Speaker 1: Pushkin. This episode contains material that may be upsetting to
Speaker 1: some listeners. I finished law school on the first Friday
Speaker 1: in June of nineteen sixty. On the following Monday, I
Speaker 1: went to work for Donne L. Holliwell, who was the
Speaker 1: ultimate civil rights lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia at the time.
Speaker 1: Vernon Jordan, one of the great figures in the American
Speaker 1: civil rights movement talking about his mentor, and I went
Speaker 1: to work for him right out of law school for
Speaker 1: thirty five dollars a week, and there were no other
Speaker 1: jobs at the local government level, county, state, or federal.
Speaker 1: We couldn't even take the bar review course at John
Speaker 1: Marshall University because Georgia law required education be separate and segregated.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to work for don Hollowell. My first
Speaker 1: day at work, I was in the Atlanting Municipal Court
Speaker 1: helping him get demonstrators from the Atlanting University system out
Speaker 1: of jo My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This
Speaker 1: episode picks up with a previous one left off with
Speaker 1: the story of an extraordinary man named Donald L. Holliwell.
Speaker 1: Halliwell died in two thousand and four, but I wish
Speaker 1: he were still alive, because he has so much to
Speaker 1: teach us, like how do you keep going when all
Speaker 1: seems lost? How do you behave? How do you conduct
Speaker 1: yourself if you're one of the leaders of a loose
Speaker 1: in cause? And for most of his life Holliwell fought uphill.
Speaker 1: How do you prepare those behind you for the day
Speaker 1: when you might succeed? What did he look like? Holliwell,
Speaker 1: big heavy guy, played quarterback at Lane College Vernon. Jordan
Speaker 1: is a big guy as well, imposing charismatic. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that only because it's not a trivial fact. The two
Speaker 1: of them, Jordan and Holliwell, would drive around Georgia from
Speaker 1: one end of the state to the next, to towns
Speaker 1: and courtrooms where a black lawyer was not just an
Speaker 1: anomaly but a provocation. If you were five foot two
Speaker 1: with a little squeaky voice, it didn't work. I would
Speaker 1: just like to think that the people at the university
Speaker 1: and around the university are sufficiently firm minded. I watched
Speaker 1: all these old, grainy videotapes of Hollowell in the Auburn
Speaker 1: Avenue Library and at Anna, and I became fixated on
Speaker 1: his hands, which would rise and fall as he talked.
Speaker 1: They were enormous. In Atlanta's segregated buses, there'd be a
Speaker 1: little sign on the back of the seat where the
Speaker 1: white section ended. It would say colored, directing black people
Speaker 1: to their place. Sometimes, when no one was looking, Hollowell
Speaker 1: would unclip it and stick it in his coat pocket,
Speaker 1: mess things up a bit until the bus driver noticed,
Speaker 1: or some white lady got hysterical because she inadvertently sat
Speaker 1: in a seat still warm from the presence of a
Speaker 1: black person. Hallowell was subversive in his own way, but
Speaker 1: also formal proper. They used to say, he talked like
Speaker 1: the Black Shakespeare. Hallowell once paused in the middle of
Speaker 1: a trial to instruct the court on the correct pronunciation
Speaker 1: of negro, not nigra, your honor negro. Another time, he
Speaker 1: was up against two district attorneys in court, and the
Speaker 1: moment he got up to speak, the white judge swiveled
Speaker 1: in his chair with his back to halliwell, so he
Speaker 1: would not have to suffer the indignity of gazing upon
Speaker 1: a black man. What did Hallowell do? Just kept talking
Speaker 1: and talking in those slow, formal tones, until it was
Speaker 1: the judge who looked like a fool. I did all
Speaker 1: the driving, and we get to a town and so
Speaker 1: a principal or school teacher or the local doctor. Somebody
Speaker 1: just got some independence. That's where you spend the night.
Speaker 1: I slept a minute a night with Holloway. You know
Speaker 1: we're piling the same bed. It better be a big bed.
