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The Foot Soldier of Birmingham · Revisionist History

0:15
Speaker 1: Bushkin Before we begin, a warning this episode contains material
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Speaker 1: that may be upsetting to some listeners. Not long ago,
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Speaker 1: I drove from Atlanta, Georgia to Birmingham, Alabama. It's a
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Speaker 1: straight shot west on I twenty one hundred and fifty
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Speaker 1: miles of rolling hills and piney woods. I got off
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Speaker 1: the freeway on the downtown exit, just before what the
0:42
Speaker 1: locals call the Malfunction junction, and drove a few blocks
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Speaker 1: south until I came to Kelly Ingram Park, which covers
0:49
Speaker 1: a full city block right in front of sixteenth Street
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Speaker 1: Baptist Church. I wanted to see a statue that stands
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Speaker 1: in the park, a famous statue. I've always loved statues.
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Speaker 1: I find them moving. Don't know why. Maybe it's because
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Speaker 1: they're a representation of something that we have chosen to
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Speaker 1: take seriously, to memorialize in a permanent form. With a statue,
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Speaker 1: you're saying to the future, this is what I want
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Speaker 1: you to remember about my generation. The statue I came
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Speaker 1: to see is at one end of Kelly Ingram Park.
1:26
Speaker 1: It's of a police officer, big guy menacing heavy pair
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Speaker 1: of sunglasses. He is a dog on a leash, A
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Speaker 1: big german shepherd, and the dog is lunging huge fangs
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Speaker 1: bared at a young black boy who's leaning back, hands
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Speaker 1: to his sides, almost like he's sacrificing himself. It's called
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Speaker 1: foot Soldier. It looks simple, but that statue is not
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Speaker 1: what you think. Trust me. My name is Malcolm Gladwell.
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Speaker 1: You're listening to Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked
2:02
Speaker 1: and Misunderstood. This episode is a second in what are
2:08
Speaker 1: going to be a few episodes this season on race
2:10
Speaker 1: and civil rights. On race in the United States, I'm
2:18
Speaker 1: an outsider. I'm Canadian. My family is half West Indian,
2:23
Speaker 1: which is a very different cultural experience than being an
2:25
Speaker 1: African American. My mom had a friend, a Jamaican, who
2:29
Speaker 1: went down to Georgia once in the nineteen seventies. When
2:32
Speaker 1: she came back, she said, the racism there cut like
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Speaker 1: a knife. I couldn't have been more than eight or nine,
2:38
Speaker 1: and that phrase startled me. It seems so visceral. But
2:42
Speaker 1: then I moved to the US as an adult, and
2:44
Speaker 1: it seemed like the way race was discussed didn't cut
2:47
Speaker 1: like a knife at all. What I saw around race
2:54
Speaker 1: in the United States was evasion and euphemism. The subject
2:58
Speaker 1: of my last episode was the Brown Decision. For half
3:02
Speaker 1: a century, the integration story has been told with all
3:05
Speaker 1: the suffering taken out. Why is it really necessary that
3:09
Speaker 1: every grand civil rights narrative be turned into a fairy tale?
3:14
Speaker 1: Which brings me to kelly Ingram Park and its statue
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Speaker 1: of the police officer and the dog and the boy.
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Speaker 1: There's a nice and tidy story you can tell about
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Speaker 1: that statue, but the real story is much different. Last
3:30
Speaker 1: summer I got a call from a man who was
3:32
Speaker 1: friends with the widow of the police officer depicted in
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Speaker 1: that statue. I'd written about the officer and the dog
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Speaker 1: in my book David and Goliath, but she wanted to
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Speaker 1: tell me the rest of the story, so I met
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Speaker 1: with her. Then I went back to Birmingham a second
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Speaker 1: time to look for the boy in the statue, and
3:48
Speaker 1: then a third time to Tuskegee, two hours south of Birmingham.
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Speaker 1: And there, on a long, lazy afternoon, I sat in
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Speaker 1: the town museum with an artist named Ronald McDowell.
4:00
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll cool Jane Me and James Brown.
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Speaker 1: And Ronald McDowell is an extraordinary man. Spidery and fine featured.
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Speaker 1: He showed me his portfolio and told me in his
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Speaker 1: urgent confessional whisper about how he was once walking down
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Speaker 1: Sunset Boulevard years ago and ran into Louis Armstrong's nephew
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Speaker 1: who took him to see Michael Jackson, who wanted McDowell
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Speaker 1: to teach him art, which led in turn to McDowell
4:27
Speaker 1: helping out on the album Thriller.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. I did the sketches for Michael Thriller.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow.
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Speaker 2: I was trying to make him into Black Superman. And
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Speaker 2: on the back of this piece of paper is it
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Speaker 2: drawing Michael da for me? When we were working on Trump.
