of Robert Shelton.
Speaker 7: Robert Sheldon became this kind of benign, old gentleman who
Speaker 7: would go to Duncan Donuts and have a cream donut
Speaker 7: and coffee in the morning, and people had no idea
Speaker 7: that he'd once been the Imperial Wizard of the United
Speaker 7: Klans of America.
Speaker 4: Benny Hayes is portrayed again as such a vivid, gruesome
Speaker 4: character in this. You have him in the trial with
Speaker 4: his cane and his menacing, pointing at witnesses and trying
Speaker 4: to intimidate people to live as a heart attack during
Speaker 4: the one of the days of the trial. What happens
Speaker 4: to Benny Hayes.
Speaker 7: Well, he's finally going to be brought to justice, but
Speaker 7: he's just so old at that point that he dies
Speaker 7: before he can be brought to trial. But it was
Speaker 7: the fate of.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, go ahead, Sorry.
Speaker 7: Well, what was the fate of the others? Well, as
Speaker 7: I told you that Henry Hayes was executed. James Tagrinas.
Speaker 7: He spent twenty five years in prison, twenty of them
Speaker 7: in solitary confinement. He got out. He now believed it
Speaker 7: or not. Is the Coaster chef. He saved his money.
Speaker 7: He's got about two hundred fifty thousand dollars and he
Speaker 7: wants to go back to the Alabama and started restaurant. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 4: And what about the UKA, which was the Again from
Speaker 4: the ashes of the Klan came Robert Shelton and an
Speaker 4: even more menacing version of the Klan in the UKA.
Speaker 4: What was you talk about numbers? Fifty thousand members in
Speaker 4: America and probably ten times those sympathizers. What is because
Speaker 4: people do watch for those kinds of numbers. What is
Speaker 4: his status now of the Klan? It's not gone well?
Speaker 7: First of all, First of all, this legal theory that
Speaker 7: dees and has been usednumber of times against skinhead groups
Speaker 7: and white nationalists and crypto Nazis and other clan groups.
Speaker 7: So you don't have any more big organizations, Okay, you've
Speaker 7: got small organizations, but troubling things. Just a few days
Speaker 7: ago in Sacramento, there was a kind of neo Nazi
Speaker 7: groups and state that was having a protest and there
Speaker 7: were knife fights and ten ten people were injured, you know,
Speaker 7: and there are people out there. It's still a very
Speaker 7: troubling thing there. There's still people with these attitudes. And
Speaker 7: they picked this stuff up like Dylan Root did last
Speaker 7: year in Charleston. They pick it up off the internet.
Speaker 7: They don't have become a member of the organization. It's
Speaker 7: a very troubling time in our society now, in a
Speaker 7: very dangerous time.
Speaker 4: What did Morris D's go on to h You know,
Speaker 4: it wasn't the end of his illustrious career, but what
Speaker 4: else did he do? What else did he go on
Speaker 4: to do? And his personal life suffered from some of
Speaker 4: these decisions. But what was a very profound thing is
Speaker 4: the scene that you have in there where his daughter
Speaker 4: question what he's doing in his motivations, and then you
Speaker 4: write about how he convinces her that it's all worthwhile.
Speaker 7: Well, his daughter is in the house, they're putting Christmas
Speaker 7: ornaments on the Christmas tree, and suddenly these two guys
Speaker 7: in their camouflage outfits, you know, and they saw that
Speaker 7: rifles coming on to the land to try to kill him,
Speaker 7: and the security scares him off. But the daughter they've
Speaker 7: been going to closet and hide, and the daughter is
Speaker 7: a friend, says their daddy, why do you have to
Speaker 7: do this? Why do you do this? And so she
Speaker 7: brought him down to the trial, the Silver trial, with
Speaker 7: the Michael Donald trial, and she saw for the first
Speaker 7: time what her daddy was doing. But he was his
Speaker 7: life was at risk. And he's a very controversial person.
Speaker 7: Some people listening to this will will know his name
Speaker 7: and admire him. Other people just can't stand him. Okay,
Speaker 7: that's the way it is. He's a controversial figure because
Speaker 7: he stood up for these things, but his life has
Speaker 7: been in danger. He has security, and again people don't
Speaker 7: like him, say he doesn't need security. He's just showing
Speaker 7: that up. He's just wasting money on this. But I
Speaker 7: know for a fact that as recently as ten months ago,
Speaker 7: there was a serious threat. There was a serious threat.
Speaker 4: Incredible, Yeah, incredible. You also talk about it took till
Speaker 4: one of the incidents in there with the young woman.
Speaker 4: There finally was a conviction of one of the clan
Speaker 4: members in twenty ten, and just to show again just
Speaker 4: a sort of understanding of the time, he only received
Speaker 4: six months, right, Yeah, But you know, now, is there
Speaker 4: some you talked about the impact that this Morris D's
Speaker 4: and in the Michael Donald civil suitcase had on other
Speaker 4: organized like this to to to be able to bring
Speaker 4: them the court and dismantle them. What is Morris D's
Speaker 4: doing now other than again you say his life is
Speaker 4: still in danger. But obviously what is he What is
Speaker 4: he doing right now?
Speaker 7: He's the same guy. He's been married five times. He's
Speaker 7: now living with someone else, and he's very happy. Nobody
Speaker 7: really loves and he's continuing to do. He still takes
Speaker 7: these motorcycle trips. I mean, he still works at the
Speaker 7: Sun Body Law Center. He's just a very dynamic person.
Speaker 4: What was the effect of writing this book on you?
Speaker 4: I know that you had said that there were some
Speaker 4: things that really amazed you that you had no idea of.
Speaker 4: And of course this is covering a lot of, you know,
Speaker 4: incredible history in America. What was the the overall I
Speaker 4: guess maybe the most profound effect for you doing this
Speaker 4: entireble corus after ward?
Speaker 7: Two, the name Holocaust was not used. It was not
Speaker 7: until the fifties when Jewish Americans felt it was extremely
Speaker 7: important to remember this and this was a way to
Speaker 7: remember it. And so now we all know that. Okay,
Speaker 7: we all know the Holocaust. We decided it can't happen again,
Speaker 7: and what a horror that was. I think we have
Speaker 7: to know this. These problems in this era, the civil rights,
Speaker 7: the struggle for black equality, the the the the evils
Speaker 7: of slavery that Obama said was is the original original Americans,
Speaker 7: and we all should know that. It's Americans. Not to
Speaker 7: feel guilty means, come on, it's not about that anymore,
Speaker 7: but it's part of our history and we all, we
Speaker 7: all should know this and realize what we've come through.
Speaker 7: It's very important for all of us.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. I want to thank you for coming on and
Speaker 4: talking about the lynching, the epic courtroom battle that brought
Speaker 4: down the Klan. It's a fascinating book, Lawrence, and I
Speaker 4: want to thank you for coming on and sharing it
Speaker 4: with us. For those that might want to follow your work,
Speaker 4: or do you do Facebook or you have a website,
Speaker 4: how people might contact you or find out more about
Speaker 4: your work.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've got face, I've got Facebook, and I've got website.
Speaker 7: L e a mr dot com. It is not too
Speaker 7: much on except in my books, but face by face
Speaker 7: Facebook too.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Lawrence. A fascinating book.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much once again for coming on talking
Speaker 4: about it. You have yourself a great Thanks for having me,
Speaker 4: good night.
Speaker 7: Yeah,