Speaker 1: Two of you were, Yeah, but there were no big
Speaker 1: beds in those there were no King's bed. Ah. But no, no,
Speaker 1: it was Halliwell was a real hero. In the early
Speaker 1: morning of November fifth, nineteen fifty three, a woman named
Speaker 1: Betty Joe Bishop calls the Atlanta Police Department in hysterics.
Speaker 1: In her car is the badly beaten corpse of her boyfriend,
Speaker 1: Marvin Lindsay. She tells the police that two of them
Speaker 1: had been attacked when they were parked on a secluded
Speaker 1: road on Atlanta's South Side. It's a sensational case. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was written up in one of those pulp crime
Speaker 1: magazines that were so popular back then, Official Detective Stories,
Speaker 1: March nineteen fifty four issue Wanted the Man in the
Speaker 1: Pyramid hat I can't do justice? To the spirit of
Speaker 1: pulp journalism. So we're going to re enact some scenes
Speaker 1: from the article, starting with its description of the moment
Speaker 1: Betty Joe Bishop meets Atlanta's Chief of Detectives, Glenn Cowan,
Speaker 1: on in November morning. Suppose that you begin by telling
Speaker 1: us your name, Bishop, missus, Betty Joe Bishop, I'm a widow.
Speaker 1: You were with Marvin Lindsey tonight. Yes, tell me what happened?
Speaker 1: Bishop tells the detective about driving to Jonesboro Road. We
Speaker 1: were only there a few minutes when this man came
Speaker 1: out of the woods. It was terrible. He struck me
Speaker 1: with his fists and Marvin had to fight him off.
Speaker 1: Then he walked around the car and hit Marvin with
Speaker 1: something heavy. Marvin pleaded for him to stop, but he wouldn't.
Speaker 1: She covered her face with her hands and broke into long,
Speaker 1: racking sobs. Cowen waited patiently until she recovered her composure.
Speaker 1: What happened? Then he asked what happened? Then? Well, after
Speaker 1: he got tired of hitting Marvin, he ran into the woods.
Speaker 1: Marvin was lying half in and half out of the car,
Speaker 1: so I walked around at the driver's side and made
Speaker 1: him lie across the seat. He was bleeding something awful,
Speaker 1: so I knew he was hurt bad. I drove to
Speaker 1: his home in Blair Village and told his brother John
Speaker 1: what had happened, and John got in the car. We
Speaker 1: drove to Gratty Hospital, but it was too late. Marvin
Speaker 1: was already dead. They're in the police station. She can
Speaker 1: barely hold it together. She's all beaten up. Her lover
Speaker 1: is dead. She tells the officer that the assailant had
Speaker 1: come back after killing Marvin and raped her. Maybe Detective
Speaker 1: Cowen takes her hand in sympathy. Maybe he waits a
Speaker 1: few moments to let her collect her thoughts. Then, as
Speaker 1: the article describes it, he asks her to describe the assailant.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It was very dark, and I was scared.
Speaker 1: He was tall, and then I remember that much. Also,
Speaker 1: when I grabbed one of his hands, I remember it
Speaker 1: felt kind of bony. Slowly, gently Cowen draws a description
Speaker 1: out of her. The man was in his late thirties
Speaker 1: or early forties, about five ft eleven then, wearing a
Speaker 1: leather jacket, dungarees, a funny kind of hat, pyramid shaped,
Speaker 1: and he was swarthy and had dark oily hair. The
Speaker 1: article never comes out and says so explicitly, But if
Speaker 1: you're a reader of the pulp magazine Official Detective Stories
Speaker 1: in March nineteen fifty four, you know what swarthy means.
Speaker 1: The killer's black. That's why this is such a sensational case.
Speaker 1: Betty Joe Bishop is an innocent white widow and she
Speaker 1: and her boyfriend had been attacked by a mysterious black man.
Speaker 1: Atlanta's finest immediately got to work. They scour the crime scene.
