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Mr. Hollowell Didn’t Like That · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:18
Speaker 2: This episode contains material that may be upsetting to some listeners.
0:24
Speaker 1: I finished law school on the first Friday in June
0:28
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty. On the following Monday, I went to
0:35
Speaker 1: work for Donald L. Halliwell, who was the ultimate civil
0:39
Speaker 1: rights lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia at the time.
0:43
Speaker 2: Vernon Jordan, one of the great figures in the American
0:46
Speaker 2: civil rights movement talking about his mentor.
0:49
Speaker 1: And I went to work for him right out of
0:52
Speaker 1: law school for thirty five dollars a week, and there
0:56
Speaker 1: were no other jobs at the local government level, county, state,
1:03
Speaker 1: or federal. We couldn't even take the bar review course
1:09
Speaker 1: at John Marshall University because Georgia law quiet education be
1:14
Speaker 1: separate and segregated. So I went to work for Don Hollowe.
1:18
Speaker 1: My first day at work, I was in the Atlanta
1:21
Speaker 1: Municipal Court helping him get demonstrators from the Atlanta University's
1:27
Speaker 1: system out of jail.
1:32
Speaker 2: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
1:36
Speaker 2: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode picks
1:43
Speaker 2: up with a previous one left off with the story
1:46
Speaker 2: of an extraordinary man named Donald L. Hallowell. Hallowell died
1:54
Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, but I wish he were
1:57
Speaker 2: still alive, because he has so much to teach us,
2:01
Speaker 2: like how do you keep going when all seems lost?
2:04
Speaker 2: How do you behave how do you conduct yourself if
2:07
Speaker 2: you're one of the leaders of a lose cause? And
2:10
Speaker 2: for most of his life Hollowell fought uphill. How do
2:13
Speaker 2: you prepare those behind you for the day when you
2:15
Speaker 2: might succeed?
2:20
Speaker 3: What did he look like?
2:21
Speaker 1: Hallowell big heavy guy, played quarterback at Lane College.
2:27
Speaker 2: Vernon Jordan is a big guy as well, imposing charismatic.
2:32
Speaker 2: I mention not only because it's not a trivial fact.
2:36
Speaker 2: The two of them, Jordan and Hallowell, would drive around
2:39
Speaker 2: Georgia from one end of the state to the next,
2:42
Speaker 2: to towns and courtrooms where a black lawyer was not
2:45
Speaker 2: just an anomaly but a provocation. If you were five
2:50
Speaker 2: foot two with a little squeaky voice, it didn't work.
2:54
Speaker 4: I would just like to think that the people at
2:56
Speaker 4: the university and around the university are sufficiently fair minded
3:02
Speaker 4: that you want to see.
3:03
Speaker 2: I watched all these old, grainy videotapes of Hallowell in
3:07
Speaker 2: the Auburn Avenue Library in Atlanta, and I became fixated
3:11
Speaker 2: on his hands, which would rise and fall as he talked.
3:15
Speaker 2: They were enormous. In Atlanta's segregated buses, there'd be a
3:20
Speaker 2: little sign on the back of the seat where the
3:22
Speaker 2: white section ended. It would say colored, directing black people
3:27
Speaker 2: to their place. Sometimes, when no one was looking, Hollowell
3:31
Speaker 2: would unclip it and stick it in his coat pocket,
3:34
Speaker 2: mess things up a bit until the bus driver noticed,
3:37
Speaker 2: or some white lady got hysterical because she inadvertently sat
3:40
Speaker 2: in a seat still warm from the presence of a
3:43
Speaker 2: black person. Hallowell was subversive in his own way, but
3:48
Speaker 2: also formal proper. They used to say, he talked like
3:52
Speaker 2: the Black Shakespeare. Hallowell once paused in the middle of
3:56
Speaker 2: a trial to instruct the court on the correct pronunciation
4:00
Speaker 2: of negro, not nigra, your honor negro. Another time, he
4:06
Speaker 2: was up against two district attorneys in court, and the
4:09
Speaker 2: moment he got up to speak, the white judge swiveled
4:12
Speaker 2: in his chair with his back to Hallowell so he
4:15
Speaker 2: would not have to suffer the indignity of gazing upon
4:18
Speaker 2: a black man. What did Hallowell do, just kept talking
4:23
Speaker 2: and talking in those slow, formal tones until it was
4:27
Speaker 2: a judge who looked like a fool.
4:31
Speaker 1: I did all the driving, and we get to a
4:36
Speaker 1: town and so a principal or school teacher or the
4:42
Speaker 1: local doctor. Somebody's got some independence. That's where you spent
4:49
Speaker 1: the night. I slept the many night with holloween. You
4:53
Speaker 1: know we're piling the same bed.
