0:15

Pushkin Before

0:19

we begin, a warning this episode

0:21

contains material that may be upsetting

0:23

to some listeners. Not

0:26

long ago, I drove from Atlanta, Georgia

0:28

to Birmingham, Alabama. It's

0:32

a straight shot west on I twenty one

0:34

hundred and fifty miles of rolling hills

0:36

and piney woods. I got

0:39

off the freeway on the downtown exit, just

0:41

before what the locals call the Malfunction

0:43

junction, and drove a few blocks

0:46

south until I came to Kelly Ingram

0:48

Park, which covers a full city

0:50

block right in front of sixteen Street Baptist

0:52

Church. I wanted to see a statue

0:55

that stands in the park, a famous

0:57

statue Valla's

1:00

love Statues. I find them moving.

1:03

Don't know why. Maybe it's because

1:05

there are a representation of something that we have

1:07

chosen to take serious, to

1:10

memorialize in a permanent form.

1:13

With a statue, you're saying to the future,

1:16

this is what I want you to remember

1:18

about my generation. The

1:22

statue I came to see is at one end

1:24

of Kelly Ingram Park. It's of a

1:26

police officer, big guy menacing

1:30

heavy pair of sunglasses. He

1:32

is a dog on a leash, a big german

1:34

shepherd and the dog is lunging huge

1:37

fangs bared at a young black boy who's

1:39

leaning back, hands to his sides, almost

1:42

like he's sacrificing himself. It's

1:45

called foot soldier. It

1:47

looks simple, but that statue

1:50

is not what you think. Trust

1:52

me, my

1:57

name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening

1:59

to Revisionist History, my podcast about

2:01

things overlooked and Misunderstood. This

2:06

episode is the second in what are

2:08

going to be a few episodes this season on race

2:10

and civil rights. On

2:16

race in the United States, I'm

2:18

an outsider. I'm Canadian. My

2:21

family is half West Indian, which is a very

2:23

different cultural experience than being an African

2:26

American. My mom had

2:28

a friend, a Jamaican, who went down to Georgia once

2:30

in the nineteen seventies. When she came

2:32

back, she said, the racism there cut

2:34

like a knife. I couldn't

2:36

have been more than eight or nine, and that phrase

2:39

startled me. It seems so visceral.

2:42

But then I moved to the US as an adult,

2:44

and it seemed like the way race was discussed

2:46

didn't cut like a knife at all. What

2:53

I saw around race in the United States

2:55

was evasion and euphemism.

2:58

The subject of my last episode was the

3:00

Brown Decision. For half

3:02

a century, the integration story has

3:04

been told with all the suffering taken out.

3:07

Why is it really necessary

3:09

that every grand civil rights narrative be

3:11

turned into a fairy tale? Which

3:14

brings me to kelly Ingram Park and

3:16

its statue of the police officer and

3:18

the dog and the boy. There's

3:21

a nice and tidy story you can tell about

3:23

that statue, but the real story

3:26

is much different. Last

3:30

summer I got a call from a man who was friends

3:32

with the widow of the police officer depicted

3:34

in that statue. I'd written

3:37

about the officer and the dog in my book David

3:39

and Goliath, but she wanted to

3:41

tell me the rest of the story, so

3:43

I met with her. Then I went back

3:45

to Birmingham a second time to look for the

3:47

boy in the statue, and then a third

3:49

time to Tuskegee, two hours

3:51

south of Birmingham. And there

3:54

on a long, lazy afternoon, I

3:56

sat in the town museum with an artist

3:58

named Ronald McDowell. Uncle

4:01

Jay Me and James Brown.

4:03

And Ronald McDowell

4:07

is an extraordinary man, spidery

4:09

and fine featured. He showed me

4:12

his portfolio and told me in

4:14

his urgent confessional whisper

4:16

about how he was once walking down Sunset

4:18

Boulevard years ago and ran into Louis

4:20

Armstrong's nephew, who took him to see

4:23

Michael Jackson, who wanted McDowell

4:25

to teach him art, which led in turn to

4:27

McDowell helping out on the album Thriller.

