>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^E00:00:04 ^B00:00:20 >> Guha Shankar: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Guha Shankar, Folklorist and Project Director for the Civil Rights History Project of the American Folklife Center here in the Library of Congress. Thank you all for attending this afternoon's program featuring Dr. Gary May. It will be a really interesting and popular looking one. I wanted to also begin by thanking our colleagues and co-sponsors of the program, the Interpretive Programs Office, and the Education Outreach Division, both here at the Library. This afternoon's presentation by Dr. May is the second event in the 2015 edition of the Public Program Series, "Many Paths to Freedom, Looking Back and Looking Ahead at the Long Civil Rights Movement." Over the course of this year the AFC, other Library divisions and service units, and on occasions, external partners, will produce many programs and events that focus on various facets of both the modern Civil Rights Movement for Equality and Justice for African Americans, and more generally, the long black freedom struggle in America. Along these lines I would point you to the thought-provoking and very rich exhibition on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which is installed over in the Jefferson Building. It's produced by our colleagues at the Interpretive Programs Office, funded with a generous grant from [inaudible] Foundation and additional support from ^IT History ^NO, formerly the History Channel. Now they just dropped all of that. The exhibition features many treasures and rare items from the Library's unique collections which are housed in several divisions across the institution. A little later this summer, the Education Outreach Program will host a dozen or so teachers from across the country in their annual Summer Teachers Institute. The teachers will be in residence in the Library developing curricula materials and lesson plans using Library collections to teach students about different facets of the civil rights struggle. And within the American Folklife Center we continue to host a signal collection of online oral history interviews with activists in the freedom struggle that was developed for the Civil Rights History Project. The CRHP, as it's known for short, is a joint initiative between the Library and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. In speaking of the Civil Rights History Project, more generally the work we've done over the past five years on collections, development, and management in the subject area, I, along with all of us at the Center in the Library, have a diligent, conscientious, and incredibly painstaking work of Kate Stewart to thank for making several important collections available for public access and scholarly research there. ^M00:02:49 [ Applause ] ^M00:02:53 Without her I would think be very accurate in saying this work would not have been done or would not have been accomplished in as timely a fashion as she has done with all of these materials. Beginnings and endings are always with us, and Kate is leaving the Library in a very short time to oversee the organization of the archives of Senator Barbara Mikulski from Maryland, and we wish her all the best. Needless to say, she'll be missed terribly. So, now, to begin the program, please welcome our new-found colleague, Grace Ethier, who is historical and researcher in the Office of the House Historian, House of Representatives. She's here to give us a taste, a few scenes really, from a documentary feature that's still in progress on the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. The 50th anniversary of the bill's passage is just around the corner as you know in August, and we'll have some programs commemorating that occasion as well. So please, please, welcome Grace Ethier. ^M00:03:50 [ Applause ] ^M00:03:55 Thank you. >> Grace Ethier: Thank you. Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Grace Ethier. As Gu has said, I am from the House Historian's Office, and I work there as part of the Oral History Team. Today I've brought in three oral history video clips to share with you all relating to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, before we turn it over to our speaker. To provide some quick background for you, in 2012 the House passed H-Res 562 which directed our office, the Office of the Historian, to compile oral histories from current and former members of Congress involved in the historic and annual Selma to Montgomery, Alabama marches. Since then we've been conducting oral history interviews relating to the Civil Rights Movement with members of Congress as well as their family members, House staff, and House Pages. For the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act we wanted to use our oral histories in a creative way to sort of connect the dots between an event that happened in the country and the corresponding legislative response. So we decided to create a documentary short. As Guha mentioned, the documentary is currently in its final stages of production, so unfortunately I don't have it to show you today. But the three oral histories clips that I brought will give you a taste of that documentary. The first clip is of Representative John Dingell, Jr. of Michigan. The second clip is Cokie Roberts, daughter of Representatives Hale and Lindy Boggs of Louisiana. And the final clip is Frank Mitchell, who was the first African American Page in the 20th Century for the House. These clips are special because they provide different personal memories of the Voting Rights Act while, at the same time, allow us as the audience to develop a deeper historical meaning of the legislation as a whole, which is also what our documentary aims to do. We're excited to launch the completed documentary in time for the anniversary of the signing of the Act into law which happened on August 6th. Along with the oral histories I mentioned, it will include archival material of the events that took place in Selma, some provided by the Folklife Center collaboration we're very grateful for. So, enjoy these clips and look for the debut