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Speaker 2: That's Michael's art work one. He did several pieces for him.
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Speaker 1: Richard Arrington, who was the first black mare of Birmingham,
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Speaker 1: used to call Ron McDowell Mack, which suits him perfectly.
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Speaker 1: He has an air of mischief about him, which we'll
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Speaker 1: get to.
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Speaker 2: That Pictures of Man Johnny Cochrane Spy Lean Natalie Cole
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Speaker 2: that's in the state capital, the first African American painting
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Speaker 2: hanging in the state of Alabama to Bosa Parks. Governor
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Speaker 2: Seglement commission me to do that.
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Speaker 1: Mack did the statue in Kelly Ingram Park. He's the
5:15
Speaker 1: one responsible. Birmingham is a strange and beautiful place. It
5:25
Speaker 1: was a steel town like Pittsburgh was, and at the
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Speaker 1: height of the steel industry, there was a lot of
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Speaker 1: money there. There's an enormous hill on the south side
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Speaker 1: of town, Mountain Brook, with a gorgeous country club and
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Speaker 1: graceful pre war homes. That's the wealthy white part of Birmingham.
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Speaker 1: Down the hill is the other Birmingham, where blacks and
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Speaker 1: whites lived in uneasy proximity. They used to call Birmingham
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Speaker 1: the Johannesburg of the South, or Bombingham, because bombs were
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Speaker 1: a weapon of choice for white supremacists who wanted to
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Speaker 1: keep black people in their place. There's an old joke
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Speaker 1: from that period that tells you all you really need
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Speaker 1: to know. A black man in Chicago wakes up one
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Speaker 1: morning and tells his wife that Jesus had come to
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Speaker 1: him in a dream and told him to go to Birmingham.
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Speaker 1: His wife is horrified. Did Jesus say he'd go with you?
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Speaker 1: The husband replies, he said, it go as far as Memphis.
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Speaker 1: Birmingham was where Martin Luther King staged one of the
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Speaker 1: most dramatic protests of the civil rights movement, and King
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Speaker 1: chose Birmingham for a good reason. He wanted to strike
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Speaker 1: at the symbol of racial oppression, to get ordinary Americans
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Speaker 1: to understand just how bad things were for black people
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Speaker 1: in the South. So through the long spring of nineteen
6:43
Speaker 1: sixty three, King and his people organized sit ins to
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Speaker 1: protest segregation, then boycott's, then marches. They called it Project
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Speaker 1: C for Confrontation. They were trying to provoke the Birmingham
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Speaker 1: Chief of Police, a trogolite named Bull Connor, into doing
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Speaker 1: something so outrageous that it would turn the tide of
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Speaker 1: public opinion in their favor. And that's exactly what happened.
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Speaker 1: May third, nineteen sixty three. King's people start at sixteenth
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Speaker 1: Street Baptist Church, right next to kelly Ingram Park. They
7:23
Speaker 1: come out in waves, marching alongside the park and then
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Speaker 1: continuing on through downtown Birmingham. There are huge crowds, tons
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Speaker 1: of police in the middle of everything. A photographer named
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Speaker 1: Bill Hudson takes a picture of a white police officer
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Speaker 1: with dark sunglasses and a big german shepherd. The dog
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Speaker 1: is lunging at a young black teenager. The next day,
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Speaker 1: The New York Times publishes the photograph above the fold,
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Speaker 1: across three columns on the front page of its weekend paper,
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Speaker 1: as does basically every other major newspaper in the country.
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Speaker 1: President Kennedy is asked about the photo and he's appalled.
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Speaker 1: The Secretary of State says, it will quote embarrass our
8:02
Speaker 1: friends abroad and make our enemies joyful. It's discussed on
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Speaker 1: the floor of Congress, Trials are written, people have debates
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Speaker 1: about it. It's exactly what King wants, something to show
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Speaker 1: the rest of the world, just how bad things are
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Speaker 1: in the South, and the tide turns. A year later,
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Speaker 1: Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, one of the most
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Speaker 1: important pieces of legislation in the history of the United States.
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Speaker 1: The Civil Rights Act, people always say was written in Birmingham.
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Speaker 1: Kelly Ingram Park is now a shrine to the events
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Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty three. The first black mayor of Birmingham,
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Speaker 1: Richard Errington, takes office in nineteen seventy nine and decides
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Speaker 1: to fill this little patch of history with sculptures that
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Speaker 1: tell the story of the movement. He commissions one of
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Speaker 1: Martin Luther King, another of Fred Shuttlesworth, who is a
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Speaker 1: key leader of the Birmingham Protests. It is one of
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Speaker 1: the four little girls killed when white supremacists bombed the
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Speaker 1: Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in September of nineteen sixty three. Finally,
9:07
Speaker 1: Errington turns to the photo, the famous photo, for one
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Speaker 1: final statue, and he calls up Mac McDowell, who has
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Speaker 1: moved out to Tuskegee from California and transformed himself into
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Speaker 1: a kind of house artist for the Civil rights movement.
