voules one for blacks one for whites to take the oath there were separate phone booths elevators stairways the races were separate all right but they were hardly equal our series the 50s continues with the racial upheavals that beset America on its journey toward greater justice our program includes personal remembrances from a reporter who was in the trenches during the Civil Rights Wars my former colleague at NBC John Chancellor who died soon after his interview was conducted join us now as the History Channel presents the fifties the rage within what do you mean go get it man that ball way in left field I don't care what in 1954 Willie Mays at 41 home run the following year he hit the 50 [Music] Harold cap flies off with it man in the 1950s Willie Mays was the most spectacular player in Beijing once the color barrier in baseball had been broken Mays were visible proof of what talented black athletes could do they've given the chance but in parts of the country this all-star baseball player was less than a second-class citizen in southern states white beach and murdered blacks without fear of retribution at the same time athletes entertainers and musicians were changing the very character of American culture these cruel contradictions would spark a smoldering rage the time had come for America to examine the color of its soul [Music] [Music] dreaming of a white Christmas just like the ones I used to know by and large we remember the nineteen fifties through images movies advertisements and newsreels in these Technicolor memories the characters are all white the 15 million blacks then living in the United States almost never appear [Music] I am an invisible man no I'm not a spook like those who wanted Edgar Allan Poe now am I one of your Hollywood movie actor Pleasants I am a man of substance of flesh and bone fiber and liquids and that might even be said to possess of mind I'm invisible understand simply because people refused to see me in 1952 the book Invisible Man created an immediate sensation written by a young man named Ralph Ellison the novel set the problem of race at the heart of the American character it wasn't a black problem it wasn't a white problem it was an all-american problem a problem of vision we were much more as african-americans invisible in the 50s then it's possible to imagine now it's so easy to turn on the television and find somebody black on every channel and heard they turn on the radio and hear so many black Americans in those days it really was an event when somebody black appeared in the media and so we have to readjust our sights and really think where do we look to find the invisible ones [Music] so invisible were blacks that American whites simply did not see one of the largest and most rapid internal migrations in history starting in the beginning of the century and accelerating in the 40s and 50s over six million African Americans would leave the southern states to settle in the great cities of the north and west particularly Chicago [Music] many were fleeing the injustice in the South many left because the picking jobs in the southern cotton fields were replaced by machines in the north the great factories and mills were desperate for workers no matter what their car cities like Chicago offered one thing the South could not good jobs [Music] Chicago was in fact the promised land it was beyond the land of hope the dreams became realized they were playing clubs jazz clubs that's a no Louie Armstrong Ella Fitzgerald Billie Holiday just been on cotton so the it was a world within a world just give that bit of everything you got don't mean a thing if you ain't Chicago was a world apart from the life that african-americans had left behind in the south these two worlds were about to collide in the summer of 1955 a 14-year old boy from Chicago named Emmett Till decided to take a trip down south of Mississippi he traveled with a cousin wheeler Parker who had grown up in the south and knew the danger of not obeying the laws of segregation if you lived there it was like entrenched in you the rules but if you didn't you could break him without him one that's you breakin in Mississippi Emmett Till and wheeler Parker went to stay with Parker's grandfather a sharecropper named Mose Wright my grandfather was a unique man he was uh he was like the head of his house you know when he spoke everybody listen he was the man so speak once we arrived in the South by car we went to my grandfather's house pitches in money Mississippi so we had a lot of fun you know yeah fish you're hot and you ate and you sit out on you know about a woodpile telling jokes you know him it love jokes love jokes well he would pay people to tell jokes only time you would go to town there's like the weekends like we did the town of money was dirt poor but for Emmett Till and wheeler Parker it was a place to go the only store in town was Bryant's grocery today the store is a ramshackle monument to a brief moment shared by two people on a hot August day Emmett Till and the wife of the store owner Carolyn Bryant known as a local Beauty the crossroads Marilyn Monroe Carolyn Bryant was alone in the store that day when Emmett Till walked in what happened next is a mystery according to Bryant til flirted with her saying don't be afraid of me baby I've been with white girls before [Music] Emmit may have said something or just whistled at Brian whatever happened a line was crossed that was invisible to the 14 year old boy from Chicago when Carol and Bryant ran to get a gun the boys quickly left in their truck Amit begged us he said don't tell I call him Papa my grandfather mosrite Don I want you to tell them so we decided we wouldn't tell him and little girl although she said you gonna get some wool from this is it not oh I know those people they were the kind of people you know she said you're gonna hear some more [Music] Brian heard from his wife what had happened and he called his half-brother JW Milam who really was a huge physically imposing bullying