4:57
Speaker 2: It better be a big bed if the two of
4:59
Speaker 2: you were.
5:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, but there were no big beds in those there
5:06
Speaker 1: were no kings eye bed. But no, No, it was
5:12
Speaker 1: Holliwell was a real hero.
5:19
Speaker 2: In the early morning of November fifth, nineteen fifty three,
5:23
Speaker 2: a woman named Betty Joe Bishop calls the Atlanta Police
5:26
Speaker 2: Department in hysterics. In her car is the badly beaten
5:30
Speaker 2: corpse of her boyfriend, Marvin Lindsay. She tells the police
5:34
Speaker 2: that two of them had been attacked when they were
5:36
Speaker 2: parked on a secluded road on Atlanta's South Side. It's
5:40
Speaker 2: a sensational case. In fact, it was written up in
5:43
Speaker 2: one of those pulp crime magazines that were so popular
5:46
Speaker 2: back then, Official Detective Stories, March nineteen fifty four issue
5:51
Speaker 2: Wanted the Man in the Pyramid Hat I can't do
5:57
Speaker 2: justice to the spirit of pulp journalism. So we're going
6:00
Speaker 2: to reenact some scenes from the article, starting with this
6:03
Speaker 2: description of the moment. Betty Joe Bishop meets Atlanta's Chief
6:06
Speaker 2: of Detectives, Glynn Cowan, on in November morning.
6:12
Speaker 1: Suppose that you begin by telling.
6:14
Speaker 5: Us your name, Bishop, missus, Betty Joe Bishop, I'm a widow.
6:20
Speaker 1: You were with Marvin Lindsey tonight. Yes, tell me what happened?
6:26
Speaker 2: Bishop tells the detective about driving to Jonesboro Road.
6:31
Speaker 5: We were only there a few minutes when this man
6:34
Speaker 5: came out of the woods. It was terrible. He struck
6:39
Speaker 5: me with his fist and Marvin had to fight him off.
6:44
Speaker 5: Then he walked around the car and hit Marvin with
6:46
Speaker 5: something heavy. Marvin pleaded for him to stop, but he wouldn't.
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Speaker 2: She covered her face with her hands and broke into long,
6:57
Speaker 2: racking sobs. Cowen waited patiently until she recovered her composure.
7:03
Speaker 2: What happened?
7:04
Speaker 1: Then he asked what happened?
7:05
Speaker 5: Then? Well, after he got tired of hitting Marvin, he
7:12
Speaker 5: ran into the woods. Marvin was lying half in and
7:16
Speaker 5: half out of the car, so I walked around at
7:18
Speaker 5: the driver's side and made him lie across the seat.
7:21
Speaker 5: He was bleeding something awful, so I knew he was
7:25
Speaker 5: hurt bad. I drove to his home in Blair Village
7:29
Speaker 5: and told his brother John what had happened, and John
7:31
Speaker 5: got in the car. We drove to Grady Hospital, but
7:33
Speaker 5: it was too late. Marvin was already dead.
7:40
Speaker 2: They're in the police station. She can barely hold it together.
7:44
Speaker 2: She's all beaten up. Her lover is dead. She tells
7:48
Speaker 2: the officer that the assailant had come back after killing
7:51
Speaker 2: Marvin and raped her. Maybe Detective Cowan takes her hand
7:55
Speaker 2: in sympathy. Maybe He waits a few moments to let
7:58
Speaker 2: her collect her thoughts. Then, as the article describes it,
8:05
Speaker 2: he asks her to describe the assailant.
8:08
Speaker 5: I'm not sure sure. It was very dark, and I
8:11
Speaker 5: was scared. He was tall, and then I remember that much. Also,
8:16
Speaker 5: when I grabbed one of his hands, I'll remember it
8:19
Speaker 5: felt kind of bony.
8:21
Speaker 2: Slowly, gently Cowan draws a description out of her. The
8:26
Speaker 2: man was in his late thirties or early forties, about
8:29
Speaker 2: five foot eleven then, wearing a leather jacket, dungarees, a
8:35
Speaker 2: funny cuint of hat, pyramid shaped.
8:38
Speaker 5: And he was swarthy and had dark, oily hair.
8:44
Speaker 2: The article never comes out and says so explicitly, But
8:48
Speaker 2: if you're a reader of the pulp magazine Official Detective
8:50
Speaker 2: Stories in March nineteen fifty four, you know what swarthy means.
8:55
Speaker 2: The killer's black. That's why this is such a sensational case.
9:00
Speaker 2: Betty Joe Bishop is an innocent white widow and she
9:04
Speaker 2: and her boyfriend have been attacked by a mysterious black man.
9:09
Speaker 2: Atlanta's finest immediately got to work. They scour the crime scene.
