efforts toward aid for rafah. and, joy reid and rachel maddow, live at the apollo, awakening america, and how the mission of the civil rights pioneers is more critical now than ever. have a great night! ♪ ♪ ♪ [ cheers and applause ] >> is in a great to be at the apollo? ♪

[ cheers and applause ] >> i grew up coming to this place so many times. and, this, tonight, is special. i thought about, when i was coming in backstage, i've been on this stage with godfather of soul, james brown, who was like a father to me, and michael jackson, the list goes on. but, tonight, you will have something special at the apollo, because you will have two icons that are going to talk about their work, and talk about what they do in this country that is so needed at this time today could not be a better night at the apollo. this is not just a great show, tonight, this is history. so-- [ cheers and applause ] so, it is my honor and my pleasure that, i can't bring

you tonight the godfather of soul-- >> [ laughter ] >> but i bring you the godmother of woke >> [ cheers and applause ] >> rachel maddow. >> [ cheers and applause ] i got you on that one. >> [ laughter ] [ cheers and applause ] [ cheers and applause ] >> wow, how are you doing? >> we love you, rachel. >> [ cheers and applause ] >> i am so nervous! [ laughter ] it's fantastic,

fantastic. thank you all so much for being here. it's an honor to be here at the apollo, and for this event. [ applause ] all right. so it was early january. the country was supposed to be preparing for a peaceful transfer of power, in washington. the elections happened in november, and so, in january, everybody was due to be sworn in, the new leadership should be taking over, but that early january, there was a problem, and there had been rumbling about it, people who were a little worried about it, but as we got closer and closer to the date on which power was supposed to transfer, it really looked like the peaceful transfer of power was not going to happen. and, this was the front page of the new york times. senate snarled.

senate is unfilled. seating is blocked. southerners prevent senate organization extended debate begun. there is supposed to be a united states senate being seated, but they can't convene. this happened in january, 1947. and, the problem they were having, is that there was a single senator, who was a problem. and-- the problem they were having, is that most members of the senate did not believe he should be seated among them. and, if he was going to be blocked from taking his seat segregationist senators were so outraged by that, that they decided they would block there from being any senate at all, they would filibuster the convening of the senate. there would be no u.s. senate anymore, not unless their guy got in. now, the man in question is somebody who you are introduced to in the first chapter of joy-

ann reid's new book, called medgar and myrlie, [ applause ] medgar and myrlie: medgar evers and the love story that awakened america. chapter 1, joy introduces us to this particular senator, because among other things, he was their representative in mississippi, and washington, and i say it is nuts, and i will now prove it, because while joey has brought you an introduction, i have brought her tonight the worst present in the world, which i will give her now in front of all of you. i have tape of that senator appearing on "depressed" in the middle of that scandal, and i will warn you that it is-- terrible. it is i think-- inarguably obscene. but it should give you some sense as to what the exact problem was with the senator. here it is. >> senator, are you or have you

ever been a member of the ku klux klan. i am a member of ku klux klan 40, bilbo. >> do you think you would get any klan supporters now? >> no man leaves the klan, he takes an oath. >> i would bet on this, sir, the reporters' integrity against yours, because all of the particulars seem to agree on that quote. do you go out and manufacture it? what did you say to approximate of that? >> i said the best time to keep a [ bleep ] >> which led to intimidating him-- >> mr. andrews, and senator, and all of the group in the balance of this program that we'll have to go ask you not to

refer to any race, group, or individual in any derogatory terms. >> very well. >> very well. i will note for the record none of the reporters were using this language, it was the sitting senator. in fact, even after admonishment like that he went on to use the litter and word multiple more times on that broadcast of meet the press. said there had been a you could not have whites only primaries, but when that senator theodore bilbo was up for reelection two years later, 1946, he openly and repeatedly told audiences in mississippi that they needed to do everything in their power, they needed to be willing to shed blood to prevent any black person from voting in mississippi's primary elections. and this was not something he did once and then got confronted with it, this was not something he hid. he said this at every event, he was proud of it, he was proud

to admit it even on "meet the press." and the only reason it ended up causing him trouble at all, the only reason it would ultimately maybe cost him his senate seat, the only reason it would stop senate from convened at all in 1947, the whole problem only arose for him, because of his constituents, who were black world war ii veterans, including medgar evers. [ applause ] black u.s. military veterans returning home at the end of world war ii including 20-year-old evers and his brother, charles, insisted in that 1946 election they would not only register to vote, they would vote. they fought for their country, they knew what the supreme court had, they said they could vote even if this guy, bilbo, said they couldn't. and what resulted was

incredibly violent. joy writes about it in her book, there were about 1500 black mississippians who braved beatings and mobs to cast a vote in that 1946 mississippi primary. more than half 1 million black mississippians were eligible to cast a vote, only 1500 were able to. it was such a scandal and challenge it ended up being washington to its knees, because black veterans petitioned the senate about the violence that confronted them when they tried to vote. they petitioned the senate specifically about senator bilbo having called for that violence, having demanded that violence. and the senate held hearings about it, in washington, d.c. and they held hearings about in mississippi, they held hearings, 96 black mississippi voters did the bravest thing imaginable and testified at

those hearings about the intimidation, and the violence that was brought against them to stop them from voting that year. >> [ applause ] >> and the point of the petition was that the senate should void his election, and not seat him in the united states senate, and they assigned segregationist senators to hear, to be on the panel, to hear that testimony and hold, the senators weren't going to prevent bilbo being on the basis of this, but it did got a lot of national attention. it became a national scandal. and, that scandal was an embarrassment, and senator bilbo was an embarrassment to the united states senate. and so ultimately, they decided well, we may not keep him out of here for inciting murders mobs against black voters, but maybe instead we'll get him for his wild ass corruption.

a new cadillac. and a swimming pool. the excavation of the lake to create an island for his home. he even built him his own private road. it was a bribery in the senate, they at least decided they would get him for that. but, the whole reason it happened, because black veterans held this man up for the country to see who he was, and what the country saw was repulsive. >> [ applause ] >> and in the end, generate, 1947, it's the first midterm election after the end of world war ii, the senate is only able to convene. we only have a congress at all, because bilbo agreed that he would not try to be seated. he would go to mississippi instead and get medical treatment that he needed, and they would just handle the whole issue of his moral turpitude on his corruption, when he came back to washington.