of ^IT Bridging History, Selma and the Voting Rights Act of 1965" on our website -- here's my shameless plug -- history.house.gov, and we'll also announce it on our Twitter page which is @USHouseHistory. >> Television was full every night of violence against the African Americans, and the marches. Martin Luther King and my friend John Lewis, and people being beaten and sprayed with water hoses and they had a fellow by the name of Bull Connor down there who'd tell his police, he's say, "Let them puppies go." And dogs would go out and bite kids and people. And, frankly, that was one of the things that carried that particular Civil Rights Bill. It made it -- people said, "We just can't have that." Frankly, the country was literally being torn apart by this. And Johnson warned that, as I mentioned earlier, that he was going -- that this was going to turn the South Republican for 20 years. Turned out a lot more than that. And it still is. By the time we passed the '65 Civil Rights Bill that came up, it was really pretty much anticlimax. Everybody knew it was going to pass and most people accepted it, not with great enthusiasm, but they accepted it. There were some rumors in my district they was going to have all kinds of bad racial consequences to my people. But they didn't believe it and they supported me in spite of it. >> And, of course, the House and Senate weren't on television or radio. So the word would have to spread, you know, Boggs is up, and people would come to the Gallery to listen to him because he was a fine speaker. The night before the debate on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 we were at home. It was summertime. And I had graduated from college the year before and was living at home, and I think my sister was around as well. And we were having dinner and we started needling my father about speaking on the Voting Rights Bill. He was Whip at the time and we said, "You know, you're a leader. You need to get up and speak on this." And he kept saying, "Stop giving me grief. I am going to vote for it. It's going to cost me unshirted [phonetic] difficulty to vote for it because of representing New Orleans and neighboring parishes in Louisiana. And I'm going to do that, but I'm not going to speak for it. That's political suicide. I'm not going to do it." And we just kept at him and he finally said just "Enough." And so we finally were quiet. And so we didn't come to Congress the next day because we didn't expect him to speak. But he was on the floor and heard a fellow Louisianan get up and give a speech saying that there was no discrimination in the state and that blacks could vote in Louisiana as easily as whites. And he just couldn't stand it. So he got up and made really what many people thought was the best speech of his life for voting rights. ^M00:10:06 And it was quite a moment because, of course, that piece of legislation is really the signal piece of legislation in the whole Civil Rights Movement, having more effect really than any other piece of legislation. >> Well, I remember I was around for the Voting Rights Act in '65. I think Medicare also. But because I was in the Cloakroom we never really got to -- it wasn't like CNN or C-SPAN, and you could sit there and watch it or listen to it. We had speakers where we could hear some of the debate, but the phone's ringing. I've got to answer the phone. Then I got to go out to the floor and tell somebody that they've got a message, and so there's just no time to sit there and absorb any of that. You just remember that it went on and that -- and I think for me I felt that, I felt those kinds of things, the legislation was more historic and certainly more important than anything about my appointment. I looked at my appointment as -- I looked at it as making sure that I did a good job so that whoever was Number Two wouldn't have to wait as long. >> Guha Shankar. Now please welcome Betsy Peterson, Director of the American Folklife Center, who'll introduce our speaker for the afternoon. ^M00:11:47 [ Applause ] ^M00:11:50 >> Elizabeth Peterson: Thank you, Guha. As Guha said, I'm Betsey Peterson. I'm the Director of the American Folklife Center here at the Library of Congress, and I want to welcome you all here today. I know I'm looking forward to our presentation momentarily, and I promise I'm the last person to speak here before then. But before I do introduce Dr. May, I do want to thank the Production Crew briefly: Thea Austin, John Gold, Chris Spear, and our colleagues from ITS here in the Library. They work behind the scenes and they're crucial to making these events possible, so let's give them a round of applause. ^M00:12:30 [ Applause ] ^M00:12:34 All of the programs sponsored and produced by the American Folklife Center present a platform at the Library for scholars, for artists, for community members of all kinds and stripes and all over the country to share their research, their artistry, and their cultural traditions with a broader public. These programs also provide an opportunity for the American Folklife Center to build the collections, our collections, here at the Library. They're all recorded on video and become part of the permanent collections, so please turn off your cell phones. In addition, the videos are webcast on the LC, Library of Congress website and distributed worldwide through platforms such as YouTube and the like so that we can share this with other people around the world and for future generations. And today we also are pleased to have coverage from C-SPAN's American History Division. These programs are critical to allowing the American Folklife Center to share its mandate to preserve and present cultural traditions, multidisciplinary scholarship that is informing and impacting our world today. So our speaker today, Dr. Gary May, is a native Californian, born, reared, educated in Los Angeles. Very rare. He earned his PhD in American History at UCLA and taught at Colgate University before coming to the University of Delaware in 1975 where he taught Recent American History for nearly 37 years before retiring from the classroom this last January. Dr. May is the author of