9:18
Speaker 2: The killer had a rolled up newspaper which he'd apparently
9:21
Speaker 2: left at the scene, and he'd circled two wantads, one
9:24
Speaker 2: for a dishwasher at a local restaurant. The police go
9:28
Speaker 2: to the restaurant. Did a thin, swarthy man with oily
9:32
Speaker 2: hair answer and ad yesterday for a dishwasher? The only
9:36
Speaker 2: the restaurant says yes, doesn't remember his name, but remembers
9:40
Speaker 2: the man said he used to work at Elite Bowling
9:42
Speaker 2: Alleys on Hunter Street. The coat check girl at Elite
9:46
Speaker 2: Bowling Alley says, oh, that's Willie. An eyewitness comes forward
9:51
Speaker 2: says he saw a man near the crime scene, swarthy
9:55
Speaker 2: wearing a pyramid shaped hat. They scour the area around
9:59
Speaker 2: the crime scene, stumble on a little cottage inside his
10:03
Speaker 2: thirty nine year old Willie Nash, unemployed handyman, swarthy, dark hair.
10:10
Speaker 2: They arrest him. He confesses, So who do you call?
10:15
Speaker 2: If you're Willie Nash, things are pretty bleak. What you
10:19
Speaker 2: really want is a white lawyer. Because it's nineteen fifty four.
10:24
Speaker 2: The jury's going to be all white, the police department
10:26
Speaker 2: is all white, the judge is going to be white.
10:29
Speaker 2: Willie Nash knows where the power lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
10:32
Speaker 2: But Willia Nash is poor, so he's forced to settle
10:36
Speaker 2: for one of the very few black lawyers in town,
10:38
Speaker 2: a man two years out of law school, still wet
10:41
Speaker 2: behind the ears, Donald L. Hollowell. When Nash realizes he
10:47
Speaker 2: has no other choice, he breaks down into tears. I'd
10:51
Speaker 2: have cried too, Hollowell says years later, if I'd have
10:54
Speaker 2: been Willy Nash under those circumstances. This was years before
10:58
Speaker 2: Vernon Jordan joined Hollowell's firm, but he knew all about
11:02
Speaker 2: the Willy Nash case. Everybody in black Atlanta did.
11:06
Speaker 1: That's the case where he held up. The latest pan
11:10
Speaker 1: is before the jury and that was the case set
11:15
Speaker 1: set Hallowell up.
11:21
Speaker 2: A few years ago, the Smithsonian interviewed a man named
11:24
Speaker 2: Robert Carter, another legendary black attorney. Carter talks about trying
11:29
Speaker 2: school segregation cases in the Deep South in the nineteen
11:32
Speaker 2: fifties with Constance Baker Motley and Thurgood Marshall, two other
11:37
Speaker 2: pioneering black lawyers of that era. They would be in
11:40
Speaker 2: court up against the local white schools superintendent, and black
11:44
Speaker 2: people from the community would show up, cram into the balcony,
11:49
Speaker 2: hang on every word. It wasn't that they expected to win,
11:53
Speaker 2: because they often didn't. They just wanted to see a
11:55
Speaker 2: black person in a position of formal authority over a
11:59
Speaker 2: white person in Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama. At the
12:03
Speaker 2: height of Jim Crow, that was history being made. Every hearing,
12:07
Speaker 2: every trial with a black lawyer was public theater. During
12:10
Speaker 2: cross examination, a white witness might forget his role in
12:14
Speaker 2: the trial and start asking questions of the attorney of Motley, say,
12:18
Speaker 2: and Connie Motley, a black woman in nineteen fifty something,
12:23
Speaker 2: would reprimand the white male witness say, my job is
12:26
Speaker 2: to ask the question, Your job is to respond, And
12:30
Speaker 2: everybody would gasp. In the evening. Carter says he would
12:38
Speaker 2: walk through the black neighborhoods and hear people re enacting
12:41
Speaker 2: the trial in barbershops and beauty parlors. In other words,
12:45
Speaker 2: there were two conversations going on at any given time.
12:48
Speaker 2: There was the legal conversation witness, judge, lawyers accused. If
12:53
Speaker 2: you were a white lawyer dealing with the white world,
12:56
Speaker 2: that was the conversation you worried about. But there was
12:59
Speaker 2: a second conversation, which was between the black lawyers and
13:02
Speaker 2: the people in the balcony. And if you were an
13:05
Speaker 2: underdog with a limited chance to win at the first conversation,
13:08
Speaker 2: then and that second conversation was really important. Donald Halliwell
13:14
Speaker 2: was very good at the first conversation, the legal one.
13:17
Speaker 2: He was a master of the second.
13:24
Speaker 3: At home the defense of liberty and democracy for African Americans.