whereupon senator theodore bilbo finally found it in himself to do the honorable thing for once in his life he finally had the decency to go home, and died. >> [ cheers and applause ] >> and he never came back to the united states senate. he never came back to washington, so they never had to vote on whether or not to seat him, and that is how we got our senate back. and, today, it is you know, theodore bilbo, has been lost to history. he doesn't loom in our history anymore. who does loom in our history today, is medgar evers. >> [ applause ] >> medgar evers ' strategic mind, and his bravery, are a story of her was a man bravery that echoes through the generations. we remember him for his work as field secretary, mississippi field secretary of the naacp, remember him for his moderate

him martyred him, his assassination, and the moment he came back from world war two. he had been discharged by the army, he was being sent home to mississippi. on the bus home from his army service in europe, fighting against the nazis, he was beaten, set upon, beaten to within an inch of his life, because he refused to move to the back of the bus when he was ordered to do so. he was wearing his u.s. uniform at the time she received that meeting. as a veteran, registering to vote trying to vote, stand up against bilbo's terroristic claim to that seat, joy writes the early fight in mississippi branded both medgar evers and his older brother, charles , as young men to watch, as agitators. the year after that fight, medgar evers started college at

alcorn a&m, followed by beasley, who laid eyes on him the first day of school and never stop stopped again. they fell for each other the first moment they saw each other . they. within a year, they were fiercely in love until he was assassinated, in 1963. and beyond. and that love story including the beyond is rendered here in this new book by my beloved friend, joy. >> [ cheers and applause ] >> so i will say this one last thing. um-- even if history is not your finger, even if it is not what moves you the way it moves dorks, like me and joy, this story is history, love story,

and a paragon of bravery that can teach us how to live now. read the life stories of americans who lived through what they lived through. if you can read these life stories and not feel a fire lit under you to do more yourself, to give more, to risk more, to live in awake history will put you on the right side of it, you need to get yourself checked out, because you are not okay. >> [ cheers and applause ] >> it is one of the great joys in my life that i work summer now where i have colleagues who share my obsession with forgotten monsters, like theodore bilbo, but who can also earn the trust and friendship of heroes who are still among us, like trying 12. >> [ applause ] >> to persuade her to tell her story, who also have the juice, the sheer talent and mind, to put together the love story of

medgar and myrlie where he belongs. please welcome my friend, the great joy-ann reid . >> [ cheers and applause ] ♪♪ choose advil liqui-gels for faster, stronger

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we are at the apollo theater. pinch herself. think of the legends that have been on this stage. >> i know. i cannot even think about it. i am wearing glasses, i can't see any of you, because if i could, i would die. >> [ laughter ] >> so joy, the book has been out about eight weeks now, new york times number one bestseller. >> [ cheers and applause ] >> i know from experience, you live in the research, and the writing. it is a very, and it's a lonely thing, and you create this thing and don't know how it's going to live in the world. i want to ask what you have learned from having this story out in the world for eight weeks now.

people responding to it, people telling you what it means to them. >> you know, one of the things i've definitely learned, i'm just soap grateful people responded to this. i would read a straight up book about the history of mississippi with no love story in it. i'm interested in history, because i think it's needed. we need to understand where we've come from, but i did this story as a love story for particular reason, and the reason is myrlie evers-williams . because, she gives you that you know, when you talk with her. but, i've learned in talking to people now all across this country about this book is how hungry people actually are to hear about love and to think of the possibility that love can move things, and do things. >> [ applause ] >> people care about history, but people also care about and are pleasantly surprised that even in some of the worst

moments in our history, people did ordinary things, and i think that's west what's most powerful. these are ordinary people who had an ordinary, wonderful life beyond the horror they were facing. >> i felt like one of the things you were-- teaching in this book, and it wasn't explicit, but it was throughout, that love is part of human resilience, that there is this-- myrlie goes back over and over to this thing that was said to her by medgar, which was painful, i'm doing this for you, doing this for the kids. and she saying me and the kids need you more, stop this work. he says i'm doing this workout of my love for you. and that is like, this helix of depths in terms of how far this goes. your words, describe the leader

she became. >> i think we like to think of the civil rights movement, and of this era of the 1940s, the post-world war ii era through rose colored glasses, the glasses you can't really see right through. we assume everybody black was eager to be in the civil rights movement, and everybody who was a world war ii veteran was heroic and good. none of those things were true. there were people who fought in world war ii heroically in europe, and came home and practiced fascism at home. and there were lots and lots of black people, who just wanted to live their lives, go to work, send their kids to school, and just not have to deal with racism, day in and day out, and fight it. and they were also afraid.

and i think it's something people don't like to admit. people like to think if you were in that era you would be on the front lines and be medgar evers. the vast majority of people wouldn't. most were just trying to survive. they were just trying to get through the day, and not get lynched and humiliated in front of their children. just getting through the day was heroic. we both have covered what happened with mr. navalny. it is abnormal to be. it is normal. and everything else that he was doing terrified her, and she was honest with him about it, and he was honest with her in saying i get that, but if i don't do this, this state, and this country won't

be good enough for you, and my kids. >> yeah. >> [ applause ] >> and one of the things i learned from your book is that, in his life, before he was martyred, one of the ways he was written about in the national black press was as essentially a poster child for i am not leaving mississippi. he was saying, she wanted to leave as soon as he was graduated, and they were married. and he was saying listen, i love mississippi, and there's so much that's wrong with mississippi, and it's dangerous, and i will never leave this state. and that was a curiosity even in his lifetime that somebody with the resources, the ability and notoriety would choose to stay, it was a deep form of patriotism and love of his country, and love of his state. >> there is a profile done on him, titled, why i love

mississippi. and these are northern, black journalists, coming to the south and talking with a southern black man who had gotten out, that most, but there were a number of black men in particular, who went to europe during the world war ii era and didn't come back, because you could live a normal life in france. they were like later for that, i'm not coming back to this country. but, he deliberately came back. you have to remember mississippi has connect tissue to chicago. if you are a black person from chicago your people are probably from mississippi, because there was this train, $11.50 that went back and forth. a lot of people would get out and go straight to chicago. there are a lot of mississippi folks in chicago. emmett til till was one of those. they had traveled a little bit.

so, they had choices. once he had his job with the naacp they could have say said i could go somewhere else. he was smart enough, you know. he was certainly capable enough to live anywhere else, but we did this background, we went all the way back to enslavement of these two families, the families of medgar and myrlie. they come in the very beginning, come from africa to mississippi. it is in their blood bones, and tears. for him, i think his attitude was why should i leave mississippi? if fascists don't like me being equal maybe they should leave mississippi. >> i love the story of hunting and fishing, and wanting in part to expose his kids to the

country. >> there is a quote i really do actually love from abraham lincoln that he had in his home, he had assigned with a quote from abraham lincoln that says i'm driven to my knees, knowing that i have nowhere else to go, is the shorthand of it. i think that's how he felt. he did not want to live in a concrete jungle, not the city, he wanted to hunt and fish in the country and do the things he loved. he loved the bucolic nature of mississippi, the fauna and flora . he loved things about mississippi that weren't the people. he felt they needed to do better. ♪ ♪ [splash] before advil: advil dual action fights pain two ways. advil targets pain at the source, acetaminophen blocks pain signals. advil dual action.