4:29

Yeah. I did the sketches for Michael Day. Oh

4:32

wow. I was trying to make him a tool black

4:34

superman. And on the back of this piece

4:36

of paper is it drawing Michael Diet for me

4:39

when we were working on truck as Michael's

4:41

arn't work one obviously. He did

4:43

several pieces from Richard

4:48

Arrington, who was the first black mare of

4:50

Birmingham, used to call Ron McDowell

4:52

Mac, which suits him perfectly.

4:55

He has an air of mischief about him, which

4:57

we'll get to. That's pictures

5:00

of Man Johnny Couple, Nataliecole.

5:04

That's in the state capital, the first African American

5:06

painting hanging in the state of Alabama. Governor

5:09

Siegleman commissioner living there. Mac

5:12

did the statue in Kelly Ingram Park. He's

5:15

the one responsible. Birmingham

5:23

is a strange and beautiful place. It

5:25

was a steel town like Pittsburgh was,

5:28

and at the height of the steel industry, there was

5:30

a lot of money there. There's

5:32

an enormous hill on the south side of town, Mountain

5:35

Brook, with a gorgeous country club and

5:37

graceful pre war homes. That's

5:39

the wealthy white part of Birmingham.

5:42

Down the hill is the other Birmingham,

5:44

where blacks and whites lived in uneasy proximity.

5:48

They used to call Birmingham the Johannesburg

5:50

of the South, or Bomingham,

5:53

because bombs were a weapon of choice for white

5:55

supremacists who wanted to keep black people in their

5:58

place. There's

6:00

an old joke from that period that tells

6:02

you all you really need to know. A black

6:04

man in Chicago wakes up one morning and

6:07

tells his wife that Jesus had come to him

6:09

in a dream and told him to go to Birmingham.

6:12

His wife is horrified. Did Jesus

6:14

say he'd go with you? The husband

6:17

replies, he said it go as far as

6:19

Memphis. Birmingham

6:24

was where Martin Luther King staged what are the

6:26

most dramatic protests of the Civil rights

6:28

movement, and King chose

6:30

Birmingham for a good reason. He

6:32

wanted to strike at the symbol of racial

6:35

oppression, to get ordinary Americans

6:37

to understand just how bad things

6:39

were for black people in the South. So

6:42

through the long spring of nineteen sixty

6:44

three, King and his people

6:46

organized sit ins to protest segregation,

6:49

then boycott's, then marches.

6:52

They called it Project C for Confrontation.

6:56

They were trying to provoke the Birmingham Chief

6:58

of Police, a troglelte named

7:00

Bull Connor, into doing something so

7:03

outrageous that it would turn the

7:05

tide of public opinion in their favor. And

7:08

that's exactly what happened. May

7:14

third, nineteen sixty three. King's

7:18

people start at sixteenth Street Baptist Church,

7:20

right next to Kelly Ingram Park. They

7:23

come out in waves, marching alongside

7:25

the park and then continuing on through downtown

7:27

Birmingham. They're huge crowds,

7:30

tons of police in the middle

7:32

of everything. A photographer named Bill

7:34

Hudson takes a picture of a white

7:36

police officer with dark sunglasses and

7:39

a big german shepherd. The dog

7:41

is lunging at a young black teenager. The

7:43

next day, The New York Times publishes

7:45

the photograph above the fold, across

7:48

three columns on the front page of its weekend

7:50

paper, as does basically every

7:52

other major newspaper in the country.

7:55

President Kennedy is asked about the photo

7:58

and he's appalled. The Secretary

8:00

of State says it will quote embarrass

8:02

our friends abroad and make our enemies

8:05

joyful. It's discussed on

8:07

the floor of Congress at toils

8:09

are written. People have debates about

8:11

it. It's exactly what King

8:13

wants, something to show the rest

8:15

of the world just how bad things are in the

8:17

South, and the tide turns.

8:21

A year later, Congress passes

8:23

the Civil Rights Act, one of the most important

8:25

pieces of legislation in the history

8:27

of the United States. The Civil

8:29

Rights Act, people always say was

8:32

written in Birmingham.

