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[MUSIC PLAYING] GARY EICHTEN: And, good afternoon. Welcome back to Midday on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Gary Eichten. This hour, we're going to focus on the civil rights movement through the eyes of an author, an activist, a teacher, and a former vice president of the United States.

Author Christopher Paul Curtis, Civil Rights Activist Josie Johnson, Teacher Lee-Ann Stephens, and Former Vice President Walter Mondale, all took part in a panel discussion this month titled Human Rights and Social Justice Then and Now.

The occasion was the opening weekend of a theatrical adaptation of Curtis's Newbery award-winning, young-adult novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963, which is currently playing at the Children's Theater company of Minneapolis. It plays through October 7.

A little background before we get started, Christopher Paul Curtis, his other books include Bud, Not Buddy and Mr. Chickee's Funny Money. Josie Johnson is a longtime Minnesota civil rights activist and the first African-American elected to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents. Lee-Ann Stephens, for her part, teaches fifth and sixth grade English language arts at Park Spanish Immersion School in St. Louis Park. You'll recall she won this year's Minnesota Teacher of the Year Award.

And, of course, Walter Mondale was a US Senator from the State of Minnesota and was Jimmy Carter's vice president as well. Well, the moderator of the panel discussion was Stephen Smith, executive editor of our American RadioWorks documentary unit. He has produced several specials on the civil rights movement.

STEPHEN SMITH: So I've asked Mr. Curtis to start us off because we're talking about the play before we've actually seen it-- though some of us have read it or read the book-- to just give us a quick refresher course on the story and the themes that you think are most important in the story.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: Thank you, Stephen. A little background on how the story came to be written. My wife and I arranged that I could take a year off work to-- she felt I was a good writer, and she gave me this year off work.

We decided to take a trip to Florida. So on the way down, I started thinking of a story about a family taking a trip. Originally, The Watsons Go to Birmingham was called The Watsons Go to Florida.

[LAUGHTER]

But when I got the family to Florida, nothing happened.

[LAUGHTER]

So I set the story aside. And my son brought home a poem called Ballad of Birmingham by a Detroit writer named Dudley Randall. And when I heard that-- it's about the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. When I heard that poem, I knew the Watsons wanted to go to Birmingham. So I set it up so that the family came to Birmingham.

And foremost, it's a story about a family. I think if the story works, it works because the readers first become attached to this family. And hopefully by the time they get to Birmingham and deal with the civil rights issues, I want the readers to be a part of the family, to feel like when they go down there and that bomb goes off in that church-- I want them to be one of the Watsons and try to get some empathy for someone who's child was in that church.

The story starts out. It's a family story. And it's set in Flint, Michigan in 1963. There are three kids in the family-- Kenny, who has three problems in his life. He's very smart, which doesn't seem like it would be a problem. But kids call him egghead, and poindexter, and things like that.

His second problem is that he has what's known as a lazy eye. One of the eyes in his face is-- one of the muscles on the side of one of his eyes are stronger than they should be, and they pull his eye to the corner. He gets teased about that.

His third problem is he has an older brother named Byron. And Byron has dedicated his life to making Kenny miserable. And he does a good job at it. Anyway, Byron is-- just turned 13. So he's officially a teenage juvenile delinquent. And the parents decide to send him South to Grandma Sands' house. Because she's a tough cookie and she takes no nonsense from anybody, and they hope that she can straighten Byron out.

Three quarters of the book is the family. Then they go South. And it touches on the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. And they come back home. And my feeling is that the story, the basic theme of it is family-- love and family strength and the power that the love of family can do.

Byron, who is this semi-juvenile delinquent, is the one who eventually pulls Kenny out of a very serious situation that he is in. Byron uses his insights to help Kenny out. As I said, it's a family story that touches on the civil rights movement.

STEPHEN SMITH: Can you talk just for a second? You're from Flint, Michigan, and the family is also from the frozen North-- Which would be familiar to us. But their experience of what was happening in Birmingham, at the time, was very removed, very remote-- especially as the children describe what they knew or what they hear their parents talk about. Does that have a connection to your experience growing up?

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: In some ways. My editor and I went over this. She felt like there should be more of a discussion about the reaction that the kids felt. A lot of it is based on my life-- the main character is.