Speaker 1: The killer had a rolled up newspaper, which he had
Speaker 1: apparently left at the scene, and he'd circled two want ads,
Speaker 1: one for a dishwasher at a local restaurant. The police
Speaker 1: go to the restaurant. Did a thin, swarthy man with
Speaker 1: oily hair answer an ad yesterday for a dishwasher? The
Speaker 1: only the restaurant says yes, doesn't remember his name, but
Speaker 1: remembers the man said he used to look at Elite
Speaker 1: Bowling Alleys on Hunter Street. The coat check girl at
Speaker 1: Elite Bowling Alley says, oh, that's Willie. An eyewitness comes
Speaker 1: forward says he saw a man near the crime scene
Speaker 1: swore thee wearing a pyramid shaped hat. They scour the
Speaker 1: area around the crime scene, stumble on a little cottage
Speaker 1: inside his thirty nine year old Willie Nash, unemployed handyman,
Speaker 1: swore thee dark hair. They arrest him, he confesses, So
Speaker 1: who do you call? If you're Willie Nash? Things are
Speaker 1: pretty bleak. What you really want is a white lawyer.
Speaker 1: Because it's nineteen fifty four. The jury is going to
Speaker 1: be all white, the police department is all white, the
Speaker 1: judge is going to be white. Willie Nash knows where
Speaker 1: the power lives in Atlanta, Georgia. But Willie Nash is poor,
Speaker 1: so he's forced to settle for one of the very
Speaker 1: few black lawyers in town, a man two years out
Speaker 1: of law school, still wet behind the ears, Donald L. Holliwell.
Speaker 1: When Nash realizes he has no other choice, he breaks
Speaker 1: down into tears. I'd have cried too, Holliwell says years later,
Speaker 1: if I'd have been Willie Nash under those circumstances. This
Speaker 1: was years before Vernon Jordan joined Holliwell's firm, but he
Speaker 1: knew all about the Willie Nash case. Everybody in black
Speaker 1: Atlanta did. That's the case where he held up the
Speaker 1: latest pennies before the jury, and that was a case
Speaker 1: set set Hallowell up. A few years ago, the Smithsonian
Speaker 1: interviewed a man named Robert Carter, another legendary black attorney.
Speaker 1: Carter talks about trying school segregation cases in the Deep
Speaker 1: South in the nineteen fifties with Constance Baker Motley and
Speaker 1: Thurgood Marshall, two other pioneering black lawyers of that era.
Speaker 1: They would be in court up against the local white
Speaker 1: school superintendent, and black people from the community would show up,
Speaker 1: cram into the balcony, hang on every word. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that they expected to win, because they often didn't. They
Speaker 1: just wanted to see a black person in a position
Speaker 1: of formal authority over a white person in Mississippi or
Speaker 1: Georgia or Alabama. At the height of Jim Crow, that
Speaker 1: was history being made. Every hearing, every trial with a
Speaker 1: black lawyer was theater. During cross examination, a white witness
Speaker 1: might forget his role in the trial and start asking
Speaker 1: questions of the attorney of Motley, say, and Connie Motley,
Speaker 1: a black woman in nineteen fifty something, would reprimand the
Speaker 1: white male witness say, my job is to ask the question.
Speaker 1: Your job is to respond, and everybody would gasp. In
Speaker 1: the evening, Carter says he would walk through the black
Speaker 1: neighborhoods and hear people re enacting the trial in barbershops
Speaker 1: and beauty parlors. In other words, there were two conversations
Speaker 1: going on at any given time. There was the legal
Speaker 1: conversation witness, judge, lawyers accused. If you were a white
Speaker 1: lawyer dealing with the white world, that was the conversation
Speaker 1: you worried about. But there was a second conversation, which
Speaker 1: was between the black lawyers and the people in the balcony.