8:38

Kelly Ingram Park is now a shrine to the events

8:40

of nineteen sixty three, the first

8:42

Black Mare of Birmingham. Richard Arrington

8:45

takes office in nineteen seventy nine and

8:47

decides to fill this little patch of history with sculptures

8:50

that tell the story of the movement. He

8:52

commissions one of Martin Luther King, another

8:54

of Fred Shuttlesworth, who was a key leader of

8:56

the Birmingham protests. There's one of

8:58

the four little girls killed when white supremacists

9:01

bombed the sixteenth Street Baptist Church in

9:03

September of nineteen sixty three. Finally,

9:07

Errington turns to the photo, the famous

9:09

photo, for one final statue,

9:11

and he calls up Mac McDowell, who has

9:14

moved out to Tuskegee from California

9:16

and transformed himself into a kind of

9:18

house artist for the civil rights movement. He

9:21

said, I got to get a statue down

9:23

right, because the people that marshton a movement

9:25

are complaining about the children don't look like

9:28

them. The children had white

9:30

features with black hair, and there

9:32

were a lot of complaints. And he said, I needed to do a

9:35

design of this image, this

9:37

photograph of this boy and this

9:39

police officer and the

9:41

dog attacking him. The other artists

9:43

with sculptures in Kelly Ingram Park are big

9:46

names, white men with impressive

9:48

resumes. Mac a

9:50

kid from the Projects of Oakland, entirely

9:53

self taught. He had in fact

9:55

never done a sculpture before, a detail

9:58

that he conveniently failed to tell Richard Arrington.

10:01

The mayor just wants Mack to do some sketches,

10:03

provide a guide. This look

10:05

on his face, a look of frustration, like

10:08

the thing he's doing what I want. You're not getting it, none

10:10

of the sculptures. And I was like, I can't say no to

10:12

him because he's powerful. It's

10:15

a great odd you know of Birmingham. The next

10:17

thing, you know, Max doing the whole thing.

10:20

And I started sculptinging. In three hours later I

10:22

was complete, and I took it to Arrington about I wanted

10:24

to think I did it so quick. SIM waited a week and took

10:26

it to him and he said, you got the commission? How

10:29

much and sell them? The rest

10:31

is history. It

10:34

was unveiled in a special ceremony in May

10:36

nineteen ninety five. It's called foot

10:38

Soldier because that was the term used to

10:40

describe the people who marched in Martin Luther

10:43

King's army. On the statue's

10:45

granite base, it reads, this

10:47

sculpture is dedicated to the foot Soldiers

10:49

of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. On

10:52

a little plaque next to it is the famous

10:55

photo on which the statue is based. If

10:57

you want to see a picture of it, we have one up

10:59

on revisionist history dot com.

11:04

And the first people to see it was Stevie Wanders and

11:06

Mattel's mother and but I didn't

11:08

know at the time I did the statue. When you're

11:10

doing bronze, you have to smooth everything. Because

11:13

I was untrained, I didn't smooth the rocks.

11:15

So Stevens was filling the rocks and he cut his hand

11:18

and one of the men in the parks

11:21

was there and he told me, he saying I'm getting

11:23

blood of my hand because Stevie wanted did I was like, oh

11:25

my god. But it's almost

11:27

it's almost it's almost biblical.

11:29

It's almost like he's blessing the park

11:32

with his blood. Yeah, Stevie

11:34

got cut on those rocks

11:35

and Foot

11:38

Soldier is the most powerful sculpture in

11:40

kelly Ingram Park. Nothing else

11:42

comes close. And maybe that's where

11:45

the trouble starts. The

11:49

name of the police officer in the photograph was

11:51

Richard Middleton. Everyone called

11:53

him Dick. His best friend on the force

11:56

was Bobby Hayes. Big guy lives

11:58

near a golf course outside Birmingham. Must

12:01

be in his eighties by now. Hayes

12:03

and Middleton started as police officers in Birmingham

12:06

right at the moment when the civil rights movement

12:08

was asserting its health. The police

12:10

department was all white and all mail back then,

12:12

but in the streets the balance of power

12:15

was shifting. When integration

12:17

came to the Birmingham school system, Hayes

12:20

remembers it as bewildering. If

12:22

you were a cop, nobody

12:26

really liked you because

12:30

we were carrying the black kids in the school.