13:29
Speaker 2: There's a great documentary about Hallowell made by the Georgia
13:32
Speaker 2: civil rights scholar Maurice Daniels.
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Speaker 3: This fight will require foot soldiers for equal justice.
13:39
Speaker 2: Daniels does a long interview with an attorney named Howard Moore,
13:43
Speaker 2: who worked with Hallowell in the nineteen sixties, and Moore
13:46
Speaker 2: talks about arriving early at ahering into the police shooting
13:49
Speaker 2: of a black teenager to handle things before Hallowell got there.
13:53
Speaker 6: When I got down to Bibb County and went to
13:56
Speaker 6: the courthouse, that were about three thousand negroes on the steps.
14:02
Speaker 6: And I went into the courthouse and there were about
14:05
Speaker 6: three thousand or as many as they could get in
14:08
Speaker 6: the balcony of staff. And when I walked in the courtroom,
14:11
Speaker 6: the people upstairs, the black people, said that ain't Hollowell.
14:16
Speaker 1: Where's Hollowell?
14:17
Speaker 6: That ain't Hallowell. I don't know what to do.
14:21
Speaker 1: I don't know.
14:22
Speaker 6: I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, you know.
14:25
Speaker 6: So I said, well, I act like Hallowell. I'll just
14:28
Speaker 6: object in the loudest voice I can. And then people
14:32
Speaker 6: upstairs in the in the balcony said, well, it ain't Hallowell,
14:36
Speaker 6: but he sounded like Hallowell.
14:38
Speaker 2: When Hallowell showed up at the court inquest, he put
14:41
Speaker 2: the police officer on the stand he'd shot a seventeen
14:44
Speaker 2: year old boy named A. C. Hall. Hallowell took the
14:47
Speaker 2: officer through his testimony, bit by meticulous bit, slowly exposing
14:53
Speaker 2: the officer's lies. The cop was in tears by the end.
14:57
Speaker 6: I've never seen that before since, when a lawyer just
15:00
Speaker 6: take completely control of a witness and buying that witness
15:04
Speaker 6: to his will, not with shouting and screaming, but with systematic,
15:09
Speaker 6: well structured, well placed questions.
15:12
Speaker 2: Now, did Hallowell win a victory for the bereaved family
15:15
Speaker 2: of ac Hall. Was the officer prosecuted, of course not.
15:19
Speaker 2: It's hard enough to win a conviction against a white
15:22
Speaker 2: cop who shoots a black kid today, let alone. In
15:25
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two in Bibb County, Georgia, this was about
15:29
Speaker 2: the second conversation between Hallowell and the thousands of people
15:33
Speaker 2: on the steps. We are not entirely powerless. I can
15:37
Speaker 2: bind a witness to my will one more case, because
15:45
Speaker 2: there are dozens of them. Hollowell never stopped moving in
15:48
Speaker 2: those years. This one was in nineteen sixty one, and
15:52
Speaker 2: this time Hallowell was with the young Vernon Jordan.
15:55
Speaker 1: Our client, James Phayir, a black kid from New Jersey,
16:02
Speaker 1: had been arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to
16:10
Speaker 1: die in the electric chair in twenty four hours.
16:15
Speaker 2: Hallowell and his team go down to the town of Reedsville, Georgia,
16:19
Speaker 2: to argue for a new trial.
16:21
Speaker 1: The judge in the case was Judge WI don't want
16:28
Speaker 1: any niggas in my court gear. He had that reputation.
16:36
Speaker 1: On Monday, we went and we tried the case.
16:40
Speaker 2: At lunchtime, the judge and the white lawyers and the
16:43
Speaker 2: white court officials went across the town square to the
16:46
Speaker 2: white only restaurant and had their lunch.
16:49
Speaker 1: Hallowell, C. B. King and I went to the own
16:53
Speaker 1: the grocery store on the courthouse square or the Pound
17:00
Speaker 1: and bolognay loaf of bread, mustard, Coca cola and the
17:05
Speaker 1: baby Ruth and sat in mister Hallowell's car in the
17:11
Speaker 1: parking surrounding the courthouse and ate our lunch. We did
17:14
Speaker 1: it on Monday. We did it on Tuesday Wednesday with
17:22
Speaker 1: Ryan Mcase and a black lady who waved in me
17:28
Speaker 1: and I met her in the vestibula at the courthouse.
17:32
Speaker 1: Never forget it, and she said, Lawyer, we've been watching
17:38
Speaker 1: y'all eat that bologna for two days now. She says,
17:43
Speaker 1: just have a Coca cola and don't eat that bolloona
17:47
Speaker 1: today and when the court ends, which is three thirty four,
17:52
Speaker 1: you'll drive to my house for lunch.