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a delegation over hamas touched down in cairo for the latest round of hostage and cease-fire talks. leaders signaled signs of compromise in recent days, even as israel continues to threaten the ground offensive and gaza's southern city of rafah where millions of palestinians are currently sheltering. an official telling nbc news there was "still a ways to go, and under no circumstances will they agreed to end the war as part of the deal." in texas dozens were rescued in harris county amid had a strophic flooding there. more rescues still under way. officials saying 73 people, 42 animals, were saved. a flood watch has been extended into tomorrow as the forecast calls for up to 3 inches of rain possible. some communities remain under

medical evacuation orders. the 54th anniversary of the kent state university shooting today. the ohio national guard fired into a crowd of anti-vietnam war demonstrators, killing four. today, an event was held calling for cease-fire in gaza, as well as divesting from military contractors. organizers say the protest was a way of continuing the legacy of those students. a spokesperson at the university said the school upholds their students' first amendment rights, and that university police were aware of that demonstration. back to our special with joy reid and rachel maddow. ♪ one of the things, joy, you are talking about how the rose- colored glasses, the way we

look back at that era, we all like to think not only would we be a hero, but everybody who we relate to, they were probably heroes too. one of the things that you spent quite a bit of time repeatedly going back to our african americans in mississippi, who-- were paid by the mississippi sovereignty commission, which was a state- organized spy agency, to spy on the civil rights movement. um-- and the files of the sovereignty commission will curl your hair. it's unlike anything else in american political history, but there were black leaders, black newspaper owners, newspaper editors, black activists essentially on the payroll of the segregationist movement to spy on leaders like medgar evers and others. and you -- make sure to tell those stories and name them as well. i wanted to ask you about that. >> the truth of the matter is that segregation and maintaining it after brown v. board, it demanded an

apparatus, that mississippi included that sovereignty commission, white citizens councils, a dressed up version of the klan, these are the bankers who could pull your mortgage. then there was a violent section of the klan, but it did require the acquiescence. some were business owners like having a captive audience. in a segregated society you, as a store owner, you know, black people had to shop with you. there was no where else for them to go. there were some black newspaper editors, who thought the naacp was too radical, they didn't like the way they were speaking about mississippi society, they thought they were troublemakers, that they were hurting the business communities that were all

locked, and they felt the status quo could work for them, financially. since they weren't suffering they didn't see any reason to change it. >> wow. >> what's so interesting, some of them were exposed at that time, almost real-time, in that era, you discovered that, not just any newspaper, but the leading black newspaper editor in jackson, mississippi, the editor of that newspaper was taking money from the sovereignty commission. pastors were taking money. >> so, this, for me, this question loomed over the whole bloke whole book, which is what i want to talk to you about. it's about good guys and bad guys in history. and, at a very fundamental level, this book is making the case james baldwin was right, if we are going to take inspiration from civil rights leaders who were martyred, then there is malcolm and medgar,

and evers , as americans stood up in the face of oppression. what do we do with the people committing the evil and are perpetrating the oppression? the reason i want to talk to you about this is, i feel like you've made really interesting choices about what history to tell in this book. and i am fundamentally divided, because, part of me is very happy that nobody has heard of theodore bilbo. being lost to history, yeah, good. i'm glad you are. but, part of me wants everybody to know who he was and what he did, and i feel like part of why we seem unprepared and ill- equipped to deal with our generation's worst confrontation with oppression and tyranny, is because we don't know much about the tyrants and the oppressors of history.

>> yes. i agree. >> [ applause ] >> so how do you thread that needle? it's a great insult, it's a great curse to tell someone, you will be forgotten, lost to history. you will have no headstone. on the other hand, maybe that's not the worst thing that can happen to the worst people. >> i agree with you. i am somebody who wants no villains lost to history, and the reason i say that, is because it sometimes feels like we keep reliving the same eras in american history, over and over again. and, and in this current era it doesn't feel like-- and all of you, we already watched rachel's incredible show-- when you are talking about the 1930s and '40s, what it sound like you are talking about is now. >> applause >> the only way you can get people to repeat the same errors is that they don't

remember that happened, before. that you think donald trump is something that's never existed before. but when you say no, here's another version of that. if you think, well, this has never happened before, that you have seen people denied access to the ballot, no, it's pretty much the same playbook. nothings new under the sun, people don't change the tactics of evil, they just repeat it, because people forget. >> [ applause ] >> i'm not for amnesia in that sense. we were talking, because rachel maddow i'm fairly sure bugs my house, because she is obsessed with everything i'm obsessed with. once we understood we were like nobody understands about you and me. >> we have arguments. >> we are both obsessed with bilbo. when i saw theodore bilbo showed up in the filing from

the state of colorado in their appeals tried to get donald trump thrown off the ballot, i was so happy that all the people around me thought i was such a weirdo, i think they probably wanted to leave the room, but i was like guys! my poor producers-- it's theodore bilbo, he's here! they were like-- okay-- is that a noun? does it matter? it matters. >> [ laughter ] >> the reason that you had to pay attention to theodore bilbo is that, when bilbo and others like him, they were not fighting black participation in the general election, they were fighting it in the primary. these were the trials of the democratic party, not the republican party. this was the way, we are talking a lot about the 14th amendment. the 14th amendment and the 13th, 14th, and 15th, were meant to enfranchise. the way