12:33

That's what we were worried to do, and they were

12:35

going to get in. That's just where it

12:37

was. We had no choice. The

12:40

black people didn't like you because

12:42

you were a policeman. The white

12:45

people didn't like you because you're protecting

12:47

the black kids and caring. The men were

12:50

the crowd. The goofies

12:54

didn't want them to go. In

12:56

nineteen sixty three, King's

12:58

protest campaign was headquartered

13:00

in sixteen Street Baptist Church, which

13:03

is an old red brick building on the northwest

13:05

corner of kelly Ingram Park. The

13:07

protesters would come out in the afternoon

13:10

march around the park on their way downtown. They

13:12

were trained in non violence, marched

13:14

according to a strict schedule. It

13:17

was a military operation. Crowds

13:19

of people would gather to see the spectacle. The

13:21

police were supposed to keep the protesters

13:24

and the crowd apart. The

13:26

protests get bigger and bigger the

13:29

crowds get bigger and bigger. It's late

13:31

spring, so it's starting to get really hot.

13:34

The police chief, Bull Connor, starts

13:36

locking up everyone he can. Then Connor

13:38

says to Hew with it, bringing

13:41

the dogs. Of course,

13:43

there's a lot of noise, a lot

13:46

of tension in the air, a lot of people

13:48

yelling and screaming. Bridge

13:50

started coming in, you know, throwing bridge.

13:55

It got to be a really

13:57

ugly shlight real quick, real

14:00

quick. Dick Middleton,

14:02

the cop in the photo, was a member

14:04

of the city's canine unit. He

14:06

had a German shepherd named Leo. He

14:09

and the other members of the tactical unit were

14:11

posted behind a barricade, a

14:13

row of wooden saw horses running

14:16

parallel to the curb. There's a line

14:18

of cops and dogs in a kind of no man's

14:20

land between the bystanders and

14:22

the protesters. He

14:25

was inside the barricade.

14:27

The crowd was on the other side,

14:30

and they were taunting a pollation, and

14:33

of course all we could do is just stand at a

14:35

police shall like you just stand there.

14:37

At that time, Dick was well

14:39

back and away. He told me

14:41

he was jin yards

14:44

maybe back at the barricade, and

14:47

a guy came around a barricade. So

14:52

here we have a foot soldier in the

14:54

middle of all the mayhem, cutting

14:56

through the no man's land towards the sidewalk,

14:59

and Middleton's German shepherd, Leo, lunges

15:01

at him. That's the moment Bill Hudson

15:04

captures in his famous photograph, and

15:06

Ron McDowell captures in his statue

15:09

the confrontation between the innocent

15:11

foot soldier and the snarling

15:13

face of racial oppression. Bill

15:17

Hudson's editor says later that he

15:19

picked that particular photo out of the many

15:21

taken that day because he was riveted

15:24

by the saintly calm of

15:26

the young man in the snarling jaws

15:28

of the German shepherd. Here's

15:33

where the story starts to get complicated.

15:37

This is an interview today Saturday,

15:41

May twenty five, nineteen ninety

15:43

six at the Burringham Civil Rights ins Or two

15:46

with mister Walter Gaston of

15:48

Atlanta, Georgia. Okay,

15:51

how did you get involved in the civil rights

15:53

movement? Now, that's

15:55

that's one thing that I've

15:59

always have a problem with. I

16:02

never did get involved with the civil rights

16:04

movement. Walter Gadsden

16:06

is the boy in the photograph. The one bitten

16:08

by Leo. He's a mysterious

16:11

figure. He was interviewed at the time of the photograph

16:13

by Jet magazine back in nineteen

16:15

sixty three, but only briefly. From

16:18

time to time, other people have come forward

16:20

to say that they were the one in the photograph, not Gadsden,

16:23

but those claims seem dubious. Meanwhile,

16:26

Gadsden disappears, people try

16:28

and find him in can't. All that

16:31

seems to exist is this oral

16:33

history that you're hearing done in honor

16:35

of the unveiling of Ron McDowell's statue.

