and the young people in sncc, i got the reading from them. they were cheering and they were -- really, they enjoyed it. and they were glad that i made it through the speech, i think. >> do you know about the march on washington? >> it's the 50th anniversary, right? >> the 50th anniversary is august the 28th. we will celebrate and commemorate the 50th anniversary. >> he was standing right here, where you're standing now, looking out there. that's the crowd. >> are you in that picture? >> yes. >> yeah. well, here he is. that's young john lewis. >> that's me there. it was good to be in the presence of lincoln. to be -- i felt very honored to be there on that day 50 years ago. and i feel honored to have an opportunity to come here almost 50 years later. >> five, four, three, two, one. >> testing, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. >> on that morning, august 28th, 1963, 50 years ago, i knew that i had to try to do my best. my very best. so, early that morning we came to capitol hill as a group. we went on over and met with

and the young people in sncc, i got the reading from them. they were cheering and they were -- really, they enjoyed it. and they were glad that i made it through the speech i think. >> do you know about the march on washington? >> it's the 50th anniversary, right? >> the 50th anniversary is august the 28th. we will celebrate and commemorate the 50th anniversary. >> he was standing right here where you're standing now looking out there. that's the crowd. >> are you in that picture? >> yes. >> yeah. well, here he is. that's young john lewis. >> that's me there. it was good to be in the presence of lincoln. to be -- i felt very honored to be there on that day 50 years ago. and i feel honored to have an opportunity to come here almost 50 years later. >> five, four, three, two, one. >> testing, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. >> on that morning, august 28th, 1963, 50 years ago, i knew that i had to try to do my best, my very best. so, early that morning we came to capitol hill as a group. we went on over and met with the

all of my friends in the student nonviolent coordinating committee, sncc, remember his face on the cover of jet magazine and his mother had insisted they not do any cosmetic work on him when he was put in the casket. she said i want the world to see what they did to my boy. and that was after having been lynched, shot in the eye and thrown into the tallahachee river. the bloated body was awful. that became the personification of all the evil that we faced and our parents. >> particularly a teenager, something of your age, it happens to them. >> absolutely. you really touched what was important to us. we were going into our teens. we were his age. if that could happen to him, it could happen to us. >> how concerned is the african american community now about issues of economic injustice and disparities between wealthy and poor as opposed to access issues such as so much of what you were working on in the 60s and 70s. >> very much, incarceration of black fathers who could be locked up. i'm hopefully the obama administration could look at that and hopefully that can change. economic injusti

that is in essence how sncc got created. we came out of a common reaction to injustice and the lack of freedom in our society. we had seen what carlotta and ernie -- there were nine people who stuck together and done something back then. we watched that struggle. and it was like it is just natural that when mrs. till, emmitt till's mother, had the courage to bring that body back to chicago and had the foresight to put that picture on the cover i mean, i have today the picture of emmett till's body when it appeared on "jet," and i found out that everybody who later became my comrades had the same pictures and were moved by the same sort of thing. all of us -- and we all came from different parts of the country, in different worlds -- but that particular murder had struck us because this was somebody our age, just as trayvon martin is somebody your age. and we realized to just speak about it or carry signs about it would not do it, would not do anything. there had to be something -- ok, we have a point that is bringing us toge

that was a be sncc idea, too. but he was seeking to us just not to say i'm where you are when it comes to not tolerating it segregation and discrimination. he was speaking directly to us when he said that he greets the marvelous new militancy and then, he began to ever so slightly admonish us to make sure that as we become more militant, we nevertheless embrace the universal truths of brotherhood. it's a marvelous thing to be able to do in a single speech to speak to those who are impatient, to speak to those who have never heard an african-american speak. to speak to those who need to be fired up. he did that by saying go right back to mississippi. go right back. that's out of which i had just come. go right back to those states and continue to do what you've been doing and doing it with even greater force. >> and fast forwarding though to today, chris, i want to play a little bit of what president obama had to say on those steps. just about 30 minutes ago. let's play a part of the president's remarks today. >> t

i remember coming back from the which wasing of sncc, held in raleigh, north carolina. that was in 1960. we decided that we are going to do something. we didn't have a name. we just -- we said that we are going to do something. later, we became the student nonviolent for dating committee. committee.rdinating saidovernor of mississippi this is what is going to happen when they integrate schools. emmett till is the first of that. blood will flow industry's. -- in the streets. we were prepared to do something about it. it was not do something to get pissed off about and hold up some signs. we were going to do something that addressed that problem and we did. we formed an organization and a plan about doing stuff. -- i came back as a freshman in south carolina state college. i came back to campus and there ,as this guy that used to help help us. said, son, you mean that you are going to see yourself handling white folks nonviolently? >> we said, yes we are. how do you expect to rehabilitate those who have never been bilitated? -- i said, that is the real question. that is t

