 1963, year of hope and hostility with Byron Williams. I want to thank you all for coming out. I just asked Anna, what did she do about 63? She told me that was the day her dad was born. So it sort of dates me right there because I was much alive in 63. I remember like it was yesterday, and actually the exact date was June 11th, 2008. And I had a friend who lives in Atlanta. His name is Mark Brown. And Mark was going to the Democratic Convention that year. And he was saying how it's going to be a lot of emphasis because that would be the 40th anniversary of 1968 and all the things that happened that year, of course. That was the year that Martin Luther King was assassinated. That was the year Robert Kennedy was assassinated. You had the Vietnam protests. The Democratic Convention was very raucous in Chicago that year. So I just said to Mark, I said, well, you know, 1963 was an interesting year. And at the time, I was writing two columns a week for the Barrier News Group. And I said, you know, my Sunday column, I'm going to do my Sunday column on 63. And when you're a columnist, when you write, once you hit send, you're done with the column. You're on the next column. But it's just so happened for that 63 column, I received an email that said, Mr. Williams, this ought to be a book. That was an interesting thought. So I'm sure someone has written about 1963. It's been written before. Someone has written about it. Too much stuff happened. But no one has written about it. This book has three protagonists, primarily. George Wallace, Martin Luther King, and John F. Kennedy. There's not a chapter in the book where I do not talk about at least one, if not in some cases all three. In George Wallace, we see, in fact, the one thing to hold these three individuals together is that you see a metamorphosis of some type with all three individuals. And George Wallace, the metamorphosis, was someone who started out his political career as a populace, a progressive populace. George Wallace sat on the board of trustees at Tuskegee University, historically black college. In 1954, he sat on that board. First time he ran for governor in 1958. He was endorsed by the NAACP. There are commercials where George Wallace does television commercials in 1958. He was run for governor talking about how Negroes, and I'm going to use Negroes throughout this conversation because that was the language of 63, how Negroes and whites could live together in a peaceful Alabama. And in 1958, Wallace lost at governor's race. And at the post-election analysis, what went right and what went wrong, it turned out that Wallace was viewed as soft on segregation. Now, in Alabama in 1958, if you were viewed soft on segregation does not mean you're Gandhi. It just means you're not as crazy as the other guy. So Wallace looked at his advisors, and he said, well, boys, no son of a bitch will ever outnigger me again. It's an important comment as we look at Wallace's 63. It's an important comment to remember about George Wallace. Second protagonist is Martin Luther King. It was the year that King gave his famous speech at the March on Washington. I refuse to call it I Have a Dream because that wasn't the name of the speech. That's the name the popular culture has given it, but that was not the name of the speech. The keynote address, the March on Washington. It's also the year that King wrote his famous letter from Birmingham Jail, and it is the year that he was Time Magazine's man of the year. And when he was coming up to the podium at the March on Washington, A. Philip Randolph said, and now it's my honor to give you the moral leader of our country, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And that is the moment he actually became the moral leader largely because that was also the first time the nation had ever heard King speak in its entirety. They had had a couple sound bites. Never heard King speak an entire speech before until the March on Washington in 63. In fact, President Kennedy was looking at the speech in the Oval Office, and he says he's good. Damn, he's good. So, and then the third person is obviously President Kennedy. I mean, his assassination is probably why there hasn't been a book on 63 prior to mine because that assassination, if you were alive at that time, took up all the option in the room. It was, I mean, to have a president whose potential was so great, who provided so much, who got so much started, ended so tragically. It's almost Shakespeare in nature, the Kennedy administration. But in 63, we see an amazing metamorphosis in John Kennedy. In 61, John Kennedy, in my view, had the worst foreign policy of any U.S. president in his first year, clearly 20th century. He had the failed Bay of Pigs. He had the horrible conference with Kuzchev in Vienna. And then the Berlin Wall goes up, and at least the perception of the Berlin Wall going up was an indication that Kennedy was weak in foreign affairs. And because one of the criticisms of Kennedy when he was elected was that he was not ready to be president, so those three things in terms of foreign policy sort of feel that narrative. It bolstered that narrative that he wasn't ready. He goes from that to 63, and we see this major transformation, which I'll talk about in foreign affairs. And same with civil rights. Kennedy was very tepid on civil rights. My view is that politics is an amoral enterprise. Sometime there are moral outcomes, sometime there are immoral outcomes, but politics fundamentally is an amoral enterprise. John Kennedy in 1960 had the close election against Richard Nixon. He was already by 63, he's worried about re-election in 64, and the key committee chairmanship, they were chairmanship at the time, were Southern segregationists in the House of Representatives and the Senate. So he is trying