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Tavis: I'm honored to be here tonight at the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at Troy University with three true heroes of the civil rights era. First up, Congressman John Lewis. At age 15 he was so inspired by events here in Montgomery, that he dedicated his life to the cause, going on to become one of the movement's "big six" leaders. He is now serving his tenth term in Congress representing Georgia's fifth district.

Up next, the Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery, who in 1957 co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along with Dr. King. He was president as well. 'Ebony' magazine named him one of the nation's 15 greatest black preachers. He is now the convener of the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda.

And last, but certainly not least, Mrs. Johnnie Carr. The Montgomery native was a childhood classmate of Rosa Parks, and would become one of her closest friends. Last month in Detroit, she gave a stirring eulogy at the final home-going service for Rosa Parks. Since 1967, Mrs. Carr has served as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association. I am glad to have you three heroes, two heroes and one she-ro, on the program. Nice to see you all.

Congressman, let me start with you. I mention that you representGeorgia in Congress, as we know. 10 terms now. But you are from Alabama. So you grew up in a little place not too far from here. And at 15, you heard about what Mrs. Parks had done. Take me back to that day, some years ago, when you were just a 15-year-old boy here in Alabama.

Congressman John Lewis: Well, I was 15 years old in 1955, in the 10th grade. I heard about Rosa Parks. I heard that she had been arrested. She had been jailed. I heard about Martin Luther King Jr. a few days later, and I followed the drama of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It was something that was so appealing, so inspiring to me. I heard Dr. King's voice.

I heard his words, and it seemed like he was saying, 'John Lewis, you can become a part of this.' You know, growing up there, I'd seen segregation. I seen the signs that said 'white waiting, colored waiting.' 'White men, colored men.' 'White women, colored women.' And I didn't like it. And Rosa Parks and Dr. King and the brave and courageous black people of Montgomery provided a way for me to get involved. And ever since then, I feel like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the leadership of Dr. King, have been one of the blessings of my life.

Tavis: Tell me what it did for you and other young persons to have the example of Mrs. Parks, to have the example of Dr. King. I mean, you were a kid; you were 15. Dr. King was only 26 when he became the head of the Montgomery Improvement Association. But yet, he was able to inspire whole generations of persons even younger than him. Tell me how he and Mrs. Parks did that.

Lewis: Well I met Rosa Parks for the first time in 1957, I was 17 years old. I met Dr. King the first time in 1958 at the age of 18. To be in the presence of these two individuals, it was liberating. They were just a few years older, and somehow, in some way, they provided us with the tools that we can do something. I started attending nonviolent workshops as a student, and we studied what Dr. King was all about in Montgomery. We studied what Gandhi attempted to do in South Africa. What he accomplished in India.

We studied the role of civil disobedience, the great religions of the world. And then it came time for us to start sitting in. And we started sitting in. At lunch counters, as students, we'd sit in there waiting to be served, and someone would come up and spit on us, put a lighted cigarette out in our hair, or down our backs. Pull us off the lunch counter stools, and beat us.

We had these little dos and don'ts. Do sit up straight. Don't talk out. Don't lash back. And at the end, it said, 'Remember the teachings of Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin King Jr. God bless you.' And the day we all got arrested in Nashville, 89 of us, every single one of us had one of those, a copy of the dos and don'ts, on us.

Tavis: Dr. Lowery, it is still amazing to me, and I suspect others, 50 years later, to Congressman Lewis's point, that the weapon, the tactic, the strategy that Dr. King and those in the movement employed was a tactic, a strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience. Are you ever amazed at how wonderfully that strategy worked?

Rev.Dr. Joseph Lowery: Yes, I am. And I have to confess that at the very beginning we may really have not been totally spiritually committed to nonviolence. But we knew that we didn't have a chance against the mighty forces of the police department, the Army, the militia, the Navy. We didn't have anything like that. All the sheriff's deputies were white. There were no black police officers in our communities at that time.

And so we knew that we could not win that kind of struggle. And so, we remembered Jesus saying, 'Turn the other cheek.' We learned the lessons of Gandhi. And so nonviolence was a technique that later impressed us so forcefully, that it became a way of life, and we sought to lead the people. Martin was very effective in teaching the nonviolence as a way of life, as an expression of love, of agape, that Jesus talked about.

