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The members of WQED next On Q, civil rights pioneers.

This local nun took students to Alabama to protest.

This was not a student field trip.

We were doing something that was potentially very dangerous.

The Reverend C.T.

Vivian fought for the right to vote.

I'm not willing to be beaten for democracy.

And you must use democracy on the street.

And the Reverend Robert Graetz, a white preacher who stood up for his African-America neighbors when others would not.

It's a special look back at civil rights pioneers.

On Q starts now.

Welcome to On Q, I'm Michael Bartley.

For the next half hour, we're celebrating civil rights pioneers.

The names of the three people were profiling probably won't sound familiar to you, but once you see and hear their stories, you'll understand just how important their contributions were to the movement.

First up, a story that takes us back 45 years as African Americans living in Selma, Alabama, began a march to Montgomery to secure the right to vote.

That march turned ugly, with police using tear gas and violent force to block the marchers.

Some refer to that day as Bloody Sunday, but the turmoil prompted more marches from Selma to Montgomery, and it also attracted support from all across the country.

From Pittsburgh, a local nun who risked her own safety marching for equality.

President Johnson sends to Congress a bil to reinforce the right to vote.

We knew what we were getting into.

The president signs an accompanying letter to the legislators, urging swift passage for the bill that would outlaw discriminatory practices.

This was not a student field trip.

The bill's aim is to bring to fruition the goal of minority groups that have staged protests throughout the nation.

But we didn't know enough to be as afraid as we were once we got there.

This is a demonstration in Montgomery, Alabama, led by Doctor Martin Luther King.

I remember the feelings better than I remember the events.

In contras to the violence of many marches, this one is held peacefully with police blessing and under permit because it was such a well, it was the most powerful lesson I ever had in my life.

The day before, the marchers had been dispersed by state troopers and sheriffs deputies when they marched without a permit.

My name is Sister Patricia McCann.

I'm a sister of mercy here in Pittsburgh.

I was teaching it.

We called it then Mount Mercy College, Carlow University.

I taught history there.

I had been very interested in civil rights, really, all through high school because of the teachers I had in high school who raised issue and directed us to read things about civil rights and about, segregation.

The long anticipated freedom march from Selma to Alabama's capital of Montgomery finally gets underway.

We heard that they were staging a march from Montgomery to connect with the Selma marchers.

And so, four busloads of students from Pitt Duquesne Mount mercy went to participate in that March.

Well, the first day there are 3200 marchers in line.

We were supposed to connect with the Selma march.

We were marching under the auspices of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

SNCC, It was called.

And, we were our hope was it was all students.

Our hope was to connect with the Selma marcher and to just expand this march.

There are a few isolated flar ups between whites and Negroes, but otherwis the demonstration is peaceful.

We went straight there.

We were stopped in Birmingham by the Birmingham police because I think they figured out who we were.

I mean, that we were coming to join these marches and they didn't want to let us go on.

And the police there boarded the bus.

They went all through.

That was scary.

And, you know, but, one of the faculty people, told the police that we were on an educational trip through the South, which was honest.

It was more educational than we ever realized it would be.

This is me out on set in the lead up with when we got to Montgomery.

And there were hundred of students there from colleges all over the country.

That was kind of a euphoric feeling of being caught up in something important and good that was happening.

The march started early in the morning, and there had been a lot of training for the students in nonviolence and nonviolent behavior.

And we were singing hymns you know, We Shall Overcome and, all kinds of the civil rights hymns and gospel hymns.

It's me, it's me, oh, Lord, there were hundreds of kids, college kids from all over.

And we began to march toward the Capitol, and we had a permit to march.

But these policemen on horseback appeared from everywhere.

And they wer what you've seen on television, you know, they had the the Billy clubs with the whips on the end, you know, that was just so sobering.

And they began to try to scatter the marchers, to try to break up the march.

And they were going among the kids with on these horses, you know, and with the whips going in the morning when we walked that we saw cars parked along the street, cars of thre and four men in them, white men.

And it began to dawn on us that they were probably KKK.

And that was a very scary feeling.

I mean, it was real clea they were watching the marchers.