And I know at 10 years old, I was aware of the civil rights movement. But it didn't affect me in such a strong way. My parents were both very active in the civil rights movement, the NAACP, in the Flint area. And there was a lot of segregation in Flint. And we picketed places like that.

But as far as what was going on in Birmingham, it was the-- I'm sure you've all seen the grainy old news clippings of what was going on. That was really what the Watsons saw. They didn't really relate it to their life.

STEPHEN SMITH: Do you remember seeing the firehose?

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: Oh, yeah, I remember that very clearly and is one of the things that after I'd written the book and finally went to Birmingham. It's amazing to see the areas where all the things took place, the church and the park right across the street from the church. It was a very moving experience to see that in person.

STEPHEN SMITH: Ms. Johnson, what does this story bring up for you, especially in your memory of that time, 1963, and why that year was so important?

JOSIE JOHNSON: Well, the '60s, as you will remember, represented a collection of history of us as a people. Things don't happen just at that time. It's a result of long history of experiences and traditions.

In the early '60s, we were very involved in activities here in Minnesota. So we were aware of everything that was going on in every other part of the United States that affected African-American people. And there were those here who felt that there were only one or two Black people. And why were we interested or concerned about those issues?

But that was soon after, if you'll remember, the Supreme Court's decision regarding desegregation of schools. Here in Minnesota, we were very involved in issues that I think many people in this part of the world hadn't really thought about as far as our concerns were of concern to them.

And so we were engaged in educating our community-- our teachers, our police officers, our firemen-- all people that had some political-- had professional responsibilities in dealing with us.

In the early '60s, we were also creating an understanding of what history had taught us here in Minnesota. I don't think we really realized that we had housing segregation at that time-- and there was. Black people lived in certain sections of the Twin Cities. And so with Fritz's help and others, we created an opportunity to have a legislation that affected fair housing. That was early '60s.

It also affected employment opportunities. Also, we were very aware that our teachers were not as conscious of the history of African-American people and other people who were oppressed as they ought to be. And so there was legislation in the early '60s to create recertification curricula for teachers so that they learned about issues, dealing with people of color, in their certification as teachers and recertification.

And then in the '63, we had the March on Washington, which was for many, the first observance of a mass of people protesting. They were not aware of the earlier efforts in equal education opportunity, equal job opportunity, equal housing, et cetera. So there was that.

And then in '64, I had an opportunity to go to Jackson, Mississippi, which was a part of a-- it was at the time that our three civil rights young people were missing. We didn't know where they were, whether they were alive or dead.

We also were told, the group of us who went-- it was a group of women from the Jewish community, from the Christian community, and the YWCA. And the purpose was to go down and check on the conditions of women and girls because it was the civil rights voter registration effort.

And it was created as a real scary time because the attorney general, then, Robert Kennedy, is doing a-- told us that we could not tell anybody about this trip to Jackson, Mississippi. So there were two African-American women, two Jewish Women, and two White Christian women who went.

And we were instructed that we could talk to each other from Minnesota to Chicago. And then once we got to Chicago, we had to separate in our ethnic group. And we did that. And when we got to Mississippi, Curtis, we didn't know if the Klan would be there to greet us. In fact, we were fearful that they might be. And so that was all setting the stage for the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the other efforts.

So the '60s were, I think, a very significant point. Once again, some called it the second reconstruction period of Black people really trying to move forward and take control, how we defined ourselves.

Black was beautiful. It was no longer something that you resented and resisted. So it was a very important piece here. We created a number of things that perhaps we can talk about later. But it was an important step here in Minnesota as well as across the nation.

STEPHEN SMITH: And I appreciate you reminding us that the civil rights movement didn't start in the late '50s or the early '60s. I mean, the Brown decision was the culmination of decades of work by African-American, White, and lawyers from a variety of ethnic groups getting together over a really staged campaign over many years to lead up to Brown. And I think there are some who argue, rightly, that the civil rights movement started hundreds of years ago and has never stopped. But we have a tendency to fixate on a period.