17:56
Speaker 2: So they go to her house. That's the moment Jordan
17:59
Speaker 2: remembers fifty years later, that moment of grace and quiet
18:03
Speaker 2: rebellion outside the courtroom.
18:06
Speaker 1: And we walked in, and the table but was set
18:09
Speaker 1: for royalty, her best linen, her best china, her best crystal.
18:16
Speaker 1: The aroma of the southern food was almost crippling. It
18:21
Speaker 1: was as it circled our noses. And her neighbors had
18:27
Speaker 1: come and put on nice sundresses, and their husbands had
18:31
Speaker 1: cleaned up, and they welcomed us. And then we joined hands,
18:36
Speaker 1: and her husband gave the grace and he said this
18:44
Speaker 1: unforgettable sentence, which was Lord way down here in Tattnall County.
18:52
Speaker 1: We can't join the NAACP, but thanks to your bountiful blessings,
19:01
Speaker 1: we can feed the NAACP lawyers.
19:09
Speaker 2: So Willie Nash, Betty Joe Bishop's swoarthy assailant. The case
19:15
Speaker 2: we began with Donald Hollowell's Trial by Fire. If you
19:20
Speaker 2: look back on Hollowell's career, it's all there, every theme.
19:23
Speaker 2: In that first case. Nash has been indicted for murder,
19:27
Speaker 2: rape and robbery. The prosecutor has a murder weapon, a
19:31
Speaker 2: bloody piece of pipe. He has Nash's confession, and he
19:35
Speaker 2: has a witness, a black man named Julius Harris, who
19:38
Speaker 2: places Nash at the murder scene. The moonlight was shining
19:42
Speaker 2: directly on his face when I glimpsed him. Harris testifies
19:47
Speaker 2: for Hollowell and Nash. It looks pretty bleak. But then
19:51
Speaker 2: one of the prosecutors is trying to remember Julius Harris's
19:54
Speaker 2: name and can't, and he says, in an open court room,
19:57
Speaker 2: the eye witness, you know that fat nigger. Hollowell jumps
20:02
Speaker 2: out of his seat and almost shouts a negro is
20:04
Speaker 2: as entitled to respect as any other person. The judge agrees,
20:09
Speaker 2: declares a mistrial. The second trial is two months later.
20:16
Speaker 2: This time Hollowell has time to prepare. He puts the
20:19
Speaker 2: head of the Georgia State Crime Lab on the stand
20:22
Speaker 2: and asks, did you find any blood on the alleged
20:25
Speaker 2: murder weapon. The man says, actually he didn't. Hallowell moves
20:29
Speaker 2: on to the police. Turns out they have multiple conflicting
20:33
Speaker 2: stories about what happened that night. Willie Nash testifies, says
20:37
Speaker 2: his confession was beaten out of him. As for the
20:40
Speaker 2: witness who said he saw Nash's face by the light
20:42
Speaker 2: of the moon, Hallowell points out there was no moon
20:45
Speaker 2: over Atlanta that night. Finally, Hollowell turns to the alleged victim,
20:50
Speaker 2: Betty Joe Bishop. Turns out she had a second boyfriend
20:54
Speaker 2: who left town right after the murder of her first boyfriend,
20:58
Speaker 2: and when she pulled up to Marvin Lindsey's brother's house
21:01
Speaker 2: with Marvin's dead body in her car, the first thing
21:03
Speaker 2: out of her mouth was, I know you think I
21:06
Speaker 2: did it, but a nigger did it. Finally, Hallowell calls
21:13
Speaker 2: the doctor who examined Bishop right after the alleged rape occurred,
21:17
Speaker 2: and the doctor concedes that he could find no evidence,
21:20
Speaker 2: not bruises or sperm, to indicate that a rape actually occurred.
21:25
Speaker 2: That's when Hollowell holds up an item from police evidence,
21:29
Speaker 2: Betty Joe Bishop's underwear. Hallowell waves them in front of
21:33
Speaker 2: the jury. Nineteen fifty four, Atlanta, Georgia. A black man
21:38
Speaker 2: waves a white woman's underwear in the air in front
21:40
Speaker 2: of an all white jury. Now who's that for? Is
21:44
Speaker 2: it for? The jury? Of course, he's saying, Betty Joe
21:46
Speaker 2: Bishop is lying through her teeth, but it's really for
21:50
Speaker 2: the audience. He's saying enough. You can imagine that up
21:54
Speaker 2: in the balcony, there was a collective intake of breath
21:57
Speaker 2: at that moment, something that could be heard clear across Atlanta,
22:01
Speaker 2: and that night, in a thousand homes, somebody stood up
22:04
Speaker 2: and played out that scene, just like Hallowell to a
22:07
Speaker 2: chorus of disbelief. Willie Nash goes free. But it's still
22:19
Speaker 2: not a real victory, because what's the real lesson of
22:22
Speaker 2: the false indictment of Willie Nash? That every white person
22:26
Speaker 2: in that courtroom lied freely and blatantly. The police LIEDE,
22:33
Speaker 2: the witness liede, the victim lied, the press slide. The
22:36
Speaker 2: murder weapon wasn't a murder weapon, the rape wasn't a rape.
