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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

1963 Civil Right Activist Welcomed Back to Birmingham, Alabama

Aired May 02, 2003 - 22:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Some periods in history can be conjured up by a single word, say, Birmingham, for instance. Just that, Birmingham. And you have described a whole terribly complicated and difficult time the wounds of which all these decades later still have not entirely healed. Just ask those who were there then and who are returning now for a reunion.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice over): Forty-year-old memories still fresh.

CARDELL GAY, 1963 BIRMINGHAM PROTESTOR (voice over): The police were there with their dogs and their hoses, and you know, the fire Department. And as we drew closer to them and would not stop, although they had instructed us to stop, we would not stop. We continued to persevere and move closer to them. What they did, the let it fly.

It knocked us on the ground. Knocked us back, but you know, you definitely remember those things and then you remember how the situation was then, the environment was then, and then how it is now.

BROWN: Cardell Gay was just 16 years old in May of '63. Just a soldier in the civil rights army that had taken on the white establishment of Birmingham, Alabama. Three times he was arrested and sent to jail.

GAY: Like the songs that they would sing at that particular time, before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord, and be free. It wasn't as though we were afraid or anything like that. It was just this was a part of us.

BROWN: He marched because his dad marched and because even to a 16-year-old history calls.

GAY: We know that there were movement (ph) going on and we seemingly had to do this. You know, because of something like a gravitational pull that was pulling us to do this.

BROWN: Beginning today Birmingham is expected to welcome back more than 2,000 men and women who protested back then. They were arrested, doused with water cannons, attacked by police dogs. The children of the movement are grown now, adults with children of their own, grandchildren in some cases.

They are guardians of a moment in history, their moment, and Birmingham's, and the country's.

GAY: Most of the children today, along with mine as well, they don't seem to grasp the magnitude of the things that have occurred. It seems unbelievable to them that this thing has happened in out life. You know, that the different mentality of the young people today.

(CIVIL RIGHTS MARCHERS SINGING)

BROWN: Which is the best news in Birmingham, 40 years later.

(CIVIL RIGHTS MARCHERS SINGING)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Joining us tonight, from Birmingham, are the Sanders sister, Dorothy Sanders Slones, Gwendolyn Sanders Gamble, and Deborah Sanders Avery. The terrible time we've been talking about is history. It was not history to them. It was their childhood.

Nice to have you all with us.

Deborah, let me start with you. You were, as I recall, about 11 or 12 years old when all this happened. Do you remember much of it all? Is it all a memory or is it vivid?

DEBORAH SANDERS AVERY, BIRMINGHAM PROTESTOR: It's still memory. And by the way, I was 12 years old.

BROWN: Yes. What do you remember about the time? Do you remember the segregated schools and the segregated drinking fountains and the rest?

AVERY: Of course, we all went to a segregated school. It was Allmon (ph) High School. It was totally black. And we had to pass several schools to get to our school. I do remember the water fountains. I remember everything about it.

BROWN: Gwendolyn, do you -- how did you end up in the marches, in the protests?

GWENDOLYN SANDERS GAMBLE, BIRMINGHAM PROTESTOR: Our mother is a civil rights activist. And my mother would come home from the mass meetings and she would tell us about the praising and the singing, and the remarks that were made as far as non-violence is concerned.

And it opened up our eyes to a lot of things like we were not getting a quality education. And when I realized that a little white student that was in the fifth grade, and I used the same book in the seventh grade, it woke me up to let me know something wasn't right and that something had to be done.

And when our mother got involved, that made us get involved.

BROWN: Dorothy, did you think at any point that because you were kids, that they would not be as nasty to you as they would be to adults?

DOROTHY SANDERS SLONES, BIRMINGHAM PROTESTOR: We thought so, yes. As children you don't quite think as adults do, of course, and we thought going out to protest for our civil rights would not affect us in the way that it did, as far as the violence, because we weren't expecting it -- at first.

BROWN: Were you wrong?

SLONES: Yes, were.

GAMBLE: Very much so.

SLONES: Very much so.