JOSIE JOHNSON: The effort of people having their civil rights, of course, happened even before slavery. So it's the whole effort of that period and then our real effort, following slavery. When we talk about Brown, we know that parents and children believed in education, and they thought that that was the vehicle for emancipation. So they worked very hard for the Brown decision a long, long time and--

STEPHEN SMITH: And put themselves at risk just to be plaintiffs.

JOSIE JOHNSON: Except for the sake of God, we would have continued, I guess, as far as the Supreme Court if someone hadn't died and another person appointed. So yeah, it was a very important period.

STEPHEN SMITH: Thank you. Mr. Mondale, would you reflect on when you personally became aware of race as a serious issue in this country, something that needed a political response? Do you recall?

WALTER MONDALE: I grew up in a family of a Methodist minister, and he taught us-- mom and dad taught us, as soon as we were aware, what they thought the Bible-- what our faith said about treating all people equally, about every child being a child of God. And I think, in our family, it was internalized. And I think that's true of a lot of families. And it was a big part of the success, finally, of the civil rights movement.

I want to talk just a minute. I think this is a great play for many reasons, but because it teaches history that's disappearing. And children, young people can, through the story, catch on again to what was being confronted.

I was a brand new attorney general from Minnesota. I'd get daily calls from Josie, telling me what I should do there. And one of the-- two things give you an idea that people were edgy about civil rights in Minnesota, you remember?

It wasn't that simple. It wasn't just glory, hallelujah down the street. So we finally held-- I think it was 1963, same year. We held a civil rights rally on the Capitol steps. I think you were there, Josie. It was hard to get people there. And a lot of politicians were busy that day and regrettably couldn't be with us.

And to my surprise, years later, when I was on the Senate Intelligence Committee and I asked for my FBI files, I found out that a good number of the people at rally were FBI agents checking in on us because it was considered iffy, dangerous stuff.

And one of the first things I did as attorney general was to sue the Minnesota Twins because they segregated in the housing of the team players. And I got a call from Earl Battey, then the catcher for the Minnesota Twins, saying, why do I have to live in separate motels and hotels from the rest of the team?

And so we had vestigial problems even here. But with all of that, I think one of the spectacular things about Minnesota and the civil rights movement was the number of wonderful community leaders-- Josie being an example, Harry Davis who just-- a long list of people that really made a difference.

And then, civil rights leaders that came out of this state-- Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, president of the NAACP for 25 years or something. Clarence Mitchell-- a name that's not well remembered, but one of the most instrumental advocates for all the civil rights laws-- came out of here. Carl Stokes-- later, mayor of Detroit-- came out of Minnesota.

JOSIE JOHNSON: Carl Rowan.

WALTER MONDALE: Carl Rowan came out of Minnesota. There's a long list. And then young, modest people like Hubert Humphrey came out of Minnesota. And from this state, came a lot of energy in the movement that led to these reforms.

STEPHEN SMITH: When we talk about segregation--

JOSIE JOHNSON: And [INAUDIBLE] and Fraser--

WALTER MONDALE: I ran out of time.

[LAUGHTER]

STEPHEN SMITH: When we talk about segregation, people tend to think of the South as the place where segregation existed, except for those who experienced it here in what some folks called up South. And, Mr. Mondale, can you help this group of many young Minnesotans know about one of the most effective ways of segregating people here called protective covenants?

WALTER MONDALE: Oh, yes.

STEPHEN SMITH: That's probably something you may have tangled with.

WALTER MONDALE: It's a good point. When I first started practicing law, I used to do real estate titles. In almost every home that was sold today, if you look in the title, there was a restrictive covenant in there. In legal language, it meant you couldn't sell to a Black or minorities. And now, that had since been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but that was a practice widely found here too.

STEPHEN SMITH: Right, for many years. Ms. Stephens, you're an English teacher?

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: I am.

STEPHEN SMITH: And this is a book. And--

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: Yes.

[LAUGHTER]

STEPHEN SMITH: Doing pretty well so far.

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: Wonderful book.

[LAUGHTER CONTINUES]

STEPHEN SMITH: How does this kind of literature connect with the students that you teach today, in what ways?

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: It's really been a valuable book. I've been able to encourage, especially young, Black students that I've had-- males-- to read this. Because they're like, I don't know what to read, Mrs. Stephens. And so I would recommend this book. And they're like, oh, thank you. They loved it.