five books, including ^IT The Informant: The FBI, the Klu Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo, ^NO which has been optioned by James Gandolfini's production company for a possible HBO or Netflix mini-series. His most recent book, ^IT Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy ^NO published in 2014, and now available in paperback, was cited by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg in her dissent in Shelby County versus Holder, the decision that has begun to gut the Voting Rights Act, and is a, I think, sobering reminder to us all that the fight for civil rights is never over. Bill Moyer said of ^IT Bending Toward Justice, ^NO "You will not find in one volume a more compelling story of the heroic men and women who struggled for the right to vote or a more cinematic rendering of the political battle to enact the law or a more succinct telling of the long campaign to subvert it. Gary May has written a book that could change this country again if every citizen would read it." Today, Dr. May is going to discuss ^IT Bending Toward Justice, ^NO and how the recent film ^IT Selma ^NO portrayed the modern Civil Rights Movement." So let's please give a warm welcome to Dr. Gary May. ^M00:15:50 [ Applause ] ^E00:15:57 ^B00:16:08 >> Gary May: Thank you, Betsy, for that nice introduction, and to Guha and others here who invited me to be with you. More importantly, thanks to all of you for the work that you do preserving the American past, not simply for historians but for all Americans and anyone who loves American history. Well, it's a pleasure for me to be here today. I'm not entirely a happy person and I'll explain why. This is probably the most personal talk that I've given of the many talks that I've done about the book. If you had told me a year ago that I would be giving a talk critical of ^IT Selma, ^NO the first film that puts African Americans at the center of their history. They were the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. But for so long Hollywood portrayed that story in a very different way. If you told me I would be a critic of this film I would say, "You're crazy." I know the director, not real well, but we've had many conversations and she's got the story right. This is going to be a historic film. And in some ways it is. But, sadly, there are flaws. What's ironic about this is that I should have expected it because most historical films are not entirely accurate and it may be unreasonable to expect that. A filmmaker is an artist and can certainly take some liberties with the facts, but it's my view that if you're dealing with history, you really should be held to a higher standard, that you should really try to get the story correct. Why agonize? It's just a movie after all. But what I found is that many people, and particularly young people, my former students, learn history from the movies. >> Correct. >> Dr. Gary May: We like to think that they're inspired to go and read more once they've seen the movie. Some teachers here no doubt are chuckling. It doesn't happen. And so, basically, my students who know something, or think they do, about Freedom Summer learned that from ^IT Mississippi Burning, ^NO a horrendous film that I'll be talking about in a second. I'm not alone in my concern about historical films. ^M00:20:03 The great philosopher, George Santayana, once remarked, "Historical movies are a pack of lies about events that never happened, told by people who weren't there." Now I would not put ^IT Selma ^NO in that group. It is not ^IT Mississippi Burning. ^NO But as I say, the irony is for years I taught courses about film and American history, and I showed my students ^IT JFK, ^NO and ^IT All the President's Men, ^NO and ^IT Mississippi Burning. ^NO So I should have suspected that something might go wrong with ^IT Selma. ^NO Hollywood's manipulation of history began very early, in the silent film era. A pack of lies is a good way to describe the first great historical movie. DW Griffith's, ^IT The Birth of a Nation ^NO released in 1915. Griffith was Kentucky-born, the son of a Confederate veteran, and he told the story of the Civil War and Reconstruction from that perspective. The heroes of the film are the Ku Klux Klan who come to rescue the southerners from black dominance during Reconstruction. And one horrendous scene depicts the South Carolina Legislature where the members, black members, are lounging in their chairs, eating fried chicken, and drinking whiskey while leering at the white women in the gallery who are observing events. And when the Legislature passes a bill to legalize interracial marriage, they just go berserk with joy. Fifteen years later, Hollywood gave us ^IT Gone With the Wind, ^NO 1939, which continued the racial stereotypes or racist stereotypes I should say, first seen in ^IT The Birth of a Nation ^NO and which would be continued for the next 50 years in film and even in television. Hollywood's recent treatment of the Civil Rights Movement has not been much better. Alan Parker's ^IT Mississippi Burning, ^NO released in 1989, purports to tell the story of the investigation of the murder of the three civil rights workers in Mississippi. The heroes of the film are two white FBI agents who ultimately use tactics, brutal tactics, that make a mockery of the Civil Rights Movement's non-violent approach. Parker was attacked by historians and he admitted that the film was, quote, "Very obviously fiction, and was made," he said, "primarily for a white audience at home and abroad. Our heroes are still white," Parker said, "and in truth, the film would probably never have been made if they weren't." 1996 brought us the ^IT Ghosts of Mississippi, ^NO Rob Reiner's film about the assassination of Medgar Evers. Medgar Evers, as you probably know, the Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary, probably the bravest man who ever lived, is seen in the first five minutes of the film. He is shot, dies, end of Medgar Evers. The focus, of course, is on the white prosecutor played by Alec Baldwin who ultimately tracks down and prosecutes the killer. And breaking news, I just learned that