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TAVIS SMILEY: Good evening from Montgomery, Alabama. I'm Tavis Smiley. Tonight we continue our look at the fiftieth anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Our distinguished lineup tonight includes Congressman and civil rights hero, John Lewis, the Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery, President Emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Bobby Bright, the second term Mayor of Montgomery.

Fifty years ago, this city became the epicenter of a peaceful movement that would change the course of American history, a movement sparked by the quiet courage of Rosa Parks. Fitting then we come to you tonight from the Rosa Parks Library and Museum at Troy University. We're glad you've joined us in night two of our look at the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It's coming up right now.

TAVIS: As we continue our look at the fiftieth anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I'm pleased to have with us again two true her...s of the civil rights movement. First up, Congressman John Lewis of Georgia whose courageous leadership defines an entire generation of young people in the 1960's. His home state is Alabama, but he represents Georgia in Congress.

Up next, the Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery who, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., co-founded the influential Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He is now the convener of the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda.

And finally tonight, Mayor Bobby Bright, the second term Mayor of Montgomery. Those here tonight will be pleased to know that Mayor Bright holds a Masters Degree in Criminal Justice from Troy University, where we sit tonight. Mr. Mayor, Dr. Lowery, Congressman Lewis, nice to talk to you. Glad to have you here.

Dr. Lowery, let me go right back to something you said on this program last night that I want to get back to. We didn't get a chance to work this thing out last night. You suggested on last night's program that you believe that nonviolence could still work today, that the King notion of nonviolence would still work today. But you went so far as to say you think it could have worked -- too late now on some level -- but could have worked in Iraq was the point you made last night.

Tell me how you think that King's philosophy of nonviolent resistance could work today. King wasn't dealing with Bin Laden. King wasn't dealing with Saddam Hussein. I could run the list. A lot of folk argue that the King philosophy might have worked here in Montgomery fifty years ago, but wouldn't work today.

REVEREND JOSEPH LOWERY: You ever hear of a fellow called Ho Chi Minh?

TAVIS: Yes.

LOWERY: Well, a place called Vietnam? Martin got in serious trouble. His speech at Riverside Church in April of 1967 was about the war and how he said that the bombs exploding in Vietnam in the late 1960's would explode in our economy in the 1970's and 1980's and nothing couldn't have been truer. Certainly it could have worked in Iraq. We were working nonviolent. We were negotiating through the United Nations, the community of nations. We had an embargo which is a tool of nonviolence like the boycott in Montgomery.

It was working. We just didn't give it a chance. The inspectors were dealing with the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. We don't know how far it could have gone, but we did not give it a chance before we started exploding smart bombs and sent them on dumb missions. I think certainly the violence that we've tried has not worked. I heard the president say, if we brought the troops home -- and I think we ought to. They can't get home this Christmas, but I think they ought to be home by next Christmas certainly -- but he said there'd be chaos if we did that.

Somebody needs to describe what's there now. If that isn't chaotic, we've lost 2100-plus American troops. God knows how many Iraqis have been killed. As Representative Murtha from Pennsylvania said the other day, he visited the hospitals and saw the troops who are blind, who have no stomachs, no legs, no arms, he said it's time to come home and to set a timetable.

Incidentally, the Iraqi leaders themselves met in Cairo, Egypt last week and came out with the unanimous resolution saying that they wanted the United States, those foreign troops, to set a timetable for going home and they affirmed the right of the Iraqi people to resist occupation by foreign troops. So it's not just Americans who are saying let's get ready to come home, but it's the Iraqis themselves who are saying it's time for you to go home.

TAVIS: Congressman?

JOHN LEWIS: I was there that night, April 4, 1967, when Dr. King gave that unbelievable speech against the war in Vietnam. He spoke from his soul, from his gut. He said, in effect, that he says so often, that we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish as fools. He paraphrased the words of Gandhi that it's nonviolence or nonexistence and I think, if Dr. King could speak to us today, he would still be saying nonviolence is the most powerful tool that we can use to create the beloved community, the beloved world, the beloved society.

I think nonviolence for Dr. King and for many of us during those years and for us today is one of those immutable principles that you cannot give up on. I wish President Bush would read that speech. I wish he would listen to the tape. Maybe, just maybe. I wish the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense. Maybe we should create a Department for Peace and start teaching our children the way of love and nonviolence. I think that the whole country and the whole world can learn something from what happened here in Montgomery, what happened here in the American south. It was a peaceful, nonviolent revolution.