16:38

And the interview is strange

16:40

because it doesn't go the way the interviewer

16:42

thinks it's going to go. She

16:45

starts with the obvious question, you

16:48

were a foot soldier? Tell me how that came

16:50

about? And he says, I wasn't

16:52

a foot soldier. But the

16:54

fact is, the day of that moment,

16:58

I was supposed to have been in school. But

17:01

a friend of mine, acquaintment

17:04

that told me that earlier that

17:06

Martin Luke game with him down that day and

17:08

he was going to

17:13

be there, and I said I wanted to be there

17:15

too. I wanted to come and flat out what it

17:17

was all a battle. Walter Gadsden

17:20

is a bystander. The famous

17:22

statue in kelly Ingram Park foot

17:24

Soldier is not in fact of

17:26

a foot soldier. It gets a stranger.

17:29

Okay. And when you're up the school, where did you come

17:31

downtown to

17:34

the park? Areas kelly Ingram

17:36

Park over there. So we started walking

17:38

to the activity

17:41

and as I approached and got closer,

17:44

they turned and looked at me, and

17:46

I saw it coming towards me, So I've turned

17:48

to Lee. He was walking

17:51

down the street with the protesters

17:53

coming towards him, so he veers

17:55

off to get out of their way and rejoined

17:57

the spectators on the sidewalk. Ducks

18:00

in behind the row of sawhorses, where

18:02

he runs into officer in Middleton and

18:04

Leo. So as I turned

18:07

and started to walk away, I was great, and

18:10

the rest of it grabbed

18:12

bout the policeman and yain't

18:15

toward him. Has that happened to dog, bitch

18:17

you? I

18:19

can remember that that happened simultaneously.

18:23

Did you go the

18:25

policeman Gray? I don't remember

18:27

what hand, but the dog the grayant

18:30

me one hand. If

18:33

it happened so fast, there was nothing I gonna do except

18:35

throw up the league and trying to protect us. Yeah, and

18:37

as I was doing that there I went. Yeah.

18:43

If you look at the famous photo, Gadsden's

18:46

explanation makes sense. Leo

18:48

is lunging. The bite is a middlesecond

18:51

away. But Gaston and Middleton

18:53

just look startled, the way people

18:55

do if they unexpectedly bump into each

18:57

other. Gaston has his knee up

18:59

as a reflex and his hand on

19:02

Middleton as if to steady himself. Middleton

19:05

has one hand on Gaston and his

19:07

other arm is flexed. He's

19:09

yanking back on the leash. Leo

19:12

has freaked out and he's trying to restrain

19:14

him. Leo whoa.

19:17

Middleton's colleague, Bobby Hayes made

19:19

the same point to me. Middleton's

19:22

not letting Leo loose on Gaston quite

19:24

the opposite. If you look at the picture,

19:27

you can tell he's holding the dog back.

19:30

But that line taunt that

19:33

dog feeder in the air the best I

19:35

recall, and Dick got

19:37

him here. He's holding that line.

19:40

He's not only invited guy. Now

19:45

what does Gaston say about all this? Does

19:48

he think he's been the victim of police brutality?

19:50

Not at all? In fact, he can't

19:53

seem to understand why everyone makes

19:55

such a big deal out of what happened to him

19:57

that day. How does your family members

19:59

react to your participation, Well,

20:03

they were angry to go by doing teen school

20:05

that day he

20:08

appears in an image that transfix

20:10

the world, and his parents are mad

20:12

that he skips school. The interviewer

20:15

then tries to get at Gadsden's connections

20:17

to the struggle for civil rights. Okay,

20:20

well, the church where your parents are,

20:22

your family members were attending. Were they

20:24

involved in the civil rights movement during that time?

20:26

You know they never

20:28

told me of it. What

20:31

benefits to you your

20:33

family in the community realize as a

20:35

result of that movement?

20:40

None. In answer to the question

20:43

what benefits did your family receive

20:45

from the civil rights movement, he answers

20:47

none. He's not having any of

20:50

it. Gadsden's

20:52

interview, in fact, just gets weirder.

