 Good evening to all of you joining us for this exciting and informative night and celebration of civil rights. I'm going to start off as we always do with a little bit of singing. I don't know what your day was like, but there was song in mind as I did a performance this afternoon actually talking about history and race. And that always includes the civil rights movement and the amazing, brave, courageous, wise folks who help to change the world by helping America to face itself. So settle under your seat and get ready for an exciting, amazing evening. I'm going to sit at the welcome table. Feel free to sing along because these songs are made to sing together. I'm going to sit at the welcome table. I'm going to sit at the welcome table. I'm going to sit at E2K together. I'm going to sit at E2K together. Welcome table. Sit at the welcome table. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Definitely feel free to join in and release whatever it was about your day that was perhaps an obstacle. You're going to hear some stuff tonight. Some things tonight that hopefully are going to inspire and fuel your soul for your soul and your body. So from the underground railroad that was also sung in the movement, we know that the struggle is long and hard as we like to say the struggle continues. So we know that we have to wait with those children all dressed in red. That's going to trouble the heart. That's going to trouble the water. With those children all dressed in white. That's going to trouble the water. They must be the ones getting ready to fly. That's going to trouble them. Sing it with me. Sing it with me. Sing it with me. That's going to trouble the singing or the same way. All dressed in blue. That's going to trouble the water. They must be all dressed in black. Sing it loud wherever you are. That's going to trouble the heart. That's going to trouble the water. That's going to trouble the heart. I can almost hear y'all singing from here. We will not rest till the storm is over. We will not lay this burning down. We will keep each other strong. We will love and carry on till we stand all together on solid ground. Been a long hard journey on a winding road. So many have gone before us. They carried a heavy load but they went there singing as they made their way. Now it's in their footsteps we follow as we work Today we will not rest till the storm is over. We will not lay this burning down. We will keep each other strong. We will love and carry on till we stand all together on solid ground. Till we stand all together on solid ground. Till we stand all together on solid ground. Well thank you again for joining us tonight for this second program in the four webinar series with the Living Legacy Project and we are so happy to be bringing these to you as a way to enlighten and inspire and certainly as you join us tonight we hope that you are understanding that the road to freedom and justice is a long and hard struggle but we make it. We can make that struggle as has been so demonstrated by those in the civil rights movement and by our esteemed guests tonight because they not only kept one foot in front of each other and kept their eyes on the prize but also because they realized that we do not make this journey alone. That we have the voices and the arms and the legs of so many who have committed themselves to the struggle. So thank you so much for the generosity and the spirit that you have brought to not only our webinars but to the mission of the Living Legacy Project as we seek to entertain and inform. And I'd like to welcome our host this evening, a colleague of mine and a long, long, long time soldier in the war on civil rights, Pam Zeppardino. Thank you Reggie. It's an absolute thrill to be here tonight. It's going to be a wonderful program. For those of you who don't know the Living Legacy Project, our vision is a world where there is equity, where there is justice, where people of different backgrounds and different cultures and different ethnic groups and different races all have the same rights and privileges and work with each other to make the world better for all of us. And so our mission is partly being fulfilled by what you're seeing tonight. We want to make sure that everyone understands what happened in the civil rights movement and what that means for today. We're not just about the history. All the history is incredibly important, but that history has a message for us today and how we can work in our communities today. And so our mission is to provide education, mostly experiential education, webinars, pilgrimages to places in the South, mostly where major events happen during the civil rights movement. So you all, if you're with us, can understand how that all came together and how you might be able to take lessons back to your own community. And so that's what we're about. If you've been on one of our pilgrimages before, thank you, and we'd love to see you again, because you might not have been on one that goes to some of the places we go to now. And if you haven't, check out our website because there are a lot of interesting things on there, former webinars, prior webinars that you might be interested in. And if you enjoy tonight's program, if you take something from it, we hope you will support our work. We are a volunteer organization, and so we live by donations. And our Operations Director Annette will put a link in the chat at some point this evening where you can make a donation if you'd care to, because we want to keep our buses on the road, our Zoom channel working, and we want to bring more people into this work. So with that, I'd like to introduce you to tonight's guest who I am so honored to be here with, Mr. Dave Dennis Sr., who was an important part of the Civil Rights Movement work, especially in Louisiana and Mississippi. Not that he didn't get other places, but tonight we're going to be talking about some of his journey, how he got involved, how he sees the work that he did coming forward, and how we can take that forward. And also, sort of winding through this is going to be the fact that he and a guy named Dave Dennis Jr., so that would be his son. He and his son have written a book about his experience, so we'll chat a little bit about that as well. But welcome, Mr. Dennis. We are thrilled to have you here. Good to be here. And I'd like to get started. As you grew up, you were born in Louisiana, you grew up there, and as I figured it out, you were probably about the same age as Emmett Till, pretty close. And we know that he was murdered in 1955, but there were lots of other things that were going on at that point in time that were an attempt to keep the races separate and attempt to keep white supremacy and power. And I'm wondering how that all came together for you, as you were growing up. Well, I