southern states got around it was to essentially say the democratic party, the only game in town in the south, the same with the republican party is now, we aren't saying you can't vote because you are black, we are saying you don't meet the rules of our private organization, and we will find all these creative ways to prevent your vote. everyone will vote for you and the general, the primary is the power. we have forgotten that in american politics noted americans have forgotten the power of primaries. the whole civil rights fight in the south was about getting black people access to the only game in town, the democratic party, and if you couldn't vote in the primary, it didn't matter what happened, because republicans couldn't be elected. reverse that the republicans were the democrats work the flip the parties, it's the same playbook. so i think we've got to remember in order to progress, because we cannot fight a demon that we beat before but forgot the formula. >> yeah. amen, amen, exactly. >> [ applause ] >> can i tell you one more

theodore bilbo story? >> tell me, please. >> you can talk amongst yourselves. >> [ laughter ] >> i believe mississippi only ever had two statues of governors in the mississippi state capitol, one of them is theodore bilbo. and, they commissioned, after he died in 1947, which was a kindness-- they commissioned a german sculptor-- >> [ laughter ] >> to create a life-sized bust of him, which sounds vague, but he was very small. but it's life-sized, and they put it in the rotunda. and i mean this is a man, before he died, when they sent him home from washington, and when he died, he wrote a book called your choice, separation or mongrelization. i mean, the man was a cartoon character.

so they have the statue of him in the rotunda, somebody gets it in their head maybe let's move him out, they put him in a conference room that no one uses. >> [ laughter ] >> they then realize they don't have a choice to move him anywhere else. when they commissioned the statue from the german sculptor they also passed a law that said this statue of theodore bilbo is never under mississippi state law allowed to leave the first floor of the mississippi state capitol. so, they put him in this conference room. ultimately they start using the conference room. who? the black caucus of the mississippi legislature. >> [ laughter ] >> who to their credit, it uses him as a coat rack. >> [ laughter ] >> [ applause ] >> at this point it's still a problem that he's there, and at some point somebody takes it upon themselves to move him to somewhere else on the first floor of the capitol, and they find a storage closet next to the elevator shaft, and they wrap him in as best as

blankets, and shove him in the storage closet. this only happened within the last couple of years. 18 months ago they finally decided, screw the law, we are moving him to the basement. and he has only just now been moved to the basement, and on to the mississippi civil rights museum. but, that man has a weird persistence, like a fable. is a b is suffering with even just the lead version of him, but understanding these stories is important to understand how people fought against him. t ag.

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affiliate today we are in a moment, where it feels like the rule of law is on life support. i feel like this went down the memory hole quickly, but with the first criminal indictment of donald trump there was a southern governor who announced if they're going to try and extradite you from florida, i will direct state law enforcement to block that extradition, governor ron desantis, of florida. and he's done well, hasn't he? >> [ laughter ] >> yeah, he's-- >> it's going great. and, that feels fatal, like

defying court orders, this feels fatal, but, we had it before, of course, right? with massive resistance to civil rights rulings from the courts in the south, we have had widespread defiance of the rule of law in this country for years and years, not bad laws, good laws defined in practice, so while you're thinking about the rule of law and the challenges we have against it now, what should we have learned from experiencing the civil rights movement that teaches us how to come back that threat now to mark >> right, this was actually a court challenge medgar evers faced. you have court rulings going the naacp's way. they are winning in court over and over again. the courts, though all-white, are saying you have to grant like citizens this right or that right, to access the bus terminals, right to eat in the restaurant, you have to do it. you see this massive resistance

of finding ways to say we will defy that. defying supreme court orders, which is the thing back then. for medgar evers his frustration was that the naacp's answer to your question is we'll go back to court and do another thing, and we'll win again and again and again. the challenge to that was younger people in the south, and in the state of mississippi. they weren't adjusted in the strategy, because for them they could have mortgages that can be recalled, they didn't have a job that could be let go from, they were high school students or college students, and they also had the bravado of use. so, their answer was we'll fight it in the streets. we'll march-- right? we'll march on the segregationists we will sit in the library and refuse to leave. we will use our bodies to resist, we will slow down the process of this economy, making it impossible for people to

live peacefully and quietly in a gated life. in defiance of his bosses, who are very angry about it, so he, he's torn. his actual job is to do what he's told, sign people up and register to vote, and the adults were too scared, and to sign people up for naacp memberships, where people would get fired if they joined the naacp, and the kids are saying no, we are going to march. he was saying i'm going to bail you out of jail. when you get locked out, i'm going to bail you out. the sense was you could only do your own version of physical resistance to tyranny. so that kind of was the big question in the south, and dr. king, who medgar evers deeply revered and wanted to replicate the movement and what he did in birmingham and alabama, he was trying to do that in mississippi. king had the same idea, which was the only thing you could do when you have people defying

the supreme court of the united states, is to force them to watch the violence that they are willing to perpetrate on television. that if you are going to do this to us we will make sure it is heavily publicized, and one of medgar evers' biggest beefs with the way black americans reacted to their subjugation, was the silence, was the fact that when someone was lynched, no one talked, no one protested. he said whatever is done to us, we need to make sure it's done publicly. he founded a newspaper to make sure that happened. i think the king and medgar agreed when you get to the point where people are willing to defy the supreme court of the united states and subsequent orders, is you have to physically resist and resist in public, so people have to feel the shame of what they are willing to do. >> [ applause ] ♪

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>> thinking about the way that we have and history, i feel

like the easy way to learn that history is to learn it as if there was a synthesis, that there was a legal strategy to get the good core dwellings and then there was the direct action strategy and they were synthesized and they came together and were working for the same thing. part of the pain of the story of medgar evers is that was not an easy marriage and he was a person employed by the naacp, which was focusing on the litigation strategy and he was in sympathy and deeply involved with and organizing direct action and at the moment that he was killed, he was prepared to be getting fired and had been warned he was going to be fired. this was itself but some kind of sacrifice and its own kind of bravery in leadership to be the one bridging the gap between those two very difficult strategies. >> this is the reason that i say, again, it is ordinary people who do these things. you have this man who not only is worried about getting fired, whose wife has now had their third child, he has a nine-year- old, and eight-year-old, and a three-year-old, she has left her job. she was his secretary, she was