BROWN: Dorothy, do you have children who are school age now?

SLONES: No, my children are adults now.

BROWN: When they went to school, did they go to schools that were predominantly African-American?

SLONES: Yes, both of them did. Yes.

BROWN: Does that surprise you? Or concern you?

SLONES: It does concern me in that our fighting for integration seemingly did not help the situation at all, because they ended up going to predominantly black schools as well.

BROWN: And Gwendolyn, your kids have much appreciation for what happened 40 years ago and what happened -- before what happened 40 years ago? What the conditions were in the South for African- Americans?

GAMBLE: Well, I don't think that my children, as well as other children, clearly understand what happened prior to that time. But by having me and my two sisters, who were very active in the movement, as far as recruiting students and some of the other experiences that we had during that time, by educating them to what we did and what we saw happened. I think it made a difference to them. And the older they get, I think they understand it better.

We had to make sure that they understood that the things that they have today, were not the things that we had as children. And because of this movement, we were able to change things for them, as well the world.

BROWN: Do you think it is even possible for kids who have grown up in the post-segregated era to imagine what it was like to be literally less than equal? To not be able to vote or to be restricted from voting and lots of ways, to not be able to stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, ride in the front of the bus, and the rest, is that even imaginable for children?

GAMBLE: I don't think it is, you know, if you haven't really lived it, then you cannot say that you really and fully understand. They cannot imagine by the things that have been laid for them today. They cannot imagine that this actually happened. And it happened to real, live human beings.

BROWN: Deborah, let's end this with you. Is there one memory more than all others that stands out?

AVERY: I think the one time, when were protesting down in front of one of the department stores, the three of us, we were attacked by dogs and the policemen.

GAMBLE: And fire hoses.

AVERY: And the fire hoses. That thought will never end. It was devastating. We lived through it. But that, I know, will always stay in my mind.

BROWN: Thank you all for joining us. I expect it will be an interesting weekend down there.

GAMBLE: Oh, it is.

BROWN: Yes. We appreciate your time tonight. And we appreciate what you did 40 years ago, as well.

GAMBLE: Thank you.

SLONES: Thank you.

AVERY: Thank you.

BROWN: We're also joined tonight by Diane McWhorter, the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning account of the time and place that we've been talking about, the book is called, "Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution." She is not a historian of Birmingham, she is of the place herself. She grew up there.

It's nice to have you with us today. Thank you.

DIANE MCWHORTER, AUTHOR, "CARRY ME HOME": Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: The significance of tomorrow, the 3rd of May?

MCWHORTER: Tomorrow is the anniversary of the photograph, which you just showed there, which really changed history. It was a photograph taken by an AP photographer by the name of Bill Hudson, of a dog lunging at a black youth. And it --

BROWN: Let's see if we have -- if we can put it -- there we go.

MCWHORTER: And it really just graphically dramatized segregation for the country. I compare it to "Uncle Tom's Cabin", in my book, because it was just sort of one of these cultural artifacts that transformed everything. Even though, if you break it down in its particulars, there are a lot of sort of misleading things. For example, the youth who was being attacked was not a demonstrator that day. And yet, he's striking this pose of sort of beatific non-violence and conveying the sort of acceptance, but firmness and resistance of the children demonstrating there. Even though, he was playing hooky from school, and just there watching.

He was from a middle-class family in black Birmingham. And they were resistant to King. They were not supporters of the civil rights movement, initially. And so his family had been quite hostile to King. So, there are just a lot of ironies in that, and yet it changed everything.

BROWN: You were what, about 11?

MCWHORTER: 10.

BROWN: You were 10.

How much awareness did you have of what it was like to be a 10- year-old black child in Birmingham, you town?

MCWHORTER: Well, we were, I was definitely on the wrong side of the revolution. I mean, my family was, we lived in what was called, over the mountain, in the suburbs. And we got this from the adults, and you still hear it over the years, that Martin Luther King was an outside agitator, and our "colored people" were very happy until he came to town. And that he was stirring up this trouble for financial gain.