20:55

Okay, if you were in control of an

20:58

organization or a movement of such and

21:00

could go back and change some things,

21:02

what would you change? Okay,

21:06

The things that would change

21:08

would be a

21:11

more careful choice of

21:16

people involved in

21:20

all of those movements. There

21:22

are too many, well,

21:25

the big just blood crooked

21:27

people many

21:31

of the people that were involved and had

21:34

an oloriety became too crooked. The

21:38

most famous photograph of the Civil rights

21:40

movement is of a startled cop trying

21:43

desperately to hold his dog back

21:46

from biting a bystander who wasn't

21:48

that much of a fan of the Civil rights movement. I'm

21:51

want to ring Steel, why me, because

21:53

I've never had any oloriety whatsoever

21:56

concerning that picture. That picture

21:58

who's in the paper? But many other people

22:00

were too, many

22:02

other situations Buss Bonnie,

22:05

Yes, but they chose

22:08

to use the little boy at fifteen

22:11

that the little boy, and he's put up

22:13

a little boy's eyes. Are

22:15

you surprised when you found out

22:17

about it? I was the oldly flamborgaster.

22:20

I don't know who's to thin. And

22:23

Gadsden's main objection he's

22:25

light skinned, he says. The statue

22:27

makes him look dark skinned. That

22:30

statue doesn't look like me. It

22:33

looks like a totally different boy. That looks

22:35

like an African boy. That's

22:38

what are your favor It looks like Afican boy. It

22:40

looks like an African boy. The

22:46

color of the features, the features,

22:49

the lips, the size.

22:52

You take a look at the pictured air and

22:54

the statue air the boy short

22:57

I was told for my age.

23:00

If you listen to the whole interview, it

23:02

nearly goes off the rails. At this point, the

23:04

interviewer expected to find a heroic

23:07

civil rights veteran. Instead, she's

23:09

getting a grumpy old man still wedded

23:11

to some of the oldest and most awkward

23:13

of black prejudices. We're

23:16

very proud of it, and I hope you will

23:18

be too. And now that we

23:20

know who you are, we can add a name

23:22

under there that

23:26

you will be a boy let's

23:28

come to use Well,

23:33

m h.

23:37

I'm still wondering why, after

23:40

all the information that I had given,

23:42

and and and all that, all

23:45

that the established me as

23:48

being a young African boy, which I'm

23:50

not. You

23:55

prefer being called a negro. I

23:58

prefer being called what I am? A colored?

24:00

Oh oh, you prefer you were colored?

24:03

I am good? Okay, okay.

24:11

Euphemism and evasion. At

24:14

the beginning, I said that what I object to is

24:16

the way so many stories about race get

24:18

cleaned up, sanitized, so

24:21

the brown decision becomes a fairy tale

24:23

in which black people triumph without effort.

24:26

Well, here's the flip side. When

24:29

we stop evading and just listen, it

24:31

gets complicated. Our hero,

24:34

Walter Gadsden isn't all that heroic.

24:37

As for the bad guy, the officer, his

24:40

colleague Bobby Hayes says he wasn't a bad

24:42

guy. Did Officer Hayes

24:44

tell me things that surprised me? And

24:46

did listening to Walter Gadsden shock

24:49

me? Absolutely? Because

24:51

I'm no different from anyone else. I

24:53

liked the fairy tale. So

24:56

the person who invited me down to Birmingham

24:58

in the first place was Dick Middleton's

25:00

widow. Everyone calls her Missus

25:02

Klingler. Her husband died not

25:04

long ago, and I think she felt it was

25:06

time to speak out. We met at a

25:08

barbe restaurant in downtown Birmingham,

25:11

sat upstairs. So

25:13

he's a police officer at a time

25:15

when Birmingham is

25:17

obviously going

25:20

through some very tumultuous times. Can

25:22

you tell me about that? The

25:24

first that was the first ten years

25:26

i'd still learned to speak English.

25:29

I didn't really know what's going on.

25:32

I didn't understand what's going on.

25:35

Missus Klingler was from Germany. She

25:37

met Richard when he was stationed there with the army.