working as a secretary when he first got the naacp job but once they give birth of her child, she stays home. now there's one income. they have a mortgage, they have two car payments, they have bills. he's a former insurance salesman. he could barely afford to pay his insurance premiums. he's economically stressed and his marriage is stressed because myrlie is assigned to them you don't have to do this. they don't even want to protect you. they won't even pay for security for this house. they won't pay for protection for you. you can barely afford to keep your car fixed up and if your car breaks down, you will get killed by the klan. every time i pick up the phone, it is a terrified black person to identify a mention in their family or it is some angry white person setting they are going to blow this house up and help me and kill you and kill our kids. so he's got family stress. so, i just, i got so invested in this couple and in their

normal lives just thinking how would you deal with that? and, there was a time when myrlie did say to me in one of our interviews, she was surprised he didn't have a heart attack because he was so stressed out. when you are doing all of that and your process are all over you and sending i don't agree with what you are doing and you are going to get fired if you don't stop but you deeply believe in your heart and your soul that this is the only way to liberate your people, i can't imagine being him. i can't imagine having to do that. for her before myrlie, by the time she buys in, when she really says, you know what, i'm going to be done with this, it is at the point where their home is firebombed and she is the one at home with the kids and she is the one who has to get the garden hose and put it out and there is a point where she says , you know what, what else can we do? what else can we do? he's not going to stop but they

are not going to stop so i'm not going to stop. >> is also just the sensitivity and the depth with which you tell how much she knew it was coming and how much he knew it was coming. may 20th, 1963, medgar evers is miraculously granted, as you tell the story, granted tv time, equal time to respond to segregationist critics of the movement and he gives a 20 minute speech on television in jackson, mississippi and you talk about how myrlie knows the racist segregationist "clarion ledger," has printed their address, no everyone who has a television will see his face and they know that this is the end. within 10 days, their home is firebombed and by the middle of june, he is dead. for them to know it is coming, for them both to know it is coming, and for him to persist is a form of heroism but also a form of tragedy that i honestly don't know how to process now. he made friends with myrlie

evers through this process. i can feel you crying in writing that chapter and feeling for her and knowing that she knew it was coming. how did you process it and how did you factor it into your friendship with her? >> i cried a lot writing this book. i think the saddest story i remember writing was the one where, you know, she is a 1950s, 1960s house wide. she does all the cleaning, cooking and ironing. just contact, you know what i mean? myrlie irons a set of shirts, crisp white shirts for medgar evers to go to work that week. he says that so sweet, i appreciate it but i don't think i'm going to need them. there is a point where he starts feeling fatalistic and saying fatalistic things and where they posadas was going as

the naacp had told him his neighbor who was a member of the naacp and his other friends had said you guys have to get this guy protection, he's being followed by the client everywhere, his phone is being tapped. you have to do something. they said we've got better things to do with our money. the sense of being abandoned and also threatened with your job, i think at the end, he was exhausted. the sort of end, the hardest thing to write was what we knew was coming but it comes in this really sort of extra ordinary moment. he had done the tv speed, he had said things about the kind of world that he wanted to see created in this country and then president kennedy gives a speech on june 11th that is very similar and uses some of his words. he has been peppering kennedy with telegram after cup telegram after telegram. i spent a lot of time in the library of congress. i got my library of congress card. i was so excited.

i took a picture of myself with it. >> very me there. >> please. but, i mean, some of the saddest stuff to read with the telegrams and the increasingly desperate communications between medgar evers and the white house saying you need to send the national guard here, you need to send , you guys are sending russian observers, send them here, let the russians, and see what we are doing here. he was increasingly desperate. kennedy gives this speech and in the meeting after the speech, it is supposed to be a triumphant moment because he won the over, he had one this president over who start using some of his own good, a fellow world war ii veteran, he got it, he gets it. in the meeting afterward, he's told by his bosses, you will and the street demonstrations immediately. there will be no more street demonstrations, there will be no more marches, there will be no more public activism. it is over. >> we are cutting off the bail money. >> the bail money, we are cutting it off. it is done. he leaves this moment when it should've been his most

triumphant moment dejected and that is why he gets killed because this was a veteran. this was a man, he was that dr. king, it was not about that life. he had against all through his house. he was not nonviolent. he didn't believe in that. he wasn't. he wasn't. but, he had a system that he had developed as a military man, even with his kids. windows with them. if you hear a gunshot, you go down on the floor, and that your brother, you lay on top of him, you go into the tub because that is the place that is safest. he taught the kids what to do if there was a shooting or firebombing in the house. that night, he was so despondent after this triumphant kennedy speech that he makes mistakes and makes fatal errors that are the reason that this fellow world war ii veteran was able to kill him >> you mentioned a couple times while we have been talking, a variety of economic warfare that i learned a lot about from your book. when we think about civil rights struggle, i think we all know about the famous black

recounts, obviously the birmingham boycott and the others that have received so much attention. i didn't know as much about the jackson movement, the black shopping or cut in the delta and places like that. there is also this other side of economic warfare. you mentioned it a couple times tonight. banks foreclosing on the homes and businesses of activists. in the wake of the emmett till trial, the banks and other financial organizations that had made normal homelands, normal, normal business loans, personal loans to the black community, just that they had to anybody else, targeted activists who had participated in trying to get witnesses to come forward for the emmett till trial and they foreclosed on their homes and foreclosed on their businesses and that is how even very well off black activists in mississippi and up leaving to go to chicago to get out because this form of economic warfare is waged against them. i was thinking about this because in tim schneider's book on tyranny, lesson 14, one of

the lessons that he wants about and that he describes is happening in all sorts of authoritarian countries in front of all sorts of different types of tyranny is to not give tyrants the hooks on which to hang you. he advises, one of his lessons from the 20th century is clean up any legal trouble, clean up any financial trouble, clean up anything that anybody can use against you because the nastier rules will use what they know about you to push you around. seeing that at work in this story, seeing that at work in mississippi, snyder's warning about that having happened in fascist germany. i wonder if you have been thinking about that in terms of the future in this country. and, the ways we need to build up our own resilience and high- profile people among us such as yourself need to protect

ourselves and make sure that we have people who are not just in solidarity for us but looking out for us. >> absolutely. and, to build on your point, think about, again, none of the playbooks are new. people at the same ones over and over again. think about what is happening in jackson, mississippi now. jackson, which is an 80% laxity, which is the capitol of mississippi, has been bereft, has had the control of its own water system seized by the majority white and republican government, and they have attempted to seize control of their own policing and imposing a capitol police system on them and their, violent policing is, it's a violent like, it is a violent in mississippi like it is nowhere else. it is incredibly violent and they are essentially saying black people must not be able