22:41
Speaker 2: And the only reason all the liars got caught was
22:43
Speaker 2: they couldn't even be bothered to keep their story straight.
22:48
Speaker 2: It didn't seem worth the effort. I know you think
22:50
Speaker 2: I did it, but a nigger did it. It's not
22:53
Speaker 2: as if the whole group of them, the victim, the
22:56
Speaker 2: police officer, the witness, the doctor, the press got in
22:59
Speaker 2: a room and worked out an elaborate story to tell
23:01
Speaker 2: the court that would be a conspiracy. But you only
23:04
Speaker 2: need a conspiracy where there is a system to conspire against.
23:09
Speaker 2: There was no system to conspire against. They were the system.
23:16
Speaker 2: The Nash case wasn't a victory, but it was a warning.
23:23
Speaker 2: Things got worse for the civil rights movement before they
23:25
Speaker 2: got better. The William Nash Caase was in nineteen fifty four,
23:29
Speaker 2: the same year that the Supreme Court ruled in the
23:31
Speaker 2: Brownvie Board of Education decision that racial segregation was unconstitutional.
23:38
Speaker 2: After Brown came what is known in civil rights history
23:41
Speaker 2: as massive resistance. The white political power structure of the
23:45
Speaker 2: South rose up, and the backlash began. One by one,
23:50
Speaker 2: white governors and mayors and senators who had been at
23:53
Speaker 2: least moderate racial issues were replaced by hard line racists.
23:59
Speaker 2: Alabama had a governor in the nineteen fifties, Big Jim Fulsom,
24:02
Speaker 2: who used to say, all men are just alike. I
24:05
Speaker 2: don't think he really meant it, but at least he
24:07
Speaker 2: was willing to say it. By the early nineteen sixties,
24:11
Speaker 2: Alabama had taken a big step backwards. Their new governor
24:15
Speaker 2: was George Wallace, who famously declared.
24:18
Speaker 1: Segregation now, segregation, Tomarra, and segregation forever.
24:28
Speaker 2: The decade leading up to the nineteen sixty four Civil
24:31
Speaker 2: Rights Act was a dark time in American racial history.
24:35
Speaker 2: We forget this now. Martin Luther King led the Montgomery
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Speaker 2: bus boycott in nineteen fifty six, but after that he
24:42
Speaker 2: had years in the wilderness when even members of his
24:45
Speaker 2: own community had turned against him. And in October of
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Speaker 2: nineteen sixty at the lowest EBB King gets arrested. He
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Speaker 2: was already on probation for a traffic violation. He'd move
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Speaker 2: from Alabama to Georgia and didn't get a Georgia driver's
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Speaker 2: license within the requisite ninety days, for which he had
25:03
Speaker 2: been sentenced to twelve months in public works camp, which
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Speaker 2: was the Georgia euphemism for a chain gang. King got
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Speaker 2: that sentence suspended, but then he got picked up for
25:14
Speaker 2: taking part in a sit in, and the prosecutor said
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Speaker 2: that meant he'd violated his probation and now he needed
25:21
Speaker 2: to do his twelve months on the chain gang. By
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Speaker 2: the way, if you think that this has anything to
25:26
Speaker 2: do with driving in Georgia with an Alabama license, you're crazy.
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Speaker 2: This is what things had come to in nineteen sixty.
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Speaker 4: You have asked me what other plans do we have
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Speaker 4: in connection with Reverend Martin Luther King's release?
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Speaker 2: So who does King call for help? Donald L. Hollowell?
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Speaker 2: Of course. In the morning after King's arrest, Hollowell stands
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Speaker 2: on the Dukalb County Courthouse steps addressing a group of reporters.
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Speaker 4: Of course, this would depend upon whether or not the
25:57
Speaker 4: court granted our motion to vacate the order of yesterday.
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Speaker 4: If the court fails to release him, of course we
26:06
Speaker 4: would take other steps to appeal or to affect.
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Speaker 2: Hallowell is trying to get King's case thrown out, but
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Speaker 2: the problem is that King is no longer in Atlanta.
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Speaker 2: He's banished. In Maurice Daniels documentary, Hallowell's wife Louise talks
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Speaker 2: about what happened when her husband went to retrieve King
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Speaker 2: from the county jail, only to be confronted by the warden.