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Speaker 2: He said, I gotta get a statue done right because
9:24
Speaker 2: people at Marshton and movement are complaining about the children
9:27
Speaker 2: don't look like them. The children had white features with
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Speaker 2: black hair, and there were a lot of complaints. And
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Speaker 2: he said, I need you to do a design of
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Speaker 2: this image, this photograph of this boy and this police
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Speaker 2: officer and the dog attacking him.
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Speaker 1: The other artists with sculptures in Kelly Ingram Park are
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Speaker 1: big names, white men with impressive resumes. Mac a kid
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Speaker 1: from the projects of Oakland, entirely self taught. He had
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Speaker 1: in fact never done a sculpture before, a detail that
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Speaker 1: he conveniently failed to tell Richard Arrington. The marriage just
10:01
Speaker 1: wants Mack to do some sketches provide a guide.
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Speaker 2: This look on his face was a look of frustration,
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Speaker 2: like nobody's doing what I want. They're not getting it,
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Speaker 2: none of the sculptures. And I was like, I can't
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Speaker 2: say no to him because he's powerful. Where it's a
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Speaker 2: great odd you know of Birmingham.
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Speaker 1: The next thing, you know, Max doing the whole thing.
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Speaker 2: And I started sculpting it in three hours later I
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Speaker 2: was complete, and I took it to Arrington about I
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Speaker 2: wanted to think. I did it a quick side, waited
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Speaker 2: a week and took it to him and he said,
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Speaker 2: you got the commission? How much? And so the rest
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Speaker 2: is history.
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Speaker 1: It was unveiled in a special ceremony in May nineteen
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Speaker 1: ninety five. It's called foot Soldier because that was the
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Speaker 1: term used to describe the people who marched in Martin
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Speaker 1: Luther King's army. On a statue's granite base, it reads,
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Speaker 1: this sculpture is dedicated to the foot Soldiers of the
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Speaker 1: Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. On a little plaque next to
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Speaker 1: it is the famous photo on which the statue was based.
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Speaker 1: If you want to see a picture of it, we
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Speaker 1: have one up on revisionististory dot com.
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Speaker 2: And the first you want to say. It was Stevie
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Speaker 2: Wanders and Emmettiel's mother. And what I didn't know at
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Speaker 2: the time I did the statue. When you're doing bronze,
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Speaker 2: you have to smooth everything. Because I was untrained, I
11:13
Speaker 2: didn't smooth the rocks. So Steve was filling the rocks
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Speaker 2: and he cut his hand and one of the men
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Speaker 2: in the parks was there and he told me, he
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Speaker 2: saying I'm getting blood on my hand because Stevie wanted it.
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Speaker 2: I was like, oh my.
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Speaker 1: God, it's it's almost it's almost biblical. It's almost like
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Speaker 1: he's blessing the park with his blood.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Stevie got cut on those rocks that I folked.
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Speaker 3: It.
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Speaker 1: Foot Soldier is the most powerful sculpture in kelly Ingram Park.
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Speaker 1: Nothing else comes close. And maybe that's where the trouble starts.
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Speaker 1: The name of the police officer in the photograph was
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Speaker 1: Richard Middleton. Everyone called him Dick. His best friend on
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Speaker 1: the force was Bobby Hayes. Big guy lives near a
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Speaker 1: golf course outside Birmingham. Must be in his eighties by now.
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Speaker 1: Hayes and Middleton started as police officers in Birmingham right
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Speaker 1: at the moment when the civil rights movement was asserting itself.
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Speaker 1: The police department was all white and all male back then,
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Speaker 1: but in the streets the balance of power was shifting.
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Speaker 1: When integration came to the Birmingham school system, Hayes remembers
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Speaker 1: it as bewildering.
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Speaker 4: If you were a cop, nobody really liked you because
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Speaker 4: we were carrying the black kids in the school. That's
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Speaker 4: what we were ordered to do, and they were going
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Speaker 4: to get in. That's just the way it was. We
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Speaker 4: had no choice. The black people didn't like you because
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Speaker 4: you were a policeman. The white people didn't like you
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Speaker 4: because you're protecting the black kids and carrying the men
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Speaker 4: where the crowd the goofies didn't want them to go.
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Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty three, King's protest campaign was headquartered in
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Speaker 1: sixteen Street Baptist Church, which is an old red brick
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Speaker 1: building on the northwest corner of kelly Ingram Park. The
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Speaker 1: protesters would come out in the afternoon march around the
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Speaker 1: park on their way downtown. They were trained in nonviolence,
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Speaker 1: marched according to a strict schedule. It was a military operation.
