Alabama African American Civil Rights Heritage Sites Consortium’s Post

Transcript

I specifically mentioned how students at a suburban high school were at a protest for George Floyd in 2020, had absolutely no idea that Martin Luther King was arrested Saint Augustine in 1964, and that was the same county where they attended schools. These were Ivy League students. These are students going to great universities. I guess my question is what can what can local journalists do to, especially those of us in Florida to to encourage our editors to include these true things? Sure. I want, I want to emphasize there's something, there's a story in the Bible, but the disciplines are out in the in the sea and the fishing all night and they're not able to get any fish. And then Jesus just shows up on the shore and there's two different stories, but in one of them he says you need to go deeper. You need to, you need to go further out and cast your Nets. And I just want to emphasize that for for our black journalists. So oftentimes we don't go deep enough. We have this year in Birmingham and throughout the state of Alabama, series of anniversaries, 60 year anniversaries. Coming up on September the 15th, there will be the anniversary of the of the bombing of the murder of four little girls at 16th Street Baptist Church. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will be the keynote speaker on September the 15th. I hope you all will come back for that date, but there's a series of things that are leading up to that. There's a healing conference that's being done that weeks of September the 12th or the 13th that's organized by Historic Bethel Church. We're going to have Eddie Glaude with Doctor Reddy. From Princeton University is gonna be here, Sponsored by the Ballard House, which is a historic home here at AT in Birmingham. You'll all show up Presidential Year of 2024 and Selma, AL to watch everybody fight, to see who will be on the front line throwing elbows as they try to cross everything this bridge. But there was a tornado that hit Selma, AL in January 12th, just a couple of months before Bloody Sunday of this year. And there is a serious story about what is happening in Selma, what is happening in Birmingham, what is happening in Montgomery. And we have to begin to go deeper and begin to go and to reach into the resources that we have within our community. No, I'm not talking about seeding the public sphere, but. We need to embrace and go deeper in the same way that my, I'm, I'm a pastor, my, my, my rabbi friends, they don't expect that Hebrew school is going to be taught in the public schools on on Monday through Friday. That's a responsibility that they take from one another. And I just want to call upon our black journalist don't just show up for that for for for for the big moment that we're told that this is the time that we're supposed to remember. We have the the anniversary of the March 60 year. Members of the March on Washington, August, everybody will be there to report how few people are there relative to where there are 1963. But there are so many other stories and I just want to encourage and urge to connect with the activists and the organizers that are still in St. Augustine, FL. I remember when I was in college I rode on a bus with Bernard Lafayette to Augustine to go to meet with the people who were there who had. Organized. And it wasn't just Doctor King that got arrested. It was a horrible failure in terms of what the movement was doing because they the the the the the police chief wasn't quite Bull Connor enough wasn't racist enough in order for them to make the kind of games that they wanted. And there are so many complexities but then our movement the back stories that that that that that what lies underneath. And I would just encourage all of our journalists and I know it's. Because you're working for white institutions and white newsrooms and white corporate media and it is so difficult to be able to to stand up in a certain way. But I'll say to you that there are stories to be told. There are resources to be tapped. There is genius that is available to inform the the, the, the, the, the narrative that we are putting out there in in in mass media today and and and we look forward to working with you.