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Welcome to the Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates'interview series on radio and podcast. The show covering all things health, wellness, culture, and more. The show for all of us who aren't old, we're better. Each week, we'll interview superstars, experts, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things, all related to this wonderful experience of getting better, not just older. Now, here's your host, the award-winning Paul Vogelzang.
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Welcome to the Not All Better Show Smithsonian Associates interview series. On radio and podcast,
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I'm Paul Vogelsang,
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and today's conversation is both powerful and eye-opening. We are exploring an untold chapter of the civil rights movement, one that's been overshadowed for decades by other more well-known events. On June 9, 1964,
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in Tuscaloosa,
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Alabama, hundreds of black men, women, and children gathered at First African Baptist Church to march. for equality. What happened next became known as Bloody Tuesday, a day of brutal police violence where law enforcement backed by deputized white citizens and Klansmen attacked innocent protesters with tear gas, fire hoses, and nightsticks. Yet for years, this horrific event remained buried in history. Our guest today is Smithsonian Associate Historian, Dr. John Gigi. Dr. John Gigi has devoted more than a decade to uncovering this pivotal moment. His new book, Bloody Tuesday, The Untold Story of the Struggles for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa is available now. Smithsonian Associate Dr. John Gigi will be appearing at Smithsonian Associates coming up. You'll find more details in our show notes today, but we've got him. We're going to be talking to him about his upcoming presentation and his book, both titled Bloody Tuesday, The Untold Story of the Struggle. for civil rights in Tuscaloosa. Dr. Giggie today will share briefly about his upcoming Smithsonian Associates presentation, including work he's done on the deep scars left by this strategy and the incredible resilience of those who survived it. Dr. John Giggie will also touch on the ongoing fight for racial justice, reminding us of the hope that these stories can tell that they're not just history. they're still shaping lives and shaping the present. Today's interview will challenge what you think you know about the civil rights movement and shine a light on the continued importance of reckoning with our nation's past. Please join me in welcoming to the Not Old Better Show Smithsonian Associates interview series, Dr. John Gigi. Dr. John Gigi, welcome to the program.
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It's a pleasure to be here with you, Paul.
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Nice to talk to you. Today, we are going to talk about your upcoming Smithsonian Associates presentation based on this wonderful new book, Bloody Tuesday. Remarkable. Congratulations on the book. Why don't we just start right off by having you tell us briefly about your upcoming Smithsonian Associates presentation. We're all on Zoom these days, but you're going to be using it to your advantage. And how might you do that to engage our audience?
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Yeah, it's going to be a real pleasure to be part of the Smithsonian family. And So much of the hope of this book is to take a local story of incredible courage in the face of violence and show it has much wider ramifications than local stories usually have. At the same time, though, I've spent 11 years interviewing people about the worst day of their life. And I feel an obligation to take this out to the public and let them hear some of these stories, particularly in a moment like we live in today when we have a very close presidential election. and we have maybe an escalation in worries and fears about the future. In many ways, these individuals were part of an America as it was literally fraying at the seams in the mid-1960s, and they experienced enormous brutality. But even in the face of that, they chose hope and a kind of courage to push on. I think there's something valuable about that story, even more so today in this political moment.
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Yeah, wonderful. Again, congratulations on this 11 years of your time spent. The book is fantastic. I have to tell you, when I first looked at the title, I thought, oh, well, we must be talking about Selma. We must be talking about Bloody Sunday as well. But it's not. This is an entirely separate incident that took place. And so give us that distinction and why it didn't capture our national attention at that time, because it really is an amazing event.