when you think about sncc and greensboro and the price people paid to move us forward and here we're in 2013 and we have the most aggressive attack on voting rights in that state. if we look across the country, every rollback they are trying in north carolina shows we're moving backwards. and for the people like medgar efforts, for all the people who paid the price, i think we know there's a time. voting rights was mentioned so many times yesterday. people know this is going to be the battle of our time. >> this is jobs and freedom. again, briefly here, wisconsin feels to me like a testing ground for interracial cooperative work between labor and voting rights, between labor and civil rights. do you have optimism that the people of wisconsin still have enough energy and optimism even after sort of having so many of these rollbacks to do that work? >> yeah, i think so. there's definitely a fight in the people of wisconsin to continue, whether it is about jobs, whether it's about health care and whether it's about voting rights. the people of wisconsin are like the people across the co

. >> julian bond, you were talking about sncc a moment ago. so impatient for justice, and yet your leaders seemed to be preaching patience, appealing to white america to catch up, to get the message. i was wondering if you yourself felt at some point that it wasn't going to happen? >> no, i have always been an optimistic person. i always believed the best can happen. usually, so far anyway, it has happened. i have always believed the best can happen. andy is right. people in our organizations were suspicious of the march on washington. we thought it was a diversion from what we had been doing. we were organizers. we went to the rural south and help people who had the courage to register to vote. we thought the march on washington would take us away from this kind of activity. i had a feeling that andy did. i got to the mall early in the morning and didn't see anybody. people came and the numbers grew and grew and it became something greater than anything i had anticipated it would be. >> dorothy gilliam, in an oral history that you gave, you p

sncc gotn essence how created. we came out of a common reaction to injustice and the lack of freedom in our society. we had seen what carlotta and there were nine people who stuck together and done something back then. we watched that struggle. and it was like it is just mrs. till,at when emmitt till's mother, had encouraged to bring that body and had theago foresight to put that picture on the cover -- i mean, i have today the picture of emmett till's body when it appeared on "jet," and i found out that everybody who later became my comrades had the same pictures and were moved by the same sort of thing. all of us -- and we all came from different parts of the --ntry, in different worlds but that particular murder had struck us because this was somebody our age, just as trayvon martin is somebody your age. and we realized to just speak about it or carry signs about it would not do it, would not do anything. there had to be something -- ok, we have a point that is bringing us together, and so we had to figure out w

so sncc became the core dating committee, and later on i want to speak about the march on washington. i was there. i was in every meeting for the big six. and i agree, if it hadn't been for a. philip randolph and bayard rustin, and bayard rustin didn't get the credit that he should receive. and i'm so glad that president barack obama is going to give him the medal of freedom in a few weeks, maybe a month or so. it is long overdue. countless people organize the unorganized and mobilize and put it together. i want to throw a question for any of the panelists to answer, and that is, as we look at the popular media was going on in washington now and across our nation in voter education and voter rights, it would appear to someone who is unknowledgeable or unskilled that we are rolling back our freedom, one of the things we're here to march for. we are rolling back civil rights. and how do we begin to mobilize ourselves that we can now address those rollbacks that are taking place in a positive way? >> the irony, the irony is that 50 years ago it was the southern democratic party that we w

all these organizations were important in my view, sncc as it was called was those important that organization really grew out of her efforts to make sure that young people had a space to organize, to make mistakes and, i mean, they essentially came the storm troopers of the movement. able to the mississippi delta were other organizations were afraid to go. certainly her. fannie lou hamer after the mississippi delta, sharecropping family, ma who, by her own account, by report went to school only one day, created, in her entire life. i would are used by one of the most eloquent spokespersons for the aims of the movement. a speech that she gave at the democratic national convention in 1964, you can you do it. if you have not heard it, here it. because it is the most eloquent statement that i have heard, courageous woman and is deathly her paper think if we move from a national level to the local level, the list grows and grows. one of, i was the one of the most exciting things about being sort of doing this history, being involved in a scholarly production of literacy about the civil rights move