to stay in the middle doing these little tepid things, but he's looking at politics, I like to say politics outside of the Oval Office looks different from inside the Oval Office, but in 63 you see an amazing metamorphosis in John Kennedy. That said, January 1st, 1963, was the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. In 62, Martin Luther King and other supervised leaders were trying to press President Kennedy to issue a second Emancipation Proclamation. Obviously for the reason I just mentioned, John Kennedy is reluctant to do that for political reasons, and in fact there were buttons printed in 62 that said free by 63 that the civil rights establishment were wearing throughout that year. But January 14th, George Wallace had been elected in 62, he gives his famous, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, tomorrow segregation forever speech. So it draws the line. The Alabama under his leadership would be the citadel of segregation. Well that night, John Kennedy gave the State of the Union address, and it was a 6,000 word speech. Kennedy talked about steel, talked about Vietnam, talked about social security, talked about Medicare, talked about tax cuts, talked about the Soviet Union. He gave 60 very glancing words about civil rights, and they even mentioned civil rights. So you had to be listening to hear that's what he was actually talking about. Which was actually no different than two years earlier when the freedom rides were occurring in Montgomery, Alabama and the bus caught on fire was the same day the Kennedy was gonna give the State of the Union that night, and he didn't even mention the freedom rides. So up until this point, this was sort of the modus operandi, the Kennedy administration, that the civil rights was this sort of irritant, you know that nat, because he wanted to focus more on foreign affairs. So that's how the year gets started. And then in February, Kennedy signs the last of three Cuban bargos against the island of Cuba, and Cuba is this irritant that really goes back to the days of Jefferson that America has always felt that Cuba was part of its domain. So Cuba's always been this irritant, so to speak. Kennedy signs the last of three bargos, and then for the remainder of his life, he did that in February, so the remainder of his life tried to assassinate Castro through Operation Mongoose while simultaneously trying to have backdoor relations to turn Castro. I think somebody here just mentioned Joseph Tito a few minutes ago, I think so. I thought I heard someone mention Tito. But it was trying to do to capture, you know, the relations with Castro was trying to do the same thing with sort of where Tito was with Yugoslavia, that not so much he would be an ally of the United States but he would not be pro-Soviet Union. So you had those things going on. In fact, the last backdoor memo about turning Castro was issued on November 22nd, 1963. April and May, we have the Birmingham Campaign, Project C, C for Confrontation. And you also have that in that the, if Kennedy King and Wallace were the three protagonists, then 3A would be television. Whatever victories came out of Birmingham, they must, you must give a nod in part to television. Hard to believe now, but in 1963, that was the year the evening news went from 15 minutes to a half hour. Television captured the police dogs and the fire hoses. I was down in Birmingham earlier this year, went to the Civil Rights Museum and they had a number of newspapers, one from Saudi Arabia, one from Sweden, one from Denmark, one from Japan. And the front page was the police dogs and fire hoses in Birmingham. And what that did, the coverage that the Birmingham Campaign received is that it put pressure on Kennedy's, Kennedy wanted to talk about foreign policy, the difference between East and West and the police dogs and fire hoses being captured on television, allowed Mr. Kouchoff to say, Mr. Kennedy, you talk about democracy, but that doesn't look like democracy in Birmingham. So all of a sudden, the Civil Rights Movement is now impacting the Cold War. The other thing that caused that campaign to be successful is a man by the name of Bull Connor. Something, timing is everything in life. Timing is everything. And when they kicked off the Birmingham Campaign, it was also a mayoral race in Birmingham. Birmingham, the year before, had changed their charter. The police, public safety commissioner who was in charge of fire and police was Bull Connor. That was an elected position. Birmingham had changed their charter so that the public safety commissioner would be under the jurisdiction of the mayor, which means that would be an appointed position. So in effect, Bull Connor would lose his power. So Bull Connor runs for mayor. One other thing about Birmingham and why they chose Birmingham, Birmingham was probably the largest industrial city in the South. In terms of steel manufacturing, it was number two. It wasn't rural, it had a manufacturing base and a lot of the very difficult jobs with steel were given to its Negro workers that were very dangerous. And it also, the nickname for Birmingham was Bombingham. It had over the course of 10 years, 18 unsolved bombings of black homes in businesses and churches. And all that was only Bull Connor's jurisdiction. Bull Connor runs for mayor against a man named Albert Boutwell. The candy administration is asking Martin with the King and others will hold off until the mayoral race has occurred. Mayoral race occurs, Boutwell wins and then Bull Connor files an injunction. I'm still elected, I still should be in office. So now you have a desk of Bull Connor fighting for his political life. And the thing to remember, when you see the police dogs and fire hoses and you see that, and we know that that was orchestrated by Bull