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Speaker 1: Crowds of people would gather to see the spectacle. The
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Speaker 1: police were supposed to keep the protesters and the crowd apart.
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Speaker 1: The protests get bigger and bigger, the crowds get bigger
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Speaker 1: and bigger. It's late spring, so it's starting to get
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Speaker 1: really hot. The police chief Bull Connor starts locking up
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Speaker 1: everyone he can. Then Connor says, to how with it,
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Speaker 1: bring in the dogs.
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Speaker 4: Of course, there's a lot of noise, a lot of
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Speaker 4: tension in the air, a lot of people yelling and screaming.
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Speaker 4: Bricks started coming in, you know, throwing bricks. It got
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Speaker 4: to be a really ugly slight real quick, real quick.
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Speaker 1: Dick Middleton, the cop in the photo, was a member
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Speaker 1: of the city's canine unit. He had a German shepherd
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Speaker 1: named Leo. He and the other members of the tactical
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Speaker 1: unit were posted behind a barricade, a row of wooden
14:14
Speaker 1: saw horses running parallel to the curb. There's a line
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Speaker 1: of cops and dogs in a kind of no man's
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Speaker 1: land between the bystanders and the protesters.
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Speaker 4: He was inside the barricade. The crowd was on the
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Speaker 4: other side, and they were taunting the police, and of
14:33
Speaker 4: course all we could do is just stand at the police.
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Speaker 4: All they just stand there. At that time, Dick was
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Speaker 4: well back the way. He told me he was ten
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Speaker 4: yards maybe back of the barricades, and the guy came
14:48
Speaker 4: round a barricade.
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Speaker 1: So here we have a foot soldier in the middle
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Speaker 1: of all the mayhem, cutting through the no man's land
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Speaker 1: towards the sidewalk, and Middleton's German shepherd, Leo, lunges at him.
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Speaker 1: That's the moment Bill Hudson captures in his famous photograph,
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Speaker 1: and Ron mc dowell captures in his statue the confrontation
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Speaker 1: between the innocent foot soldier and the snarling face of
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Speaker 1: racial oppression. Bill Hudson's editor says later that he picked
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Speaker 1: that particular photo out of the many taken that day
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Speaker 1: because he was riveted by the saintly calm of the
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Speaker 1: young man and the snarling jaws of the German shepherd.
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Speaker 1: Here's where the story starts to get complicated.
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Speaker 5: This is an interview today on Saturday, May twenty fifth,
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Speaker 5: nineteen ninety six at the Birmingham Service Answer Too, with
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Speaker 5: mister Walter Gaston of Atlanta, Georgia. Okay, how did you
15:52
Speaker 5: get involved in the civil rights movement?
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Speaker 6: Now, that's one thing that I always had a problem with.
16:02
Speaker 6: I never did get involved with the civil rights movement.
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Speaker 1: Walter Gadsden is the boy in the photograph, the one
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Speaker 1: bitten by Leo. He's a mysterious figure. He was interviewed
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Speaker 1: at the time of the photograph by Jet magazine back
16:15
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three, but only briefly. From time to time,
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Speaker 1: other people have come forward to say that they were
16:21
Speaker 1: the one in the photograph, not Gadsden, but those claims
16:24
Speaker 1: seem dubious. Meanwhile, Gadsden disappears, people try and find him
16:29
Speaker 1: in can't. All that seems to exist is this oral
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Speaker 1: history that you're hearing done in honor of the unveiling
16:36
Speaker 1: of Ron McDowell's statue. And the interview is strange because
16:41
Speaker 1: it doesn't go the way the interviewer thinks it's going
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Speaker 1: to go. She starts with the obvious question, you were
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Speaker 1: a foot soldier. Tell me how that came about? And
16:51
Speaker 1: he says, I wasn't a foot soldier.
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Speaker 6: But the fact is, the day of that movement, I
16:58
Speaker 6: was supposed to have been in school, but a friend
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Speaker 6: of my acquaintance of mine had told me that earlier
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Speaker 6: that Martin Luther Gaine was him down that day and
17:08
Speaker 6: he was going to be there. And I said I
17:14
Speaker 6: wanted to be there too. I wanted to come and
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Speaker 6: thrit out what it was all a battle.
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Speaker 1: Walter Gadsden is a bystander. The famous statue in kelly
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Speaker 1: Ingram Park foot Soldier is not in fact of a
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Speaker 1: foot soldier. It gets stranger, okay.
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Speaker 3: And when you go to school? Where did you come downtown.
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Speaker 7: To the park area? The kelly Ingram Park over there.