And for me, it's so important even with-- because I teach in St. Louis Park. And I teach at a Spanish immersion school. And in my particular building, we don't have a lot of students of color, which is one important reason for me to be there too because they need to see African-American people in roles of authority as well.

But even for my White students, this has been very important. It's amazing how much they don't know about history, and especially-- which I tell them it's our history. We want to say Black history, and we want to put it in the month of February.

But I said, this is our history. It's American history. We've done a lot. And so I spend a lot of time throughout the year, teaching them about Black history, I guess if you want to say, but our history. And I've even had-- I remember last year, one of my students said, Mrs. Stephens, we haven't done some of the Black history for a while. Can we do it?

Because it was so important, and he was a young, Black male from North Minneapolis, but he went to my school. And it made him feel so good to be able to see himself represented in positive roles in history because he wasn't getting that.

And so this book has been really important. We need to connect. And I think one thing that I really appreciated about it was that it showed the family-- and we don't see Black families in positive roles. We don't see it. On TV, they're buffoons. The parents don't have control, even on television.

And so when reading this book-- and the family, they're trying to do something about their son. He's in jeopardy. His life is in jeopardy. And they're aware of that. And like, we need to do something about it. We are responsible. We're going to take some action to try to get Byron turned around.

And I think, if nothing else, for people to be able to see that there are families like that. And so, often, we don't see that. And so I really appreciate the fact that you brought that out in this book. Thank you. It meant so much because that's the kind of family that I have with my husband and my friends. Those are the kind of families that they have, but we don't see that. So, thank you.

STEPHEN SMITH: And how do students recognize themselves-- either White kids, or Black kids, or any kids in this story? Does it feel, to them, like ancient history? Or do they feel like there's something about it that they know about today?

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: Well, you know what, they do know. And it probably just depends on who the students are, but my students do know because we do a lot with civil rights. And so they do see it. The thing for them is they just can't figure out how people could even be that way. How could you bomb a church? How could you hose down people because of the color of their skin?

And I had one girl come up to me after we had a discussion on Martin Luther King. And she came up to me. And she just stood there. And she's standing in front of me, and I can't figure out what's going on. And then she hugs-- she just hugged me. And she said, I'm just so thankful because if it weren't for Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement-- she said, you wouldn't be my teacher.

AUDIENCE: Aw.

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: And so that meant a lot. That meant a lot because it was a student who showed no emotion, and I didn't realize that that connection was being made with her. So they do see it, and they're much more aware. And I think we don't give them enough. We don't tell them enough. We try to, I think, sometimes, act like it never happened. They need to know about it.

GARY EICHTEN: Lee-Ann Stephens, Minnesota's 2006 Teacher of the Year, taking part in a panel discussion this month called Human Rights and Social Justice Then and Now. Other participants were Former Vice President Walter Mondale, Christopher Paul Curtis who is the author of The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963, and long-time Civil Rights Activist Josie Johnson who we'll hear from next.

JOSIE JOHNSON: I think it's very important what Lee has said about Black families, what we don't know and the important thing about reviewing history-- said, it's so important for people to appreciate and understand that this is maybe a 40-year development of single-parent families.

In the beginning of African-American families, the importance-- if you think about where we were as a people in slavery and how our families were sold away, moved any place, not respected-- the relationship of man, wife, children. And then after the emancipation, our families working to find each other to create a system of unity. And in the late '60s, 75% of our families were man, wife, children in one house.

So far, young people today, to not know that, is not a healthy environment for them or for the larger society. I have met young, Black kids who don't know the history of family life in America among Black people. And the fact that they believe that all of us have come from a single-parent-family environment. They have no idea of the value that Black parents, Black communities, Black children have always played and placed on education.

Our people believed that education was the vehicle for emancipation, true emancipation. And when we mentioned the Brown decision, the number of parents who were murdered, whose businesses were bombed and closed, who-- teachers were fired because they were working for equality of opportunity and the Brown decision. And a lot of people don't know that. They think of us only today in what's read.

When I read about Black children killing Black children, I want to weep because I say, what are we doing as a community? We're not training our children. We're not passing this history along to them. They don't know from whence they've come. So, much of their behavior, it does not reflect who they are and what their history and culture says.