was like most black people at that time, I think, is trying to figure out how to survive. I was born and raised on the first nine years of my life on the plantation. And so in a place called Toulouse, Louisiana, and then outside of Shreveport, Louisiana. So the first school I ever went to was a one-room building house. The old pot stove, the things you read about, and some things that people don't believe happen, but it's a pot stove. And I was in a room, at that time, I was around six or seven years old, but we had people, well, 18, 19 years ago, the basics of teaching, learning was around reading, writing, and what they call arithmetic, because the fact is that that's what you need just in terms of survival. And so the beginning of my life is, that's what I came up with, is watching, you know, picking cotton, and we had no lights. I was nine years old before I was exposed to even inside toilets, you know, running water to think that nature. So that was a way of life. So in addition to that is pretty much conditioned, and I was one of those people's condition around survival and doing what is necessary. For instance, when Emmett Till was killed, I saw, I was shown the pictures by the neighborhood. So we actually, I grew up, although we were poor, after left the plantation, moved to a place in St. Port, Louisiana, called Cedar Grove. Even there is, it was about before we had running water, even in the area that we lived in, although we lived in the city, we still had outside toilet and things of that nature. But when Emmett Till killed, the men took the boys, the black boys, to a church and told us what to do and what not to do in order to survive so that we didn't end up like Emmett Till. So if you saw a white woman walking down the street of someplace, you crossed the street, you did not look them in the eye, you did not do anything that one might think accused of being flirtatious or whatever nature that. And you didn't make sure how you spoke to people at that time is, white people is. Some people, young people, you could get beaten by saying properly, yes, sir, or yes, man. So you had to do the draw thing, you would tell how to say yes, no, no, sir, because you had to play the role, because anything outside of that role could get you killed in those particular days or beaten or going to jail for the habits. So actions around survival. So I grew up not understanding a lot about, you know, the civil rights movement, that type of protest. Although some things happen in my life is that demonstrate to me a different type of protest that black people were involved in. So we were part of a protest from the time that black people came here as enslaved people, using different types of things at the same time as figuring out how to survive as you do with personal types of protests. So that's how I grew up. I had no interest in becoming involved in a civil rights movement until I entered college at the University and that's another story. So I did not, people ask me all the time is if we did you have this burning fire and anger, you know? I won't call it, it was anger in the senses, but at the same time that one that took me out of my lane. But at that time is what I felt I had to do in order to survive. It's interesting. It's very much what we hear today, what everyone who is friends with African American families, that the talk happens very much like you were told that families talk with their children, especially male children, about you know, what you say to a police officer, what you don't say to a police officer. So it seems like that not much has changed in that sense. Well, I think that what has changed a lot is the concept of family in the black community pieces. I came from a single parent home. All the things that people say that should happen is to call you not to be successful and to end up, you know, in jail or whatever you have. The concept of family was different when I grew up. We actually had real communities when I grew up. There was the black communities. And so Mr. Jack, who lived down the street, was like a father to me, isn't he? He had the right and permission from my parents, my mother and my grandparents, to jack me up if I did something wrong down the street. So it's all in terms of love, because we had the idea that young people would talk to respect your elders. And we respect our elders. And at the same time, reverse is the elders respect the children. So if you did something good, you got rewarded for it. If you did something bad, the community let you know about it. So what I'm trying to say is that we had this camaraderie that we had is the family that we had came out of, you know, how we were forced to live. I mean, the first thing happened when black people brought here as enslaved people, the families were broken up. I mean, fathers were sent someplace else's and mothers have sent someplace else. A lot of times the children would take their moms and their mothers and send someplace else as enslaved people. So we learned and taught and began to live the way by the children became the children of the community, not just if anyone took biological care. So that's what I grew up with is this caused me to be strengthened, I think is, and was protected. And we were protected by the elders within the community. So you mentioned that you got involved in the civil rights movement when you were in college. How did you get started? Well, a lot of it has to do with faith, so I have to go back a little bit now. So I believe and my grandmother always told me that, you know, you're here for a particular purpose on this earth, all human beings are. So what that is, you find out as long as you live. And so once you finish serving that purpose, you know, then pretty soon life is over with you, you're here for a purpose. And so I didn't understand what she meant about that is, you know, but as I think about my involvement in the movement and how I got here, things began to happen. I went from one school to the other. I went to a boarding school for a reason. I don't know how, why I got there to the largest extent, because we were poor. I ended up at this Catholic boarding school. I ended up from there is, for my senior year, I had taken out a boarding school and lived with my aunt in Baton Rouge, and I went to a place called Southern Lab School with Southern University. So here I am is for the second walkout, which is one of the largest walkouts in history, and civil rights movement from colleges at Southern University. The lab school was right there on the campus there. And so there's a march by my best friend in that school. We've sat outside and his brother was leading the march and said, come on, come on, join us. And we said, no, so we went over to my best friend's house and play basketball. And so I had, we didn't get