Connor, keep in mind there was absolutely nothing that Bull Connor did that did not enjoy the support of the well-healed business community known as the White Citizens Council. King gets arrested, that's when he writes his letter from Birmingham jail, but the movement's not really taking off. It's really not taking off. And that's when they had a children's campaign. Young people six to 18 would march and they too would go to jail. And that's when Bull Connor, you know, to show his importance to the good people of Birmingham, that's when he brings out the dogs and the fire hoses on children and the world saw it. That's when it changed. And so if we can look at Birmingham as minimal gains, you know, the higher, you know, agreement to hire Negro workers not to have segregated facilities, but it set the stage for the upcoming march on Washington. It also set the stage for the Civil Rights Bill 64 and the Voting Rights Act of 65. June. June 11th, 1963, I think is really the day. If there was a day, a moment that really captures the title of my book 1963, Hope and Hostility, it is June 11th, 1963. That's why I remember the June 11th, 2000 day where I was talking to my friend. That's why I remember so well because of June 11th, 1963. Most, in my opinion, most amazing 24 hours in the 20th century, say maybe the Kennedy assassination in Pearl Harbor, but look at the events 24 hours. John Kennedy is on the phone talking to his brother, Robert, as to how they're gonna deal with George Wallace. He's had the New York Times. Kennedy sort of screams, Jesus Christ. Buddhist monk, front page of New York Times, Buddhist monk has set himself on fire on the streets of Saigon. First indication, this little country called Vietnam was going to be a problem. First indication. Several hours after that, George Wallace stands in front of the University of Alabama to block Vivian Malone and James Hood from entering. And while that's going on, Kennedy's watching from the Oval Office. He turns to, no, brother, you just had to do it right in front of the camera, huh? No, I just mess with you, man. Kennedy, he's watching that. Kennedy turns to speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, and said, we better give that speech tonight. And Sorenson's like, what speech? Civil rights speech. Well, it hadn't even been written yet. And within three hours, they put together the civil rights speech. And in fact, certainly on YouTube, if you watched that civil rights speech that Kennedy gave, the last third, 25% of it, he was ad-libbing. They hadn't even finished the speech when they went on national television. And that speech was, in my view, the most important speech to that moment by any president since Abraham Lincoln on civil rights. I mean, he really, they said, what we're talking about primarily is a moral issue that's as old as the scriptures and as clear as the Constitution. Well, about two hours after that, NAACP field director, Medgar, was just killed. It's an amazing 24-hour period. And you know, the old Hall of Fame picture, Dizzy Dean used to say, it ain't bragging if it's true. Well, let me just brag for a moment and say that. That I believe my book is the first to capture that 24-hour period. That's one chapter of my book, just capture that 24-hour period in American history. It was an unbelievable period. The other thing that happened in June was John Kennedy had probably the most, in terms of one month, the most meaningful oratory of any U.S. president 20th century. Because on June 10th, he gives the peace speech at American University where he has the audacity of the courage because of the Cuban Missile Crisis being perceived to have stared down Khrushchev and 62 with the Cuban Missile Crisis where he actually humanizes the Soviet Union to peace speech, where he says in the final analysis, you know, we all breathe the same air. We all love our children and we all are mortal. He essentially says this whole cold war that we've been doing, let's rethink it. Then on June 11th, as I just mentioned, he gives the civil rights speech where he elevates civil rights to a moral issue. And then on 17 days later, he goes to Berlin in the famous Ishbein-Bellitter speech where three courts of West Berliners come out and his kidneys come into the podium. I mean, you got 650,000 people there with chance of Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Chancellor, German Chancellor, Adenauer, Conrad Adenauer, turns to Secretary of State Dean Rustin says, does this mean we can have another Hitler? That's how crazy it was, they were worried. But what I think is more important about that is that on that day, being at that wall in the stark difference between East and West symbolized by the Berlin Wall, the people of West Berlin heard John F. Kennedy not with their ears, but with their hearts. And that made his mango German fluent that day. So, then in August, obviously, August 20th, you have the March on Washington where King talks about his dream. But four days before the March on Washington on August 24th, Cable 243 goes out. Cable 243 was a memo, that memo went out on a Saturday by an undersecretary, the President's out of town, Secretary of State's out of town, Vice President's out of town, Secretary of Defense's out of town, National Security's out of town, Attorney General, all out of town. Major shift in policy, and no one's out of town. They come back on a Monday to talk about the memo. Meanwhile, Ambassador Lodge is pushing for this coup, but when they go back to meet, there's never a definitive yes or no. If you have access to YouTube, if you just do a YouTube search, Kennedy, Vietnam, you can actually hear the recording of John Kennedy with his son, John John, after the coup had taken place, after Diem had been killed, and you hear how rattled