And so it became a very effective tool, and it disarmed our enemies. Those who wanted to assault us didn't know how to deal with nonviolence. They could have dealt very effectively with violence. They could have wiped us out. But with nonviolence, and with the whole world looking at these people willingly submitting to arrest, being beaten without retaliating, continuing to love even though they were the victims of hate. The whole country's conscience was touched, eventually the world's conscience was touched, and we won the victories of desegregation because of nonviolence.

Tavis: 50 years ago, that was then. This is now, here in Montgomery. But even beyond Montgomery, tell me, Dr. Lowery, whether or not -and I ask this question with all due respect to you and Mrs. Carr and Congressman Lewis - whether or not your generation was more naive than kids today, or whether your generation was more spiritual.

And I ask that because if you told a bunch of young black folk today, if somebody slaps you, turn the other cheek, they would laugh you out of this room. So was your generation, were you all more naive? More spiritual? 'Cause I can't necessarily imagine that line of nonviolence civil disobedience would work today in the same way it did back in the day.

Lowery: Well, I think it would work. It hasn't been tried recently. We thought it would work in South Africa. And Nelson Mandela has told us that they watched the nonviolent movement, when they could, from prison in South Africa, and they wanted to emulate it. But the difference was that in South Africa, they had no national conscience to address. There was no constitution in South Africa that called for justice and immune to discrimination.

Whereas in America, we did. We had people with conscience; we had a government that was bound by a constitution. And so we had those forces to which we could appeal. And that is why we were more effective.

And we think it would work today, I think it would work in any social struggle. I believe it is a more powerful tool than violence. I believe that we could have worked with Iraq with more negotiation, and that kind of thing. The inspectors and the others through the world community, rather than sending smart bombs on dumb missions.

I think young people today have to find a way; and it's not just in demonstrations. Nonviolence goes beyond, it is a way of life. It is a love, it's an attitude toward yourself, and self respect. And it an attitude towards others as children of God, and therefore, brothers and sisters. And so love, of which nonviolence is a tool, is a way of life that we need to embrace in every facet of our being in this country, and turn this country and the world away from violence.

Tavis: Mrs. Johnnie Carr, we would not know Dr. King and his philosophy, his strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience, had it not been for your childhood friend, Rosa Parks. It is because of her that we got to know King. And Dr. King was always very open about saying that. It was because of her that we got to know who he was. Take me back to your school days with Mrs. Rosa Parks, and tell me how you - the two of you became such friends in the fifth grade.

Johnnie Carr: Back to our school days, number one, I would like to say our parents were interested in us trying to get a good education. And in that day and time, education for blacks was very, not - almost existent. And so when our parents found out about this school that was for black girls, and they decided to enroll us in this, to help us to be able to get a good education. And that is when I met Rosa Parks, in this school. A school that was established here in Montgomery, Alabama, just for black girls.

It was owned by white teachers who came down from the north, and established this school. And in this school, all the things that were taught to us were things to help us to become the type of women or the type citizens that should be. Our background teaching, and our rearing that our parents was one of the backgrounds that I feel helped us be what we are today.

Because I feel like that a foundation of Christianity in any situation, as you were speaking to Dr. Lowery about what can happen today, about what did yesterday. I just feel that if we would take more time with our families and things, to teach them these things, it could become a reality in our lives. And I firmly believe that is one of the things that the ministers and religious leaders are gonna have to work on, is to get that going in our community.

In our homes, because out of the homes come everything in the world that you have today. Every one of us in the room today came out of some type of home. And it depends upon what was the background of your training in your home, plus other training that you receive, if you are a religious person, and went to church and learned things that you should learn from God.

And I feel to myself, and I just really honestly feel this, that if we would get a, and I use the phrase a lot of times, if we would get a little more real with God and stop playing with him, I think things could be better, and we could have more opportunity to stop some of the crimes and things that are going on in our communities.

Tavis: No question that you are a woman of faith, as we all are. And Mrs. Parks was a woman of faith. If I could get up out of this seat, which I can't do because I'm strapped down to this microphone, if I couldget out of this chair and walk to this window behind me and put a camera just over the ledge, you would in fact see the very place where Mrs. Parks was arrested and taken off the bus.

Right outside this building, this museum, is the spot on the actual street where Mrs. Parks was arrested and taken off the bus. I raise that, Mrs. Carr, because you all know this neighborhood well. But I askyou totake me back 50 years ago to where you were and how you heard the news that your childhood friend Rosa Parks had been arrested.

Carr: Well, how I heard the news was to say this, that Mr. E.D. Nixon, who was, I call one of the most fearless men that I've ever met.