involved in the movement. We didn't want to do that. Well, show you how fate was touching me on the shoulder because my best friend at that time was a person by the name of Hubert Brown. They don't want to be known as H. Rat Brown. No. And so we went out of separate ways and I went to Diller University. I got involved. There is that when I got on campus, there were students who had been jailed at Diller University, Cesar Carter and some others. And then there was other students from one from Suno by the name of Rep the Castle, who was a icon of the civil rights movement, the street name after it. And then there was a Rudy Lombard who was the big civil rights leader and core and people and so in the intervention of us. And so these people, you know, were in jail, but I didn't want to have a thing with the movement in a sense this. I knew it was happening, sympathized, but I wanted to be an electrical engineer, make some money for my parents and my mother and stuff is to help her out. And also to make some money, you know, so I never have to go back on the plantation, not realizing what the plantation that meant to them. One day I was walking across campus and so there was a rally on campus and there'd be flagpole at Diller University is and there was this young lady who was speaking. And so I walked by and so I went back to talk to see what's going on is, but I didn't go back so much to hear what she was saying. She looked good. I was going to go back and try to get a date with. And so I went to talk when she finished. I went to talk to the data. Well, make a long story short. She convinced me to go with her to a meeting, which ended up to be at Mount Sinai Baptist Church is which was also found out was the church was a Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in New Orleans. And there I am with these people who became later on known as very icons with civil rights moving to orders in Louisiana and also the on the national level is. And so I was chasing this young lady whose name was Doris Castle, who happens to have been the sister of this icon civil rights leader in New Orleans, Louisiana. And so the rest became history to largest. And so my chasing Doris who kept challenging me. And I kept trying to get a date she would not date them until finally, she convinced me to go on a sit and they were doing sit ins and demonstration in New Orleans at that time. And so I decided to go. But they weren't arresting people. They were warned them. And the idea was what they call hidden run to sit at lunch counter police comes, you know, and beyond the Saturday. And so that would keep the traffic of people going into the store without police around so people don't want to trouble so it was affected boycott. And so this is being affected. So I said, Well, I'm going to go on this because maybe Doris will go on a date with me if I go on with these demonstrations. They're not going to jail anyway. Right. And so I did on the day that I decided I put on that time as you wore a little suit and tie, you know, cotton. And I dressed up and I was ready to go on the seven feet be impressive finish to her. Well, lo and behold, of course, that's the same day that the police in the city decided they're tired of this stuff is they ain't gonna do no warning is gonna come and arrest everybody. So I ended up my first demonstration going to jail. All right. So that was the beginning of my involvement in the movement at that time. So that's how I really began to get started. I got my feet wet. It wasn't because of inside commitment to the movement. It was because I was trying to get a date which says is that you don't know where it is, where it's going to hit you. You know, and it remind me of the old Baptist, we grew up and the whereby you set up a morning bench and the preacher would preach and try to get you to join church and my grandmother used to say one day it will hit you. And it took me a long time to deal with that issue. So and so when the movement kind of stuff is you don't know when it's going to hit you. So that was the beginning, but that wasn't exactly where they hit me as arrested, but it was got me into a position whereby it did hit me a little bit later on. In your book, you talk about a time when being arrested didn't bother you anymore. You were actually ready to go. Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, that happened in some very interesting pieces, but I'll talk about faith. So at the time, I've got to go back a little bit here too. So at the time that we were in this demonstration in New Orleans, we're talking about, the core has started the Freedom Rides from Washington, D.C. and the host for the group that was supposed to be for the Freedom Rides was the New Orleans core chapter. Then so, you know, the Freedom Rides started. So I got out of jail and everything else. Now, going back to school, Dilly University is saying I'm trying to keep myself out of trouble getting rid of exams and this is when I'm April and May, and when May rather was. And so what happened is that the bus was attacked in Aniston, Alabama and Birmingham, Alabama. We know that story, but part of the, a lot of the people there on the bus, especially in Aniston, Alabama and Birmingham were beaten and very badly and injured very badly. And they could not get medical attention where they were either Birmingham or Aniston, Alabama. So they had to get them out of the areas and sent them into New Orleans. And so we were able to find doctors in New Orleans. There was a hospital, a black hospital called Flint Goodrich Hospital in New Orleans because black doctors, even at that particular time, were not allowed to practice in white hospitals, like the shared hospitals. So they had to practice in the black hospital which was Flint Goodrich, which still happened was connected to Dilly University at the time. So that's why we were able to get treatment for them and they were able to stay, put found house and for them at Xavier University in New Orleans at that time. And so when these people came in, they were like, you know, really beaten up and stuff is what the untold story is, these three of those people, four, they think of us, of those people in those original, on those original two buses in Birmingham, and Aniston, Alabama eventually died as a result of the injuries they received in those buses that we don't read about and talk about. So at any rate is that there were two things going on at the same time is there was a group out of, there was an issue about whether or not the riots should continue. And that was a group out of Nashville, Tennessee, young people are led by Diane Nash, James Belville and some others. And there's a group out of New Orleans also that was also demanding that the riots continue. And that was led by Retta Castle, these two fantastic