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Speaker 6: So we started walking toward the activity, and as I
17:42
Speaker 6: approached and got closer, they turned and looked with me,
17:45
Speaker 6: and I saw it coming toward me, so I turned
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Speaker 6: to lee.
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Speaker 1: He was walking down the street with the protesters coming
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Speaker 1: towards him. So he veers off to get out of
17:56
Speaker 1: their way and rejoin the spectators on the sidewalk. Duckson
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Speaker 1: behind the row of sawhorses, where he runs into officers
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Speaker 1: Middleton and Leo.
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Speaker 7: So as I turned and started to walk away, I
18:08
Speaker 7: was great.
18:09
Speaker 6: And the rest of it are about the policeman Gray
18:12
Speaker 6: about the policeman and yank toward him.
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Speaker 3: Does that happen? The dog bits you there?
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Speaker 7: As I can remember that that happened simultaneously.
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Speaker 2: Did you go.
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Speaker 7: The policeman gray at me? I don't remember what hand,
18:28
Speaker 7: but the dog the gray at me with one hand.
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Speaker 6: It happened so fast there was nothing to do except
18:35
Speaker 6: throw up the leg and try to protect usself.
18:37
Speaker 7: And as I was doing that, there I went. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: If you look at the famous photo, Gasden's explanation makes sense.
18:48
Speaker 1: Leo is lunging. The bite is a millisecond away. But
18:52
Speaker 1: Gaston and Middleton just look startled, the way people do
18:55
Speaker 1: if they unexpectedly bump into each other. Gaston has his
18:59
Speaker 1: knee up as a reflex and his hand on Middleton
19:02
Speaker 1: as if to steady himself. Middleton has one hand on
19:06
Speaker 1: Gadsden and his other arm is flexed. He's yanking back
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Speaker 1: on the leash. Leo has freaked out and he's trying
19:14
Speaker 1: to restrain him. Leo whoa. Middleton's colleague, Bobby Hayes made
19:19
Speaker 1: the same point to me. Middleton's not letting Leo loose
19:23
Speaker 1: on Gadsden. Quite the opposite.
19:25
Speaker 4: If you look at the picture, you can tell he's
19:28
Speaker 4: holding the dog back the lion's taunt the dog feeder
19:33
Speaker 4: in the air the best I recall, and Dick got
19:37
Speaker 4: him here. He's holding that line. He don't only invite
19:41
Speaker 4: that guy.
19:45
Speaker 1: Now, what does Gadsden say about all this. Does he
19:48
Speaker 1: think he's been the victim of police brutality? Not at all.
19:52
Speaker 1: In fact, he can't seem to understand why everyone makes
19:55
Speaker 1: such a big deal out of what happened to him
19:57
Speaker 1: that day.
19:58
Speaker 5: How does your family members react to your participation, Well,
20:03
Speaker 5: they were angry because I didn't attend school that day.
20:07
Speaker 1: He appears in an image that transfixed the world, and
20:11
Speaker 1: his parents are mad that he skipped school. The interviewer
20:15
Speaker 1: then tries to get at Gadsden's connections to the struggle
20:18
Speaker 1: for civil rights.
20:19
Speaker 5: Okay, well, the church where your parents or your family
20:22
Speaker 5: members were attending, were they involved in the civil rights
20:25
Speaker 5: movement during that time?
20:26
Speaker 7: You know they never told me of it. Okay.
20:30
Speaker 5: What benefits do you your family in the community realize
20:35
Speaker 5: as a result of that movement?
20:38
Speaker 7: None.
20:41
Speaker 1: In answer to the question what benefits did your family
20:44
Speaker 1: receive from the civil rights movement, he answers none. He's
20:49
Speaker 1: not having any of it. Gadsden's interview, in fact, just
20:53
Speaker 1: gets weirder.
20:55
Speaker 3: Okay, if you were.
20:56
Speaker 5: In control of an organization or a movement of such
21:00
Speaker 5: and could go back and change some things, what would
21:03
Speaker 5: you change?
21:05
Speaker 7: Okay?
21:06
Speaker 6: The things that would change would be a more careful
21:12
Speaker 6: choice of people involved.
21:19
Speaker 7: In all of those movements. There are too many, well
21:25
Speaker 7: the big just blunt, crooked people. Many of the people
21:32
Speaker 7: that were involved and had no abiety became too crooked.
21:38
Speaker 1: The most famous photograph of the Civil rights movement is
21:41
Speaker 1: of a startled cop trying desperately to hold his dog
21:45
Speaker 1: back from biting a bystander who wasn't that much of
21:49
Speaker 1: a fan of the civil rights movement.
21:51
Speaker 6: I'm wondering, Steel, why mean, because I've never had any
21:55
Speaker 6: notoriety whatsoever.
21:56
Speaker 7: Concerning that picture. That picture was in the paper, but
21:59
Speaker 7: many other people were too, Yes, many other situations.