Rob Reiner is going to be working on a biography of Lyndon Johnson, starring Woody Harrelson [background talking] as LBJ. We'll see what he does with that. In 2009, when I began working on ^IT Bending Towards Justice, ^NO Hollywood began talking again about making a Martin Luther King film and perhaps focusing on the voting rights campaign in Selma. Steven Spielberg bought the rights to Dr. King's speeches from his heirs. Oliver Stone expressed interest in making a film about Dr. King's assassination. And God knows what he would have done with that. He apparently has discarded that idea. In October of 2009, ^IT Selma ^NO finally got a director. Lee Daniels announced that he was going to make a film about the Selma Voting Rights Movement. Liam Neeson would play LBJ, Robert De Niro would play George Wallace, and in the strangest casting of all, as the brutal Selma sheriff, Jim Clark, this hefty man who used to dress like General Patton, Hugh Jackman would play Clark. Apparently Jackman put on a lot of weight in preparation. The script was written by a British screenwriter named Paul Webb. And Daniels said, "It's really Lyndon Johnson's story. Martin Luther King is a part of it, but it's really the arc of a man that starts out as a racist, who is forced to look at himself, and ultimately sides with King." While reading this, I shuddered. Of course LBJ is an important personality in this story as is Dr. King. But it suggested to me that Daniels, if we went forward with the focus on LBJ, was following in the sort of Alan Parker ^IT Mississippi Burning ^NO tradition in which the real heroes of the Civil Rights Movement were white government officials and Dr. King and the others would be marginalized. As I worked on the book, I discovered that the story of the struggle for voting rights was a much bigger story, and that it began years before Dr. King went to Selma in January, 1965. Time and time again I was struck by the extraordinary courage of the citizens of Selma and the others in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, who came to work for voting rights. Now while ^IT Bending Toward Justice ^NO covers the legislative maneuvering, the relationship between Dr. King and President Johnson, as well as the renewal of the temporary provisions of the Act in 1970 and 1975 and 1982 and 2006, my book above all is a people's history of the Voting Rights Act. The people who risked everything -- men, women, who risked their jobs, their homes, and very often their lives in the struggle for voting rights. It's a classic example of the collective movement of people to bring about change. President Obama, the former community organizer, once remarked, "Change doesn't come from Washington. It comes to Washington." And this is the story that I focused on: the men and women, and even children, who fought so hard. ^M00:30:05 Among them were Selma's teachers who had been reluctant to join the fight because their jobs were dependent upon white school boards, white-run school boards. So they had the most to lose. But their students continually chided them. How can you teach us civics when you can't vote? And so finally on a Friday in January, 1965, Selma's teachers, 105 of them, men and women, dressed as if they were going to church, marched on the courthouse where the Registrar's Office was, waving toothbrushes, a sign of their commitment to spend the night in jail if they had to. Not long afterwards the students took to the streets, 161 of them carrying signs that read, "Let our parents vote." ^E00:31:22 ^B00:31:30 Selma's Sheriff Clark charged them with truancy and force-marched them out of town, pursued by police, state troopers, and his own private posse. They were beaten, they were shocked with electric cattle prods, and many fell to the ground unable to move. One of these students, Letha Mae Stover, looked up and saw a police officer forcing her to rise, jabbing her in the back, remarking, "You want to march? I'll teach you how to march." But she couldn't move, and she told him, "You might as well kill me. I can't get up." Fortunately, the officer turned away and ran after other people. And there are many others whose courageous acts that I could tell you about that still send chills up my spine. Fortunately, Lee Daniels could not raise the money to make his film about Lyndon Johnson, racist. And it finally fell in 2013 to Ava DuVernay to make the film. An interesting choice. An African American woman who produced small independent films, But she seemed right to me as she began to discuss her plans for the movie. The title of the film she pointed out was ^IT Selma, ^NO not ^IT King. ^NO So her emphasis would be on the unsung heroes of the Selma Voting Rights Movement. May I say, my people, the ones I was writing about. This would not be a traditional biopic as Hollywood calls it, where the main character becomes a super hero and his life is covered from cradle to grave. She would focus on the period from January to March, 1965, the period that gave birth to the Voting Rights Act. In later interviews she said that she had revised Paul Webb's script, shifting the focus away from Lyndon Johnson to King. She wanted to show King as a human being, a great man, yes, but one with flaws, which he was able to overcome to achieve so much. But, again, she was going to highlight the people, the unsung heroes, of Selma. I was in love. I thought this is going to be amazing. And when she began to cast the film I saw characters who would be portrayed. Amelia Boynton who, with her husband, Sam, had been the Voting Rights Movement in Selma for decades. Sam died, really as a result of working so hard. His business was ruined and his last days were spent in a nursing home. But the fire still burned. People would come by to say hello, and he'd said, "Can you -- are you registered to vote? A voteless people," he said, "is a hopeless people." I sent Ms. DuVernay a copy of ^IT Bending Toward Justice ^NO in July, 2013. And one Saturday night the telephone rang and there she was. She thanked me for sending the book. Said she liked it. I told her I was thrilled with her plans for the film, that Selma's brave