. >> julian bond, you were talking about sncc a moment ago. so impatient for justice, and yet your leaders seemed to be preaching patience, appealing to white america to catch up, to get the message. i was wondering if you yourself felt at some point that it wasn't going to happen? no, i have always been an optimistic person. i always believe the best can happen. usually, so far anyway, it has happened. i have always believed the best can happen. andy is right. weree in our organizations suspicious of the march on washington. we thought it was a diversion from what we have been doing. we were organizers. we went to the rural south and help people who had the courage to register to vote. we thought the march on washington would take us away from this kind of activity. had a feeling that andy did. -- the mall mel early in the morning and didn't see anybody. people came and the numbers grew and grew and became something greater than anything i had anticipated it would be. , and an orallliam history that you gave, you painted a very smart -- stark

there was a group called snake that came along in -- sncc. they felt their voices were not being heard. one of things i want to stress because its import for us to learn from history is under the from some of the folks down in florida. we need a youth led leadership. what we really need is people lead leadership that is multigenerational. that's what we really need at this point. [applause] one of my favorite images of dr. king is from 1966 in mississippi when he is marching with stokely carmichael wright once told it was about to drop the phrase yellow, black power. dr. king because he was not jealous or insecure or disrespectful for younger people, we need to say that, even though he was a nobel peace prize winner, he had let the march on washington to get done all these incredible things. he listened to this younger rather than stokely carmichael explain why we should not call ourselves negroes anymore and embrace black power. dr. king felt like because he's a leader in the think it's important we define what a leader is. she or he because

people have got to do the organizing, and getting back to the old school organizing of the naacp, a sncc, of the farm labor movement. we've got to get back to it. >> i totally agree. and it happened at the county level, city, county level, state level, federal level, and to hearts and minds because requires our culture to be engaged because we will have to connect the heart and mind. i was in oakland and went to see -- the oscar grant case which really pulled together the community in oakland in a way that we haven't seen in a long time. and that really spoke to the institutions and the systems that occurred that allow something like that to happen. and so you really did see, i appreciated the film makers work where he was saying that it wasn't about that he had a statement to make. he just was telling his story. but he told in a way that is really sensitive to the diversity in oakland, the way the community comes together and the need for organizing, and how important that organizing is. because really is the life of our children and the lives of our families. and so, on all those level

randolph and roy wilkins and the naacp and whitney young of the urban league and the john lewis of sncc and others came together. we are still confronted with some of the same problems and then a new problems. you do not act like protest is something like a hit record that you go with it while it's hot we are not in the business of seeing what the polls say. we are in the business of turning around the poles. [applause] we were as we were 50 years ago. 50 years ago they had no right to vote. 50 years later they are given with a photo id law. it's ending early voting cut ending the fund below the election day with regard to the new policy. 50 years later mass incarceration. 50 years later, we can't get a jobs bill through congress. [applause] people are asking me why are we marching. the issue is why did we wait until now to come and march on washington? [applause] we should be marching more. no one asks anyone in the community why they come to washington and march. no one challenges what they are marching for. we are the ones that taught america how to march, and tomorrow we are going t

and i thought because john said black people, that meant sncc was the most militant group there, and we were bad. we were bad. and so i tried to tell the reporters look there, he said black people can see that? he is saying black people. none of them paid any attention. but i had another job, too. and that was giving goal is to the movie stars. everybody who's been to the march has some memory. my major memory is this. i gave a coca-cola to sammy davis, jr. last night and he said, thanks, kid. [laughter] it was a wonderful moment. a wonderful moment. now, we've been talking about and leadership and i thought does anybody know the name claudette golden? does that name ring a bell. some of you know that many. claudette was a young woman who was arrested on the bus in montgomery before rosa parks. but because because of her bad behavior on the bus and i think she had called the bus driver out of his name, as young people will do, they decided she would make a good plaintiff. because who knows what she might have said. but later, later she recalled -- she was called upon to testify in th

and so many people in sncc started wearing those buttons, one man, one vote. and much further down in the speech i said you tell us to wait, you tell us to be patient. we cannot wait, we cannot be patient. we want our freedom, and we want it now. we had prepared a speech that represented the feeling and the attitudes of the people that we were working with, but also the young people that made up the student nonviolent coordinating committee. and at one point i said listen, mr. president, listen, members of congress, you're trying to take revolution out of the streets and put it in the courts. and i went on and on and on in the speech -- [laughter] and said we're now involved in a serious revolution -- and just picking up on something a. phillip randolph had said. and they wanted me to drop the reference to revolution. and mr. randolph said there's nothing wrong with the word revolution, i use it myself sometimes. [laughter] and then i said the party of kennedy is the party of eastland. eastland was the chair of the senate judiciary committee from mississippi,