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So Bloody Tuesday refers specifically to June 9th, 1964, eight months before the more famous and well-known Bloody Sunday. But it was a day in which more people were jailed and more people were injured than on Bloody Sunday. Specifically on Bloody Tuesday, law enforcement and Klansmen and their allies invaded and sacked a local black church, First African Baptist, that was full of 500 black individuals, many of them children, seeking, preparing to march downtown in protest of segregation. They never made it as the police blocked off that church, kicked open the windows, blew it open with water from a fire hose, lobbed dozens of tear gas grenades into the church. And as people spilled out of the church, many of them choking and gagging, they were beat, arrested, and many were sent to the hospital. Today, enormous, enormous violence. And it's important as it relates to Bloody Sunday, because the tactics that police use, extreme violence, the use of tear gas, using billy clubs and cattle prods were very much what was brought onto the bridge in Selma. So the question then is, why don't we know more about this? And there are two main reasons. One is when Reverend King got a phone call from many of his disciples in Tuscaloosa, he said, I'm sorry, but I can't come to help you today or tomorrow. He was already committed to go to St. Augustine's in Florida and maintain a protest there he had led throughout the spring. To his credit, he sent many of his close disciples, particularly James Bevel, who was critical in the Birmingham campaign. But Bevel was no media magnet like King was. And so we know that where King went, reporters followed, TV cameras followed. So in many ways, Tuscaloosa never got the attention it deserved because King didn't come here. Secondly, a few weeks after Bloody Tuesday, you had the disappearance of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. And that became the story of the civil rights movement in mid-1964. President Johnson sent the FBI and National Guardsmen to look for those three civil rights workers. That took away steam from looking at Bloody Tuesday. Most importantly, though. The media reported on Bloody Tuesday in ways that framed it away from what had happened. They framed it as efforts by Black thugs, young Black individuals preparing to tear downtown in Tuscaloosa and there ransack property and perhaps assault people. And very much the police were authorized to do what they had to do to use the violence they needed to contain these individuals. That story became the story about Bloody Tuesday for generations. And up until very recently, it was the dominant narrative. Until slowly over time, many of these individuals who were in the church, when the police and the Klan sacked it, they felt more comfortable talking about it and felt this was their time to finally bring this to the public spotlight.
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Yeah, let's talk about some of those memories, because in your research, you did unearth some really powerful testimonies that you write about in the book. And those memories, I know, must have shaped the book and your own mind about the event. What was challenging? about finding those memories and what did they tell you that really drove you and then gave you a perspective on this to become the day, the Bloody Tuesday?
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What I discovered early on is that the historical profession, as rich and wonderful as it is, it can also silence or ignore stories. Historians like me, we depend on an archive or printed records to verify and create stories. But what if in this case, those stories don't exist? or if these stories were recorded, they were recorded falsely or with different kinds of ideas. So very quickly, I had learned to trust the people I was speaking to, that they would give me what I needed to build a book, even though what I needed wasn't in the archives that I looked at or I couldn't find in newspapers. Part of it was, this came to me very clearly, I was speaking to an older black woman in her 90s, and she literally grabbed me by the lapels and said, Dr. Kiki, I'm going to tell you something, and you have to believe me. You ain't going to find it in a newspaper. but you have to believe me. And that was the sort of the core of the book. As I went through hundreds of interviews, I learned to take what people said, even though it wasn't corroborated by external evidence in many cases, and use that to build a narrative. Now, to be sure, these stories that were shared with me, sometimes 40, 50 years after the fact, the trauma scrambles the brain. And many people struggled to record exactly what had happened. And sometimes the stories conflicted. In many cases, what you see is my efforts to talk about the memory of Bloody Tuesday as was presented to me as opposed to suggesting this is the verifiable and perfect account. The piece that's important here is just the value of interviewing someone on their own terms in their own way. In many cases, I interviewed the same person multiple times and I realize now that was as important as almost anything in terms of recovering Bloody Tuesday for them. That someone could come and just sit and listen for a couple hours. And after I recorded and transcribed it, I always give it back to the individual because I was really terrified I'd get the story wrong. And somehow I would not represent their voice in a way that they wouldn't find to be truthful and honorable. So I'd return those transcripts and people would sometimes mark them up. I actually lost an interview. A woman said, this is not me. I don't believe I said this. I simply just discarded that interview, put it away and didn't use it. But in the most part, doing the history and doing the book in this way facilitated the creation of a kind of new archive that was community-based and run by and for the individuals I interviewed. And that way, it was recreating a different kind of history profession, almost. One that was enormously rooted in the community and allowed the community tremendous power over the way they would sculpt their voice and the narrative of the book.
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One of the corroborating proof, perhaps, was that the Ku Klux Klan is headquartered. there in Tuscaloosa. And I just thought to myself, if for no other reason, the fact that they're based there must have exacted a certain amount of violence, a certain level of violence, maybe not seen as they spread themselves out. It seemed like you really were kind of referring to that and intensification of some of the violence based on the KKK being headquartered right there.