Black women who was taking on this leadership. Retta Castle was having a discussion with Robert Kennedy, I think Diane Nash was dealing with Singapore, I think his name was. It was also the Attorney General's office pieces. And so that was the demand that the riots continued. And then and so, again, my following dars, Retta called us all to a meeting at her house, which is where she lived with her mother and father about what we call the Freedom House there, which is located at 917 North Tontia, still can't remember the address. And so we, I decided to go on a ride following dars still because still I've gotten a date. So she didn't think about going to jail that time was enough. And so I ended up going on a ride. So we have five of us from New Orleans who decided that we want to go on the ride. And that was a group that came out of Nashville, Tennessee. So there was a meeting hell in Montgomery, Alabama, we know about the church, where the king and then we're trapped in the church by mob of clansmen and others. And so we took a train from there to to Montgomery, Alabama. And we had this meeting. There was this big meeting at Dr. Harris's house, who's a pharmacist, the black pharmacist there. And they were the federal government, the candidates they called for martial law. And it was really tough. I mean, when we got there. So we get there is been this building and I'm meeting for the first time all these icons as Abernathy, there was a king, there was just you name him, why to walk with Andy Young, all the people that I've heard about. And there they were Diane Nash for the first time meeting her and James Belville and the rest of it. And so we're sitting there in this room. And this is when it hit when that we talk about what hits you, you never know. And so I'm debating whether or not I want to be number one, why am I here? I don't want to get back to school. I'm going to go to jail again. I'm never going to go to college. My career is over. You know, my mama didn't know where I was. She even though I had been arrested one time now, now we talk about a second time. And so I was sitting in this room, you know, all of a sudden that was this all I heard was someone say it loud and clear, you know, there's not enough space in this room for both God and fear. For some reason is it like hit me just by between eyes. And before I knew it, my hand was up. I'm ready to go on the ride. And let's go. And so from that to it became the difference for my understanding between fear and being afraid. I can't say that I've never been afraid. And then I can't say I wasn't afraid then to move forward. I didn't have that fear that paralyzes what you have is so that I didn't have fear. So I separate the two. And with that piece is that I joined into the civil rights movement and never looked back. It was whatever hit me. Hit me in a way that that changed my whole course of life is I've never even thought about it again is in terms of what I should be doing. So that was the beginning of the making that particular changes when I talk about you don't know how it hits you where you hit you, you know, but that's how I really got into it. And from that point, I went to Jackson, Mississippi, went to jail, parchment. And then from there, they ended up being arrested 30 times during my life. It's interesting. I teach college students and I asked them if there was anything they'd be willing to go to jail for and they look at me like go to jail. But, you know, I think they haven't found what hits them yet. But, you know, very much they were like you originally were like, Well, I've got my career and I've got all of this stuff to go through. But you went on and stayed as part of the movement, a very powerful part of the movement. What, what about your experience in the civil rights movement? Do you see as most life changing for you most important for you? There is no one thing. I think it's a continuation combination of a lot. And I think it had to do with when I talk about this whole thing about family, you know, which is one of the things that really I think was amazing. We young people did not start this movement. That's one thing needs to be clear about. When we came in, like in Louisiana, there was already a movement going on in Louisiana. There was already a movement going on in Mississippi and Alabama. It was just a different type of a movement. Bob Moses just talked about the Mississippi theater. That thing was there. So we was young people began to move into the areas to direct action. And we could do things that the elders could not do it. But we came in the pathway that had been already set. I mean, the stage had already been set. The play had begun. And we became supported actors into this play. And now, and we became part of what was already theirs continuation. I mean, Mississippi, what, but the way had been opened goes for answers for years and there is one of the most powerful people there. People like mega Evers and RLT Smith and M's and more. You know, Louisiana is that I found out that one of the leaders was my dentist. I grew up as a kid, you know, was one of the leaders and one of the founders of SCLC Dr. C. O. Simkins and others. So the movement had been and also the other fallacy we have to deal with the fact is what was made of the movement, the movement was made us. We didn't make the movement. It was made of a cross section of people. Good example is what I mean by that cross section of the community. But it's Mississippi. We always talk about these three fantastic women in Mississippi. One was they represented what the movements all about as far as I'm concerned. One was Ms. Fernando Hamer, who was a sharecropper that we know. And everybody knows them as family. And there was another one in there who was a top leader was related by the name Ms. Victoria Ray, who lived out of down in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, who was actually from Virginia. And she was a school teacher. And then out of Kansas, Mississippi, there was this powerful lady by the name of Ms. Anna Devine. Ms. Anna Devine was a business lady and also insurance agency. So what she did was sold those 25 cent policy, but she knew everybody in the whole area around it. But these three powerful women represented three sections of the community. Then you had leaders of Dr. Aaron Henry out of Clarksdale was one of the leaders of WACP. He was a pharmacist. Ams and Moore, who took Bob Moses in and taught him the ropes about what to do and how to do, how to organize in the area, all right, was work for the post office and he owned a service station, he owned a home, right? And then you got the step toes and people like that is. But you had people of porters and people of that nature, then you had the grass woods people. So you had a cross section of people who made the