citizens would finally get the attention they deserved. And I offered to help her in any way I could. But it seemed like she had the story right. Was I hinting that I wanted to be the film's technical advisor? ^M00:36:32 [ Laughter ] ^M00:36:35 Hang out with Brad Pitt and Oprah Winfrey? Yeah, probably, probably. But she didn't make the offer and I didn't ask. So blame me for the furor that later occurred. Maybe if I had said, "Look, you really should have a historian look at the shooting script just to make sure," but I didn't do it. And I regret that. Then in the summer of 2014, when the film began to shoot, she called me again, asking if I had an electronic version of ^IT Bending Toward Justice. ^NO David Oyelowo wanted a copy of it and she wanted to distribute it to other members of the cast. I said, "Yes, I do. I'd be happy to send it." And I said, jokingly, "Will I get screen credit?" And she said, "What? For reading a book?" She was laughing and so was I. I said, "No, no. You know, at the end of movies you see this little part where the director thanks their grandmother [coughing], excuse me, and the caterer who feeds the crew." But that was it. I thought after that, that since I wrote ^IT Bending Toward Justice ^No and taught courses on film and American history, that it might be interesting and fun to write a book about the making of ^IT Selma. ^NO I ran it by Ava, and she thought it sounded interesting, too, and referred me to a Vice President of Publicity at Paramount who seemed open to the idea also. So I'm getting closer and closer to Brad Pitt and Oprah Winfrey at this point. In November, 2014, I was invited to New York for a screening of the film. I also hoped to meet Ava at the same time. She was there. She introduced the film and later took questions. The audience seemed to be young, independent filmmakers and some members of the Internet Press. They adored the film and gave it a standing ovation. I stood, too, but my legs were shaking. I left the theater without meeting Ava. She was mobbed by her fans. And I spent a sleepless night worrying about what I'd seen. ^M00:40:00 I felt ^IT Selma ^NO was too critical of Lyndon Johnson, who was a difficult man with an ego obviously the size of Texas itself, but committed to a voting rights bill. And the odd thing was that when Lyndon Johnson came on the screen, the audience hissed him. Of course, the most serious problem was the strong implication that LBJ had conspired with J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, to destroy Dr. King, and specifically by getting a tape together, recording Dr. King's sexual escapades, and sending that tape to his office and, eventually, his home. That had not occurred. And that, of course, was one of the major problems that provoked historians' outcry. And I was especially upset because the Selma activists had been ignored. Amelia Boynton, a long-time leader of the Voting Rights Movement, only had a few scenes. Really nothing crucial. Where were the teachers who risked their jobs? Where were those students who were run out of town and beaten? They weren't there. Of course, I understood that this was not a documentary, that a filmmaker with a $20 million budget, really very small, couldn't get everything in, but repeatedly Ava had said, "This film is a love letter to the Selma activists." And so I felt they deserved some screen time, however brief. They would have done it in maybe 15 seconds, I think, of screen time. And there were other problems. Bloody Sunday, the most important event contributing to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Well-shown on the screen, but -- and you may think I'm nitpicking here, but I'll try to defend myself. In the movie, Bloody Sunday is shown as occurring in real time. In other words, the networks break into their normal shows to take you to Selma, take you to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and see that terrible event. That didn't happen. It took hours for film to get to New York. In fact, ABC interrupted its ^IT Sunday Night Movie of the Week, Judgment at Nuremburg, ^NO a film about the Nazi war trials. And that's important because people watching ^IT Judgment at Nuremburg ^NO and then the scenes from Selma were stricken. They thought, what's happening to America? Are we becoming Nazi Germany? And the next days, they dropped everything, went to Selma. They joined Dr. King. Went to Washington, D.C. to picket and besiege President Johnson. Well, I went home and there's an email from the publicist at Paramount. How did I like the movie? Well, what was I going to do? So I go into -- only emphasized the positive, the most important thing that African Americans are finally the heroes of their own history, and just omit the problems, or somehow spin it in some deceptive way. I finally wrote a long and candid email about the problems as I saw it. And I warned her, I said, "You've got to prepare for a reaction among the historical community. It's happened before, certainly with ^IT Mississippi Burning, ^NO and you've got to get Ava ready for this." She never responded to that email. I waited. Sent another email. Nothing. Well, I wouldn't be hanging out with Brad Pitt. I probably should have written Ava. And again I -- again, blame me, blame me for the furor. I mean, I should have done it. But she was very busy. She was showing ^IT Selma ^NO to select audiences around the country. And, really, it was too late. Although there was still time to go to that Lyndon Johnson/ J. Edgar Hoover scene and just snip it away. And I think, had that occurred, she could have avoid much of what occurred. ^IT Summer ^NO was released on Christmas Day, 2014, and soon the critical voices were raised, mine among them. It's hard to say no when the ^IT New York Times ^NO calls and wants your opinion. I was one of the few historians who had actually seen the movie. I wasn't alone, obviously. The great biographer of King, David Garrow, was talked to, and Taylor Branch, certainly. But they hadn't seen the film. And I was the only one who had. I also wrote a piece called "Dr. King Goes to Hollywood" which the ^IT The Daily Beast ^NO