man and told him a black boy had been fresh with his wife which was the front to all white manhood in the Mississippi of 1955 and he said I'll come over right now [Music] Sunday morning about 2:30 someone call at the door and I said Twitter and he said built is mr. fry I want to talk with you and boy and when I opened the door there was a man staring with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other hand I can't remember if I heard the knock but I do remember them they're talking to my grandfather and they say you got two boys here from Chicago and we want to see the one that did the talk at the store in my mind I said I'm gonna die I think the whole day if I was shaking you know and in it just wasn't afraid he didn't know the danger he was in and he wanted to put his socks on they start cursing him you know and he was saying yeah said no and they didn't like that you don't say yeah yeah I know some white people in the south it was yes sir no sir no ma'am yes ma'am you know at that time and invite him to the car and you know someone there was this is right boy and the other was here and he drove toward money that was the last time anyone saw Emmett Till alive a few days later a boy fishing found tills body in the Tallahatchie River snagged on a root a 75-pound cotton gin fan was tied to his neck with barbed wire his face and body were badly mutilated but he was identified by the ring on his finger [Music] Emmett Till's mother managed to have the body brought back to Chicago when I went to see Emmett every bone in my body turns a seal and as I began to identify pieces and bits of him such as the few remaining teams such as the ear where half of it was missing and the one either was left one was gone and the one that was left I could tell that that was a messiah because I knew the color and mr. Rayner wanted to know did I want him to retouch the body if I wanted him to fix it and I tell them no you can't fix that as to let the world I want the world to see but I have seen [Music] to show the world what had happened Emmit mother displayed her son's body in an open casket [Music] the news of the murder of Emmett Till was shocking and frightening I think there was a feeling among most people in the black community is important to remember now we're just one generation even myself removed from the South there was a feeling that this could happen to a relative of any one of us Jet magazine ran pictures of Emmett Till's disfigured corpse something that helped to make the Till case a national story the spotlight now shifted to Mississippi for the first time southern racism was a national story as reporters from all over the world streamed into the little town of Sumner Mississippi I can remember the bus didn't actually go to Sumner it drops you off on the road and you had to walk in to town and there was a big sign that said Sumner Mississippi a good place to raise a boy Sumner a good place to raise the boy I remembered very well just out of college an aspiring writer named David Halberstam managed to get an assignment to cover the till trial the reporters who had come down from the north were told not to hang around in Summoner at night because otherwise they were gonna get picked up and possibly killed and would disappear in that explosive you could just almost feel as you walk down the street that people wanted to jostle you and beat you up you could feel the hatred itched on the faces of the local White's towards anyone who was different you were their enemy this was not Americans from different states together in a courthouse this was us in them this was a foreign land go up north in n-double a-c-p tops demand it come back home Clarence Strider HG Strider who was the sheriff huge man the word seemed to come from his mouth in every other world a plantation owner Strider was furious to learn that he would have to see black reporters in the courtroom he squeezed them all in around one small table jagged with splinters Strider also put tills mother down along with a man who came to monitor the fairness of the trial Charles Diggs a congressman from Detroit those few white people that I was exposed to were surprised even shocked you know that there was such a thing as a black member of Congress they don't know what I think about anything like that one of the deputy sheriff said there's a congressman there that says he has a right to have a seat here is it what a congressman I mean it was just astonishing to them I mean it was if their world was being turned upside down the trial started on August 18th though 63% of Tallahatchie County was black every juror was white according to Mississippi custom jury service was restricted to white males over the age of 21 [Music] I remember their contempt for the process I remember them sort of smirking and winking and sitting out on the front steps as if it were a picnic giving ice cream cones to their children I mean they were enjoying it it was their largest moment there was no field of conviction the mother of the victim couldn't help but notice the love between parents and children that passed between the family of the accused each of them have a little boy on each knee they both have two sons and their mother coming behind them wiping their brows with a claw giving them something to drink Fanning them leaning over to ask them if they were comfortable the case for the prosecution was solid every detail of the murder including the gin fan was presented in court the man who collected much of the evidence was a fearless n-double-a-cp representative named maker Evers the key witness was Mose Wright who had been hiding out since the night of the murder when he appeared in Sumner he was fully aware of the danger of what he was about to do I remember his tremendous dignity of mosrite and and the tremendous you know he stood ramrod straight and he pointed at those men and it was a unforgettable moment you knew was a historical moment because you know nobody and his position had ever done that before [Music] when the defense gave its closing argument I remember the one of the last things they said was I know that every last anglo-saxon one of you will have the courage to bring back a verdict of not guilty and set these men free after a five-day trial the jury retired to make its decision to give the illusion of some deliberation the 12 men paused to share a soda pop only 67 minutes after they left the courtroom they returned with their decision not guilty but that verdict came through it was as if to say it's open season on and the noise that went up the celebration that went on was unbelievable I'm just glad to talk with you [Music] was scary it was like here we are this is Diamond America and this is America and this is a place where people can call a child out of a house and take him away and he's never seen again until his body comes up in the river and he's dead this was like the most dramatic illustration of the nightmare of what we were living with and what we had created two months after the trial a journalist named William Bradford Huie paid Milam and Bryant $4,000 to tell him the real story because they could not be tried twice for the same crime they agreed in a blow-by-blow description they told youi how they had stripped the boy beat him shot him in the head tied him to the old cotton gin fan and then thrown him in the Tallahatchie River at first they said they didn't plan to kill the boy but after the way he acted toward them they felt they had no choice when they made this story public of how they brutal as is fought because he would not say he was afraid of them as a white it's white people that just turned us all along it gave us no energy to get into it so it was a stimulant of major stimulant and pushing people further and deeper into the civil rights movement in Sumner one day after the trial took place a young reporter for NBC radio named John Chancellor was rushed by a group of whites furious at the way the northern media had portrayed their town I had on my shoulder a little tape recorder a little portable tape recorder that wasn't connected to anything but its own battery and so what I did was I held up this little microphone and I said you can do what you want to me but the whole world is gonna know about it if you do it know that before you take one more step and they stopped the unexpected power of the microphone the camera would be used by sophisticated young black leaders to make the struggle for civil rights visible to the entire nation in 1954 the Supreme Court decision of Brown versus Board of Education had declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional to provide equal opportunity for all children schools across the country would be forced to integrate in 1957 Little Rock Arkansas in order to comply with the Supreme Court moved to integrate its Central High School starting slowly the local school board chose nine african-american students for their excellent grade this popular resentment did not escape the notice of Orval Faubus the governor of Arkansas seeking re-election he would find a dramatic way of courting the segregationist vote he was not a racist I don't think he was blown motivated by any kind of animosity toward blacks on the other hand he was expedient he used the race issue when it served his purpose but equally important in some cases perhaps even more important was what I always used to define as they ain't no son of gonna tell me what to do syndrome units of the National Guard have been and are now being mobilized with the mission to maintain our restore the peace and good order of this community Paul bus used the force of the Arkansas National Guard to prevent any black students from entering Central High School [Music] afraid of potential violence the n-double-a-cp called back the black children who were supposed to attend school that day but one girl Elizabeth Eckford didn't have a phone she went to school alone [Music] a white woman intervened and managed to escort Elizabeth Eckford to a nearby bus [Music] but TV viewers around the country had been horrified by what had happened to the young girl President Eisenhower tried to reach a compromise with Paulus but when fathers called off the National Guard he left the explosive situation in the hands of a few local police when the students managed to sneak into school through a back entrance the white crowd turned on a black reporter outside the school [Music] in the Cold War with the Soviet Union the United States promoted the justice of the American Way now to a watching world American ideals seem little more than a sham that night President Eisenhower addressed the nation our enemies are going over this entity and using it everywhere to misrepresent our only we are portrayed as a violator of those standards of conduct with the peoples of the world United to proclaim than the Charter Review magazine mob rule can not be allowed to override the decision of our Court Eisenhower ordered the invasion of Arkansas by units of the hundred and first Airborne Division the army had instructions to maintain order and to secure the safety of the black students while they attended school to Orval Faubus it was a replay of the civil war we are now an occupied territory in the name of Liberty we hold so dear in the name of decency which we are carry that is happening in America Eisenhower calling out the total the beginning a real aid assist to the modern civil rights movement because it put the federal government fairly behind the desires and efforts of black citizens first time anybody could think of that somebody cared about us somebody cared about protecting our rights somebody cared about black citizens every day the soldiers escorted the children to school in a convoy of jeeps mounted with machine guns [Music] you know this is a group of nine teenagers and we get out of the station wagon they have cleared the street we're surrounded by a cordon of soldiers with bayonets drawn marching up to the front of the steps you had you know