movement ministers and others, you know, and their children and families and pieces. And the family piece became people always asking when you got in Mississippi Freedom Summer, you brought in a thousand kids. I mean, how did you do that? We were able to do that because of the people. They were howls by the local people, poor people gave up their beds for these kids to come in and sleep and stuff like this. And they knew the danger was, you know, and so they came in, they hit them, they fed them, you know, took care of them, protected them. And they knew that one of days, a few months down there is that these kids are going to get on that bus this and stuff and leave them. And they were going to be down there by themselves. And they did it anyway. So the real heroes of the movement like we, it's a few of us who get a lot of credit. There's a lot written about us, you know, about the boom. But we could not have done anything of what we've done, you know, without the support of the community. And the people that the real family, they took us in because we would like their children, you know, we would extension of that family pieces. And so we have to figure out a way as we think about this as the movement is of all of these thousands of people out there is who march and everything else is who put their lives in danger that we don't give honor to, don't give credit to, and don't understand the roles that they play. Because they have a real movement that's similar to what we had at one time is we must understand, you know, wrap our arms around the people just because a person wears his pants low should not be a reason for them not to be led into the door, you know. And so, you know, and worry about that is not really worried about the wrong end anyway. So the thing that we have to be going to look at how do we build families and rebuild communities, which we don't have in the mall. We deserve the community. And that's not, you know, by accident, that was an intentional act on the part of this country to destroy what I consider to be the civil rights movement. You know, so one things I think about if you look at it real carefully is this 1964 Civil Rights Act, you know, actually became like a Trojan horse of the civil rights movement. But I mean by that is we didn't think about all the things that was connected to it that was used to destroy the movement rather than to protect and to make the point to grow and to be equity and equality for all people. So we can talk about that as we move forward. Do you talk about that a little bit more? Yeah, well, we came the challenge to the Democratic Party in 1964 really challenged power. We really didn't understand what power it was until we, at least I didn't, until then. We got right to the door, you know, and slam the door. I mean, when power really acted, I mean, we had the Credentious Committee just about wrapped them with our hands as after Ms. Hamlin gave her testimony before the Credentious Committee. We had it wrapped up. And Johnson and the others went through the back door is needs to be threatened people that overnight. The next day is some of the members of the Credentious Committee, if you don't change your vote, your husband's got for a judgeship, that's gone, you know, you got this, that's gone, you know. And so they were threatened. I mean, even in terms of our lawyer at that time was Joe Rao, who was the attorney for the Teamsters Union, Walter Ruth with them. But Walter Ruth went to Joe Rao and said, you don't change this around as you use in your job. All that happened within the 24 hour period of pieces. So that's when power acted. And they changed the whole thing about we've able to get the seats to the democratic party pieces. But we came close, too close. So this country then at that time made a concerted effort to fact is that this would never happen again. And so one of the ways of not doing that is to begin to attack what they knew would be the, which is the strength of the, of the, of the black community. And that happens to be the community. We had families. So they went after that structure. The first thing they did was he came out, people called, right, you know, was they called the Morning Hand Report. The Morning Hand Report became directed at the family structure of the black, black family structure. But we were blamed for the problems of racism, the impacts of racism, you know, because of the black father that's not in the home and not taking consideration. The fact is that as soon as we were brought in this country and say, people, the first thing to do was separate the families. You know, so that was the first thing about it. And some people bought into that. It was pieces. Then you got the poverty program, which looked good on the services. But what it did really did, if you look at it was to drain the black leadership out of the black communities. And they ran across the track, took a lot of big jobs. What you have is the main, main offices of the poverty program did not exist within the black community. It existed across the track. And so there you're left there. You had the whole thing as we had at that particular time, business, the whole thing about we didn't have business, didn't have capitalization in the black community. But it's not true. We had all grocery stores, stores, you know, you take them places around there. They had little like wall streets, whatever you have. You talk about Texas, you talk about the facts of North Carolina, you talk New Orleans, whatever you have is you had great businesses across the country, Atlanta, whatever you had, you know, Petersburg, Virginia, you had it. So the first thing to destroy that piece is so the tack on that is was that they having to have grocery stores and stuff like this is you had to pick the wigglies and wiggly pigglies or whatever you have is who was able to sell groceries, they put the stores not to into the community per se, bone outskirts of the communities, but they sold cheaper. And so the boycott in terms of the fact is black peas and backstores and stuff like that could not get the same prices, it breaks in terms of that. So their food and stuff was higher prices than what's in the white store. In fact, you're so raising in Mississippi, they had a store called Jitney Jungle that was around closer to the black community, then to the white community at the same store, they call it Jitney Premier. So you give an idea how this whole thing was operating. Blacks tried to come together to, you know, form larger grocery stores, but they're probably they couldn't get the loans downtown. So you blocked it. So all of a sudden you got a whole shift in terms of where the financial structure that happens to have been. The other piece happens to be is that that wasn't enough is how you deal with the culture in those