22:04
Speaker 6: Plus it's Bonnie, yes, but they chose to use a
22:09
Speaker 6: lip boy at fifteen of that statue.
22:11
Speaker 7: The little boy in aves put up a little boy
22:13
Speaker 7: in size.
22:15
Speaker 3: Are you surprised when you found out about it?
22:19
Speaker 7: I was totally flabbergas cause I don't know who to thin.
22:23
Speaker 1: And Gadsden's main objection he's light skinned, he says, The
22:27
Speaker 1: statue makes him look dark skinned.
22:30
Speaker 6: That statue doesn't look like me. It looks like a
22:33
Speaker 6: totally different boy. That looks like an African boy.
22:38
Speaker 3: What do you feel about it looks like African boy?
22:40
Speaker 6: It looks like an African boy.
22:45
Speaker 5: Uh, the color of the features, the features, the lips,
22:50
Speaker 5: the size.
22:52
Speaker 7: You take a look at the pictured air and the
22:54
Speaker 7: statue air the boy short. I was tall for my ads.
23:00
Speaker 1: If you listen to the whole interview, it nearly goes
23:02
Speaker 1: off the rails. At this point, the interviewer expected to
23:06
Speaker 1: find a heroic civil rights veteran. Instead, she's getting a
23:10
Speaker 1: grumpy old man still wedded to some of the oldest
23:12
Speaker 1: and most awkward of black prejudices.
23:15
Speaker 3: We're very proud of it, and I hope you will
23:18
Speaker 3: be too. And now that we know who you are,
23:21
Speaker 3: we can add a name under there. But you with
23:27
Speaker 3: the young boy, let's comet tore used.
23:32
Speaker 6: Well, M, I'm still wondering why after all the information
23:41
Speaker 6: that I had given, and and and all that, all
23:45
Speaker 6: that established me as being a young African boy, which
23:49
Speaker 6: I'm not.
23:54
Speaker 3: You prefer being called a negro.
23:58
Speaker 7: I prefer being called what I am, a colored?
24:00
Speaker 3: Oh oh, you prefer you were colored?
24:03
Speaker 7: I am?
24:04
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, euphemism and evasion. At the beginning, I said
24:15
Speaker 1: that what I object to is the way so many
24:17
Speaker 1: stories about race get cleaned up, sanitized, so the brown
24:21
Speaker 1: decision becomes a fairy tale in which black people triumph
24:25
Speaker 1: without effort. Well, here's the flip side. When we stop
24:29
Speaker 1: evading and just listen, it gets complicated. Our hero, Walter
24:34
Speaker 1: Gadsden isn't all that heroic. As for the bad guy,
24:38
Speaker 1: the officer, his colleague Bobby Hayes says he wasn't a
24:41
Speaker 1: bad guy. Did Officer Hayes tell me things that surprised me?
24:46
Speaker 1: And did listening to Walter Gadsden shock me? Absolutely? Because
24:51
Speaker 1: I'm no different from anyone else. I liked the fairy tale.
24:56
Speaker 1: So the person who invited me down to Birmingham in
24:58
Speaker 1: the first place was Dick Middleton's widow. Everyone calls her
25:02
Speaker 1: missus Klingler. Her husband died not long ago, and I
25:05
Speaker 1: think she felt it was time to speak out. We
25:08
Speaker 1: met at a barbecue you restaurant in downtown Birmingham, sat upstairs.
25:13
Speaker 1: So he's a police officer at a time when Birmingham
25:17
Speaker 1: is obviously going through some very tumultuous times. Can you
25:22
Speaker 1: tell me about that?
25:24
Speaker 8: The first that was the first ten years I'd still
25:27
Speaker 8: learning to speak English. I didn't really know what's going on.
25:32
Speaker 8: I didn't understand what's going on.
25:35
Speaker 1: Missus Klingler was from Germany. She met Richard when he
25:38
Speaker 1: was stationed there with the army. She says, what happened
25:40
Speaker 1: on that spring day in nineteen sixty three was like
25:43
Speaker 1: a shadow over her husband.
25:45
Speaker 8: He went to work and come home and enjoy the family. Ah,
25:50
Speaker 8: but I knew something is going on.
25:53
Speaker 3: You know.
25:54
Speaker 8: Then later on you see the picture in the paper. Oh,
25:58
Speaker 8: he never really discussed it.
26:01
Speaker 1: She had a big book with her filled with clippings
26:04
Speaker 1: of her husband's career and other photographs from that day
26:07
Speaker 1: in kelly Ingram Park. She wanted to set the record straight.
26:12
Speaker 1: Her husband was unfairly vilified.