Speaker 1: And if you were an underdog with a limited chance
Speaker 1: to win at the first conversation, then that second conversation
Speaker 1: was really important. Donald Holliwell was very good at the
Speaker 1: first conversation, the legal one. He was a master of
Speaker 1: the second. At home the defense of liberty and democracy
Speaker 1: for African Americans. There's a great documentary about Holliwell made
Speaker 1: by the Georgia's civil rights scholar Maurice Daniels. This fight
Speaker 1: will require foot soldiers for equal justice. Daniels does a
Speaker 1: long interview with an attorney named Howard Moore, who worked
Speaker 1: with Holliwell in the nineteen sixties, and Moore talks about
Speaker 1: arriving early at a hearing into the police shooting of
Speaker 1: a black teenager to handle things before holliwell got there.
Speaker 1: I got down to Bibb County and went to the courthouse.
Speaker 1: There were about three thousand negroes on the steps. And
Speaker 1: I went into the courthouse and there were about three
Speaker 1: thousand or as many as they could get into the
Speaker 1: balcony of stand. And when I walked into the courtroom,
Speaker 1: the people upstairs, the black people, said that ain't Hollowell.
Speaker 1: Where's Hallowell. That ain't Hollowell. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Hey, I have no idea what I
Speaker 1: was supposed to do, you know. So I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll act like Hollowell. I'll just object in the loudest
Speaker 1: voice I can. And then people upstairs in the in
Speaker 1: the in the back, and they said, what it ain't Hollowell,
Speaker 1: but he sound like Hollowell. When Hollowell showed up at
Speaker 1: the court in quest, he put the police officer on
Speaker 1: the stand he shot a seventeen year old boy named
Speaker 1: Acy Hall. Hollowell took the officer through his testimony bit
Speaker 1: by meticulous bit slowly exposing the officer's lies. The coup
Speaker 1: was in tears by the end. I've never seen that
Speaker 1: before since, when a lawyer just take completely control of
Speaker 1: a witness and buying that witness to his will, not
Speaker 1: with shouting and screaming, but with systematic, well structured, well
Speaker 1: played questions. Now, did Hollowell win a victory for the
Speaker 1: bereaved family of ac Hall. Was the officer prosecuted? Of
Speaker 1: course not. It's hard enough to win a conviction against
Speaker 1: a white cop who shoots a black kid today, let alone.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty two in Bibb County, Georgia, this was
Speaker 1: about the second conversation between Hollowell and the thousands of
Speaker 1: people on the steps. We are not entirely powerless. I
Speaker 1: can bind a witness to my will one more case,
Speaker 1: because there are dozens of them. Hollowell never stopped moving
Speaker 1: in those years. This one was in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: and this time Hollowell was with the young Vernon Jordan.
Speaker 1: Our client, James Fayre, a black kid from New Jersey,
Speaker 1: had been arrested, haraigned, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to
Speaker 1: die in the electric chair in twenty four hours, Hallowell
Speaker 1: and his team go down to the town of Reidsville,
Speaker 1: Georgia to argue for a new trial. The judge in
Speaker 1: the case was Judge w I and the niggas in
Speaker 1: my court gear. He had that reputation. On Monday, we
Speaker 1: went and we tried to gaze. At lunchtime, the judge
Speaker 1: and the white lawyers and the white court officials went
Speaker 1: across the town square to the white only restaurant and
Speaker 1: had their lunch. Hallowell, CB. King and I went to
Speaker 1: the owner grocery store on the Cornell Square or the
Speaker 1: pound of bologney, loaf of bread, musta Coca cola and
Speaker 1: the baby Ruth and sat in mister Hallowell's car in
Speaker 1: the parking surrounding the courthouse and ate our lunch. We
Speaker 1: did it on Monday. We did it on Tuesday. Wednesday,
Speaker 1: we're trying the case. And the black lady waved at
Speaker 1: me and I met her in the vestibute of the
Speaker 1: courthouse and never forget it, and she said, Lawyer, we've
Speaker 1: been watching y'all eat that bologney for two days now.
Speaker 1: She says, just have a Coca cola and don't eat
Speaker 1: that bologney today and when the court ends, which is
Speaker 1: three thirty or four, your drive to my house for lunch.