to govern themselves in jackson, they cannot govern themselves to go to tennessee, very similar. the two states they are targeting with trying to steal from them control of their own resources are the cities of memphis and the city of nashville, both of which have black leadership, justin jones and justin pearson. right? they are the representatives from memphis and jackson. they are essentially fighting their majority conservative white government for his control of the resources of the city of nashville and the county where nashville is, which is the most prosperous, it is where the money comes from but they don't want that in control of black people. you are seeing what is happening in states where they are deconstructing the ei to the extent we are even there is a lawsuit against howard university to not allow howard university to control the influx of black doctors, to demand that they make howard university medical system

longer majority plaque. this is a systematic attempt to wage economic warfare on a group of people, particularly in southern states, who have the numbers that if they voted at scale, with flip elections. this is not about conservatives or white people not liking black people. i will just say very briefly, one of the things that my editor cut down on a lot but i still sprinkled through the book because i had a whole chapter on it, i had a whole chapter, an in-depth history of the history of slavery and the post-slavery era in mississippi because mississippi was the richest state in america when we had slavery because it's cotton is, it comes from the richest soil, this alluvial soil creates the highest grade cotton on earth. the queen of england loved the

mississippi cotton. they needed a massive labor force to produce this cotton so they had one of the largest numbers of enslaved people. so, after slavery was done, three states, mississippi, louisiana and south carolina at majority black populations because they imported to so many africans and read so many africans in their chattel system because they needed a massive labor force. what happens when you end slavery and reconstruction says every man could vote but the majority of your state is black? in the case of mississippi, it is like, 55% black. what you get is a successful multiracial democracy because the black and tan republicans, which was a coalition of radical republicans, which used it to mean something different than and black folks got together and created things like free public schools, access to health care, trying to educate black children who had never gone to school in their lives. actual school that wasn't closed during the time when you

were telling the field. they would close the school so like kids could work and be child labor. those things changed during reconstruction and changed mississippi for the better. ending that and ending lack access to the ballot was about that. it was about reversing reconstruction and what we are seeing now in the south where it is the most intense is it is looking at the places that have large numbers of people of color, texas, arizona, nevada, mississippi, south carolina, north carolina, virginia, florida, which is one of the highest percentage of black people in the country the systematic ways in which they are trying to demoralize black voters and demoralize brown voters and demoralize white liberal voters and demoralize lgbtq voters. it is about reducing the percentage of people who will be willing to or able to participate so that they can

win. that is the way fascist governments drive. >> and, to make it worse, i do feel like we are in, in this election cycle in particular, we are in an era of newly, in our lifetime, newly overt, out and allowed electoral racism and i mean that not like i am discerning racism in something that you are doing. i know, being out and loud, proud racists. the steve bannon in europe addressing conservatives in europe saying you will be called racist. wear it as a badge of honor. stephen miller, who is a trump administration official running ads in florida saying the only real racism is racism against white people and what white people need is white racial solidarity and a government that finally works for white people. they ran as to this effect in

florida and they have now written it into policy for what would be the incoming trump administration as part of project 2025. you see it in right wing culture, you see people like elon musk and twitter endorsing pseudoscience racism, all of this about iq and pseudoscience that is newly popular among the technology pro right wing. this is not subtle and it is not something that you need investigative journalism to figure out. this is out and proud. that is an important distinction because it means exposing it or trying to put a spotlight on it doesn't necessarily work because they are not ashamed of it. what do you do with that? >> by the way, no, i mean, they weren't then either. one of the things that is a

fascinating, if you go back and you watch in the 1950s, people being interviewed on the street. i love man on the street interviews. when you look at the man on the street interviews from the 1950s and 60s, cbs news reporters would go up to a random white couple and they were very open in saying we don't want the n words in our schools. they didn't think this was interesting and they saw the power of television as something that could work for them and there was always this idea about what is the premise is that we are right so if we can get the media to stop being biased against us and say everything, we are right anyway so it will be obvious we are the morally right people and it was only when the media started actually realizing wait a minute, there is a villain and a factor here, we can't be neutral or both sides of the ideas of racism that you start to get this idea that the media was biased, that is where that comes from. what you do with it is that you actually have to speak louder. i think you also have to explain to people, we both

talked a lot about democracy on our shows a lot. somebody said to me at a talk i did recently, you should explain what that means. i was like that is a really good point. it is just a word that we say a lot but i don't think people necessarily know what that means. demos . the people. how are the people deciding when 40% of americans vote in the primary and everyone is stuck with whoever that 40% juice, general and then like 60% vote in the general? that means that demos did not decide that. that is not democracy. we are a very low participatory democracy right now. what we are seeing is a disconnect between people and power. a small number of people have really gotten good at finding ways to exercise minority rule and power and where the majority of people have become demoralized. you are seeing very low voter turnout in places like louisiana, in places like florida.

i was in broward county, it was one of the most blue counties in florida, and one of the worst turnouts. you get ron desantis because they say he won a great victory. 1 million people didn't vote that voted in the previous election. that is subtraction, not addition. that is not democracy. i think maybe what we do about it is that we have to start speaking more loudly and i think more specifically about what we mean by defending democracy and not just saying that we should do it. it. you? nah...not me. in a relationship. if you're sexually active and unvaccinated, it could still be you. i'm too old if you're under 45, you're not. for most people, hpv clears on its own. but for those who don't clear the virus, it can cause certain cancers. wow... gardasil 9 is a vaccine given to adults through age 45 that can help protect against certain hpv-related cervical, vaginal, vulvar, anal, and certain head and neck cancers, such as throat and back of mouth cancers, and genital warts.