They were not watchin as if they were cheering us on.

You know, during tha time, the police, some of them on motorcycles, came right into the neighborhood, and there was a young black ma who had been with the marchers, and they had him down on the street.

I can still see this in my mind.

The motorcycle astride him, he he wasn't ru over in the sense of he wasn't, you know, they didn't run him down with the motorcycle, but they were holding him down with a motorcycle.

We didn't know what they were going to do to him, and we were so upset.

And so, you know, just wanting to try to relieve that situation.

But it was a rea clear experience of what people had gone through for months, years down there I met a man, black man, who had been a marine who was in World War II, who was on Iwo Jima, battle Iwo Jima in World War II, who came home with a Purple Heart, and who told me his story of never having been abl to vote in an American election because when he went to vote, the test they required of him was that he'd be able to write the Constitution, which, of course, I mean, I was a problems of democracy teacher.

I couldn't write the Constitution.

So, that was that just stayed in my head so much that, this is something we just have to keep doing.

No matter what it costs.

We have to fight this battle because this is not a situation Americans can live with.

A parade passe through the heart of Montgomery, pass the state capitol at the county courthous a mile from the starting point.

Street was filled with people.

You know, there were still a few police about on the motorcycles, but there weren't as man as there had been by this time.

There were a lot of TV cameras.

There were, you know, kids, students, I mean, all guns.

The street was filled with people.

Today, troopers and deputies are absent on the cit police line, the road of March.

And, all of a sudden, Martin Luther King was there.

He was walking down the street.

There were people with him and I don't know who they were, but he's walking down the street.

And so he went and he talked to some of the police, and he talked to some of the, student leaders who were milling around down in the street.

Being in the habit we were, you know, real visible, whic I think they have sometimes now and realize that was a symbol that was very, very, meaningfu symbol in that kind of context.

But he came over to us, we were in the crowd.

He was there, and he came over and thanked us for coming, thanked us for being willing to stand with them in the the battle for civil rights.

Yeah, we we met him right there in the street in Montgomery.

The Freedom March has been an historical venture and nonviolent protest.

When we got on the busse to come home, one of the things Martin Luther King told us was put another city than Pittsburgh on the front of those busses, put on the front of those busses, some southern city, Richmond, Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale, any place in the south.

Because you won't get out of here without your bus being burned if you don't.

And we start at home in the middle of the night.

We literally left Montgomery in the middle of the night to get out of town.

And I think until I knew that we were well through Virginia, I didn't breathe too easily because we we just were so afraid of what might happen to the busses because now they knew who we were.

But, home never looked so good.

When we got home I just crashed for a few days.

Coming for to carry me home, sister McCann tells On Q she had the support of her superiors at the Sisters of Mercy, and it wasn't surprising that she joined the fight.

Prior to the march, sister McCann was a member o the Catholic Interracial Council to educate people about equality.

Next, a ma whose tireless efforts to help African Americans secure the right to vote made national headlines.

He was also a close frien and lieutenant of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr, and we caught up with Reverend C.T.

Vivian when he spoke at Geneva College in Beaver Falls.

And once you hear his story, it's easy to understand why to so many.

Reverend C.T.

Vivian is a civil rights legend.

If he had murder to arrest us, why don't you get out front?

A common goal and a matter of being from the camera, facing your shirt and taking your shirt.

We're willing to be beaten for democracy.

And you may use you democracy in the street.

You beat people bloody in order that they will not have the privilege to vote.

This man pointing his finger is Reverend C.T.

Vivian.

Whenever anyone does not have the right to vote, then every man is heard the time.

1965, in Selma, Alabama, and Reverend Vivian is active in the Civil Rights movement as part of the Souther Christian leadership Conference, which was led by Doctor Martin Luther King Junior The Reverend Vivian is leading protesters to the Dallas County Courthouse in the state of Alabam to confront Sheriff Jim Clark.

Sheriff Clark was known to forcibly prevent blacks from registering to vote.

But you cannot turn your back upon the idea of justice.

You hear him saying, arrest that man, arrested man right?

Well, a huge guy that should have played halfback on the Chicago Bears, right?