And one thing that you see over and over in the South is that rather than address the merits of an argument the white Southerner will pick apart something about the forum. So, they'll say, well he's an opportunist, not -- not does his cause have merit?

BROWN: Do you ever remember saying to yourself, or let me ask it differently. Remember the first time you said to yourself, because surely you must have, I mean they couldn't drink out of the same drinking fountain, what is that about? They couldn't swim in the pool, what is that about?

MCWHORTER: Yes. The classic thing for almost every Southern child, because we all when to Sunday School was that song, "Jesus Loves the Little Children", all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." And after the first time you kind of go, Huh?

I never would have taken any kind of moral stand, but segregation always seemed odd to me. It jus seemed weird. And children, white and black, are kind of fixated on the water fountains. And we were always trying to taste each other's water. And I know that a lot of families would have a housekeepers, who had their own bathrooms in the house. And we would always go sneak into the bathroom, the "maid's bathroom", to see what that was all about. It was just weird. And thank god, that it never seemed normal to me. That segregation ended before I had to deform my conscience really, to make it seem like it was normal.

BROWN: We've got a couple of minutes here. Do you remember it ending? Do you remember one of those moments of cognition, where what was, isn't anymore?

MCWHORTER: I don't remember. It ended because of Birmingham.

BROWN: Yes.

MCWHORTER: It ended the Civil Rights Act of '64 was introduced by President Kennedy.

BROWN: You don't remember a drinking fountain that was colored only that no longer was?

MCWHORTER: No, about it being dismantled, I don't.

BROWN: Do you think Birmingham has ultimately passed the point -- I mean, sort of as a PR thing, no city can say it sort of embraces a racist past. Does it now embrace diversity?

MCWHORTER: I think it is starting to. For a long time it really resisted its "reputation" and they thought they had this bad image in the world. I think now it is seeing that as something positive, because it did bring about the end of segregation.

And for 40 percent of the population the large black minority, it was kind of a triumphant story. Because without them, we wouldn't have had this magnificent turning point in our history. And it was just one of the great democratic uprisings in human history. And it is just something that you know, the city is looking to with pride now.

BROWN: It's a terrible question to ask, do you wish with all you know now...

MCWHORTER: Yes?

BROWN: With all you know now, you could go back 40 years ago and live it all again. See it through the eyes of someone who has thought a great deal and written a great deal about it.

MCWHORTER: Well, that's what I did writing the book. I had to revisit this past that was distorted for me. You know that I don't remember hearing about the 16th Street Baptist Church being bombed. You know?

BROWN: You have no memory about that?

MCWHORTER: Not of hearing about it. Feel like I was (INAUDIBLE), but Kennedy was assassinated two months later and I have vivid recall of that. And I had to ask myself, one of the motives for writing my book was, how could I have lived in a place and where that didn't make an imprint on me? But obviously it did, because I ended up spending longer writing my book than the civil rights movement lasted. You know, reliving it minute by minute.

BROWN: Really nice to meet you. It's wonderful, it's a wonderful piece of work and it's a great - it is one of those great American moments. Not the most comfortable American moment. But a great American moment that is being remembered, 40 years ago, now, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Thanks for coming in.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, sad to say, some things change and some things stay the same. We'll take you to a town where the high school and some of the white kids say they want their own prom. A whites only prom.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It could be you think we have belaboring the Birmingham story, after all, it was 40 years ago, in another age entirely. And so much has changed since then.

If only it were that simple. From CNN's Jason Bellini, tonight, here's a report on a town in Georgia and the visible shadow cast on it by time, supposedly, gone by.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Last year the Taylor County High School Prom proudly opened its doors for pictures of black and white students dancing together. Breaking a 31 year tradition of segregated proms.

The theme the choose was, "Make It Last Forever". This year, cameras are kept far away as white students, only white students, arrive for the prom they voted for, one to which black students are not invited.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tell me why you don't find it racist?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because it is not a racist, it's just the way it's always been. A tradition. And it was put up to vote. And we just voted against it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone votes against it, so that's how it is.