Kennedy is about events in Vietnam. Then Martin Luther King, yeah, the March on Washington on August the 28th, three weeks to the day after King gave that speech, he was eulogizing three of the four girls killed the 16th Street Baptist Church. This is again, a year where hope and hostility live in proximity, they're always in proximity. So one moment is I have a dream, and now he's trying to make sense of a senseless tragedy, how someone could bomb a church and kill four, actually six, we always say the four little girls, but actually six young people were killed that day, because two of the boys were killed as a result of the events of that day. And again, television didn't capture it live because television was there. It forced America to grapple with the fact that this is part of who we are, and this is the side of America that we don't like. But again, I just gave you some of the highlights, but it was also some very subtle things that happened in 63, Earth Day, as we know it today, finds its genesis in 1963. Gideon versus Wainwright, where the Supreme Court ruled that prior to Gideon, you had to have an attorney if it was a capital case, but if it wasn't a capital case, you didn't have to have an attorney. Well, Gideon versus Wainwright ruled that you had to have an attorney, for any felon case, you had to have an attorney. What makes this beyond that ruling, which we've only had that for 50 years, we haven't had that in a long, what makes that ruling so remarkable is that Clarence Gideon wrote to the Supreme Court himself, handwritten out on legal, I mean, Supreme Court takes less than 1% of cases, I mean, if it's a small number of cases, but here's on a handwritten note, I have a legal pad, they took this case and they ruled on it. Amazing. Another, maybe small, but in one sense, it was big and a precursor for us, for us as a country, was that Sidney Partier won the Best Actor for Lily's of the Field. And I cite that as important for this reason. Those of you who've seen Gone with the Wind know that Hattie McDaniel was the first black person to win an Oscar, she won it for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind in 1939, but Olivia DeHavilland couldn't have been Mammy. You had to have a black person playing Mammy. Why I think Lily's of the Field is so transformative because Sidney Partier won for a role. Homer was just a good guy. Paul Newman could have been Homer, William Holden could have been Homer, Steve McQueen could, any number of Hollywood's aimless people could have been Homer, but it was Sidney Partier and he was recognized for that award. I think it makes it significant. And I'll open it up for questions after this, but the one thing I haven't talked about is probably the one thing that most people associate with 63, which is the candy assassination. And if you buy my book, I am sorry to tell you I do not have any new conspiracy theories. I can't tell you any more than you've already known, but one of the things that what I tried to do in that last chapter when I talk about the candy assassination, I tried to take it from the perspective of what that moment did to us. And each one of my chapters is taken from something that happened in that period that I'm discussing. For example, chapter one is Ceregation Day, Ceregation Tomorrow, Ceregation Forever, because I'm talking about George Wallace. Well, in the candy chapter, a man by the name of Sam Payt, I think it's KBOX, I believe, television in Dallas, a radio in Dallas, was covering the candy assassination. He says something has happened in the motorcade route. And so that's the title of this chapter, something has happened in the motorcade route. And I just want to give you a quick, little short reading and then we can open up for some questions. The unintended consequences of our grief has led to the inability to examine what November 22nd did to us. It was a blow to the nation's solar plexus, leaving us excruciating pain but causing a rest of development and acute cynicism. Dallas made the inconceivable possible before JRUing became a pop culture icon, Dallas was a euphemism for unfathomable shock. This is not to suggest that we've not been stunned by subsequent tragic events. But for those living on November 22nd, 1963, America would never be the same. The decade that began with the candy campaign running on the Frank Sinatra dream of high hopes would later be defined by Dr. Timothy Leary's non-conforming idiom, turn on, tune in, drop out. For those who believe that conspiracy theorists are a cabal of crackpots searching for a platform, it is reflective, however, of 50-year-old odyssey that continues to leave holes in the official explanation. But cynicism does not occur overnight. In retrospect, the sleepy stereotypes that were held through the 1950s could not camouflage the obvious. Cynicism was already there, lying dormant, waiting for the opportune moment. What led to the Vietnam protests in the late 1960s was created by decades of presidential leadership, mythology kicking the can down the road. Therefore, 1963 in many ways served as an incubator for cynicism yet unborn. Whatever cynicism may have dwelled beneath the surface, it was unleashed in Dallas. In a mobilized nation in such a way that it has been unable to look back on this year that for 365 days nearly wove hope and hostile into a single garment of possibility and pain. What happened in the motorcade route changed the people, but the elected leaders were slow to catch up and grossed more in their traditional playbooks than what was occurring in the hearts and minds of many Americans. But it was too late. On November 22nd, 1963 at approximately 12.30 p.m., central standard time, the memo went out from Dallas, the change was on the horizon, and there was no turning back. Thank you. So.