TAVIS: I want to talk more in a minute, Congressman, about what in fact made nonviolence work here in Montgomery and we'll bring the mayor in this conversation. Before I get to that, I'll put a pin in that for just a second, but I want to stay with something you just raised here now. I raise this because I want to give you a chance to respond here.

King gave a brilliant speech in 1967. The Vietnam speech you speak of New York was a brilliant speech. The Riverside speech we're talking about, the brilliant speech. Something, though, happened. We got to be honest about this. Something happened in America from 1955 to 1967. In 1955, we had the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Fifty years ago yesterday, Rosa Parks would not give up that seat on that bus.

So King at 26 takes over the movement. He's on the cover of Time Magazine, as you recall, as a result of leading the movement here in Montgomery. In 1967, though, he gives the speech on Vietnam. By the time King gives this speech in 1967 -- he's dead, of course, assassinated the next year, 1968 -- but he had fallen out of the list, as you well know, of the most admired, the most popular, the most revered American.

They were doing these polls every year back in the days. We still do today. King had fallen off that list. He'd been on that list since 1955. By the time he got around to opposing the war in Vietnam, though, still talking about nonviolence, he had fallen off that list. What happened in America between 1955 and 1967?

LEWIS: Well, more than anything else, I think Martin Luther King, Jr. and others were speaking truth for power and the whole segments of America didn't want to hear the truth. It was too powerful. It was getting in the way. He had left the south after Selma. He went out to Los Angeles. He had gone to Chicago and he stopped talking about just public accommodations and voter registrations. He started talking about economic issues and bringing together all segments of the societies that had been left out and left behind. Low-income whites as well as blacks and Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Native-Americans.

I remember one of the meetings that took place in Atlanta where he had people from Appalachia, from the southwest, from the reservations, and people thought Dr. King was a threat to the order of things.

TAVIS: What made then the notion of nonviolence could work? We could debate all night whether it would work or could work in Iraq. I suspect Reverend Lowery is probably right, but we ain't got time to debate that. Tell me, though, why it did work, why that philosophy did work here in Montgomery fifty years ago.

LEWIS: Well, here in Montgomery, like other parts of the south, but here in Montgomery, you had something that was so different, so unique, something almost foreign, to see people in an orderly, peaceful, nonviolent passion boycotting the buses, walking, sharing rides. We went to these mass meetings at churches and some nights there would be more than one meeting, be in different parts of the city.

But by the hundreds and by the thousands, people had the sense of togetherness, the sense of solidarity and it was so peaceful and so ordered. You had the opposition bombing homes, bombing churches, intimidating people, harassing people, but people didn't strike back. They didn't take up their guns. Dr. King, when his own home was bombed, came out and appealed to a group of people to go home. Put down your guns, put down your sticks.

LOWERY: It worked because love is more powerful than hate, because we believe in the final triumph of righteousness and that the refusal of blacks in Montgomery to cooperate with an evil system brought it down. The nonviolence was a tool of love. It was an instrument of love and self-respect. Black folks weren't going to be humiliated anymore, but were not going to disrespect the white people by hating them. We'll continue to love them, but we won't let them oppress us. Love is more powerful than hate and that's why the nonviolent forces won over the forces of hate and the forces of wrong.

TAVIS: Mayor Bright, I won't ask you to speak for the entire south, but I do a lot of traveling in my line of work and I love coming down south and making appearances and meeting people and doing stuff like this. When I go to urban centers in the south, I can see the progress that has been made. I'm sure that the Congressman and Reverend Lowery will back me up on this, but you move too far beyond those urban centers and you still realize with a quickness that you are still in the south. I raise that because certain things are said and done to remind me that you're still in the deep south. So what kind of progress in fifty years are we making in the south?

BOBBY BRIGHT: We're making a lot of progress, but let me echo what Congressman Lewis just said. You know, peace should be in front of everybody's mind when there's controversy out there, not retaliatory action or vindictive action. I think what we had here in Alabama back in the 1950's and 1960's and we even have it today in the south is a peace-loving people. The vast majority of the people who lived here back in the 1950's and 1960's loved peace, they loved the laid-back, the quiet life, the slow life and we have that today here in Montgomery. Even though fifty years after the Bus Boycott began in 1955, we still have people that are slow to change. You have to guide them. You have to lead them.

As mayor, I would like to be much more progressive in the actions that we take here in the city of Montgomery to follow some of our sister cities that have a lot of things going on, activity going on, in their cities. But sometimes we fight resistance. We fight here because of our lifestyle, we fight a change. Don't want change just for the sake of change, and that's something I have to deal with every day and the people who live here have to deal with every day. Even in the 1950's when the civil rights movement started, uncertainty and change. We still have that here today in our community, but we're moving forward. We still got a ways to go, but we've still come a long way.