it was an overwhelming moment they are in the school now the students see still on the steps up their television had reached its mobile stage it could take you where you could not be which is the most important thing about television and show you things you could not see there were one would get up in the morning and turn on the television we got television that turn on the television to see what happened in a Little Rock the army before TV racism had been invisible to most white now as sets across the nation tuned into the Little Rock story Americans saw their moral scars exposed by a new group of reporters John Chancellor of NBC News reporting from Little Rock I must say I was very pleased to see the 100 first airborne marching down that Street I hated the feeling that I was taking sides but every reporter has a heart and mine just soared I saw not just the troopers coming down the street I saw the Constitution of the United States coming down that Street these new reporters are not just reporters but on a story of this moral intensity John Chancellor and the men like him are in fact modern-day prophets and he might as well be saying as the film is rolling this is a sin this is a sin this is a sin [Music] the drama of Little Rock continued on throughout the year despite military guards in the hallways the nine children endured insults cruel pranks and assaults but by June one senior Ernest green did receive his diploma in a ceremony attended by Martin Luther King no less the MAL entertainment figures as Louie Armstrong the great trumpet player made the statement if the United States can't take care of those little children to hell with the United States shocked Louis Armstrong said that nice mildly nobody knows the trouble I've seen he had been hiding himself he had been invisible his real self had been invisible and suddenly he becomes visible as the real Louie Armstrong that'll complete trouble but he could be a man [Music] Bill Russell raged against his invisibility the skills that most people couldn't see and the humanity they wouldn't recognize he wanted to be seen not just as a player but as a man he would do these superhuman things at times during games that only a guy that needed to win I mean down deep in his guts needed to win would do Bill Russell was born in Monroe Louisiana in 1934 as a young boy he was smart and unusually sensitive to the world of the old south [Music] at the age of nine Russell and his family left Louisiana and became part of the great black migration to the north and to the west the long train ride to Oakland California made a big impression on the young Russell whose lifelong fondness for trains was linked to a sense of possibility stirred by his journey out of the south in Oakland Russell saw basketball as a way to move on up to a better life as a senior he impressed local Scouts who offered him a scholarship at the University of San Francisco where the team was known as the dogs [Music] you at the University of San Francisco in the early 50s was not a big basketball power or program and have their own gym they would call the homeless Dons and Russell scholarship was not a great deal he had to wash dishes and work in the cafeteria and have a job while he was there so they were not a perennial power by any means and he walked on the campus Russell quickly adapted to college life as a star basketball player he was idolized on campus it was a heady time then the team took their first trip down south to Louisiana number four on the USF team was Casey Jones one play on the tone the team had never been south gene brown raised in San Francisco and we're having fun with this the blacks and white players we haven't been fun with the with the with the slave thing but to sit in the back back of the bus thing and we were laughing joking about it but as soon as a plane landed in New Orleans and we stepped out to flame into the lobby all sudden is this this great clouds came down and his frown came on on the black players faces these signs up there white whites only blacks on it is the water fountains James Brown had to go to restroom he came back crying because he saw the signs up there we were upset about this atmosphere of your your lesson that human being we stepped on the court that night and he saw this scowl on bill Russell's face which indicated to everyone else that okay so this is what it's about we are going to tear this team apart and we went out and just murdered the other team about 20 to 25 [Music] [Music] no one had ever seen a player like Bill Russell before he was a big man who ran his defense was so good it became an offensive weapon though his shot was Gaulke he was so fast and so smart he was still a big scorer remember the chief with Jack Nicholson and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Nicholson was stationed this gigantic indian man down beneath the basket and say chief catch the ball put the ball in the basket that's the way the game was played and he had these behemoths guys under the basket they weren't very mobile it didn't matter they were told everybody else and could score Russell comes in and a guy he was also tall it was very mobile very quick and he changes their shots the shots are blocked all of a sudden these guys are surprised this man's blocking his shots your blocked shots and got the rebound then behind that comes a past quick and that first time we would have was involuntary but that you guys have [Music] after one early loss in his junior year Russell made sure that the Dons never lost again they won 55 games in a row and two national championships at the end of his senior year Russell's extraordinary success led to speculation what protein would he play for the Globetrotters cutting capers in Madison Square Garden a little wizardry in the pregame workout at a time when the NBA was mostly quiet a novelty team called the Harlem Globetrotters drew many of the most talented black college players so the Globetrotters made Russell a good offer he wasn't sure he