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The reason Bloody Tuesday was so important in the overall scheme of the movement is that Reverend King recognized that Tuscaloosa was the national headquarters for the Klan. This is where the imperial wizard Robert Shelton was quarterbacking terror campaigns across the South. And Reverend King recognized that if he could somehow break segregation in the Klan's own backyard, it would carry enormous significance for the movement as a whole. But he also realized it would carry enormous risk because he could never anticipate what happened in First African on that day on June 9th. The level of violence, the extraordinary terror that it unleashed for years. But in the end, he knew that he had to take the fight to Tuscaloosa to broaden the movement's ability to attract new volunteers and new money. He did that with Tuscaloosa. I should say, one of the things that these interviews drove home that I don't think historians capture enough is the daily level of violence that these individuals lived with. So often we think of the movement as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and perhaps the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. But the daily level of fear and violence, which began during the movement but had an enormous... pre-history. But in many ways, Tuscaloosa is one of the most violent spots in the deep south by the mid-1960s. There were over 100 lynchings in the county, and there wasn't a black person I spoke to that didn't have a story or a warning from her grandparent about, be careful, don't be on the roads by yourself, don't travel by yourself. These weren't errant stories. This is how people grew up. So these individuals, again, to sort of move into that church on June 9th, knowing that there was going to be violence. require them to hold in abeyance, at least for a moment, a whole lifetime of rumor and of story and of family history that just testifies to the courage of these individuals on that day.
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You're also right. I thought this was equally fascinating that community groups began to arm themselves for really some of the first time in Tuscaloosa. And that was a that was a big step that there was enough fear and rumor and. all of this potential violence being inflicted on them that they just felt the need to arm themselves. And that changed the dynamic.
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One of the powerful lessons of the Tuscaloosa campaign, as King once referred to it, was eventually the black community arms itself to the teeth, and not so much to plan revenge, or not so much to attack what individuals to protect their own. It's one thing, you know, to be spit on or to be pushed while you're picketing. It's another. to recognize that the main black church in West Alabama has been ruined and that threats of families and households being blown up that required in the minds of many individuals a different response. So then the task becomes how do you create armed black self-defense but maintain an interest in non-violent social protest and this tension vibrated in Tuscaloosa and some people left the movement they couldn't abide by the rule of not striking back and in this case just protecting yourself even with guns. it was a reminder that the movement was never completely non-violent reverend king traveled with armed bodyguards by the mid-1960 pretty much every major civil rights leader had protection and that emanated throughout the community such that after bloody tuesday the black community had people policing itself there were men on stoops with shotguns women were arming themselves i worry that that story gets lost in our history of the movement which always focuses on this bloodless revolution in the sense that Blacks simply were willing to endure the torment of the Klan or of law enforcement. They did, but they also armed themselves. And this had enormous significance because it began to limit the ability of the police or the Klan to come into Black neighbors and expect to be able to enact violence without any kind of repair, any kind of response.
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Hi, it's Paul. Do you love entertaining, informative, eclectic, insightful programs about culture, health, science, life, and everything Smithsonian? As part of our Smithsonian Associates interview series on radio and podcast, we're introducing you to the new Smithsonian Associates streaming series. Smithsonian, a nonprofit organization, is excited to present this new aspect of their 55 years as the world's largest museum-based educational program. Join us from the comfort of your home as we periodically interview Smithsonian Associate guest speakers. Our audience here on radio and podcast can explore our website for more information, links and details at notold-better.com. Thanks, everybody.
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Our guest today is Dr. John Gigi. Dr. John Gigi is a Smithsonian associate will be appearing at Smithsonian Associates coming up. The title of his new book is Bloody Tuesday. We will have links so their audience can find out more information about Dr. Gigi, his new book Bloody Tuesday and his upcoming Smithsonian Associates presentation. The book is excellent. Dr. Gigi, one of the reviews that I thought was just so powerful, says Dr. John Gigi's Bloody Tuesday is an important fulcrum. in the expanding civil rights history of the state, offering a compelling account of the horrifying brutality Tuscaloosa officials unleashed on its black citizens in the face of their concerted efforts to desegregate the city and the protracted efforts to belie the toll of state-sanctioned racial terrorism. Powerful. It really is excellent. We're looking forward to seeing you at Smithsonian Associates coming up. I just wanted to touch for a moment on something a bit lighthearted from the book, the prologue. You refer to Reverend T.W. Linton there, and I say lighthearted. It isn't so much lighthearted, but I just thought an interesting point to make in your prologue about a haircut, of all things, in a place of a barbershop, where some of this, the development of the book actually took place. If you'd tell us that story, I think we'd all love to hear it.