He was huge.

And, he came over to get me and they grabbed me and they took me on over to the jail.

As we start up the elevator, this huge guy says, let me beat him.

Let me beat him.

But what that meant was stop the elevator between between floors and just let me beat him, for that was practice.

That was a normal practice for the whole South.

Reverend C.T.

Vivian, is, in my estimation, one of those civil rights figures who doesn't nearly get the attention and recognition that he deserves.

As a member of the, executive, board for the Souther Christian Leadership Conference, particularly as the director of national affiliates.

He was one of those, point persons that was out on the ground, in many of the places where, the movement was comin two months before, long before, the movement would ultimately make a decision to get there.

You know we talked about that whole idea of identification.

Todd Allen teaches communications at Geneva College.

He also leads a civil rights bus tour.

Every June, the tour participants visit key civil rights landmarks and hear eyewitness accounts of the movement.

What I think sometimes we unfortunately do is we we try to separate, this thing over her called the civil Rights movement and then faith, when really the civil rights movemen was people of Faith in action.

In 1960, Reverend Vivian organized lunch counter citizens in Nashville.

He also rode on the first Freedom Bus into Jackson, Mississippi, and participated in many rallies, including the March on Washington, where he heard Doctor King's I Have a Dream speech that one day, yes, this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Help me.

Welcome to Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.

And Geneva College, a lifelong social justice activist, pastor, and just all around great human being, Reverend C.T.

Vivian Recently, Reverend Vivian spoke at Geneva College.

There he told students that the world is waiting to see what their generation is all about.

We've been waiting.

And then in Jena, Louisiana of all the places in the world.

Right.

But remember, Selma, Alabama was off the map, too, right?

But it gave us the most important, most important change in American life.

And it gave us, the voting rights bill.

President Johnson addresses a joint session of Congress to push a voting rights bil aimed at ending discrimination.

Reverend Vivian also talked about the event before the passage of the voting rights bill.

President Johnson, what we need is a voting rights bill.

Our people are not allowed to vote in what's supposed to be the greates democratic country in the world.

We brag about it.

We got millions of people not voting.

We've got to change that right.

And, Johnson says he says, now, you know, I understand, because I'm from the South myself, right?

And I live with these people.

I understand, he says, but right now is not the time.

So we went down the Selma and made it the time.

All right.

And he stepped back from his paper and said, we and we shall overcome, And we did.

Right.

And we got the voting rights bill.

And his Johnson said, is that the voting rights Bill is the most important single piece of legislation in our time.

The bill's aim is to bring to fruition the goal of minority groups that have staged protests throughout the nation.

I think if we don't hear these stories, it's when we lose touch with these stories.

I mean there have been promising signs, over the years that that not that we've overcome, racism, if you will, but that we we're taking steps in the right direction.

Have we reached the dream or achieve the dream?

I don't think we have.

Now, in his 80s, Reverend Vivian is still working hard for equality and justice.

He recently started churches supporting churches.

The aim is to help African-American churches devastated by Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans rebuild their communities.

And as America's celebrates Black History Month, you expect to hear the familiar names of two civil rights leaders, of course, Marti Luther King Jr and Rosa Parks.

But you may not have hear of the Reverend Robert Graetz.

He was a young whit pastor of an all black church.

When his friend Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus back in 1955.

Chris Moore also has that story.

Yeah, well.

I thought, tha I knew a lot about the movement.

And then I was introduced to a fellow named Reverend Robert Graetz, a Lutheran pastor who pastored an all black congregation in Montgomery, Alabama, who when he went there, was just trying to, you know, learn and grow as a pastor, really wasn't thinking about getting involved in, a civil rights movement to say, but then one day, his good friend and next door neighbor, Rosa Parks, got arrested.

And kind of, as the cliche goes you know, the rest is history.

Why don't we bow our heads for a moment of prayer?

Reverend Robert Graetz and his wife Jeannie, are not well known outside of Alabama, but to many, there they are unsung heroes.

This man is a very special man, him and his wife and his family.

During the times of segregation, when everything was completely separate.