BELLINI (on camera): As the prom goers arrive the very few who are willing to speak to us say, what's the big fuss here? There's going be a joint prom next Friday for both black and white students and some say they're going to go to that one as well.

(voice over): Taylor High as 439 students, 232 of them are black. The school, just like many other rural Georgia schools , waited until the 1970s to desegregate, still has separate black and white student councils. Derris Chambless is council's vice president.

DERRIS CHAMBLESS, STUDENT: I'm disappointed because we thought that all the juniors that we go to school with every day, the wouldn't have a problem with having another integrated prom. Last year, when the seniors had an integrated prom we thought the issue was resolved. Obviously, not because when we went to rest of the white juniors, they said that they'd get back to us. But the never did. So, as prom time approached we had to go on with the plans that we had.

BELLINI: The school itself disavows any association with either prom, leaving students at spokespersons.

(on camera): Some people are calling this an all white, private party, tonight. Do you think there will be black students there as well?

JASON WAINWRIGHT, STUDENT: I don't know. But there are going to be black people catering it there. So, it's not a racist prom.

BELLINI: You're not a little bit embarrassed right now?

STUDENT: No, not at all.

BELLINI (voice over): The manager of the prom's venue seemed embarrassed, however, after getting an earful from the local NAACP leader.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You knew that this was a white prom, and you allowed this to happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I knew it was a prom. It is a prom from Taylor County.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now that you know it's a white prom, are you prepared to say that this is wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, yes. I would probably say that it is wrong, but I don't agree with it, but its not for me to agree.

BELLINI: But disagreement is what this prom has bred.

CHAMBLESS: They're my friends, I thought that they would want to have a party and everything else, but...

BELLINI: But you're not invited.

CHAMBLESS: I'm not invited.

BELLINI (voice over): A closed-door party and lingering vestige of segregation.

Jason Bellini, CNN, Columbus, Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Forty years ago it was Birmingham.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, take a look at tomorrow morning's papers from around the country, and around the world. Tomorrow's news tonight, what do you know? We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, all of those seem pretty irresistible. Time to check the morning papers from around the country. Here are some of the papers that will be landing on doorstep, depending on what cities you live in.

For example, if you live in Boston and you take "The Herald", and I'm sure many people do in Boston. Here's the headline: "Strange Brew". This is the Maine arsenic story. Fatal shooting deep in Maine, coffee kill mystery. We talked about this earlier. One of the updates, one of the people that police wanted to question was shot, or shot himself.

In any case, also on the Front Page, I cannot figure out how any newspaper can pass on this story, OK? Up here, guys. "Slots of Debt for Virtue Man", this is the Bill Bennett gambling story. I mean, I don't care what you're politics are, that thing, that is just too luscious a story to pass on. There is nothing illegal about gambling. He's perfectly entitled to do that. I got it.

It is Saturday. I mean in the newspapers, it's Saturday, which therefore justifies "The Dallas Morning News" leading with, "Under Purcells (ph), It's Star Search", it's a football story of the Dallas Cowboys. It looks like Coach Purcells has fallen off the Atkins diet, like yours truly.

"Cincinnati Inquirer", it's Saturday, did I mention that? In the newspapers? And therefore, the big story in the "Cincinnati Inquirer" is called "Straight Down". Cedar Point's new right is 420 feet high, the tallest. It's 120 miles and hour, the fastest. And it goes straight down.

And I don't know, can you get in and see this picture here? Because they did -- they took a shot of this poor man's face. Man! I mean, he looks, that's awful. Isn't it? How'd you like to wake up and see yourself looking like that?

I don't know why I noticed that.

"Detroit News & Free Press", how are we doing on time, very quickly. Not much. OK, nobody else had this story, that I saw. This is a very good story. "Civilian Losses Exceed 1,100 in Baghdad". And they had the amputation story, of the guy who cut off his own arm, on the Front Page, too.

That's the morning papers. Have a great weekend. We'll see you again Monday, 10 o'clock Eastern Time. Good night, for all of us.