TAVIS: I don't mean, again, to put you on the spot here or cast aspersions on all white people included. There were a lot of good white folk down south who were involved in the movement, as you know, to help this thing work. That said, though, you mentioned change a moment ago. Somebody once said that change is inevitable. It's growth that's optional. Change is inevitable, but growth is optional. I wonder whether or not it is your sense as a mayor of this historic city, a white man obviously, I wonder whether or not it is your sense that people's hearts in the south are changing? Because you can't legislate morality. Are people's hearts changing? Is the south getting better in the hearts and minds of the people in the south?

BRIGHT: In my opinion as mayor, they are. The hearts are getting better, but you're right. You hit it on the head. You have to change in the heart before you can have the change outwardly and the appreciation and the good treatment of your neighbors and your brothers and your sisters out there. I think the hearts are changing and I'm proud to say that. I really am. You know, I'm a product of the south just like Reverend Lowery and Congressman Lewis, born and raised here. I'm a fourth generation Alabamian.

I was a boy when these gentlemen here -- let me tell you this, it's a delight and honor for me to be here among these giants, quite frankly, tonight. But I was a boy and I've read about these gentlemen here when they were going through the turbulent times of the 1950's and 1960's. I kept thinking in my heart as a young man in south Alabama what's wrong? The picture here is not a good picture. All they want to do is be treated just like us, be treated equal to us, and I was confused as many young people growing up in the south were at this point in time.

Little did I know as a young rural Alabamian that I would grow up one day and be the elected mayor of the capital city where the spark of the civil rights movement took place. It's a delight and an honor for me to be that. I also had an impression and made a decision back then, if I ever get in a position to make a difference, I will. I think we have, and I think we're on the way to make more differences.

TAVIS: Reverend Lowery, I could argue -- I won't waste the time doing this because you know these issues. You and Congressman Lewis, I want both your thoughts on this -- I could argue, with all due respect to the mayor. I could give you a litany of things. Political issues, regressive public policies, certain persons who've been elected down south. You all live here, so you know this stuff better than I do. I could give you a litany of things, though, that suggests that, while the south may have done the right thing fifty years ago, why things may have changed in 1955 and after 1955, I could argue that things are making a U-turn down south.

LOWERY: I wish you'd been at the breakfast this morning.

TAVIS: Well, you tell me whether I'm right about this or not.

LOWERY: Everything has changed and nothing has changed. I agree with the mayor that hearts can change and the key is leadership. Katrina has taught us a lesson if we'll learn it. We had not only pulled the color off poverty in the south and the face is black, but it also pulled poverty off the whole of the south and it did two things. It showed that, with leadership, with the right situation, people can come together. I've been so pleased with the stories of white people who've taken black people in and black people who've responded to the outreach of white people. It showed that, under the right influence and inspiration, people can do the right thing. But it also showed that we need real leadership in the south, indeed in this whole country.

What has come out of Katrina is that the south policy, the public policies, have kept the south in poverty. The census bureau just issued a report that, of the twenty richest counties in the country, there are only four counties from the south in the whole twenty. The twenty poorest counties in the country, seventeen of them are in the south. So the public policies of the south have kept the south in poverty, policies that tell industry to come on it and we'll keep the wages low, we'll keep the unions out so the wages can't get high, we're going to keep the races divided so we keep them fighting each other so they can't unite against their real enemies. So leadership is the key, white leadership particularly, that brings us together and that is business, political and religious leadership. We labored under the kind of leadership that tells us the Ten Commandments belong in the courthouse, but they really don't have to be in your house. They don't have to be in your heart.

That's the kind of demagogic leadership that has kept us -- let me say one more thing. I was with my grandson the other day, John, and we were watching a football game. This wide receiver was over the goal line. The ball hit him in a bad place. Hit him in the hands and he dropped it. My grandson almost cursed in my presence. He says, "I want to see that replay." I said, "Well, son, you can watch all the replay you want. I guarantee you he going to drop it every time. (laughter)". That's what the leadership in the south and indeed in this nation needs to learn. If we continue the policies of divide and conquer, if we continue the anti-union, anti-living wage philosophy, if we continue to hijack Jesus and make Him a God of exclusion instead of the Lord of inclusion, it's going to come out the same way.