This man was the pastor of a black church and a black community.

And when he took up the fight with the rest of the black people, he became like a black person to the enemies who were against us.

In 1955, Reverend Graetz was called to serve an all black Luthera church in Montgomery, Alabama.

When they got there, he and his wife chose to live among their parishioners.

We were very comfortable living in African American communities, and interestingly enough, some years before, like about 40 years before, when that congregatio in Montgomery was established, it was white missionaries who established the congregation.

So they had had white pastors there before, but not as a part of the community.

They lived in the white community and served the congregation in the black community.

We were the first ones who actually lived right in the neighborhood.

Montgomery is carrying on more than yearlong celebration of the 50th anniversary of the bus boycott.

But Reverend Graetz and his wife, Jeannie, didn't just live there.

They were active, visibly active.

So when their next door neighbor, Rosa Parks, refuse to give up her seat on the bus, not only did they support her, they also took part in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, something very few whites did at the time.

Sunday morning first thing I did was announced to the congregation to stay off the busses.

Tomorrow I'll be out in my car.

If you need a ride, I'll take you to work.

Oh, whatever you need to be.

In a sense, I was the token white person.

There were many white people who were very supportive of what we were doing but who could not be as public as I was since I was serving a black congregation, the white community did not control my income and they could not fire me.

So I was able to be very public, which meant that white people had to realize this was in a very limited sense, but but in a very real way, it was a by cultural experience, but it wasn't easy.

Like others involved in the civil rights movement the Graetz family was threatened And Doctor King used to say to us, if you're not ready, you die.

You have no business sitting in this meeting.

We should leave now.

So we all had to face death and and reconcile ourselves to the reality that some of us were going to die.

We assumed that Doctor King was the prime target.

We also assumed that since I was the only white person in the room, that I was likel to be a high on the target list, and the fact that there were several attempts on our lives, most difficult part was people were threatened.

Our children they threw things at the house, they put sugar in our gas tank, they slashed our tires.

And then there were three bombs thrown at our house at different times, two of which went off.

The one that did not go off was large enough.

The demolitions people told us it would have leveled the entire neighborhood, and many people would have been killed.

Now, more than 50 years later, still committed to social justice, Reverend Gritz has written a book about his civil rights experience.

It's called A White Preacher's Message on Race and Reconciliation.

We thought, well, just for the sake of history, we need to add our recollections to the to the body of knowledge that's available.

A secon thing is that we think we have a unique perspective being the growing up white and now living black for a number of years and being totally involved in both communities.

There aren't that many people who have that perspective, and we need to share that s that people can understand that.

A third thing is that the role of God in the movement is too often overlooked.

This was a movement of the people of faith The book is not only a memoi of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Reverend Graetz also writes about today's challenges in the human and civil rights struggle.

Our oldest son was born gay, and we had to learn how to dea with the issue of homosexuality.

We began to realize that the civil rights movement is broader than just black and white.

And Docto King used to say that injustice anywhere is a threat to justic everywhere, so that we're we're dealing with justice issues not just race, not just gender, not just sexual orientation, not just ability, but justice in a broader sense.

And anywhere there is oppression, we who are part of this movement need to stand against that oppression.

What happens when we're discriminating is we say to other people, you don't have value.

Reverend Graetz and his wife are still taking a stand.

Now they give lectures and do tours, telling their audiences about their involvement in the civil rights movement.

If somehow, rather, we can communicate to other people the need for us to respect one another, you know, we will feel lik we have accomplished something.

And they also encourage others to embrace the idea of what Martin Luther King called the beloved community.

What I hope the readers will get out of the book is an understandin of what the beloved community is when we're traveling around the country, and particularly when we get into school settings, we will usually go up to the chalkboard and say, we want to show you a new look at a new way to look at race r, a c, e respect all cultures equally.

And we will say now the basis of the beloved community.

Is this word respect Well, I hope our readers will read about our experiences and decide for themselves.

I can do something too.

and for mor information on Reverend Graetz and his book, lo on to our website wqed.org/OnQ that's going to do it for this special edition of On Q I'm Michael Bartley.

Thanks for watching.