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Alabama>


Aired May 2, 2003 - 22:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Some periods in history can be conjured up by a single word, say, Birmingham, for instance. Just that, Birmingham. And you have described a whole terribly complicated and difficult time the wounds of which all these decades later still have not entirely healed. Just ask those who were there then and who are returning now for a reunion.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice over): Forty-year-old memories still fresh.

CARDELL GAY, 1963 BIRMINGHAM PROTESTOR (voice over): The police were there with their dogs and their hoses, and you know, the fire Department. And as we drew closer to them and would not stop, although they had instructed us to stop, we would not stop. We continued to persevere and move closer to them. What they did, the let it fly.

It knocked us on the ground. Knocked us back, but you know, you definitely remember those things and then you remember how the situation was then, the environment was then, and then how it is now.

BROWN: Cardell Gay was just 16 years old in May of '63. Just a soldier in the civil rights army that had taken on the white establishment of Birmingham, Alabama. Three times he was arrested and sent to jail.

GAY: Like the songs that they would sing at that particular time, before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord, and be free. It wasn't as though we were afraid or anything like that. It was just this was a part of us.

BROWN: He marched because his dad marched and because even to a 16-year-old history calls.

GAY: We know that there were movement (ph) going on and we seemingly had to do this. You know, because of something like a gravitational pull that was pulling us to do this.

BROWN: Beginning today Birmingham is expected to welcome back more than 2,000 men and women who protested back then. They were arrested, doused with water cannons, attacked by police dogs. The children of the movement are grown now, adults with children of their own, grandchildren in some cases.

They are guardians of a moment in history, their moment, and Birmingham's, and the country's.

GAY: Most of the children today, along with mine as well, they don't seem to grasp the magnitude of the things that have occurred. It seems unbelievable to them that this thing has happened in out life. You know, that the different mentality of the young people today.

(CIVIL RIGHTS MARCHERS SINGING)

BROWN: Which is the best news in Birmingham, 40 years later.

(CIVIL RIGHTS MARCHERS SINGING)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Joining us tonight, from Birmingham, are the Sanders sister, Dorothy Sanders Slones, Gwendolyn Sanders Gamble, and Deborah Sanders Avery. The terrible time we've been talking about is history. It was not history to them. It was their childhood.

Nice to have you all with us.

Deborah, let me start with you. You were, as I recall, about 11 or 12 years old when all this happened. Do you remember much of it all? Is it all a memory or is it vivid?

DEBORAH SANDERS AVERY, BIRMINGHAM PROTESTOR: It's still memory. And by the way, I was 12 years old.

BROWN: Yes. What do you remember about the time? Do you remember the segregated schools and the segregated drinking fountains and the rest?

AVERY: Of course, we all went to a segregated school. It was Allmon (ph) High School. It was totally black. And we had to pass several schools to get to our school. I do remember the water fountains. I remember everything about it.

BROWN: Gwendolyn, do you -- how did you end up in the marches, in the protests?

GWENDOLYN SANDERS GAMBLE, BIRMINGHAM PROTESTOR: Our mother is a civil rights activist. And my mother would come home from the mass meetings and she would tell us about the praising and the singing, and the remarks that were made as far as non-violence is concerned.

And it opened up our eyes to a lot of things like we were not getting a quality education. And when I realized that a little white student that was in the fifth grade, and I used the same book in the seventh grade, it woke me up to let me know something wasn't right and that something had to be done.

And when our mother got involved, that made us get involved.

BROWN: Dorothy, did you think at any point that because you were kids, that they would not be as nasty to you as they would be to adults?

DOROTHY SANDERS SLONES, BIRMINGHAM PROTESTOR: We thought so, yes. As children you don't quite think as adults do, of course, and we thought going out to protest for our civil rights would not affect us in the way that it did, as far as the violence, because we weren't expecting it -- at first.

BROWN: Were you wrong?

SLONES: Yes, were.

GAMBLE: Very much so.

SLONES: Very much so.

BROWN: Dorothy, do you have children who are school age now?