When you did this with By in the book-- see, I remember, children-- in African-American families, we truly believed that it took the village. So if a young man misbehaved, you might send that young man to uncle or grandpa or anybody to straighten him out. So for this to have been a part of that experience was so real, and it meant a lot-- and parents worrying about their children.

My mother and father worried about my brothers when they were out. I grew up in Houston, Texas. And my brothers were people who didn't take stuff off of other people. And so my parents would worry to death until they got home, for fear that someone-- the police would grab them.

And I grew up with a mother who was afraid of policemen. She was scared to death of them. And it wasn't until I was a young woman that I learned that police could be friends, that they did-- they weren't what we had believed them to be.

STEPHEN SMITH: And, of course, lots of African-American families in the South would send young men North, often, at the last minute at night. Get out of town because something's happened, and the only way to stay alive is to go to Chicago and live with the relatives.

JOSIE JOHNSON: Exactly.

STEPHEN SMITH: Mr. Curtis, in this story, in a way, the crucial moment for both family survival and for Byron, the older brother, requires going the opposite direction. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the idea of this family going into the war zone, if you will, to solve their own war zone.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: Flint, Michigan, in many ways, was a very unusual place-- and it always has been. General Motors had brought large-- almost whole cities from the South-- up to work in the factories. And Flint, even though it's a northern city, has a very southern feel to it.

When we'd have breaks at the factory, a lot of the guys would drive 24 hours to get back home and spend as much time as they could at home and then come back. So there was always this idea of even though the South was very troubled, it was home to a lot of people.

And as Dr. Johnson said, there was this concept of if you weren't handling the situation right or you couldn't, and if-- whatever the case was, there was always somebody else there that could do a better job than you. And when I wrote the story, that was the thought that I had.

One of the things that when I wrote it, I had been to a school. And a little girl had asked me once, what book really touched you when you were a child? And I just went blank. There was never a book. And I thought about why that was, why I couldn't come up with a book.

It wasn't that I wasn't a good reader. I was a very good reader. I don't know if any of you are familiar with that. Remember the old SRA boxes that were at the back of the room, started with primary colors and then as you advanced--

JOSIE JOHNSON: Mm-hmm, yeah.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: Well, I don't like to brag, Dr. Johnson. But I was reading from [? Plaid ?] in sixth grade.

[LAUGHTER]

But I was a good reader. I was exposed to reading. Both my parents always had books. My mother is in her 80s now and still reads a book a night. So I was exposed to books. So I think what it was deals with a lot what Ms. Stephens was saying too. I wasn't finding anything in any of the books that really touched me, that were about me.

And that's not to say that African-Americans have to read books about African-Americans. But I think for there to be something that really touches you in a book or in a story, there has to be something of you in it.

I sit on a panel like this, and I feel very humbled because I wrote the story. And I'm told by teachers that they use it a lot. And to me, teaching is such an honorable, wonderful profession. And the fact that I can do something that helps a teacher to reach a student, it's very humbling.

STEPHEN SMITH: Let's give it up for writers and teachers.

[CHEERS, APPLAUSE]

So let's fire up that wireless mic and get ready to take questions from the audience.

JOSIE JOHNSON: Somebody's coming forward with that. Speaking of books and reading, another aspect of African-American history that people are not aware of is the amount of reading Black people did. There were people who went door to door, selling books to Black families. And they had records of theirs.

So they've always been interested. Your parents are living the history and the culture of us as a people. Our children don't know that, and a lot of people don't know the value that we place. So that's wonderful.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: Yeah. Now, unfortunately, what Ms. Stephens said is true. A lot of the presentation that we get of Black people is buffoons. And the shows that you see that are popular are shows that really demean Black people or Black people demeaning ourselves.

JOSIE JOHNSON: Exactly.

STEPHEN SMITH: And I'll just ask this because of the heightening debate that Bill Cosby-- if he didn't start it, but he sort of revised it. Now, Juan Williams, the Public Radio journalist and author, is also striking out and saying that-- with his book, Enough-- that Black communities are implicated in the current situation where representations are unfortunate, where family history isn't being remembered. I wonder if any of you would care to reflect on that.