businesses that still existed, the communities in the communities, they call it urban renewal. And so if you look at the place, to me, is they put those expressways across the country, but most of them, especially in the South, in other places, it went straight through the black community and basically where the business sections existed. New Orleans, it was Claiborne Avenue. It wasn't St. Charles Avenue, the most beautiful street in New Orleans. It was Claiborne Avenue, where blacks used to come between Orleans and St. Bernard Avenue, Claiborne, beautiful trees, picnic all through the summer, and everything else is all that's gone. Business on both sides of the street, Mississippi at Farage Street, where that was now is all boarded up and everything else because the fact is that don't know businesses existed at the time. So it's a drain on the community. Where do you think this has all brought us to today? I mean, where the movement sort of, you know, if we look at it historically, we had all of these, the Mississippi movement, the Louisiana movement, but it certainly seems like we've still got a long way to go. And how do you see what you all did back then coming forward to today and how we can move that forward? Well, you have to talk about rebuilding. I mean, this country has a way of every 60, 70, 75 years, so it goes to search forward and search back. I mean, the 1964 was not the first Civil Rights Act, right? 1876. And what happened then that is, you got the whole piece about making progress is, I mean, the Ku Klux Klan back in those particular days would be declared to be a terrorist organization, you know, in the 19th century, you know, that's real. And so then you have what you call the beautiful behaves compromised, whereby some of what you have if you look at it, you know, the search back, search forward, you know, politically is the political deal that was that for other VAs to become president is there was a deal made, the deal was, it would take out the move, remove the restrictions on the Ku Klux Klan, allow them to take out the soldiers out of the country and gave it back to what they called the Dixit Crafts, right? So the Dixit Crafts ran the south, all right? So that whole thing, we came back to segregation, get to Jim Crow laws, but back in effect is and constitutionally they've done the civil rights act 1876 would consider to be unconstitutional, you know, and so the in that the 1415 amendment, the 3040 15th amendment did not apply anymore. So you have that is, if you think about what happened then, you know, the civil rights act and what's happening now with the voters rights act and everything else is, it's quite similar in terms of that particular path. It took time is in turn for that to build. So you take from 1964 until now what has been having very slowly happening down the line. So it's not just, you know, you got the Reagan's and, you know, and others when Reagan became, became president of the announces president of the United States is okay. He recall is that he set the sense about changing the direction of this country to the to more to the right. So where does he makes his announcement? Slap in the face of about the showbook County, the same place is with chain of goodness when we're murdered. The showbook County fair. If you read that, it's a blueprint where we are today. So this has been in the process of 1968. If you look at it is as they search back pieces in 1968 is white males left the Democratic Party of the Dixiecraft PC and they said, they don't have it, you know, and they went all to the Republican Party, all right, because Republican Party, if you recall, was a party Lincoln, as well as most of the blacks were outside of the South. And, but because in the softest, we did the challenge where we did do the challenge to the Democratic Party because that's the only part everybody had in power existed. So if you do anything, you have to deal with the challenge to Democratic Party. So that's why it was that pieces. But the 1968 white enjoyed the white males left the Republican Party and went to the Democratic Party. So if you look at that history pieces how he existed, that's when the whole piece began to really gel in the country. Well, it's not about a Trump, you know, I mean, people keep talking about Trump and Trump and Trump, this is not about Trump. It's about the people who are following, not following, but leading to Trump's group. That's a whole lot of people. You talk about 40, 50 percent, you know, people, that's a lot of people in this country. So it's not, it's a whole culture system, you know, that we up against at the present time is that's in the making for a number of years. Well, I can't, we still have a little bit of time and I can't let you go without talking about your book a little bit. How did you and your son come to write this book about your experiences? Well, there have been a lot of people after me about telling my story and I didn't want to do it. It's a very painful thing to deal with because I lost a lot of friends during that period of time. I mean, I was in Mecca one hour before he was assassinated. I was with Chaitanya Goodman sworn in 24 hours before they were murdered and during that period of time, I'm involved in the movements. We lost 19 people that people don't talk about that murder. So the talk about that is, is these families and things of that nature that you have to relive and think about and then how do you get the story out? And so my son from a very small kid, he came up with us, you know, a bit, I listened to these people in these stories, but he always told me, I want to write your story, dad, I want to write your story. So he's the one who pushed me when he went to school and journalism, graduating stuff like this, he really got in his head, he wanted to do this and he kept after me. So it started out really about him and I because he talked about he wanted to know more about his dad because he felt that he didn't know his dad. I didn't understand what he was talking about this. And so as we got more and more to the book, I began to understand about this relationship. I did not know anything about understanding about PTSD. And so we in the movement spent years writing, I mean, nonstop. I mean, something was happening every day on the movement and I stayed in the movement without coming out doing anything. It's not even vacation from 1961 to 1965. And you just don't, you know, I mean, so I didn't understand what impact it had. And so that's why I didn't have it and any understanding about the impact I was having on my family as I grew older and like this and his coming up and stuff like this. And so our conversation, one of the things in the book he does is that he didn't tell me about it till the very end, by the way, that he writes me five letters that