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>> i have one last question i want to ask before i see the questions to all of you. that is you are talking about the position. the other thing that happens is a democracy is threatened by an authoritarian movement is that the politics gets not just a boring or demoralizing but dangerous, that there starts to be violence that is associated with individual candidates and individual political moments we expected to be paramilitary presence at political events when people who are doing normal political things, whether it be registering to vote with voting, you saw this in the south, right, this is some of the most dramatic

elements of the civil rights story. to receive are being used to prevent people from doing the very mundane day to day work of democracy. so, doing the basic stuff as a citizen becomes an act of bravery. that leads to heroism but it also leads to very small number of people participating. and, we are not in a place right now as a country of 330 million people where we can count on a few euros to fix this for us. we need mass participation. while people are more or less that people are increasingly afraid, and i have learned so much from you. i want to know what your messages to people watching us right now, people in the theater right now, people talking to you as somebody who understands this history and understands these politics better than anyone i know, how do you tell people that it is okay to do it, it is okay to feel afraid, you need to do it anyway and, in fact, you must? >> is the most important question because we, the system

that we have inherited from our very imperfect founding father slaveowners is one in which cemetery democracy is the only thing that can save us. the courts aren't going to save us. we all know that now. clarence isn't interested. god love him. bless his heart, like they say in the south. he said i just want to go on trips. and samuel alito is like i'm going with you. what i say about it is remember rosebud lee. rosebud lee is someone i learned about doing the research for this book. her husband, the reverend lee was doing the simple thing and meeting the political violence, he was just doing people to vote in a state in which fewer than 6% of black people were registered to vote in the democratic primary. you had to register as a

democrat to have any power at all because republicans, had no access. the way that democrats at that time kept black people from voting was through political violence. reverend lee was taking, you know, petitions for black folks to simply register to vote and he was shot dead by a klansman who polled up to the side of his car and aimed a gun at him and shot his jaw off . and rosebud lee made a decision that was very brave. she said if you are going to do that to my husband, you are going to see it. everyone will see it. she had an open casket funeral for her husband, whose face has been shut off. the authorities at the time said they believed it was a car accident and what happened to his jaw with his feelings flew out in a car wreck so they didn't have to arrest anyone for his killing. that open casket funeral is where many till mobley got the idea.

brave and courageous people take inspiration, they duplicate the brilliant inspiration of others. the other thing is to deliver that political violence is what kept mississippi, is what kept black mississippians from voting. was charles and medgar evers trying to go to register to vote and have them 200 white men with guns face them down and threatened to kill them if they tried to register and charles and medgar evers saying we have guns too and medgar saying maybe there's only 4 of us and a lot of them but we will go home. they did end up registering but they weren't able to vote in that election. it was theodore bilbo saying the best way to keep a black person from voting is to visit him the night before. using tremendous political violence. there was congressional testimony, there was a field hearing in mississippi where the members of congress tried to understand what had happened in that election. black people were terrorized out of voting. what i would say now is we don't face that level of

political power but the level of terror that you face now is real and we should knowledge that it is real. when you have found boys and keepers showing up in arizona with long guns, it is intimidating. you know there are mass shootings and you see people with visible weapons at your polling place or outside where you are trying to count votes when you have ruby freeman and her daughter threatened with death and kidnapping and all of the rest just for being election workers, this is a time that is very much like medgar evers's time. we have to ask ourselves, how did people at that time respond to that , what did they do when they were faced with the same things we did? you know what they did? they voted. they voted anyway. because they understood that, as king said, you may not be to get the racist sheriff to stop being racist toward you or change his mind but you can vote them out. and, in the end, i think what people have to remember is that the vote and using the vote is actually the strongest and most powerful tool that you have and

maybe you vote in numbers, maybe you vote absentee so you don't have to go and face the government, maybe you get on your church friends or all of your group chat or all of your friends to organize a convoy where you can all drive together. you start using your community, using the community you've built up around you and find ways to get together and be brave. but, not voting isn't the answer. you are giving it to the other side. what they want, desperately, is for you to not participate and for you to become, for you to give up. in autocratic societies and societies that are fully gone, there are elections, like in russia, but they aren't real, they don't matter. when we start to believe elections don't matter, we are on our way to beating them. >> that is exactly right. ctly it was all too hard to deal with in the beginning,

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delegation from hamas touched down in cairo today for the latest round of hostage indices talks. u.s. and egypt negotiators signaled there have been signs of compromise in recent days, even as israel continues to threaten a ground offensive in rafah. there is an estimated 1.5 million palestinians currently sheltering. and israel official telling

msnbc news there is still a ways to go. dozens of people have been rescued in harris county, texas and made catastrophic flooding. more rescue still underway. officials saving 73 people, 42 animals were saved tuesday. a flood watch was extended into tomorrow as the national weather service warns an additional 1 to 3 inches of rain as possible. several communities remain under mandatory evacuation orders. students make the 54th anniversary of the kent state university shooting in ohio when the ohio national guard fired into a crowd of anti- vietnam war demonstrators, killing 4 many decades ago. early today, protesters at the school held an event calling for a cease-fire in gaza while urging the university to divest from weapons manufacturers and military contractors. organizers say the protest was a way of continuing the legacy of those students. a university spokesperson said the school upholds their students first amendment rights and that university police were

aware of that demonstration. for now, back to our special with joy read and rachel maddow. >> we are going to take some questions from the audience. we are going to have reverend al sharpton come out and join us again. he will fact check everything we just said. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> first of all, did we get anything wrong in that discussion? >> no, i think you got it all right and i think that, you know what this book did, i almost had to go to therapy because i think what joy did that has not been done is bring the human side of what those that fought the sites were and last year, i went and spoke for the 60th anniversary of the assassination of medgar and myrlie evers was there.

i never told this in public. i told it to her. you know how legal she is. she took my arm and said you ought to say that in public one day. medgar got killed at 39 years old. a lot of the reason that the 250,000 people showed up in the march on washington in 63 is because medgar got killed and that energized that march. dr. king got killed at 39. malcolm x got killed at 39. i was, i grew up in the movement years later and i started in brooklyn when i was 12. i became youth director to jesse jackson's group here when i was 13. john lewis and jesse jackson told me one night, you don't understand, we are the first generation of leaders that lived past 40. i don't think people understood until your book, i really, when

people's families lived every day expecting to bury their loved ones. and, the human side of it, you told. it was a family thing. i think that this was a beautiful book for history. it also told the story of a woman that everyday looked at her kids saving your dad may not come home. >> joy, question for you, what made you decide to do this book and did you travel to mississippi as part of your research? >> thank you for the question. what made me decide to do the book was myrlie. i interviewed myrlie for my weekend show at the time. and, i had interviewed her remotely. but, rev will tell you it is

different meeting her in person. this was 2018, she and maxine waters were together as a panel, representative waters. afterwards, we got to talking, us girls, and she started talking about medgar and it was in such a profound personal and present way and i said to her, you sound like a giggly school girl talking about your boyfriend. he has been dead for almost 60 years and she said, in her beautiful, resonant voice, medgar evers was the love of my life. that is pretty good. that's how she sounds. >> you got it. you got it. >> that's how she sounds. when she says that to you, you would be hard-pressed not to want to write a whole book about it. and i did travel to jackson, the second part of the question. we spent a lot of time in jackson to do this book. we went on the block where they lived. they have changed the name to margaret walker alexander avenue because misses work with walker alexander lived at the