26:15
Speaker 8: He done his job and he was spit at, he
26:21
Speaker 8: was thrown rocks at and he did not let the
26:26
Speaker 8: guy put the dog to him. He was holding the
26:31
Speaker 8: leash away from him. If you see other pictures what happened.
26:37
Speaker 8: This was not the right picture.
26:40
Speaker 1: This was not the stort, this was not the truth.
26:45
Speaker 1: For the longest time afterwards, they got hate mail. So
26:49
Speaker 1: how soon did the letters start coming?
26:52
Speaker 8: Just like, I'm sure like the next month or so
26:56
Speaker 8: when it went all over the world, just as ugly
27:00
Speaker 8: as you can imagine.
27:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, did he ever talk to any journalist? Or do
27:06
Speaker 1: you know. No, you never gave any interviews.
27:09
Speaker 8: He didn't give no interviews because I think he felt
27:12
Speaker 8: like what he was betrayed es they would not tell it.
27:20
Speaker 8: No matter what he say, no matter what he would do,
27:24
Speaker 8: they would not believe him. All they look at the picture,
27:28
Speaker 8: that's all.
27:29
Speaker 1: Do you think your husband suffered?
27:31
Speaker 8: I think he has.
27:33
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a statue in Kelly Ingram Park of one
27:38
Speaker 1: of the most iconic moments in civil rights history, and
27:42
Speaker 1: everyone directly involved in that moment thinks it didn't happen
27:46
Speaker 1: that way. Oh Mac, what did you do? You said
27:55
Speaker 1: earlier that when you draw, you try and inhabit the characters. Yes,
28:00
Speaker 1: and so tell me your emotional reactions to that photograph.
28:03
Speaker 2: Well, I saw that the boy was maybe about six four,
28:07
Speaker 2: the officers maybe five ten, five nine, And I said,
28:12
Speaker 2: this is a movement about power. So I made the
28:14
Speaker 2: little boy younger and smaller, and the officer taller and stronger.
28:19
Speaker 2: The armor of the law is so strong, that's why
28:21
Speaker 2: his arm is almost like strength. And the dog is
28:25
Speaker 2: more like a wolf than a real dog. Because if
28:27
Speaker 2: I'm a little boy, that's what I would see. I
28:29
Speaker 2: would see, like this super man hovering over me, putting
28:32
Speaker 2: this big, old, giant monster of a dog in my
28:35
Speaker 2: gran area, in my private area. And so that's what
28:39
Speaker 2: I envisioned when I first saw the photograph.
28:41
Speaker 1: And you changed it. In the photograph, I noticed the
28:44
Speaker 1: boy is leaning in, and in your sculpture, he's leaning back.
28:49
Speaker 1: Tell me about that.
28:51
Speaker 2: He's leaning back because I wanted to depict him showing
28:55
Speaker 2: that I'm not gonna fight you. I'm not leaving, I'm
28:57
Speaker 2: not moving, I'm standing, but I'm not gonna fight you.
29:00
Speaker 2: This is a non violent protest. That's why his hands
29:03
Speaker 2: are open and he's going back, like, do whatever you're
29:04
Speaker 2: gonna do. Put the dog on me, beat me with
29:06
Speaker 2: the color, whatever you want to do. And I saw
29:08
Speaker 2: all of that when I saw the photograph.
29:12
Speaker 1: We were in the Tuskegee History Center, a museum on
29:15
Speaker 1: Elm Street, not far from the university. It's in what
29:18
Speaker 1: looks like an old bank, and it's filled with exhibits
29:21
Speaker 1: to the town's extraordinary history, the infamous Tuskegee Syphliss Study,
29:25
Speaker 1: the Tuskegee Airman, Rosa Parks. Tuskegee native McDowell's work was
29:30
Speaker 1: all over the walls. He took me on a little tour.
29:34
Speaker 1: Then we sat down and he took out his portfolio.
29:37
Speaker 2: Here's the statue.
29:40
Speaker 1: Those glasses are like we are the glasses the same.
29:43
Speaker 1: I think, did you make the glasses bigger?
29:45
Speaker 2: Too good?
29:46
Speaker 1: Piper maca is a whole section on the statue, preliminary drawings, sketches, photographs, so.
29:53
Speaker 2: He's almost like a blind officer. He doesn't even see
29:57
Speaker 2: the kid because he's so far beyond that killed this nigger,
30:01
Speaker 2: attacked this nigger. He's so passed the reality of this
30:04
Speaker 2: is a human, innocent, human child, human being. That's why
30:07
Speaker 2: he was wearing blind people glass.
30:09
Speaker 1: That is so interesting because when you see that, that's
30:12
Speaker 1: the thing I couldn't put my finger on. The officer
30:14
Speaker 1: is behaving as if he's blind. The dog is attacking.
30:18
Speaker 1: He doesn't even see the boy.