he shares in the book about this relationship and stuff like that. So anyway, Brian brought us closer together as a father, son. I mean, we always have been close, but this really brought us in terms of knowing, you know, each other is I mean, I talked to him about twice a day every day. He just coughed, he was like that, you know, kind of stuff is. And so that's how it came about is and so it's a story that he writes and it's more when I think of more of his passion than I told him the story. And also he was good for him because most of the people we talk about in that is other people that he came up with and knew at one time personally, you know, he met them, talked to me. Bob Moses used to take his bed when he comes to places, you know, so people of that nature became to love and he calls them all Uncle Bob, Hank, Canada, whatever he has to be, you know, it says aunt and uncles and stuff like this throughout the movement. So it became part of that big family that I was talking about. So that was the beginning of it and how it began to grow was was through his eyes and his feelings going up in this piece. But at the same time, it's the whole idea of what family being beyond just biological family. So you got to understand about that is so he's the one who came from him. In terms of his feelings that made I think the success was he made the story come on. And what he did also was he understood this whole thing about all these other people that made the movement. You know, it wasn't just these icons because what they did was they were telling stories about people that you don't read about. Do you know Mr. Turnbull? Hey, you know Mr. Turnbull did this blah, blah, blah, CEO Chen did this, you know. So names of people as he began to look at and go back and try to find who the hell are these people that they were talking about, you know. And so we have this, the movement where we have to begin to do is it's being, you know, understand that you don't have to be, it's not these people who tell me all the time what we need is another Martin Luther King, what we need is another Bob Moses. There'll never be another Bob Moses, there'll never be a Martin Luther King, you know, and everybody there's a piece of the movement and everybody. You got to have a desire to feel of want to be, you know, free, you know. So that's what it takes to come out. So you don't know where that great leadership is, but the leadership of the movement was about the accumulation of the whole lot of people, you know. There's a story that, if I can't just one minute, to me really tells me what the courage is all about is. And when you talk about fear and all this stuff. So we used to have these days of freedom vote days whereby people come out, as many of you possibly can, or usually on the Friday to try to register the vote. There's really a demonstration to refute the idea that people trying to spread in the country is that blacks would not register the vote because they were complacent and didn't want to do it. We say, no, it had all these things happening. I mean, to try to register the vote was almost like a death, which, you know, sign off because people were getting killed and beaten and stuff like this. It's just about trying to register the vote. So we do that to give that demonstration. So these are real heroes to me because people coming out and trying normally couldn't do it. Facing, you know, the white supremacy supremacy there, no, as they did, that is. And normally I had to go back in those back woods of places, you know, to face them every day, share some of what we have is, but they did it. So one day we were there in Canyon, Mississippi, and I heard this clip of the clock and I look around and there's this elderly couple in a wagon with a horse, a mule who's looking for a mule coming up. And they came right up to the courthouse. There is an old gentleman who had, what, suddenly go past, he had a pair of overalls on, white shirt and a tie and a hat. The lady had an abominant long dress. Never forget it. And he got up and said, hi, y'all. Hi, you sir. And he held her down off the wagon. He looked at us and he said, where do I go to vote for George Raymond? George Raymond was a very brave young kid who the civil rights were about at New Orleans, who was working in Canyon, Mississippi. So he was, for some reason, he thought he was coming to vote for George Raymond. We told him, George wasn't running for anything else, but this was where you go to register the vote in case George decided to run, you can vote for him. So he said, okay, if I do this, I can vote for George Raymond, yes. So he took his, I'm assuming that's his wife, up to the courthouse. And he went by the sheriff. His name was Billy Noble and just looked him in the eye and kept walking. And he had these whites on the side, spit the tobacco, looking at him, pointing at him. They didn't care. They went in and tried to register when they came back out. And he helped her and he said, thank you, son. Y'all have a nice day. And he helped her on the wagon, he did that on the wagon, turn the wagon up and that clipped the clock. Clipped the clock. I'll never forget that because I wake up sometime at night wondering whatever happened to them. That was bravery. That was fighting fear all those years. They're back there in those backwoods, not even having a car. But on that particular day, they faced it. That is a powerful story. When I read the book, that one stood out to me as well. It was just an amazing thing that those people did. Just amazing. Right. And so those are what we need to remember as we talk about move from what life is all about is. And what can we do? What should we do? What am I willing to do? I mean, a lot of us, where we are today, and a lot of people have a life that they have. And the good side is because of people like that. It wasn't us. We hit road on that couple's back on their shoulders, which helped me and a lot of us do what we did. They're the ones who really paved the way. So that's what we mean. We say the movement made us. We didn't make the movement. What would you say to young people today in terms of trying to change things for the better? There's got to be something that makes them angry about what's going on today. Got to be something. So embrace. I mean, I don't know this much about these young people who are stuck in these areas, these places. They're not communities anymore. They intentionally put areas whereby they end up fighting against each other. And what we have is they don't want to be there. We need to figure out how to help open that door to help them to get out of their areas. Embrace them. But they have nothing to hold on to. But young people who do have something to hold on to need to begin to embrace and try to figure this out. So we're working with young