25:39

She says, what happened on that spring day

25:41

in nineteen sixty three was like a

25:43

shadow over her husband. He went

25:46

to work and come home and enjoy the

25:48

family. But I

25:51

knew something is going on. You

25:53

know. Then later on you see

25:56

the picture in the paper. He

25:59

never really discussed it. She

26:01

had a big book with her filled with

26:03

clippings of her husband's career and

26:06

other photographs from that day in kelly Ingram

26:08

Park. She wanted to set the

26:10

record straight. Her husband was

26:13

unfairly vilified. He

26:15

done his job and

26:18

he was he was spit at, he

26:21

was thrown rocks at, and

26:24

he did not let the

26:26

guy put the dog

26:29

toom he was holding the leash

26:32

away from em. If you see other pictures

26:34

what happened. This

26:38

was not the white picture, This

26:40

was not the stoyed this

26:43

was not the truth. For

26:45

the longest time afterwards, they got

26:47

hate mail. So how soon

26:50

did the letters start coming, Just

26:52

like I'm sure like the

26:55

next months or so when it went all

26:57

over the world, just as

26:59

ugly as you can imagine.

27:02

Did he ever talk to any journalist

27:06

or do you know he never gave

27:08

any interviews. He didn't give no interviews

27:11

because I think he felt like what

27:14

he was portrayed. They

27:17

would not tellt yeah,

27:19

yeah, No matter what he say, no

27:22

matter what he would do, they

27:24

would not believe him. All they

27:26

look at the picture, that's all.

27:29

Do you think your husband suffered a

27:32

thank he has. Yes, there's

27:35

a statue in Kelly Ingram Park

27:38

of one of the most iconic moments in

27:40

civil rights history, and everyone

27:43

directly involved in that moment thinks

27:45

it didn't happen that way. Oh

27:47

Mac, what did you do?

27:55

You said earlier that when you draw, you

27:57

try and inhabit the characters. Yes,

28:00

and so tell me your emotional reactions to

28:02

that photograph. Well,

28:05

I saw that the boy was maybe about six four,

28:07

the officers maybe five ten, five

28:10

nine, And I said, this is

28:12

a movement about power. So

28:14

I made the little boy younger and smaller,

28:16

and the officer taller and stronger. The

28:19

arm of the mall is so strong. That's

28:21

why his arm is almost like strength. And

28:24

the dog is more like a wolf than

28:26

a real dog. Because if I'm a little boy, that's

28:28

what I was seeing, I would see like this super

28:31

man hovering over me, putting this big,

28:33

old, giant monster of a dog in

28:35

my groan area, in my private area. And

28:37

so that's what I envision when

28:40

I first saw the photographs, and you changed it.

28:43

In the photograph, I noticed the boy is

28:45

leaning in, and in your sculpture

28:48

he's leaning back. Tell me about that

28:51

he's leaning back because I wanted to depict

28:53

him showing that

28:55

I'm not going to fight you. I'm not leaving,

28:57

I'm not moving, I'm standing, but I'm

28:59

not going to fight you. This is a non violent

29:01

protest. That's why his hands are open and

29:03

it's going back, like do whatever you're gonna do. Put the dog on

29:05

me, beat me with the come of whatever you want to do.

29:08

And I saw all of that when I

29:10

saw the photograph. We

29:12

were in the Tuskegee History Center, a

29:14

museum on Elm Street, not far from the university.

29:17

It's in what looks like an old bank, and

29:19

it's filled with exhibits to the town's extraordinary

29:22

history, the infamous Tuskegee

29:24

Selfless Study, the Tuskegee Airman,

29:27

Rosa Parks, Tuskegee native. McDowell's

29:30

work was all over the walls. He took

29:32

me on a little tour. Then we sat

29:34

down and he took out his portfolio.

29:37

Here's the natural Those

29:40

glasses are like Wait, are the glasses

29:42

the same? Did you make the glasses

29:45

bigger too? Yeah? Good, bigger.

29:47

Mac is a whole section on the statue, preliminary

29:50

drawings, sketches, photographs,

29:52

So he's almost like a blind officer.

29:56

He doesn't even think again because

29:58

he's so far beyond that killed this nigger,

30:01

attacked this nigger. He's so past

30:03

the reality of this is a human, innocent, human

30:06

child, human being. That's why he was wearing

30:08

blind people glass. That is

30:10

so interesting because when you see that, that's the thing

30:12

I couldn't put my finger on. The officer

30:14

is behaving as if he's blind. The

30:17

dog is attacking. He doesn't even see the boy.