SLONES: No, my children are adults now.

BROWN: When they went to school, did they go to schools that were predominantly African-American?

SLONES: Yes, both of them did. Yes.

BROWN: Does that surprise you? Or concern you?

SLONES: It does concern me in that our fighting for integration seemingly did not help the situation at all, because they ended up going to predominantly black schools as well.

BROWN: And Gwendolyn, your kids have much appreciation for what happened 40 years ago and what happened -- before what happened 40 years ago? What the conditions were in the South for African- Americans?

GAMBLE: Well, I don't think that my children, as well as other children, clearly understand what happened prior to that time. But by having me and my two sisters, who were very active in the movement, as far as recruiting students and some of the other experiences that we had during that time, by educating them to what we did and what we saw happened. I think it made a difference to them. And the older they get, I think they understand it better.

We had to make sure that they understood that the things that they have today, were not the things that we had as children. And because of this movement, we were able to change things for them, as well the world.

BROWN: Do you think it is even possible for kids who have grown up in the post-segregated era to imagine what it was like to be literally less than equal? To not be able to vote or to be restricted from voting and lots of ways, to not be able to stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, ride in the front of the bus, and the rest, is that even imaginable for children?

GAMBLE: I don't think it is, you know, if you haven't really lived it, then you cannot say that you really and fully understand. They cannot imagine by the things that have been laid for them today. They cannot imagine that this actually happened. And it happened to real, live human beings.

BROWN: Deborah, let's end this with you. Is there one memory more than all others that stands out?

AVERY: I think the one time, when were protesting down in front of one of the department stores, the three of us, we were attacked by dogs and the policemen.

GAMBLE: And fire hoses.

AVERY: And the fire hoses. That thought will never end. It was devastating. We lived through it. But that, I know, will always stay in my mind.

BROWN: Thank you all for joining us. I expect it will be an interesting weekend down there.

GAMBLE: Oh, it is.

BROWN: Yes. We appreciate your time tonight. And we appreciate what you did 40 years ago, as well.

GAMBLE: Thank you.

SLONES: Thank you.

AVERY: Thank you.

BROWN: We're also joined tonight by Diane McWhorter, the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning account of the time and place that we've been talking about, the book is called, "Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climatic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution." She is not a historian of Birmingham, she is of the place herself. She grew up there.

It's nice to have you with us today. Thank you.

DIANE MCWHORTER, AUTHOR, "CARRY ME HOME": Thank you, Aaron.

BROWN: The significance of tomorrow, the 3rd of May?

MCWHORTER: Tomorrow is the anniversary of the photograph, which you just showed there, which really changed history. It was a photograph taken by an AP photographer by the name of Bill Hudson, of a dog lunging at a black youth. And it --

BROWN: Let's see if we have -- if we can put it -- there we go.

MCWHORTER: And it really just graphically dramatized segregation for the country. I compare it to "Uncle Tom's Cabin", in my book, because it was just sort of one of these cultural artifacts that transformed everything. Even though, if you break it down in its particulars, there are a lot of sort of misleading things. For example, the youth who was being attacked was not a demonstrator that day. And yet, he's striking this pose of sort of beatific non-violence and conveying the sort of acceptance, but firmness and resistance of the children demonstrating there. Even though, he was playing hooky from school, and just there watching.

He was from a middle-class family in black Birmingham. And they were resistant to King. They were not supporters of the civil rights movement, initially. And so his family had been quite hostile to King. So, there are just a lot of ironies in that, and yet it changed everything.

BROWN: You were what, about 11?

MCWHORTER: 10.

BROWN: You were 10.

How much awareness did you have of what it was like to be a 10- year-old black child in Birmingham, you town?

MCWHORTER: Well, we were, I was definitely on the wrong side of the revolution. I mean, my family was, we lived in what was called, over the mountain, in the suburbs. And we got this from the adults, and you still hear it over the years, that Martin Luther King was an outside agitator, and our "colored people" were very happy until he came to town. And that he was stirring up this trouble for financial gain.