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Speaker 3: When he got there. He said, I came to get
26:34
Speaker 3: a king out this morning, or something like that to
26:36
Speaker 3: that effect. And he said, well, he ain't here. And
26:41
Speaker 3: he said, well, what do you mean he ain't here?
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Speaker 3: He said, well, they took him away this morning. Sometime
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Speaker 3: and they carried him down to the state prison, and
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Speaker 3: he said, that's what he is. He ain't here, so
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Speaker 3: you can't get him. Well, mister Hallowell didn't like that.
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Speaker 2: I love that line. Mister Hallowell didn't like that. Daniels
27:04
Speaker 2: picks up the story with Andrew Young, another of King's
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Speaker 2: inner circle.
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Speaker 7: That was a word night of Martin Luther King's life.
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Speaker 7: They took him from the Decalb County, put him in
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Speaker 7: leg irons and handcuffs, laid him on the floor in
27:18
Speaker 7: the back of a paddywagon with nobody back there but
27:22
Speaker 7: a German shepherd, and they drove him from Atlanta to Reidsville.
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Speaker 7: It's three hundred miles. There were no expressways then, three
27:30
Speaker 7: hundred miles on bad Georgia roads.
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Speaker 2: Reidsville the same place where Jordan and Hallowell ate their
27:36
Speaker 2: Bologney sandwich in the car. They know the town well.
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Speaker 2: The state prison in Reidsville was notorious. It was the
27:44
Speaker 2: kind of place where they used that phrase in quotation
27:47
Speaker 2: marks that somebody got shot trying to escape, or where
27:50
Speaker 2: they got beat up by a guard out on the
27:52
Speaker 2: chain gang. When King's followers heard Reidsville, they honestly feared
27:57
Speaker 2: that he was going to end up dead, but there's
28:00
Speaker 2: not a hint of that in his attorney on the courthouse.
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Speaker 4: Steps, learning that Reverend King had been taken to the
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Speaker 4: Reidsville prison, I would say that I indicated two authorities
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Speaker 4: on last evening that we were desirous of having Reverend
28:16
Speaker 4: King at this hearing.
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Speaker 1: However, they informed.
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Speaker 4: Me that they had already transmitted the papers yesterday afternoon
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Speaker 4: to the Board of Correction, and that it was in
28:27
Speaker 4: their purview to move him when they desired.
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Speaker 2: Hallowell's composure does not break why because he's not just
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Speaker 2: talking to those reporters. He's talking to the black people
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Speaker 2: of Georgia, telling them that it will take more than
28:43
Speaker 2: the abduction of their leader to break the spirit of
28:46
Speaker 2: their movement.
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Speaker 4: We know that it's a matter of normal practice, it
28:51
Speaker 4: is several days before a prisoner is moved. However, when
28:55
Speaker 4: we called at eight for the purpose of ascertaining the
28:57
Speaker 4: whereabouts or the sheriff for making service, we were informed
29:01
Speaker 4: that Reverend King had been taken down to Reichsville at
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Speaker 4: four or five this morning.
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Speaker 2: That day, Hallowell flew to Reidsville, invited along the National media.
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Speaker 2: The White House was watching. Hallowell walked into Reidsville and
29:19
Speaker 2: walked out with his client. It's a surreal moment. The
29:24
Speaker 2: state of Georgia basically tried to kidnap the nation's leading
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Speaker 2: civil rights leader. There's press everywhere. Someone puts a camera
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Speaker 2: in Martin Luther King's face. Everyone's eyes are on him.
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Speaker 2: There's a famous picture of that moment. It ran in
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Speaker 2: all the newspapers, and you can imagine that when people
29:41
Speaker 2: from the movement saw it, they first looked to see
29:44
Speaker 2: whether King was okay, and then they asked, where's Hollowell.
29:49
Speaker 2: Sure enough, there he was in the background, off a
29:53
Speaker 2: little to the left, crisp white shirt, elegant black bow tie, impassive, implacable.
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Speaker 1: This is put gave me hope.
30:07
Speaker 2: Okay, and Jordan again. I went to see him to
30:11
Speaker 2: talk about Hollowell, but more than that, because I wanted
30:15
Speaker 2: to understand what it means to persevere. It's not just
30:19
Speaker 2: that these stories are shocking and extraordinary, it's the sheer
30:23
Speaker 2: weight of them. A white woman has her boyfriend murdered
30:27
Speaker 2: and then just randomly pins it on a black man
30:29
Speaker 2: who just happens to be in the neighborhood. A police
30:32
Speaker 2: officer shoots a teenager in the back and gets off
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Speaker 2: scott free. A kid gets arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted,
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Speaker 2: and sentenced to die before he can even mount a defence.