Speaker 1: So they go to her house. That's the moment Jordan
Speaker 1: remembers fifty years later, that moment of grace and quiet
Speaker 1: rebellion outside the courtroom. And we walked in, and the
Speaker 1: table but was set for royalty, her best learning, her
Speaker 1: best china, her best crystal. The aroma of the southern
Speaker 1: food was almost crippling. It was as a circle. I noticed,
Speaker 1: and her neighbors had come and put on nice sundresses,
Speaker 1: and their husbands had cleaned up, and they welcomed us.
Speaker 1: And then we joined hands, and and her husband gave
Speaker 1: the grace, and he said this unforgettable sentence, which was, Lord,
Speaker 1: we're down here in Tatnall County. We can't join the NAACP,
Speaker 1: but thanks to your bountiful blessings, we can feed the NAACP. Lawyers.
Speaker 1: So Willie Nash, Betty Joe Bishop's swore the assailant. The
Speaker 1: case we began with Donald Hollowell's Trial by Fire. If
Speaker 1: you look back on Hollowell's career, it's all there, every
Speaker 1: theme in that first case. Nash has been indicted for murder, rape,
Speaker 1: and robbery. The prosecutor has a murder weapon, a bloody
Speaker 1: piece of pipe. He has Nash's confession, and he has
Speaker 1: a witness, a black man named Julius Harris, who places
Speaker 1: Nash at the murder scene. The moonlight was shining directly
Speaker 1: on his face when I glimpsed him. Harris testifies for
Speaker 1: Hallowell and Nash. It looks pretty bleak. But then one
Speaker 1: of the prosecutors is trying to remember Julius Harris's name
Speaker 1: and can't, and he says, in an open court room,
Speaker 1: the eye witness, you know that fat nagger. Holliwell jumps
Speaker 1: out of his seat and almost shouts a negro is
Speaker 1: as entitled to respect as any other person. The judge agrees,
Speaker 1: declares a mistrial. The second trial is two months later.
Speaker 1: This time Holliwell has time to prepare. He puts the
Speaker 1: head of the Georgia State Crime Lab on the stand
Speaker 1: and asks, did you find any blood on the alleged
Speaker 1: murder weapon. The man says, actually he didn't. Holliwell moves
Speaker 1: on to the police. Turns out they have multiple conflicting
Speaker 1: stories about what happened that night. Willie Nashe testifies says
Speaker 1: his confession was beaten out of him. As for the
Speaker 1: witness who said he saw Nash's face by the light
Speaker 1: of the moon, Holliwell points out there was no moon
Speaker 1: over Atlanta that night. Finally, Holliwell turns to the alleged victim,
Speaker 1: Betty Joe Bishop. Turns out she had a second boyfriend
Speaker 1: who left town right after the murder of her first boyfriend,
Speaker 1: and when she pulled up to Marvin Lindsay's brother's house
Speaker 1: with Marvin's dead body in her car, the first thing
Speaker 1: out of her mouth was, I know you think I
Speaker 1: did it, but a nigger did it. Finally, Halliwell calls
Speaker 1: the doctor who examined Bishop right after the alleged rape occurred,
Speaker 1: and the doctor concedes that he could find no evidence,
Speaker 1: not bruises or sperm, to indicate that a rape actually occurred.
Speaker 1: That's when Holliwell holds up an item from police evidence,
Speaker 1: Betty Joe Bishop's underwear. Hollowell waves them in front of
Speaker 1: the jury. Nineteen fifty four, Atlanta, Georgia. A black man
Speaker 1: waves a white woman's underwear in the air in front
Speaker 1: of an all white jury. Now, who's at four? Is
Speaker 1: it for? The jury. Of course, he's saying, Betty Joe
Speaker 1: Bishop is lying through her teeth, But it's really for
Speaker 1: the audience. He sang enough. You can imagine that up
Speaker 1: in the balcony there was a collective intake of breath
Speaker 1: at that moment, something that could be heard clear across Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and that night, in a thousand homes, somebody stood up
Speaker 1: and played out that scene just like Hollowell, to a
Speaker 1: chorus of disbelief. Willie Nash goes free. But it's still
Speaker 1: not a real victory, because what's the real lesson of
Speaker 1: the false indictment of Willie Nash? That every white person
Speaker 1: in that courtroom lied freely and blatantly. The police liede
Speaker 1: the witness lied, the victim lied, the press lide. The
Speaker 1: murder weapon wasn't a murder weapon, the rape wasn't a rape.