30:21

You're the first person. I'm telling them too. That's

30:24

so interesting. See how vicious

30:27

the dog with Oh my, that's

30:30

a wolf. I

30:33

did the hair with a I don't. I don't

30:35

have to, I don't. I didn't know what instruments to use. I

30:37

did all this with a pencil, pencil

30:41

the hairs, and I do the

30:43

teeth like that, and oh look at the teeth.

30:46

I did that on purpose. The curved Oh

30:48

yeah, because if you have a curve

30:50

tooth, like when you see those those um

30:52

world wolf pictures, the teeth, the curve because once

30:55

there's like a snake when he bites you, if he doesn't retrack

30:57

and he's gonna rip, it's not going in

30:59

coming out. When it comes out, he's gonna rip flesh.

31:05

When you're face to face with the statue. It

31:07

has historical authority. It's

31:10

in the shadow of sixteen Street Baptist

31:12

Church inside kelly Ingram Park

31:14

at the actual site of the Birmingham

31:17

Marches. But it's a work of imagination.

31:20

It's not a literal representation. It's

31:23

art. We

31:27

are there other details that I mean you

31:29

were saying you there's the blind

31:32

officer. There's the curved teeth on the dog.

31:35

The officer moved all of his anger

31:38

into the dog, and it's the dog that's

31:40

attacking the war. You know. That's what

31:42

they do with when racism

31:47

mac made Leo into a wolf and blinded

31:49

Middleton and shrank Walter Gadston until

31:51

he was tiny and helpless because

31:54

he was telling a story about Birmingham.

31:56

That's what history is. Each side

31:59

writes their own story, and the winner's

32:01

story is the one we call the truth. You

32:04

don't think white people told their share of whoppers

32:06

over the years in the South. You don't

32:08

think that there's a statue in a Southern town somewhere

32:11

of a champion of the Confederacy that makes a

32:13

hero of someone who was actually a villain. White

32:16

people got to do that in the South for centuries.

32:19

Foot Soldier is just what happens when the

32:21

people on the bottom finally get the power

32:24

to tell the story their way. It

32:26

was a long time coming. It's

32:33

a brilliant statue. Thank you, a

32:36

Poorma Hartington. Yeah, there's

32:38

some you've some mischief in

32:40

you. What

32:43

do you mean there's a little

32:45

bit of mischief in that in your recreation

32:47

of that photo, you're you're

32:50

using that opportunity to make a much broader

32:53

kind of subversive point. I'm

32:56

maybe I

33:01

went back through Birmingham after talking to Mac

33:03

and Tuskegee, and I went to Kelly

33:05

Ingram Park one last time stood

33:07

in front of the statue. I think

33:10

everyone who wants to understand the civil rights

33:12

movement should do that because

33:14

of what it means, the hard

33:16

one reward of a long and costly battle

33:18

over who gets to control the stories that

33:21

make up history. But if

33:23

you do, just keep in mind that Dick

33:25

Middleton didn't actually sick his dog Leo

33:27

on Walter Gadsden, and that

33:29

Walter Gadsden wasn't actually

33:31

a foot soldier for civil rights. Mayor

33:34

Arrington tell me, Marnathan, we did the unvail

33:36

me. He got hundreds

33:38

of threats about bombing and tearing a statue

33:41

up from all over the world, and his

33:43

response was I'll just get

33:45

backed into a bigger one in a battle run. So

33:47

they never touched him. Oh, he said, if you if

33:50

you destroy that statue, we're coming back bigger.

33:52

Do you know how many times I begged for somebody.

33:55

I hope somebody blows it out. I was like into a bigger

33:57

one.

34:08

Revisionist is produced by Meil LaBelle

34:10

and Jacob Smith, with Camille Baptista,

34:13

Stephanie Daniel, and Ciomara Martinez

34:15

wife. Our editor is Julia

34:17

Barton. Flawn Williams is our

34:19

engineer. Original music by Luis

34:22

Guerra. Special thanks to Andy

34:24

Bowers and Jacob Weisberg at Panopley.

34:27

I'm Malcolm Gladwell