wanted to play the clown bill was insulted by the fact that the general manager of the Harlem Globetrotters chose not to speak to Russell himself he talked to his coach and bill found is very insulting and that was it Red Auerbach the coach of the Boston Celtics respected Russell's intelligence he signed him because he saw what others did not Russell was a new kind of player for a new kind of game at the time the Celtics had a great ball handler named Bob Cousy they had a good outside shooter named Tom Heinsohn but they needed somebody to get them the ball to play defense and rebound the missing piece [Applause] [Music] complemented the skills that we had in place completely he added a dimension to the game shot-blocking that had never been witnessed before at six nine and a half or whatever he was literally as quick as a cat and he caught everyone by surprise the entire basketball world began ba he the Celtics and as I say the result was you know 11 championships in 13 years [Music] it was one of the greatest competitors may be the greatest competitor I ever saw playful whatever psychological reason he needed to be the best he would actually get physically ill before ballgames that's how important in his life playing a basketball game was Russell would vomits before the big games and that was the deal that they couldn't do out of the locker room until bill had done his thing over in the stall some felt that Russell didn't really enjoy the game for him it was a mission a way to release a deep rage within I think the source of the anger is the racial issue the disrespect shown in human beings because of their color and here just has total disdain for civilization being in this mode I mean not respecting a person for being a human being in cities like st. Louis which were still segregated where they couldn't get service in a coffee shop and where there were a lot of racial taunts when he played and always played his best as it happened the Celtics met the st. Louis Hawks for the title in Russell's first year for Russell it was an opportunity to prove something to st. Louis and the country the series came down to a seventh and final game with only a few seconds remaining one of the Hawks streaked all alone toward the basket to win the game when Russell performed a superhuman feat Russell went by me like I was standing still he ran the length of the court faster than they could make one long pass and a dribble one dribble to the basket Russell watch the shot Russell finished with 32 rebounds and five blocked shots in the celebration afterwards teammates shaved off Russell's goatee he was a very rare athlete whereas stats didn't mean anything he made his teammates better and the teammates I don't know what they thought of him off the floor away from the game but I think when they were playing the games they all loved Bill Russell Russell loved playing for the Celtics but he did not like the city of Boston at first the only black player on the team he felt that fans revered him as a player while they denied the humanity of ordinary african-americans it was a northern city but there was under an undertow a cultural undertow of races that he that he must have found odious and he kept himself apart he acted as if he was in a foreign country and maybe he was in one incident in Boston thugs broke into Russell's house and scrawled the word on the walls and a lot of Boston people don't understand that this truly did happening and he never mentioned it because he didn't want to let those people know that they had heard him that much we saw within our unit the complete bill vessel once he stepped outside of that unit on a plane and a train and a hotel lobby he would pull the shade off the court Russell refused to meet the expectations of fans and reporters he rarely agreed to interviews and over the years he infuriated fans by refusing to sign any autographs ever one day when I asked him to sign a picture because I wanted all of each the players that I had played with to sign an autograph and he refused I didn't take that too well so hey I can understand you're not signing for everybody else I'm different and I'm a teammate and he stuck to his guns he just wouldn't sign real pain he wouldn't send Bill Russell believed that the autograph was not worth anything really what the whole encounter was was for a person to meet another person and he was shake their hands and he would spend more time talking to them but he wouldn't give them the autograph because by giving him the autograph the meeting was not the meeting of two people Russell led the Celtics to 11 championships in 13 years he had changed the game of basketball and he had let everyone know that was not nearly enough I think the entire generation that he belonged to was more activist the country was paying attention this was a great theater of integration these men were proud they were college educated they were extremely articulate bill Russell's very articulate men he writes very well um and they had something to say and they were superior citizens and they were angry in 1963 Medgar Evers the man who had done so much to collect the evidence in the Emmett Till case was murdered by a white supremacist in a demonstration in Boston Bill Russell turned out to make a public declaration of his outrage later he went down south to protest the murder of three other civil rights workers in August he was at the forefront of Martin Luther King's March on Washington America was still divided into black and white worlds but now there was a difference both were beginning to see each other more clearly the invisible had become visible [Applause] throughout his days as player-coach and executive bill russell maintained his strict no autograph policy but he had a change of heart in 1994 he agreed to sign autographs in Boston charging fans four hundred ninety five dollars for his signature on a basketball the take for four hours worked one hundred fifty thousand dollars now here's a look at our next episode of the