end of the block and was the queen of the block and the next block over is named for medgar evers. we interviewed the neighbors, many of whom still on those homes. so, myrlie's best friend lived across the street. we inferred , we interviewed her. she was 90 years young and fresh and she had on her fabulous red lips and a high heel. she was fabulous. we interviewed the nextdoor neighbor. the law was also very ill but the daughter who witnessed the aftermath of the assassination was 15 at the time, she and her little sister, we interviewed her, we interviewed the best friends down the street. we spent a lot of time there. the family gave a tremendous access to their archives. we went in, myself, my two researchers and my assistant, sean, sheila's genealogy and stuff. we all were in there in these archives. it was incredible. they gave us just full access. they let us in when it was

closed and we were the only ones there and we could go through boxes of everything. everything from their high school records to their marriage certificate to letters they had written, to all of his communications that we were allowed to photograph it and take it back and sit with it and i really sat with it for like a year of really just figuring out what do i do with all of this material? we spent a lot of time in jackson. jackson. of dawn. watch it make soap scum here... disappear... and watch how sprays can leave grime like that with up to 10 times the cleaning power, foamy melts it on contact. magic. it makes this ring a thing of the past. it makes you forgetti about baked on spaghetti. new ultra foamy magic eraser. clean with more magic than ever. ♪ ♪ wayfair's biggest sale of ne the year is finally here.. it's way day! right now you can save up to 80% off at wayfair. ooo, yes. plus score free shipping on everything.

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>> this is a question for both of you. what advice do you believe medgar evers would provide for today's youth? >> at the time what medgar evers was telling the you that the time is you have to be smart if you are going to be out there . they are going to hit you with batons, they will hit you with fire hoses, they will get violent. what he taught them was how to defend yourself. he did a lot of drills with them about how you protect your body from the blues he knew they were going to take. he was concerned that they would get climbed. he also taught them they had to be strategic. he would do things like i'm going to open these naacp youth councils but we don't want you to get suspended from school for being in the naacp youth counsel so we will call this one the naacp youth club .

sometimes the naacp youth club meets, sometimes the youth counsel meets, sometimes the youth committee but it is all different names and he would make things different things to keep it like moving along so people could be strategic. what he would say is that for young activists, the strategic. be prepared for any violence that you might meet and stick together. that is the other thing these young people did. one story that moved me was james cheney, who was in one of these naacp youth leagues. youth councils and his first act of activism was as a 15- year-old, he pinned and naacp tag he made on his shirt and got suspended. he didn't just jump into the movement when he was with goodman, he had been an activist since he was a kid, a very young kid. >> i think medgar evers would say , based on how he lived to make sure that you are fighting for the end result. don't get caught up in the drama of the moment. make sure that, is used toward

an end result. i think that that sometimes happened to me when i was a young activist, we would get caught up in the drama, that we would forget is this working? like joy was talking about voting, that wasn't dramatic enough. at the end of the day, that is what makes the difference. you know that medgar evers never lived to see the voting rights act . but, he was the one who that made it possible. you may not see the results but your strategy must be to lead the results. like right now, we are living in a time that is tumultuous but one thing i thought about, you know, i have rallies every saturday morning. one of the central park five guys was there this morning at our rally and i told him the irony is as depressing as some of this is, donald trump will start on trial in the same

building. he will start on trial in the same criminal courthouse that he called on the death penalty for the central park five. so, those are few of us that stood by the central park five, sit back and watch. that is the building we marched for those kids on are exonerated now. he's going to have to sit there and watch a jury, prosecuted by a black prosecutor, that we voted and elected. if you had ever told donald trump a black prosecutor in georgia, a black prosecutor in new york and a black woman federal judge in washington. >> and, while yusef salaam is

serving on the city counsel in harlem. >> this seems like a fitting following question . does it seem we will keep our democracy? >> do you want to go first? >> i think we have to get it to keep it. i think we will get what we fight to get and i think that if we look at the fact that they are not going to do it and they never did, if there's one thing we can learn from medgar & myrlie, and that you get what you fight for and have to be willing to do more to get it then they are to keep it from you . >> amen. >> joy, this is for you. what advice would you give to young black ladies who want to get into journalism today? >> so, when i was young and a

nerdy kid who loved watching the news. >> you are still young. >> i'm still young. thank you. i'm still nerdy. i'm still both of those things. this is why you have to have your friends around you. have good friends. that is one piece of advice. i didn't really have a role model for being a journalist. he didn't intend to be a journalist at all. i was supposed to be a doctor. and caribbean. but, i love gwen eiffel. watch this. i am answering the question. watch this. i'm going somewhere. in 2015, i'm going somewhere. i was in selma, alabama and my peripheral vision is terrible. i never see anyone. i see across the street that looks like gwen eiffel. i start running at her like a muppet. gwen eiffel, you are the greatest person ever.

she was so kind. she turned to this madwoman running at her, she opened up her arms and gave me the biggest hug. i say that to say my advice would be for me, i used to run track. i had some athletic abilities. that kept me from real trouble. i used to run third lake in the really be to have to run a full 100 and have to hand off and the hand off is the game. the first person sets the pace. for me, that is gwen ifill, someone who sets the pace. the person who picks up the pace has to keep the pace. you can't lose the pace. i used to run third lake, you have to set up the next person for success and then the closer has to close. if all four of those people don't do it, you are not going to win. my advice to young journalists is to know who your starter is,

who is that person that is your gwen ifill, that is your inspiration. find a way to benefit from the inspiration of them, whether you get to meet them and hug them or not but learn what they did . learn all about what they did. learn about who the pacer was after them. how did the next generation of people after gwen ifill get in there? if you can meet one of them and get one of them in your life and get mentorship, do that. if not, look at your self. when you get anywhere in that door, your job is to hand off. your job is to put that baton into the hands of someone else who might not have an opportunity. it is your obligation not to slam the door behind you. it is your obligation to see this as a relay race, not you finishing by your self. none of us do this by herself. we have to have people willing to help us, let us in the door, and off to us and then when we get the baton, if you don't hit it off, karma will hit you back right back where you started.

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