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: And I thought about that. And first of all, that doesn't represent all of us. And it's amazing what a small group can do to the larger group. And so we'll look at a small segment of a society. And then especially if they're non-White, then that becomes representative of the whole culture.

And that's not the case at all. I mean, we have all kinds of people in our culture. We have doctors, and lawyers, and teachers. And we have two-parent families. And so we focus so much on that. And that's what the media hypes. And then we lose.

And so the teachers that we have and all the other wonderful things that we have about our culture gets put in the wayside. And it's so obvious because when I first went to St. Louis Park, my second week there-- and I had shared this with some people.

My second week there, a student had asked me why I never taught ghetto. And he was a White student because the majority of the students are White. And I thought, if that's the only image that he has, we're doing a horrible job of showing what really is out there with Black people.

And so I was offended at first. But then I thought, you know what, he's being truthful. That's what he sees. And so he was wondering, how come that wasn't coming from me? And I had to explain to him. I had a long conversation with him and with his parents as well. And they, of course, were really shocked. That's what they told me. They were really shocked, but they needed to know too what their child was thinking, so--

STEPHEN SMITH: Mr. Curtis, you were-- seemed like you might have something to say on this too.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: No. No.

STEPHEN SMITH: OK.

[LAUGHTER]

Let's stick with that.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: No. I don't know it. There are a lot of things that Bill Cosby has brought up are valid. We're in a lot of trouble. We are in a lot of trouble when you-- for example, literacy rates in the community.

The literacy rates for adults in Detroit is 50%. And that's obscene. We are in a lot of trouble. Things haven't worked. To me, it's a lot like the drug wars. We're approaching it from the wrong ways. It's not working. We have to try new and better things.

I think it's great that the discussion is getting out there. I think that it's great that we're looking at the problem. Because if you don't know what the problem is and don't analyze it, you can't do anything with it. So I'm glad that they're bringing it up.

JOSIE JOHNSON: And I think the reason there is such conversation about it is not so much that these issues aren't important and that they don't exist. What we've done is to allow the discussion to take place in a vacuum, not with a backdrop of information and history.

You cannot talk about the issues facing African-American people, in particular in the United States, in the absence of everything that's going on. So what Bill Cosby did-- and we talk about the buffoons, et cetera.

It was Cosby's show that helped identify other lifestyles for Black people. And he received a lot of criticism about that because people had a hard time identifying with the kind of life. But it is such an important subject because our children need to know. Our teachers need to know. Our leaders must know the bigger picture of who we are and the impact that the system has.

You have to remember that this stuff is deeply etched in the fabric of American life. So when you see the negatives in the press, it only reinforces what most people believe anyway, because they have not kept up with the families that you're talking about or that many of us had exposure to. So it's such an interesting subject. And it requires quiet conversation.

STEPHEN SMITH: Sure.

JOSIE JOHNSON: It really does.

WALTER MONDALE: I'm in the middle of Juan Williams book, Enough, and I think it's rough. Have you read it?

JOSIE JOHNSON: I've only heard it interviewed, and I--

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: Recommend it?

WALTER MONDALE: I'm not through yet. I'll call you as soon as I finish it. But there's a lot of that theme in there about how things are not going well, things are disastrous. And it's all the Black community's fault and everything breaking down. It's time to look solely to yourself and so on. But then I listen to this panel, and you're saying quite a different set of things from what he's saying about the Black community.

I know we've got to do better as a nation, as a community, to give all these kids a chance. And it's not working the way many of us thought it would work. There were two parts of the civil rights movement.

The first part, we got done. And that's eliminating official discrimination. We just passed the Voting Rights Act again for 25 years. The idea that you can use government to separate races, which was what the idea was not long ago, is no longer legal. That's a big break.

But there was a second part of civil rights, and that is to give people that have been held back, been split apart and been emotionally damaged, the men sometimes psychologically castrated-- and that was one of your scenes there where they take the father, driving the kids South. And the cop beats up on him emotionally, right in front of the kids.

So he said, I don't feel like I'm anything. We have that history. But we didn't do the second part. We passed the laws. We passed Title I. We passed aid to education, but we never funded it. We sort of authorized dreams and offered peanuts. And this is a big problem, we've got to be working on together. And if we want this story to improve the way Martin Luther King and the others dreamed it would, we've got to do the second part of it as fast as we can.