30:44
Speaker 2: Your leader gets whisked away to a chain gang because
30:46
Speaker 2: he didn't get his license changed within ninety days. You
30:50
Speaker 2: fight an uphill battle all morning in the courtroom. Then
30:53
Speaker 2: you eat your bologney sandwich in your car like a fugitive,
30:56
Speaker 2: and it never ends. You get in the car and
30:59
Speaker 2: you drive to one end of the state, and the
31:01
Speaker 2: judge swivels in his chair and will not offer you
31:04
Speaker 2: the basic courtesy of facing you as you speak. Then
31:08
Speaker 2: you sleep too in a bed in a stranger's house,
31:11
Speaker 2: and do it all again the next day and the
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Speaker 2: next day. I don't understand how Donald Holliwell did it,
31:19
Speaker 2: And maybe more importantly, I don't understand how he kept
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Speaker 2: everyone else, the people behind him who didn't have his strength,
31:27
Speaker 2: from giving up. Is there any question more fundamental than that?
31:32
Speaker 2: I'm not sure there is. So I went back to Vernon,
31:42
Speaker 2: Jordan a second time after he's told me about Nathaniel
31:46
Speaker 2: Johnson and Willie Nash I sat in his office in
31:50
Speaker 2: Rockefeller Center and he told me one last story. It's
31:54
Speaker 2: about when he was in high school the same school,
31:57
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King went to David Howard High on Randolph Street,
32:01
Speaker 2: an all black school in the black part of town.
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Speaker 2: Jordan was in the band, and one day the principal
32:07
Speaker 2: gets a call from the school's superintendent, a white woman.
32:12
Speaker 2: The senator from Georgia, Richard Russell, was running for president.
32:16
Speaker 1: She wanted the Dave D. Howard High School band to
32:19
Speaker 1: be at Peastree in Baker Streets to play with these
32:23
Speaker 1: hand me down instruments of white schools. As Richard Russell
32:26
Speaker 1: went up p Street Street on his way to sixteen
32:30
Speaker 1: hundred Pennsylvania Avenue.
32:33
Speaker 2: Richard Russell was a hard core segregationist, one of the
32:36
Speaker 2: most powerful men in the Senate, who used his position
32:40
Speaker 2: to block anything even looking like civil rights. A man
32:43
Speaker 2: who was a matter of principal did not think black
32:46
Speaker 2: people should be allowed to drink from the same water
32:48
Speaker 2: fountain as white people. This man one of the black
32:52
Speaker 2: students of Atlanta to play in his honor.
32:57
Speaker 1: The principal told the band master, and the bandmaster told
33:00
Speaker 1: us at band practice at two thirty, a trombone player
33:05
Speaker 1: named Maynard Jackson and a trumpet player named Vernon Jordans
33:10
Speaker 1: said hell, no, we won't go. Big discussion took place, right.
33:18
Speaker 2: You and Maynor Jackson were at school together. Yeah, Maynor
33:22
Speaker 2: Jackson in his day was part of the same band
33:25
Speaker 2: of brothers as Donald Hallowell and Vernon Jordan and Martin
33:28
Speaker 2: Luther King.
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Speaker 1: The big argument took place, and at the end the
33:35
Speaker 1: trumbone player and the trumpet player I said, wait a minute.
33:37
Speaker 1: We raised it, but we gotta go because if we
33:40
Speaker 1: don't go, our principal and our bandmaster would lose their jobs.
33:47
Speaker 1: So we played at Peach Street and Baker Street for
33:50
Speaker 1: Richard Russell in nineteen fifty one.
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Speaker 2: He swallowed your pride.
33:54
Speaker 1: It wasn't the pride, it was a practical decision. Twenty
34:00
Speaker 1: one years later, Maynord Jackson was sworn in as mayor
34:04
Speaker 1: of Atlanta. Right, so you got nineteen fifty one on
34:09
Speaker 1: a bad situation and you get through it. Twenty one
34:12
Speaker 1: years later he is conducting the political Symphony of Atlanta.
34:17
Speaker 1: And that's why you can't get angry. You have to
34:19
Speaker 1: get smart.
34:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, at least did you at least play badly.
34:26
Speaker 1: No, we were too good. We were We were a
34:29
Speaker 1: hell of a man.
34:48
Speaker 2: Revision's History is produced by Emi LaBelle and Jacob Smith,
34:51
Speaker 2: with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and sill Mara Martinez White.
34:56
Speaker 2: Our editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer.
35:00
Speaker 2: Original music by Luis Scara. Special thanks to our actors
35:05
Speaker 2: Jody Markel and Ken Marx, and to Andy Bauers and
35:08
Speaker 2: Jacob Weisberget Cannaply. I'm Malcolm Graddler