published on January 2nd, 2015. And that same day I received an email from Ava. ^E00:47:27 ^B00:47:36 She was shocked and couldn't understand why I had written that piece. And I wrote her and I said, "Please understand that I agonized for days about what to do. And what stuck in my mind was Letha Mae Stover, the young woman I wrote about in ^IT Bending Toward Justice, ^NO part of the student group who had been so badly beaten. This was just not the full story of Selma without those students and those teachers. I wish you the best of luck," and I'm confident that certainly her career would flourish, as it has. I never received a response. A few nights later I saw ^IT Selma ^NO again, and I saw no reason to change my mind about the flaws, and I was ready to leave but my wife loves to watch the credits right to the very end, and they ran for a long, long time. And there at the end was a section labeled, "The Director wishes to thank," but very small, though, so we peered, and there was what I later learned, her parents, David's parents, John Lewis, Andrew Young, others, and fourth from the bottom, Gary May. I felt bad. But I still believe that ^IT Selma ^NO has important flaws, and in some ways an unfortunate conclusion, because Dr. King, again, sort of becomes a super hero in this film. And it leads people to believe that change is only possible when a hero comes along. And ^IT Selma ^NO showed that was not true. ^M00:50:00 That average people working together, fighting together, can bring about change, can be their own heroes. Apparently now, Ava recognizes that there were problems with the film. The DVD has come out and there's a second disk with Special Features. And in that section she does state the film is, quote "A piece of historical fiction." She said she wasn't trying to capture all the facts, but rather she wanted to represent the truth of it all. I'm not quite sure what she means by that because there's also a guide for teachers, and students are asked to discuss the difference between fact and truth in historical fiction and the usefulness of both in the study of history. Huh? It's clear as mud. Still, it's possible that ^IT Selma's ^NO real power is stronger than its flaws. That by showing the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church which killed four young girls and maimed a fifth, by showing the assault on peaceful demonstrators in Marion, Alabama, which led to the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson by a Alabama State Trooper, and above all Bloody Sunday, the event that was critical in the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the successful march at the end from Selma to Montgomery. These powerful images perhaps could contribute to the passage of the new Voting Rights Act that was introduced in the Congress just last week. Those events had a profound impact on the passage of the original Act in 1965. Maybe if enough people see the film and are moved by those images, that we will have a new Voting Rights Act. I certainly hope so although it's sad to say that the new Act has no Republican co-sponsors. And the Republican Party played a key role in the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act was written in the office of Everett Dirksen, the Republican Minority Leader, and without his help and the help of others, the Act would not have passed. One of President Obama's favorite quotes of Dr. King's is the one that comes from Dr. King's speech to the marchers at the end of the march on March 25, 1965. "The arc of the moral universe is long," Kind said, drawing on the words of the abolitionist, Theodore Parker, "but it bends towards justice." To which President Obama added, "Here's the thing. That arc does not bend on its own. It bends because each of us, in our own way, puts our hand on that arc and we bend it in the direction of justice." Let's all of us, from Washington, D.C. to Hollywood, follow that prescription. Thank you. ^M00:54:20 [ Applause ] ^M00:54:30 >> Guha Shankar: So we have time for audience questions, so please pipe up. Here's your chance to talk to the almost friend of Brad Pitt. ^M00:54:37 [ Laughter ] ^M00:54:40 >> Gary May. I imagine he's not a very interesting person, right? ^M00:54:45 [ Laughter ] ^M00:54:47 >> And if you could just repeat the question into your mic after you hear it. >> Gary May: Yes. >> Well, first, I'd like to thank you for getting it right about the Voting Rights Act. In that time in 1964 I was a staff lawyer in the Civil Rights Movement. And Page 50 of your book you indicate that Lyndon Johnson, four days before he met King in the White House, had instructed Katzenbach to come up with a bill. So Lyndon Johnson was never hostile to a voting rights bill, he was a greater supporter of that, and we worked like crazy to get that done. I was a staff lawyer under -- in the Appellate Section with responsibilities for going to Harold Green. And it's too bad that Harold Green had died before you wrote the book. He knew a heck of a lot more about the bill than I did, but it was a time when the relations between how Congress and the Executive worked were not quite the same as today, and in fact, in the Civil Rights Division we wrote virtually every speech of the Congressmen. I wrote the Senator [inaudible] speech that was the first speech that introduced the bill into the Senate. He wrote the House Report. We wrote the Senate Report. I mean, the Executive Branch -- I agree with you that nothing would happen without obviously the people who had been on the front line and spent all of their courage in making a case for it. But the Executive Branch was not hostile to the Voting Rights Bill. I'm not sure I would agree that it was all written in Everett Dirksen's Senate office but in all other respects I -- >> Gary May: Well, Nicholas Katzenbach, the Acting Attorney General, was there -- >> It was in Dirksen's office -- >> Gary May: Right. >> -- where it was written. >> Gary May: Right. >> But I just am -- I've read your book and I thought it was wonderful, and again, I'm certainly happy that you did get [inaudible]. >> Gary May: And your name, sir. >> Steve Isleframe [assumed spelling]. >> Gary May: Thank you very much. >> And, by the way, I also was on the brief of South Carolina versus Katzenbach, that helped the Voting Rights Act in the Supreme Court. >> Gary May: The Supreme Court. >> And I was lucky enough to get a pen -- ^M00:57:51 [ Laughter ] ^M00:57:55 >> George May: Well, I can't really repeat that. I hope the mic picked that up. The gentleman played an important role in the Civil Rights Division. Again, one of the unsung heroes of the story. I hope that our filmmaker from the Office of the House Historian will be seeing you very quickly. Any other questions? ^E00:58:23 ^B00:58:30 >> I would appreciate hearing from you in regards to the message that King may have been getting from Johnson in a public way. >> Gary May: Mm-hmm. >> I lived in Alabama during the time of the Civil Rights Movement and my impressions of my memory is how strongly the message was going all the time. "You have to be more patient. You have to realize the reality with which I'm dealing. You've got to be patient, King. Your people have to be patient." And so, not that things weren't happening, that those of us who read papers or saw the news were not made aware that that was such a strong impression in my life, and I'd like to hear you speak to that. >> Mm-hmm. The question is, what was the message that President Johnson was actually sending to Dr. King? Wasn't it that Dr. King you must remain patient. We're going to get this done. Maybe not this year or next year perhaps. We have other priorities, Medicare, and Aid to Education that need to come first. Frankly, President Johnson was often an erratic personality. ^M01:00:00 One day he could be completely positive about getting the bill up there now. Another day telling Dr. King, "You have to wait." And on the third day, he told Dr. King in a phone conversation, which is taped, "What you need to do is go to the worst possible place where people are being denied the right to" -- I can't put it like President Johnson did. It's a wonderful southern good old boy vernacular -- to show how badly they're being treated and once this message gets across, even to the guy who drives the pick-up truck, we're going to get this bill passed." So it's hard for Dr. King, which Lyndon Johnson to believe or to trust. But he knew, basically, that -- and the President was saying, "You have to pressure me. You have to find that place, to create the opportunities to convert the Congress and the country and help me do this." And, of course, that's what led Joseph Califano, the first critic of ^IT Selma, ^NO to say unfortunately it was the President's idea that Dr. King go to Selma. That's not what happened, of course. But what Califano was thinking of, I assume, was that conversation in which the President is encouraging Dr. King to create the conditions to pass the Act. So, again, it was erratic. When the President met with Dr. King in December, I think, of '64 -- again, at that point, he told him, you know, we're going to do this at some point. You have to be patient. That same day he asks Acting Attorney General Nick Katzenbach to draft a Voting Rights Bill, and the first thing that the President receives from the Justice Department -- correct me if I'm wrong here -- was the options that Katzenbach was laying out. And the first option was a Constitutional Amendment. So it was felt that that would be the only way that you could have a Voting Rights Bill. And, obviously, that's not something that the President wanted. And the last was legislation. But that changed. Events forced the change. ^E01:02:59 ^B01:03:11 >> Is there any evidence that a film like ^IT Selma, ^NO though flawed in the way that you presented, does impact people's interests in voting given the abysmal numbers of people who vote in this country? Is there any way to measure that or to measure any public response to impacts such as that? >> Gary May: Hmm. The question is, is there any way to measure the impact of ^IT Selma ^NO on voter activism? That's a tough question. I don't know if social scientists have done -- I haven't seen any polling that's specifically asks, "Does ^IT Selma, ^NO the film, change your mind about working for a new Voting Rights Act, and are you going to get involved?" The people are already involved. ^IT Selma ^NO did modestly well at the box office. I think I have the figures here. At home, it made $52 million and a budget -- that's gross. The budget was 20 million. Foreign was not good, only 14 million. So we really don't know. But now it's on DVD and it's available on Netflix and Apple TV, and it's on your phone, and maybe we will have an answer to that question eventually. Maybe this version of ^IT Selma ^NO will have an impact. ^E01:05:09 ^B01:05:18 >> Has the criticisms of the film from historians been mostly on your side of the camera? Has there been any counterbalance through other historians who are backing up the [inaudible]? >> Gary May: The question is, are there any historians totally supportive of the film? Not that I'm aware of. What I did see -- the night that I saw the film in November of 2014, there was a journalist there who'd actually covered Bloody Sunday and other events, and he stood up and he said to Ava, "You got it right." Actually, I won't mention his name, but I had written about him in ^IT Bending Toward Justice. ^NO I was shocked that he would say that because the things he was talking about, it just wasn't so. ^E01:06:23 ^B01:06:33 >> I lived in Alabama in 1963 and I was surprised that the local television stations might not carry the segments of the news that the rest of the country was seeing. And I wonder if you've looked into this. You know, we call it living behind the magnolia curtain. As late as 1974 in Mississippi, you could not buy a ^IT New York Times ^NO in a bookstore. So a local affiliate might not be hearing what's happening just down the road. So many of us were kind of left out of the national news. Have you looked at this at all? >> Gary May: The question is, was it true that local press coverage of the Voting Rights Movement and perhaps what was going on in Birmingham in '63 might not have been