TAVIS: But, Congressman, the problem is, with all due respect to Reverend Lowery, I think we don't disagree on this, but if it takes a Montgomery Bus Boycott for us to see the light -- you know that old adage that some folk see the light, some folk feel the heat -- people get around to doing the right thing eventually, but sometimes they're going to see the light, sometimes they feel the heat. does it take a bus boycott to get the races to come together? does it take 9/11 to get us to come together? does it take Katrina to get us to come together? Because, if that's what it takes, a catastrophe, for us in the south or any other place to act as one America, those numbers -- you do the math -- that ain't going to add up for long.

LEWIS: Well, without leadership -- I think Reverend Lowery is right. Without leadership, and there is a need for leadership now more than ever before. I'm talking about strong leadership, moral leadership. We don't have it in America. There was so much hope, so much optimism in America a few years ago. When John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960 and during that short period that went into the Johnson years, we had a sense of great expectation. We expected more. There was a sense of hope and optimism that we were on our way. Now at the highest level of government, you don't see it.

TAVIS: With all due respect, we got a president now who says God a whole lot more than John Kennedy did.

LEWIS: Yeah, but sometimes you got to do more than speak the word. You know, we say you can talk the talk, but you also got to walk the walk. And you got to do it not just having a photo opportunity. You got to get out there and lead. Something happened. When I saw what was happening in New Orleans, I cried. I literally cried. I couldn't believe it. We were living in America in 2005 and the most powerful nation on the face of the earth could not respond to the moans and cries of pain of those citizens. You had people there, women and children, trapped and help us, help us.

America is not Somali, it's not Bangladesh, not Haiti. It was a shame and a national disgrace. The American people responded, but the religious community is too silent. Dr. King was right. I think it was Lester Pope who first said it, that the church has been a taillight rather than a headlight and we need people to get out front.

LOWERY: And we got people that can walk on the moon and repair a spaceship on the moon, but can't fix the levee on the Mississippi. That's an issue of leadership and priorities.

BRIGHT: And let me expand on this issue about the hearts and the religious leadership. You know, we've broken down barriers in our society in the last fifty years. We've broken down barriers in the sporting events, school, employment. There's one area that I'm concerned --

TAVIS: -- although I must add as my own personal commentary, I'm still mad at Alabama for not hiring Sylvester Croom, but that's another issue, but go ahead. I digress (laughter).

BRIGHT: (Laughter) I'm a War Eagle fan. But we're forgetting one thing, one very critical thing, and that is the church community, the religious community. You know, we still are the most segregated nation in the world. At eleven o'clock on Sunday morning every week, we have to think about it. When our hearts are the most receptive to accept people who are different than we are, who look different, who are different nationalities, races and so forth is at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning.

You know, we've got to start working in that area and I think that is one key to success in us overcoming all the differences and one major hurdle that we've got to overcome in order to be able to accept each other and move forward together in a very progressive way. If we move together, if we remove this hurdle, this tremendous hurdle, and move forward together, we'll do it a lot quicker, we'll do it in a stronger nature and we'll do it in a way that we all can be proud in years to come.

TAVIS: Let me ask you right quick, Reverend Lowery, since you're the only one on the panel with a license to preach (laughter), let me ask you whether or not very quickly, Sunday morning will be forever the most segregated time in America against the backdrop of his very good analysis, the time that our hearts are most receptive to receiving?

LOWERY: Well, it may be, but that ain't the issue. I'm worried about Monday morning and Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning and Thursday morning and Friday morning and Saturday morning. You know, Friday when we cash the paychecks and Saturday when we're looking at stock market reports and so forth. You said the president uses God more than any other president. I don't know which God he's talking about because the God he talks about evidently he thinks is the God of the rich.

The God I know whom Jesus represented and reflected and was made manifest on the flesh talked about the least of these. He said, "I was hungry and you didn't feed me. I was thirsty and you didn't give me drink. I was sick and you didn't nurture me. I was in prison and you didn't administer to my needs." The disciple said, "Lord, we never would have let you be hungry and not feed you." And Jesus said, "Inasmuch as you didn't do it unto the least of these, you didn't do it unto God."

TAVIS: Now before he starts preaching with his license (laughter), let me say that's our show for tonight. My thanks to everyone here at Troy University and especially to my friend, Gina Brown, and all the good people at Alabama Public Television. Thank you for making this possible. Congressman Lewis, Reverend Lowery, Mayor Bright, thank you all. I'll see you back in Los Angeles next week right here on PBS. Until then, good night from Montgomery, Alabama as we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Thanks for watching and, as always, keep the faith.