And one thing that you see over and over in the South is that rather than address the merits of an argument the white Southerner will pick apart something about the forum. So, they'll say, well he's an opportunist, not -- not does his cause have merit?

BROWN: Do you ever remember saying to yourself, or let me ask it differently. Remember the first time you said to yourself, because surely you must have, I mean they couldn't drink out of the same drinking fountain, what is that about? They couldn't swim in the pool, what is that about?

MCWHORTER: Yes. The classic thing for almost every Southern child, because we all when to Sunday School was that song, "Jesus Loves the Little Children", all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight." And after the first time you kind of go, Huh?

I never would have taken any kind of moral stand, but segregation always seemed odd to me. It jus seemed weird. And children, white and black, are kind of fixated on the water fountains. And we were always trying to taste each other's water. And I know that a lot of families would have a housekeepers, who had their own bathrooms in the house. And we would always go sneak into the bathroom, the "maid's bathroom", to see what that was all about. It was just weird. And thank god, that it never seemed normal to me. That segregation ended before I had to deform my conscience really, to make it seem like it was normal.

BROWN: We've got a couple of minutes here. Do you remember it ending? Do you remember one of those moments of cognition, where what was, isn't anymore?

MCWHORTER: I don't remember. It ended because of Birmingham.

BROWN: Yes.

MCWHORTER: It ended the Civil Rights Act of '64 was introduced by President Kennedy.

BROWN: You don't remember a drinking fountain that was colored only that no longer was?

MCWHORTER: No, about it being dismantled, I don't.

BROWN: Do you think Birmingham has ultimately passed the point -- I mean, sort of as a PR thing, no city can say it sort of embraces a racist past. Does it now embrace diversity?

MCWHORTER: I think it is starting to. For a long time it really resisted its "reputation" and they thought they had this bad image in the world. I think now it is seeing that as something positive, because it did bring about the end of segregation.

And for 40 percent of the population the large black minority, it was kind of a triumphant story. Because without them, we wouldn't have had this magnificent turning point in our history. And it was just one of the great democratic uprisings in human history. And it is just something that you know, the city is looking to with pride now.

BROWN: It's a terrible question to ask, do you wish with all you know now...

MCWHORTER: Yes?

BROWN: With all you know now, you could go back 40 years ago and live it all again. See it through the eyes of someone who has thought a great deal and written a great deal about it.

MCWHORTER: Well, that's what I did writing the book. I had to revisit this past that was distorted for me. You know that I don't remember hearing about the 16th Street Baptist Church being bombed. You know?

BROWN: You have no memory about that?

MCWHORTER: Not of hearing about it. Feel like I was (INAUDIBLE), but Kennedy was assassinated two months later and I have vivid recall of that. And I had to ask myself, one of the motives for writing my book was, how could I have lived in a place and where that didn't make an imprint on me? But obviously it did, because I ended up spending longer writing my book than the civil rights movement lasted. You know, reliving it minute by minute.

BROWN: Really nice to meet you. It's wonderful, it's a wonderful piece of work and it's a great - it is one of those great American moments. Not the most comfortable American moment. But a great American moment that is being remembered, 40 years ago, now, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Thanks for coming in.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, sad to say, some things change and some things stay the same. We'll take you to a town where the high school and some of the white kids say they want their own prom. A whites only prom.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It could be you think we have belaboring the Birmingham story, after all, it was 40 years ago, in another age entirely. And so much has changed since then.

If only it were that simple. From CNN's Jason Bellini, tonight, here's a report on a town in Georgia and the visible shadow cast on it by time, supposedly, gone by.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Last year the Taylor County High School Prom proudly opened its doors for pictures of black and white students dancing together. Breaking a 31 year tradition of segregated proms.

The theme the choose was, "Make It Last Forever". This year, cameras are kept far away as white students, only white students, arrive for the prom they voted for, one to which black students are not invited.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tell me why you don't find it racist?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because it is not a racist, it's just the way it's always been. A tradition. And it was put up to vote. And we just voted against it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone votes against it, so that's how it is.