covered by the Alabama press or local television? My impression is that it was very, very limited and certainly in the press, more in the press not covered at all. I'm thinking of the ^IT Mississippi Clarion Ledger ^NO that for years was the most racist newspaper in Mississippi. But, ironically, it was later taken over by a member of the family that owned the paper originally, and turned everything around. And that paper now has become a force, particularly for investigating the civil rights cold cases. A reporter named Jerry Mitchell has been doing fabulous work for the last 10 years. Yeah, it was -- you were living behind the magnolia curtain in many ways. ^E01:08:26 ^B01:08:36 >> Could you talk about the impact that you hope your book will have on the current discussion, both Civil Right -- both at the Supreme Court level, which is now done, and at the Congressional level on the need for a renewal for the Civil Rights Act? How would you say your history and reporting on it contributes to that debate? >> Gary May: Oh, the question is, will my book have an impact on the Congress, the Court, and help, perhaps, the passage of the new act? It would be wonderful, obviously, if it did, but sales of the book were not good. Now in paperback and, again, they don't seem to be flying off the shelves. In fact, I probably shouldn't say this publicly, but the -- oh, well, the publisher of the original hardcover edition declined to bring it out in paperback ^M01:10:00 And so they sold it off to Duke University Press, which did a lovely job of -- and allowed me, actually, to update things, because my book came out -- the hardcover came out in April of 2013, two months before the Supreme Court decision. So people were left hanging, and so in the paperback I updated what happened. I was pleased that John Paul Stevens reviewed the book in the ^IT New York Review of Books ^NO and praised it and, more importantly, used it as an opportunity to attack his former colleagues on the Supreme Court for the Shelby Decision. But, of course, he's retired and he was kind of preaching to the converted in a way. But people don't read books. I wish they did. Basic Books will not be coming to me again here [background talking] for my next book. >> Guha Shankar: Do you want to mention that your book's out here for sale? >> George May: The paperback is waiting for you. ^M01:11:14 [ Laughter ] ^M01:11:17 >> And at this point I'd like to speak for the Library of Congress and encourage people to look for resources here, but in other places. Newspapers are indexed and available widely by subscription databases in libraries all over the country. And so if one wants to see what was occurring in newspapers in various parts of the country at different periods of history, that can be done. But here at the Library, something that I saw programming this year in February, was a [inaudible] documentaries that are part of our collections. And as I looked at them I had no idea that anything like this had ever appeared. And at least one of them was an ABC affiliate, and I was reminded that there was no ABC affiliate in Alabama during that period of time. But just to look at your library, and especially the Library of Congress, if you want to find some really outstanding unusual resources. >> Gary May: Indeed. I hope C-SPAN picked it up, but I'll repeat it. Become your own historians. Visit the Library of Congress and use their resources and you'll get a lot of pleasure becoming a historian. That's the fun part, doing the research. >> And additionally, you only need to be 16 years of age to get a reader registration card and be a researcher at the Library. >> George May: And young people can become historians, too [laughter], as young as 16. Yes. >> Guha Shankar: I wanted to go back to this notion of historical fiction or historical representation which you're taking up in the course of a Hollywood film. And that's interesting that the film will have a limited release. But I think the more pernicious thing that happens is when history books and history textbooks start repeating lies which stay with young people even further. These are the people coming to your classroom. I'm reminded of the fact that in Texas the three major causes that are given for the Civil War, at this particular date, are states' rights, economic rights, and slavery sort of in passing. And I would ask you to maybe think about what your colleagues are doing in that [inaudible], if they are colleagues who -- you know, historians who are writing these books, but that seems to be even more damaging, if not [inaudible] -- >> George May: Mm-hmm. >> Guha Shankar: -- more damaging than say a work of historical fiction, if you will -- >> George May: Yes. >> Guha Shankar: -- that comes up on celluloid. >> George May: Yes. Dr. Shankar notes that the role played by textbooks in distorting history, especially in places formerly covered by the Voting Rights Act. ^E01:14:11 ^B01:14:19 Well, thank you all for coming. >> Thank you -- ^M01:14:22 [ Applause ] ^M01:14:27 >> Guha Shankar: Thank you, Dr. May. And, as promised, Dr. May is going to proceed directly outside to shake your hand and sign a copy of your book which are waiting for you right out there in the lobby. Thank you all for coming to the program. We look forward to seeing you again. There's one on August 5th, the evening, of the Civil Right -- Passage of the Voting Rights Act. This will be off-campus at the Hill Center. Filmmaker Robin Hamilton will be giving a presentation and showing her documentary on Fannie Lou Hamer and the Maryland Freedom Democratic Party, one of those local heroes who are every bit as important as the Doctor King's and anybody else in the Civil Rights era. On the 6th, back here at the Library, Emily Crosby, one of the historians who works for the Civil Rights History Project, will be talking as Dr. May has done, about teaching history from the bottom up with reference to Library of Congress collections, so we look forward to seeing you all at those events. Thank you again. Give yourselves a hand. ^M01:15:19 [ Applause ] ^M01:15:23 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.