My Chat with Two Pulitzers on King and his Legacy

       Jan 17, 2013 I called in the Dianne Rehm show on NPR and talked to Taylor Branch and and Isabel Wilkerson. Here is my part of the transcript about the 45th minute into the hour.

   And its the Thankful Baptist Church in Rome, Ga about a quarter mile from Momma and Dad were married and a half mile from my Grandparents Grave and three aunts.

  In her book the Warmth of Other Suns Wilkerson talks often about visiting her Mothers People in Rome where they were active in Thankful Baptist Church.

        

• STEP H ENTaylor, I desperately wanted to hear you at Sanford last October in the lecture there. But I didn't make it. I want you to tell your story about the anonymous black fellow who was on the march from Selma to Montgomery in '65. He said we won when we started walking. And to Isabel my parents were married in a house about a quarter of a mile from the Faithful Baptist Church in Rome, Georgia. So I feel very kind of...

• 11:48:33

  STEPHENMy father was a Baptist minister and I know, Taylor, you're a product of the Second Ponce de Leon Baptist in Atlanta as is Charles Marsh, who's written about civil rights. And so I know that white Baptists have a very checkered history, to say the least, in that era. But there was, you know, the priesthood, the belief thing, it's good and thanks.

• 11:48:55

  GJELTENWell, Isabel and Taylor we're getting all your old friends calling. Isn't that great?

• 11:48:58

  BRANCHYeah, this is quite something and connecting...

• 11:48:59

  WILKERSONThat's lovely.

• 11:49:00

  BRANCH...connecting the two of us. Well, the story that he mentioned is from a guy up in Lowndes County, Alabama, one of the most primitive counties -- nobody -- no black. It was 70 percent black, but not a single black person had even tried to register to vote in the entire 20th Century. But one man joined the march to Montgomery and was asked, you know, when did you know this might be a good thing. And he said we won when we started.

• 11:49:26

  BRANCHAnd what he meant by that is that if you're an ordinary citizen the hardest thing to do is to take action toward and act like you deserve the rights you're claiming. Which is a great metaphor for that whole movement, which was an aroused citizenry interacting with responsive elected representatives. That's what makes the 1960s so great.

• 11:49:48

  BRANCHAnd if you -- speaking to Isabel because of her book, "The Warmth of Other Suns," it is such a great corrective to Americans' loss of memory about these amazing migrations because we generally willfully and, to some degree, wishfully misremember all the strands in our history that really should be inspiring. But you have to face -- you have to face the unflinching realities of the divisions that we have in order to be inspired by the changes.

• 11:50:19

  BRANCHAnd if you did, we would be inspired by the politics of this 1960s era. And it should inspire us to tackle big problems today. And, instead, because we misremember it so pervasively there are awful lot of people who think that what guards their liberty is the machine gun in their closet instead of the things that we've built among ourselves in this amazing history that we're trying to describe that really do protect freedom.

  
  

TPUSA AND CNP Charlie Kirk fails his on Noah Test at Clemson ralley

   Check the wiki page for Charlie Kirk. The 28 year old is a piece of work. Not quite WA Criswell diabolical charisma on stage but a demagogue of the first order and fluorishing.

     Double Whammy leader in Council for National Policy, founder and performance artist of Turning Point USA, radio host, Strom Thurmond and George Curley wannabee reincarnated I observed him last night with about 500 other folks at Clemson Ralley as part of his national Campus tour. He's been at Baylor while Samford rescinded an invitation to Jon Meacham.

     Kirk boasted at Clemson their chapter of 300 is the largest in the nation. My Clemson trustee friend Bob Peeler from 3rd grade on at Central Elementary on College Drive, same school as Queen Latifah's good friend actress Andie Macdowell, and then Gaffney High School has his work cut out for him if he and David Wilkins and Jerry Carter continue to let Kirk and his kind define the Republican party and fluorish at Clemson. Google the Jane Mayer Funding the Big Lie at New Yorker if you doubt how venal and poisonous Kirk and his network is.

     I saw what Jesse Helms and Paul Pressler of the CNP did to the Southern Baptist Convention, been there done that, so I will fight this Trump version of fundamentalism and I hope CBF of Upstate, FBC Greenville, Clinton, Greenwood, even FBC Clemson will take up the challenge.

    These churches fund Baptist News global. Check their piece yesterday by Susan Shaw who like Tim Tebows Momma heard often the preaching of Jerry Vines; read what Shaw who pilgrimmed out of fundamentalism had to say in her ruminations on witches on Halloween. She had two indicting paragraphs on Kirk and TPUSA framed near perfect.