Tavis: He was Mr. Civil Rights.

Carr: He was Mr. Civil Rights, and he was - what he could do to help change things in the community. And having worked with him with the NAACP and Rosa Parks also worked with the NAACP, 'cause at the time of her arrest she was secretary to the organization. And when she was arrested and they got her out of jail, they decided to talk with her, and ask her if she would be willing to have a test case of it

And when they decided that, then Mr. Nixon got on the telephone and starting calling the leaders, the ministers and the leaders in the community to tell them that they had arrested Ms. Rosa Parks. And when he called me and I answered the phone, and he said, 'Mrs. Carr, they have arrested the wrong woman now.' Two other woman had been arrested prior to that, Carvin and Ms. Smith. So this was the third black woman that had been arrested.

And he said that it's time for us to do something. But I said, 'Who have they arrested now?' And he said Rosa Parks. And I said, you are kidding. I just couldn't believe it. Because Rosa Parks was always such a kind little, quiet person. She was not noisy or boisterous or anything. And I just thought, well, if Rosa Parks had been asked to get up off her seat, she probably would have gotten up and walked off and said, "I'm not gonna get back on the bus anymore," or something like that.

But for her to have taken the stand that she took that day, it took more than just a notion for that to happen. But that is how I got the message of her being arrested. And from that day until she passed away, she and I were always very, very close friends.

Tavis: All right, so Dr. Lowery, so she is arrested 50 years ago today, December 1st, '55. December 5th, a few days later, there is a meeting to create this organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association, the MIA. King is 26; he's a kid; he is 26 years old pastoring Dexter Avenue Baptist Church here. He gets elected the first president of the MIA, the position that Mrs. Carr now holds.

So he's head of the MIA. And this boycott is announced. This thing takes off. Help me understand how it was that we were able to get, we were Negroes then, Negroes. For 381 days, to walk and to carpool through the bad weather, through the winter months. For 381 days, how did you all sustain it?

Lowery: Well let me say first of all, I don't think any of those things were accidental nor coincidental. I think they were providential. I think God was in the plan. I think Martin, by training and personality and temperament was right for leadership. Montgomery by demographics and geographics was right for the boycott.

And every black person who had ever ridden a bus in Montgomery had to drink from the bitter cup of dehumanization and humiliation.And if some black people had not, their parents had or their relatives or friends had. And they knew how humiliating an experience it could be. If it were raining, for example, and the bus was crowded, the black people had to go in the front door and put their money in the box, get back off the bus in the rain, and go around to the back door and go in.

Everybody had been humiliated. So for every African American in Montgomery, this was a personal fight. So nobody had to sell them on the need to strike back against this dehumanizing system that controlled the bus. And the final thing was they had terrific leadership,Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks refused. But Martin Luther King consented to give the leadership, and his skillful, humble -we talk about Rosa Parks' humility, Martin had humility as well.

And he was able to impress and win people because he didn't come over as bossy and arrogant. But his intellect and his spirituality merged into a force which could not be resisted by those who're already looking for a reason to fight the bus company. It didn't happen accidentally. Black folks were looking for the right moment. It wasn't the right moment when Sister Smith did; it wasn't the right moment when Carvin did; it was the right moment when Rosa Parks did. And God intervened and the rest is history.

Lewis: I think there come a time when people say, enough is enough. That they want change. And God acting through Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and the leadership created such a solidarity. It was something to watch 50 miles away, to see this drama. Unbelievable. Every day you saw these people walking, sharing a taxicab, a church station wagon.

They had this carpool. It was skillful, it was well organized. And I think - something I call the spirit of history just tracks you down, and says you have to be used for a call much larger than you. And I think that is what happened.

Tavis: I asked Mrs. Carr, Congressman, how she became such good friends with Mrs. Parks. Let me go back to your friendship with Dr. King. We all know of course you were one of his top lieutenants. We know our history rather well. We know that you almost lost your life on more than one occasion as one of his top lieutenants.

And I've always been amazed by the fact that Dr. King was so good about having so many young people around him. He just surrounded himself with young people like yourself and others who we now know. Tell me how you got to know Dr. King. I am always fascinated by these stories of how you young people got to be so close to who I believe was the greatest American we've ever produced. How did you get to know Dr. King?