30:21
Speaker 2: You're the first person I tell that to. That's so interesting.
30:26
Speaker 2: See how vicious the dog will.
30:28
Speaker 1: Oh my, that is a wolf.
30:33
Speaker 2: I did the hair with the I don't I don't
30:35
Speaker 2: have to. I didn't know what instruments to use. I
30:37
Speaker 2: did all this with a pencil pencil in the hair,
30:41
Speaker 2: and I do the teeth like that, and oh, look
30:44
Speaker 2: at the teeth. I did that on purpose. The curved
30:48
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because if you have a curve too, like
30:50
Speaker 2: when you see those those World Wolf pictures, the teeth
30:54
Speaker 2: the curve because once there's like a snake when he
30:55
Speaker 2: bites you, if he doesn't retrack and he's gonna rip,
30:58
Speaker 2: it's not going in and coming out when it comes out,
31:00
Speaker 2: he's gonna rip flesh.
31:05
Speaker 1: When you're face to face with the statue. It has
31:08
Speaker 1: historical authority. It's in the shadow of sixteenth Street Baptist
31:12
Speaker 1: Church inside kelly Ingram Park at the actual site of
31:16
Speaker 1: the Birmingham Marches. But it's a work of imagination. It's
31:20
Speaker 1: not a literal representation. It's art. Well, are there other
31:28
Speaker 1: details that I mean you were saying you there's the
31:31
Speaker 1: blind officer, there's the curved teeth on the dog.
31:35
Speaker 2: See the officer moved all of his anger into the
31:38
Speaker 2: doll and it's the dog that's attacking the boy. You know.
31:42
Speaker 2: That's what they'll do with with racism.
31:47
Speaker 1: Mac made Leo into a wolf and blinded Middleton and
31:50
Speaker 1: shrank Walter Gaston until he was tiny and helpless because
31:54
Speaker 1: he was telling a story about Birmingham. That's what history is.
31:58
Speaker 1: Each side writes their own story, and the winner story
32:01
Speaker 1: is the one we call the truth. You don't think
32:04
Speaker 1: white people told their share of whoppers over the years
32:07
Speaker 1: in the South. You don't think that there's a statue
32:10
Speaker 1: in a Southern town somewhere of a champion of the
32:12
Speaker 1: Confederacy that makes a hero of someone who's actually a villain.
32:16
Speaker 1: White people got to do that in the South for centuries.
32:19
Speaker 1: Foot Soldier is just what happens when the people on
32:22
Speaker 1: the bottom finally get the power to tell the story
32:25
Speaker 1: their way. It was a long time coming. It's a
32:33
Speaker 1: brilliant statue.
32:35
Speaker 2: Thank you. I'll pour my heart into.
32:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some you have some mischief in you.
32:42
Speaker 2: What do you mean there's.
32:44
Speaker 1: A little bit of mischief in that in your recreation
32:47
Speaker 1: of that photo, you're you were using that opportunity to
32:51
Speaker 1: make a much broader kind of subversive point.
32:56
Speaker 2: I maybe I.
33:01
Speaker 1: Went back through Birmingham after talking to Mac and Tuskegee,
33:04
Speaker 1: and I went to Kelly Ingram Park one last time
33:07
Speaker 1: stood in front of the statue. I think everyone who
33:10
Speaker 1: wants to understand the civil rights movement should do that
33:13
Speaker 1: because of what it means, the hard won reward of
33:17
Speaker 1: a long and costly battle over who gets to control
33:20
Speaker 1: the stories that make up history. But if you do,
33:24
Speaker 1: just keep in mind that Dick Middleton didn't actually sick
33:26
Speaker 1: his dog Leo on Walter Gadsden, and that Walter Gadsden
33:31
Speaker 1: wasn't actually a foot soldier for civil rights.
33:33
Speaker 2: Mayor Rrington told me right often we did the unfail me.
33:37
Speaker 2: He got hundreds of threats about bombing and tearing a
33:40
Speaker 2: statue up from all over the world, and his response was,
33:44
Speaker 2: I'll just get back into a bigger one and a
33:46
Speaker 2: batter one so they never touched it.
33:48
Speaker 1: Oh, he said, if you if you destroy that statue,
33:51
Speaker 1: we're coming back bigger.
33:52
Speaker 2: Do you know how many times I begged for somebody.
33:55
Speaker 9: I hope somebody blows it down to a bigger one.
34:08
Speaker 1: Revisionous History is produced by Me Label and Jacob Smith,
34:11
Speaker 1: with Camilloe Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and Ciomara Martinez White. Our
34:16
Speaker 1: editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer. Original
34:21
Speaker 1: music by Luis Guerra. Special thanks to Andy Bauers and
34:25
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg at Panoply. I'm Malcolm Gladwell