people today to try to say to them, there is a way out. I mean, what do you value in your life? And how do you begin to change that and value something that's going to be beneficial to you? What is that? So the whole idea about family. So we all can help this out. I mean, we're young people. I mean, our elders have an obligation. When I grew up, the elders helped me. They put support for me. I mean, they were there for us. When we were in the movement, we worked. We got $15 to $25 a week in order to do the work we did. Out of that came, you had to pay your rent, car, gas, food, everything on that. So a lot of days we went to bed hungry. And all the people there, some of the best chicken sandwiches they've ever had is going to the door, trying to get people to register to vote. And somebody come up, Sonny, you hungry? Would you like to have a sandwich? And they had to fry chicken. That's why you take a double slice of white wonder bread and wrap it around a drumstick. And that was good. But it's appreciation that she had is and what we had in turn to live with. And I met a young person. He's younger than me. And he reminded me of something. He says, Dave, do you remember me? I say, sure. His name is Hezekiah Watkins. I know Hezekiah. He's a supreme rod and worked in civil rights movement in Mississippi. He said, no. He said, when I was a kid, you know, you took me in for a couple of weeks and fed me and stuff. You had some of the best food, man. He said, because I was poor, I didn't have any place to live. And you said, come on, stay with us until you get to find your parents and stuff, get you together, find your place to stay. And he said, you remember that? And I lied to him. I said, oh, yeah, I don't remember. So I ask people all the time is if a young person came up to you with his pants hanging down and stuff like that is, would you walk away from him? Would you talk to him? Would you have a conversation with him? Or you'd be concerned by the fact that he has pants low? I mean, how do we begin to reach out, you know, and look at the fact is, say to them, you know, you are one of our children, you know, and begin to work for that, you know, that's what do we do for our children and watch what's happening in schools today and stuff like this? I mean, how do people, how do we allow this to happen to our children? No, instead, we're looking at who's out, our larger child is and say that it's not happening to him, but her. You know, but all of these children, so when I grew up is when we have real communities, you know, the children or the children of the community, you know, and how do we bring that back? You know, so we need to figure out how to rebuild our communities and take them back. These old dilapidated houses, rebuild them, you know. That's a powerful place to begin to wrap this up. We do have the after session, so we'll have another half hour with Mr. Dennis, and I see that the link has just gone up, but looking at the children as the children of the community, I think, is something that we really have lost. And you're underscoring the importance of that is very powerful. There are many points in the book by the two Mr. Dennises are very powerful. For me, it filled in the spaces between those things with the people we hear about and all the people who were there doing the work that felt very important to know about, that it wasn't, you know, Martin Luther King may have been very important, but he wasn't the only one doing the work and so on. And stories of young people being taken in back then who didn't have a place to go. And so things in some ways haven't changed too much, but the work, the work has to go on. And if you haven't read the two Mr. Dennises book, The Movement Made Us, it is something you should pick up and read. You'll learn so much, and you'll feel so much about what it must have been like. So you've used that phrase just to wrap up a couple of times that we didn't make the movement, the movement made us. Can you just explain that one more time as we go out? What I meant by that, what Davey meant by that too is that there was a movement around at the time, began at the time that enslaved people first brought into this country. They always put some form of resistance that was theirs. And so the people came after them on that particular show. So a lot of people give credit to the fact is to say that the young core people, young SNCC people in SCLC and LACP, they didn't want to create the movement as if the movement began with their work. And so what that means is that these organizations, the organizations are made up of the people. The people made the organization, the organizations did not make the people the movement. So therefore in terms of the movement, it was there. And so we didn't make the movement. The movement made us help us to be who we are. It took us where we are today is the people who were there. And now is the question is how do we do the recognition to those people? Thank you so much for this past hour has been amazing. And we're not finished yet. So I hope everyone will click on that link and come to the after session. And I see Reggie is back with us. Are you going to take us out, Reggie? I am. I'm going to say thank you so much to Mr. Dennis. Dave Dennis, you have been a very powerful witness of the movement, making those who came through it and leaving us such an amazing legacy of how to keep persevering. I remember seeing you on on the films and TV, had the opportunity to see you in 2014 at the reunion of Mississippi Summer. Such a powerful voice for change in America. And folks, you have an opportunity to ask a question or two. Join us in the after talk. The link is in the chat. And you can join us there. We'll have some time for Mr. Dennis to also entertain your questions. Remember the songs of the civil rights movement talked about community. They talked about the fact that people were not working alone. They were working in solidarity and in community to keep themselves on the path and keep their eyes on the prize. So as they sang, ain't gonna let nobody turn me round. I'm gonna keep on walking, keep on talking, marching up the freedom land. They were not marching by themselves. And we don't have to march by ourselves either. Because together we are more powerful than we are alone. So thank you very much for joining us tonight. Please be generous. And if you have the means, we ask that you be generous in your donations to the work and the mission of the Living Legacy Project. You can go on our website for information and also to see past webinars. They were all recorded and they were all available there for you. See you in the question answer. The link is right in the chat. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dennis. It was an honor and a pleasure. Thank you, mine also.