     Bobby Jeffress of FBC Dallas is in the Kirk Camp with Falwell Jr. Sickeningly enough Kirk has joined with falwell for Falkirk ministries in the public square. Jeffress is a successor to WA Criswell, baptist demagogue of the last half of the 20th Century at FBC Dallas Texas. Last night when Kirk did his Brandon cheer and the crowd went apey somebody in the crowd yelled out Jeff Duncan Loves you. Duncan, Dabo Swinney's US Congressman, was seen last week wearing a Brandon facemask.

    I felt like I was in the room in 56 in Columbia SC in a joint session of the SC Legislature where Criswell at the invitation of Strom Thurmond repeated his thoughts on integration to SC Preachers. He said among other things "Now you wouldnt call a chigger a chiggerow, now wouldya"; and I wouldnt let my daughter within two city blocks of one of those big black bucks.  Same kind of gut tribalism in the room at Clemson last night to the same frenzy of thunderous applause whitewashed just a tad.

    Ask Greenwood native, Tomiko Brown Nagin of Harvard History faculty, Dean of Radcliffe as she called out Nikki Haley on 1619 a month ago on NPR. Haley is also on the Clemson Trustee board.

   I was gonna make a comment for Kirk to unpack. Trevor Lawrence is from Bartow County, and Deshaun Watson from Hall County Ga. Smack Dab in the middle is Forsyth County and their lynchings of 1912 and subsequent land grab by the local whites when they banished all people of color within a week. Patrick Phillips, Methodist ministers son , wrote it up in Blood at the Root about five years ago. And then the lynching of Sam Hose and beating of Isaac Woodard.

   I wanted to know with all the ruckus TPUSA and Fox News News and Ralph Norman, Gaffney and Lancaster Congressman for Bob Peeler and Brother Harvey hometown; with the ruckus at local school boards on teaching of history, Kirk would allow his followers to discuss these matters of fact in history classes at public schools. Of course talk about Rousseau and Hobbes and Locke and the creation genius of the Constitution, and Jefferson and his evolution of slavery, but spend a week talking about Sam Hose and Leo Frank as well and maybe visit the lynching museum in Montgomery; take a field trip with the Clemson Trustees.

    But the mike didnt get to me. Maybe I can get this to Kirk and the Clemson student newspaper.

    Near the end unlike Obama's Audacity of Hope, Kirk had the audacity to put Chic Fil A on his poop list. Said they are a front for Planned Parenthood and a woke America. Dad Cathy was in my religion class at Furman and a first cousin spoke at his Dad Truett's funeral. Truett was named for George W Truett for whom the Divinity school is named at Baylor and whose memorial church I was baptized in Hayesville NC.

   The Cathy's politics are a little to the right of mine but they are good people and have been good stewards of their 11 billion dollars, though were it my money I most likely woulda sent a good 60 percent in other directions

    But between chic Fil A now and the cabal of TPUSA and CNP, Clemson football program and its subsidiary the trustee board now has to define itself. Let's hope they do better than Pontius Pilate and try to wash their hands cause they have at least 300 students taking big doses of the Kool Aid.

    Oh almost forgot Noah. Kirk fails his on test, his on insight of the Old Testament story of Noah. Said Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord cause by the standards of his time of his time he incarnated a chapter that grew in the legend of the People of Israel to David and Solomon and the Prophets. So we cant judge Noah by Abraham Lincoln, or in Kirk world Ronald Reagan, but by the human race at the time he existed. Therefore in Kirk world Robert E Lee and Strom thurmond and I imagine Jesse Helms get a pass.

    But Kirk does not, cause there are voices in his time he is bright enough to understand, like Marilynne Robinson and Charles Marsh, the biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Dorothy Day's grand daughter, Pope Francis who places justice for immigrants above the mendacious abortion politics Kirk practices. All these people, Randall balmer at Dartmouth and Ralphael Warnock in Georgia, Sallie Yates, thousands more are out there Kirk can learn from and talk to Jesus and turn from his wicked agenda whitewashed with Tim Tebows Mother Eagle Forum. Azar Nafisi This Republic of Imagination would be a good read for Clemson chapter of TPUSA, maybe a book club with Nikki Haley and the trustees.

    I got baptized in Truett's waters, the greatest baptist of the First half of the 20th Century. I am reading Paul Harvey's new Bio on ML King which fast forwards the legacy to the Trump Effect and Kirk World. God as my Witness, last night at Clemson, Charlie Kirk failed his own Noah test and failed it miserably.