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The book really began in a barbershop. I had been having my hair cut by Reverend T.Y. Linton, who was leader of the movement in the mid-1960s. I met him at a church function, and he invited me to the barbershop. He said he promised to cut my hair, but also give me a story. And that began over a decade-long relationship. He became, after the movement, the single most important carrying the memory of Bloody Tuesday. He converted that barbershop into a living museum. He found every newspaper article he could and cut it out and framed it. He had... small pamphlets. He had small pictures. And what I remember most was how upset he was that no one would follow the story in the way that he wanted to, but also that he became my muse. Once I said, you know, this is a story I'm interested in, he would call me. He would wait for me when I said I was coming by. But also that barbershop was a place of some embarrassment for me, because even as I learned of this story early on, I leaned away from it. I told him that sometimes I was just too busy or I had to work on something else. And then early on in the book, he told me he wanted more than just a monograph. He wanted us to work together to take these oral histories, to get the truth of that day into the schools or into the churches or maybe put a sign up. And he was constantly berating me. I use that word constantly berating me because he wanted more of the public history of this book to be out there. He's a very funny man. At one point, I thought I need to get this book out first. He goes. That's great, but what if nobody reads it? Then what happens? But part of the joy of the book was to work with him and begin to develop a public landscape that puts signs up around the community testifying to that day, but also producing a civil rights trail guide for Tuscaloosa, that center Bloody Tuesday. And then lastly, we worked together to offer a Black history class in a local school. We didn't realize it at the time, but became the first Black history course taught every day, all year at a Black public school. And his vision was part of that. So many ways he was asking me in the historical profession in general, can you do more than just write a book? Can you take the message and take the truth and bear witness to it in different fashions so that the meaning of the book isn't contained between the pages of its covers but has a different resonance? And that way I can't thank him enough because he taught me about the limits of the profession and perhaps the ways to revive history and the humanities is to think about its public meaning, to work with schools and churches and community groups to take ideas and give them the widest possible. manifestation as we can.
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Well, thank you, certainly, Reverend Linton, for staying with this subject. Again, the book, Bloody Tuesday is Wonderful. Smithsonian Associate Dr. John Gigi has been our guest. 11 years of your life devoted to this. What surprised you at the end? Because I'll tell you, one of the things that grabbed me among so many fascinating elements was just the role that women played in the community and in shaping some of the protests. So maybe... Talk about what surprised you and maybe just touch on that element of what the women in the community were doing.
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What I discovered early on was the Tuscaloosa campaign was a women's movement. Women young and old, they were part of the mass meetings on Monday nights. They were picketing. They were marching in the streets. They were raising money. They were grabbing their girlfriends to come to the church. Their voices were never registered at the top of the masthead. They weren't in formal positions of leadership. But in Tuscaloosa, there was no progress for freedom without these women marching in the streets. That had different ramifications. One of the reasons that Tuscaloosa citizens targeted the stores to demand equal treatment was that that's where black women worked. And they would consistently tell stories about being threatened there, or that when they would get paid, they would get paid half of the amount that they were deserved. Or they went shopping in these stores as was their duty as young women. They remember going into these stores and if they were to touch any article of clothing, they had to buy it. So they would come to these stores and they would have their dress sizes written out and they would have an outline of their shoe because once they touched a piece of clothing they had to buy it. These indignities, they shaped the ways in which protest was organized. So integrating stores is number one because that's what black women demanded. The second piece of this, and this connects to the role of armed black self-defense, These women talked consistently about fears of violence, whether it be physical assault or sexual assault. And so they demanded that as the movement progressed, that greater levels of protection be awarded all marchers. It helped me think about the connection between armed black self-defense and the call for these women for greater peace and greater security and greater protection. In the end, when I center these black women's voices, the movement looks different. right suddenly you see the ways in which we understand why these stores why is armed black self-defense becoming so important because these women who were often the majority in these marches they were demanding it other pieces that surprised me was how quickly the clan despite his bravado back down that in the face of armed black self-defense and the threat of return violence they would literally pull back sometimes someone once told me the clan was never as powerful as they thought they were This was an older black citizen, and I think they were right. Lastly, I was also surprised by how fast the federal government responded to the cries for justice from Tuscaloosa. Immediately after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, a few weeks after Bloody Tuesday, Attorney General Kennedy filed suit against white merchants demanding that they integrate as soon as possible. At the same time, J. Edgar Hoover redoubled efforts to begin to harass and monitor the Klan. So the federal government began to enlist efforts to aid Tuscaloosa's citizens. I think that's an important piece of the story. And it also testifies to the role of Tuscaloosa in the movement. Kennedy on the one hand and Hoover on the other, they also recognize that defeating the Klan on its own home turf carried enormous power for Americans as they saw, in this case, the role of the federal government in helping blast citizens open up doors to progress.