Speaker 1: And the only reason all the liars got caught was
Speaker 1: they couldn't even be bothered to keep their story straight.
Speaker 1: It didn't seem worth the effort. I know you think
Speaker 1: I did it, but a nigger did it. It's not
Speaker 1: as if the whole group of them, the victim, the police, officer,
Speaker 1: the witness, the doctor, the press got in a room
Speaker 1: and worked out an elaborate story to tell the court
Speaker 1: that would be a conspiracy, which you only need a
Speaker 1: conspiracy where there is a system to conspire against. There
Speaker 1: was no system to conspire against. They were the system.
Speaker 1: The Nash case wasn't a victory, but it was a warning.
Speaker 1: Things got worse for the civil rights movement before they
Speaker 1: got better. The William Ash case was in nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: the same year that the Supreme Court ruled in the
Speaker 1: Brownvie Board of Education decision that racial segregation was unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: After Brown came what is known in civil rights history
Speaker 1: as massive resistance. The white political power structure of the
Speaker 1: South rose up, and the backlash began. One by one,
Speaker 1: white governors and mayors and senators who had been at
Speaker 1: least moderate on racial issues were replaced by hard line racists.
Speaker 1: Alabama had a governor in the nineteen fifties, Big Jim Fulsom,
Speaker 1: who used to say, all men are just alike. I
Speaker 1: don't think he really meant it, but at least he
Speaker 1: was willing to say it. By the early nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: Alabama had taken a big step backwards. Their new governor
Speaker 1: was George Wallace, who famously declared sagregation now segregation, the
Speaker 1: MA and segregation father. The decade leading up to the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act was a dark time
Speaker 1: in American racial history. We forget this now. Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King led the Montgomery bus boycott in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: but after that he had years in the wilderness when
Speaker 1: even members of his own community had turned against him.
Speaker 1: And in October of nineteen sixty at the lowest EBB
Speaker 1: King gets arrested. He was already on probation for a
Speaker 1: traffic violation. He'd move from Alabama to Georgia and didn't
Speaker 1: get a Georgia driver's license within the requisite ninety days,
Speaker 1: for which he had been sentenced to twelve months in
Speaker 1: public works camp, which was the Georgia euphemism for a
Speaker 1: chain gang. King got that sentence suspended, but then he
Speaker 1: got picked up for taking part in a sit in,
Speaker 1: and the prosecutor said that meant he'd violated his probation
Speaker 1: and now he needed to do his twelve months on
Speaker 1: the chain gang. By the way, if you think that
Speaker 1: this has anything to do with driving in Georgia with
Speaker 1: an Alabama license, you're crazy. This is what things had
Speaker 1: come to in nineteen sixty. You have asked me what
Speaker 1: other plans do we have in connection with Reverend Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King's release? So who does King call for help?
Speaker 1: Donald L. Holliwell. Of course. In the morning after King's arrest,
Speaker 1: Holliwell stands on the DeKalb County Court House steps addressing
Speaker 1: a group of reporters. Of course, this would depend upon
Speaker 1: whether or not the court granted our motion to vacate
Speaker 1: the order of yesterday. If the court fails to release him,
Speaker 1: of course we would take other steps to appeal or
Speaker 1: to effect. Hallowell is trying to get King's case thrown out,
Speaker 1: but the problem is that King is no longer in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: He's banished. In Maurice Daniel's documentary, Hallowell's wife Louise talks
Speaker 1: about what happened when her husband went to retrieve King
Speaker 1: from the county jail, only to be confronted by the
Speaker 1: warden when he got there. He said, I came to
Speaker 1: get a king out this morning, or something like that
Speaker 1: to that effect, and he said, well, he ain't here.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, what do you mean he ain't here?