BELLINI (on camera): As the prom goers arrive the very few who are willing to speak to us say, what's the big fuss here? There's going be a joint prom next Friday for both black and white students and some say they're going to go to that one as well.

(voice over): Taylor High as 439 students, 232 of them are black. The school, just like many other rural Georgia schools , waited until the 1970s to desegregate, still has separate black and white student councils. Derris Chambless is council's vice president.

DERRIS CHAMBLESS, STUDENT: I'm disappointed because we thought that all the juniors that we go to school with every day, the wouldn't have a problem with having another integrated prom. Last year, when the seniors had an integrated prom we thought the issue was resolved. Obviously, not because when we went to rest of the white juniors, they said that they'd get back to us. But the never did. So, as prom time approached we had to go on with the plans that we had.

BELLINI: The school itself disavows any association with either prom, leaving students at spokespersons.

(on camera): Some people are calling this an all white, private party, tonight. Do you think there will be black students there as well?

JASON WAINWRIGHT, STUDENT: I don't know. But there are going to be black people catering it there. So, it's not a racist prom.

BELLINI: You're not a little bit embarrassed right now?

STUDENT: No, not at all.

BELLINI (voice over): The manager of the prom's venue seemed embarrassed, however, after getting an earful from the local NAACP leader.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You knew that this was a white prom, and you allowed this to happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I knew it was a prom. It is a prom from Taylor County.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now that you know it's a white prom, are you prepared to say that this is wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, yes. I would probably say that it is wrong, but I don't agree with it, but its not for me to agree.

BELLINI: But disagreement is what this prom has bred.

CHAMBLESS: They're my friends, I thought that they would want to have a party and everything else, but...

BELLINI: But you're not invited.

CHAMBLESS: I'm not invited.

BELLINI (voice over): A closed-door party and lingering vestige of segregation.

Jason Bellini, CNN, Columbus, Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Forty years ago it was Birmingham.

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, take a look at tomorrow morning's papers from around the country, and around the world. Tomorrow's news tonight, what do you know? We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Well, all of those seem pretty irresistible. Time to check the morning papers from around the country. Here are some of the papers that will be landing on doorstep, depending on what cities you live in.

For example, if you live in Boston and you take "The Herald", and I'm sure many people do in Boston. Here's the headline: "Strange Brew". This is the Maine arsenic story. Fatal shooting deep in Maine, coffee kill mystery. We talked about this earlier. One of the updates, one of the people that police wanted to question was shot, or shot himself.

In any case, also on the Front Page, I cannot figure out how any newspaper can pass on this story, OK? Up here, guys. "Slots of Debt for Virtue Man", this is the Bill Bennett gambling story. I mean, I don't care what you're politics are, that thing, that is just too luscious a story to pass on. There is nothing illegal about gambling. He's perfectly entitled to do that. I got it.

It is Saturday. I mean in the newspapers, it's Saturday, which therefore justifies "The Dallas Morning News" leading with, "Under Purcells (ph), It's Star Search", it's a football story of the Dallas Cowboys. It looks like Coach Purcells has fallen off the Atkins diet, like yours truly.

"Cincinnati Inquirer", it's Saturday, did I mention that? In the newspapers? And therefore, the big story in the "Cincinnati Inquirer" is called "Straight Down". Cedar Point's new right is 420 feet high, the tallest. It's 120 miles and hour, the fastest. And it goes straight down.

And I don't know, can you get in and see this picture here? Because they did -- they took a shot of this poor man's face. Man! I mean, he looks, that's awful. Isn't it? How'd you like to wake up and see yourself looking like that?

I don't know why I noticed that.

"Detroit News & Free Press", how are we doing on time, very quickly. Not much. OK, nobody else had this story, that I saw. This is a very good story. "Civilian Losses Exceed 1,100 in Baghdad". And they had the amputation story, of the guy who cut off his own arm, on the Front Page, too.

That's the morning papers. Have a great weekend. We'll see you again Monday, 10 o'clock Eastern Time. Good night, for all of us.

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