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Dr. Gigi, final question for you. Thanks so much for your time. But at the top of the show, you mentioned the word hope. And I wonder if you'll... tell us perhaps a little bit more about that, especially in relation to what all of us can learn about hope from events and tragedies such as Bloody Tuesday, because I think there is a good deal to be learned from this.
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One of the questions I always asked the people I interviewed was, how did you carry on? How is it that you didn't simply drop out of the pursuit of justice and develop a irreconcilable mistrust of the federal government or the local government? And this was in the face of enormous terror and violence. It was interesting. It was more trust in the government, but also prepare. By trust, they meant for generations, they had learned about democracy as the best opportunity for citizens of limited means or marginalized citizens to advance. But it wasn't going to happen on its own. So these citizens continually to expand their ability to organize. After Bloody Tuesday, Tuscaloosa paired with communities around West Alabama to swell their ranks. they began to file local lawsuits as much as they could. And they worked even harder with Reverend King as much as he could afford them help. So that trust that the government could be managed and squeezed to produce a democratic result never left them. At the same time, they did participate in armed self-defense to protect their homes and their properties. But what rings out to me today is this people faced a brutality like few did during the movement. If they chose not to withdraw or to respond in kind. but instead to trust that through more organizing, in their case more prayer, that a better day was coming. It's a message today that we need to carry forward with the increasing elevation of political violence in rhetoric or the assassination attempts on President Trump. It's important to remember that when days were darker, where the country was tearing apart over the matter of racial justice, that citizens who experienced the worst of America in the end acted like the best of America and demanded that justice be served and democracy broaden itself. to begin to wrap its arms around all citizens. It's a message I think that we have to hold on to as we move into the election season.
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Thank you. Wonderful. Dr. John Gigi, author of the new book, Bloody Tuesday, The Untold Story of the Struggle for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa has been our guest. Written this wonderful new book. We'll have links to the book as well as all of the other information about Dr. Gigi's work and his upcoming Smithsonian Associates presentation. Thanks, Dr. Gigi. We'd love to have you back. to just selfishly as you do more work in this area or all the other areas that you work in please consider coming back i know our audience will just love to hear from you my pleasure paul thanks so much for speaking with me today thank you dr gigi my thanks to smithsonian associate dr john gigi smithsonian associate dr john gigi will be appearing at smithsonian associates you will find details in our show notes today about his upcoming presentation titled Bloody Tuesday, the untold story of the struggle for civil rights in Tuscaloosa. My thanks to the Smithsonian team for all they do to support the show. My thanks to executive editor Sam Hanegar. My thanks to you, our wonderful audience here on the radio show and on podcasts. Thanks, everybody. Please be well, be safe, and let's talk about better, the not old better show. We'll see you next week.
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Thanks for joining us this week on the Not Old Better Show, Smithsonian Associates interview series on radio and podcast. To find out more about all of today's stories, or to view our extensive back catalog of previous shows, simply visit notold-better.com. Join us again next time as we deep dive into some of the most fascinating real-life stories from across the world, all focused on this wonderful experience of getting better, not just older. Let's talk about better. The Not Old Better Show.
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Hi,
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one final thing. Please check out our website for this episode and all episodes at notold-better.com or subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and be sure to check out your local radio stations to find out more about The Not Old Better Show on podcast and radio. You can find us all over social media. Our Twitter feed is notoldbetter and we're on Instagram at notoldbetter2. The Not Old Better Show is a production of NOBS. studios. I'm Paul Vogelsang, and I hope you'll join me again next time to talk about better, the not old better show. Thanks everybody. We'll see you next week.