Speaker 1: He said, well, they took him away this morning sometime,
Speaker 1: and they carried him down to the state prison and
Speaker 1: he said that's where he is. He ain't here, so
Speaker 1: you can't get him. Well, mister Halliwell didn't like that.
Speaker 1: I love that line. Mister Halliwell didn't like that. Daniels
Speaker 1: picks up the story with Andrew Young, another of King's
Speaker 1: inner circle. That was a night of Martin Luther King's life.
Speaker 1: They took him from the DeKalb County, put him in
Speaker 1: leg irons and handcuffs, laid him on the floor in
Speaker 1: the back of a paddi wagon with nobody back there
Speaker 1: but a German shepherd, and they drove him from Atlantat
Speaker 1: of Reidsville. It's three hundred miles. There were no expressways then,
Speaker 1: three hundred miles on bad Georgia roads. Reidsville, the same
Speaker 1: place where Jordan and Holliwell ate their Bologna sandwich in
Speaker 1: the car. They know the town well. The state prison
Speaker 1: in Reidsville was notorious. It was the kind of place
Speaker 1: where they used that phrase in quotation marks that somebody
Speaker 1: got shot trying to escape, or where they got beat
Speaker 1: up by a guard out of the chain gang. When
Speaker 1: King's followers heard Reidsville. They honestly feared that he was
Speaker 1: going to end up dead, but there's not a hint
Speaker 1: of that in his attorney on the courthouse steps, learning
Speaker 1: that Reverend King had been taken to the Reidsville prison,
Speaker 1: I would say that I indicated two authorities on last
Speaker 1: evening that we were desirous of having Reverend King at
Speaker 1: this hearing. However, they informed me that they had already
Speaker 1: transmitted the papers yesterday afternoon to the Board of Correction
Speaker 1: and that it was in their purview to move him
Speaker 1: when they desired. Hallowell's composure does not break why because
Speaker 1: he's not just talking to those reporters, he's talking to
Speaker 1: the black people of Georgia, telling them that it will
Speaker 1: take more than the abduction of their leader to break
Speaker 1: the spirit of their movement. We know that it's a
Speaker 1: matter of normal practice. It is several days before a
Speaker 1: prisoners moved. However, when we called at eight for the
Speaker 1: purpose of ascertaining the whereabouts with the sheriff for making service,
Speaker 1: we were informed that Reverend King had been taken down
Speaker 1: to Reidsville at four or five this morning. That day,
Speaker 1: Halliwell flew to Reidsville invited along the national media. The
Speaker 1: White House was watching. Holliwell walked into Reidsville and walked
Speaker 1: out with his client. It's a surreal moment. The state
Speaker 1: of Georgia basically tried to kidnap the nation's leading civil
Speaker 1: rights leader. There's press everywhere. Someone puts a camera in
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King's face. Everyone's eyes are on him. There's
Speaker 1: a famous picture of that moment. It ran in all
Speaker 1: the newspapers, and you can imagine that when people from
Speaker 1: the movement saw it, they first looked to see whether
Speaker 1: King was okay, and then they asked, where's Holliwell. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: there he was in the background, off a little to
Speaker 1: the left, crisp white shirt, elegant black bowtie, impassive, implacable.
Speaker 1: This is put gave me hope. Okay and Jordan again.