Lewis: Well, when I finished high school in May of 1957, at the age of 17, I wanted to attend Troy State College, it is now called Troy University. I submitted my application, my high school transcript, and never heard a word from the school. So I wrote a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and told him I needed his help. He wrote me back, sent me a round trip Greyhound bus ticket, and invited me to come to Montgomery. In the meantime, I went off to school to Nashville.

Tavis: You had never met Dr. King before?

Lewis: I had never met him before.

Tavis: You just wrote him a letter.

Lewis: I wrote him a letter.

Tavis: Told him your story; he wrote you back and sent you a bus ticket?

Lewis: Right. I think he had this idea, can anything good come out of Troy, Alabama? I think he had this idea.

Lowery: That's still an open question. (laughs)

Tavis:(laughs)It's still an open question, Dr. Lowery said. But go ahead.

Lewis: And so he wanted to know something about this guy. So I went off to school in Nashville, and there was a young minister there named Kelly Miller Smith. And I told, Kelly Miller Smith was a friend of Dr. King, that I had been in contact with Dr. King. And Kelly informed Dr. King that I was in school in Nashville.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. got back in church and suggested when I was home for spring break to come see him. So in March of 1958, by this time I am 18 years old, I board a Greyhound bus in Troy, Alabama, come to Montgomery. A young lawyer named Fred Gray, who had been a lawyer for Rosa Parks and Dr. King in the movement, picked me up, and drove me to the First Baptist Church on Ripley Street, pastored by Reverend Ralph Abernathy, one of the leaders, and a colleague of Dr. King.

Ushered me into the pastor's study. I saw Martin Luther King Jr., and Ralph Abernathy standing behind the desk. I was scared; so nervous. I didn't know what to say or what to do. And Dr. King said, 'Are you the boy from Troy? Are you John Lewis?'

I spoke up and I said, 'Dr. King, I am John Robert Lewis.' That was the beginning. And ever since then, I got involved in the sit-ins and the freedom rides. And in 1962, at the age of 22, he asked me to become a member of the SCLC board, to be sort of a liaison between the students and adults.

Tavis: Dr. King, and I mention, Rev.Lowery, was the president of the MIA of course, the first president, but the SCLC, the organization that you once headed after him, was the only organization he founded in his lifetime. What was his reason for starting that organization out of this bus boycott?

Lowery: I am glad you asked that question. Because at the time, following the boycott, when he called me in Mobile where I was living at the time, to tell me the boycott had begun, and asked for our support,I was head of the ministerial alliance. We raised money and brought it to Montgomery. And then we had a movement started in Mobile, a movement in Birmingham, headed by Fred Shuttlesworth.

And we used to meet in Montgomery, if we could, monthly to commiserate and kind of plan strategies and comfort each other. And in that meeting, somebody suggested that we ought to have a southwide meeting. And Kelly Miller Smith that you mentioned and others. C.K. Steele in Tallahassee, T.J. Jimerson in Baton Rouge. We all met in Atlanta to organize and have a southwide movement to strengthen each other, to draw national attention to segregation on public transportation.

While we were there, Ralph's church was bombed, and we had to dismiss. But then later in late January, we met again in New Orleans in 1957 and organized a Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And Martin was the president, he was a natural choice because of his leadership in Montgomery. So that's how SCLC was born. It is a child of the parent of the Montgomery Improvement Association.

Tavis: Mrs. Carr, I'm gonna not have the pleasure of having you on this program tomorrow night when I will still be joined by Congressman Lewis and Rev.Lowery. So let me ask you before I wrap this program, what you think the value is of taking the time to look back on what happened here 50 years ago? What lessons ought we learn out of what you all did 50 years ago?

Carr: Well, the lessons to learn is first of all, you have got to understand what happened 50 years ago. And if you can get an understanding of what happened 50 years ago, after explaining that everything was segregated and nothing was - you didn't have rights and privileges like other people.

And then when you look today and see where we are, and the things that you are now able to participate, the things that you can enjoy and be a part of, it should give you a good courage. It should give you an understanding of how you should conduct yourself in order to make sure that you are a product, and you will be producing something to help make things like they ought to be.

Tavis: She is 94 years young. She is Mrs. Johnnie Carr. Mrs. Carr, nice to see you. Rev.Lowery and Congressman Lewis, we'll continue this conversation tomorrow night on this program.

Thank you for watching. I want to thank all the folk here at Troy University and Alabama Public Television. We will be back again next time for night two of our look at the 50th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Thanks for watching. We will see you tomorrow night. Until then, keep the faith.