Speaker 1: I went to see him to talk about Holliwell, but
Speaker 1: more than that, because I wanted to understand what it
Speaker 1: means to persevere. It's not just that these stories are
Speaker 1: shocking and extraordinary. It's the sheer weight of them. A
Speaker 1: white woman has her boyfriend murdered and then just randomly
Speaker 1: pins it on a black man who just happens to
Speaker 1: be in the neighborhood. A police officer shoots a teenager
Speaker 1: in the back and gets off scot free. A kid
Speaker 1: gets arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted, end sentenced to die
Speaker 1: before he can even mount a defense. Your leader gets
Speaker 1: whisked away to a chain gang because he didn't get
Speaker 1: his license changed within ninety days. You fight an uphill
Speaker 1: battle all morning in the courtroom. Then you eat your
Speaker 1: bologny sandwich in your car like a fugitive, and it
Speaker 1: never ends. You get in the car and you drive
Speaker 1: to one end of the state, and the judge swivels
Speaker 1: in his chair and will not offer you the basic
Speaker 1: courtesy of facing you as you speak. Then you sleep
Speaker 1: two in a bed in a stranger's house, and do
Speaker 1: it all again the next day and the next day.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how Donald Holliwell did it, And maybe
Speaker 1: more importantly, I don't understand how he kept everyone else,
Speaker 1: the people behind him who didn't have his strength, from
Speaker 1: giving up. Is there any question more fundamental than that?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure there is. So I went back to Vernon,
Speaker 1: Jordan a second time after he's told me about Nathaniel
Speaker 1: Johnson and Willie Nash. I sat in his office in
Speaker 1: Rockefeller Center and he told me one last story. It's
Speaker 1: about when he was in high school, the same school
Speaker 1: Martin Ruth the King went to David Howard High on
Speaker 1: Randolph Street, an all black school in the black part
Speaker 1: of town. Jordan was in the band, and one day
Speaker 1: the principal gets a call from the school superintendent, a
Speaker 1: white woman. The senator from Georgia, Richard Russell was running
Speaker 1: for president. She wanted that David Howard High School band
Speaker 1: to be at Peastree in Baker Streets to play with
Speaker 1: these hand me down instruments in white schools. As Richard
Speaker 1: Russell went up Peastree Street on his way to sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. Richard Russell was a hard core segregationist,
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful men in the Senate who
Speaker 1: used his position to block anything even looking like civil rights.
Speaker 1: A man who was a matter of principal did not
Speaker 1: think black people should be allowed to drink from the
Speaker 1: same water fountain as white people. This man one of
Speaker 1: the black students of Atlanta to play in his honor.
Speaker 1: The principal told the bandmaster, and the bandmaster told us
Speaker 1: at band practice at two thirty, a trumbone player named
Speaker 1: Maynard Jackson and a trumpet player named Vernon Jordan said hell, no,
Speaker 1: we won't go. Big discussion took place, right, you and
Speaker 1: Maynard Jackson were at school together. Yeah, Maynard Jackson in
Speaker 1: his day was part of the same band of brothers
Speaker 1: as Donald Holliwell and Vernon Jordan and Martin Luther King.
Speaker 1: The big argument took place, and at the end the
Speaker 1: trumbone player and the trumpet players said, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: We raised it, but we gotta go because if we
Speaker 1: don't go, our principal and our bandmaster would lose their jobs.
Speaker 1: So we played at Peachtree in Baker Street for Richard
Speaker 1: Russell in nineteen fifty one. Swallow your pride. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a pride, It was a practical decision. Twenty one years later,
Speaker 1: Maynard Jackson was sworn in as mayor of Atlanta. Right,
Speaker 1: so you got nineteen fifty one a bad situation, and
Speaker 1: you get through it. Twenty one years later he is
Speaker 1: conducting the political Symphony of Atlanta. And that's why you
Speaker 1: can't get angry. I have to get smart. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: at least did you at least play badly no, we
Speaker 1: were too good. We who we were? A hell of
Speaker 1: a man. Revisions History is produced by mail La Belle
Speaker 1: Jacob Smith, with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel and ciel Maarra
Speaker 1: Martinez wife. Our editor is Julia Barton. Flawn Williams is
Speaker 1: our engineer. Original music by Luis Gara. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: our actors Jody Markel and Ken Marx, and to Andy
Speaker 1: Bowers and Jacob Weisberg. Panoply, I'm Malcolm Gradwell