STEPHEN SMITH: Former Vice President Walter Mondale, speaking this month as part of a panel discussion on Human Rights and Social Justice. The other participants were 2006 Minnesota Teacher of the Year-- Lee-Ann Stephens, longtime Minnesota civil rights activist-- Josie Johnson, and Christopher Paul Curtis who is the author of The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963, who had the first response to this question from the audience.

AUDIENCE: In recent years, what has been done to forward civil rights legislation? Has anything undermined the previous legislation? And in your opinions, what else needs to be done?

STEPHEN SMITH: Who wants to start?

JOSIE JOHNSON: That's a good question.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: I think we've seen a trend that it's all going back. And I think a lot of it has to do with an attitude that-- when Dr. Johnson was talking about in the '60s, I can remember people from my neighborhood in Flint, going to the South on Freedom Rides, putting their lives on the line. This is Black people and White people, actually putting their lives on the line to try to make a change.

I don't know where that attitude is now. It seems like it's gone, where now it is-- or we're very comfortable in our prejudices. You listen to the radio, and you're told, yeah, this is right. You're OK to feel that way. It's always, they are doing something to us. They are trying to take something from us.

I think we've come a long way backwards. I don't think we went as far as we thought we did. And I think even as far as we've gone, we're starting to recede. And I think, it's getting worse and worse with Supreme Court justice picks that are very frightening, I think. I think we're in a lot of trouble.

STEPHEN SMITH: Is there anything on a legislative front that can be done? I'm asking this of two people who were very involved in that first round of civil rights legislation.

WALTER MONDALE: One thing to do is enforce the law. And a lot of these laws are being limply enforced. There's a lot of issues around voting and purging voters' lists, and designing voting districts where there are long lines, having the police show up in front of voters in Black communities just on election. There's a lot of things there. And I don't think we have that around here, but it's around, and it goes right to the heart of America. Those things should be vigorously resisted.

I worry very much about the direction of the court. You did a documentary, Steve, about Justice Marshall. I was privileged as a young senator to vote for him-- the first Black justice and formerly, the lawyer for the NAACP. And he helped lead that remarkable court toward this high tide of civil rights.

But that could be unraveled. It's very close now. And I think that we have to be very careful about insisting that any new federal to any judge, but especially federal judge and Supreme-- they've got to have a clear, not only verbal commitment, but they've got to have a record. You can't live very long in this world without-- you know, as a judge-- without showing your spots and insisting on that.

And then I return to what I said. The civil rights movement is not just about eliminating old barriers. It's about giving kids a chance for the fullness of opportunity. That's where we're really failing. And that involves money. It involves personal involvement. It involves respect. It involves us doing it together instead of separately-- and a lot of things.

JOSIE JOHNSON: And I think in addition to that, when I said earlier that the issues are deeply etched in the fabric of American life, what we do is to make people feel that if I get something, it takes away something from someone else. That's what's happened with the whole issue of affirmative action.

I had a young man in a school setting say to me once that he didn't believe in affirmative action. That his father told him that he couldn't get the job that he wanted because he had to give it to a Black man.

And when we continue to verbalize statements like that, even once in a while-- because people believe them anyway, that affirmative action was to do something affirmative for people who were not qualified. That was the big issue, that the word affirmative was not clearly understood. It was interpreted as giving somebody something that they didn't deserve.

And it has followed us. So the laws that we see now, the courts that make decisions about how young people are admitted to college, the difference between athletes and musicians, and actors, and people of color, and languages-- I mean, it all gets so confused because we haven't spent, I don't think, enough time talking quietly about the things that truly bother us.

And in Minnesota, as you know, we are so nice in Minnesota that we don't really say what we think. And I can remember someone from the East Coast coming here. And they actually said that they had to go back to New York or New Jersey or someplace.

Because people in Minnesota put an issue on the table. We can discuss it. We talk about it. We think we've arrived at a decision. We come back. If it wasn't a decision that most of the people in the table wanted, it gets back on the table. And it gets discussed again and again with these other issues.

And she was talking then, not so much about race issues, but the commerce. And so that's the way we are in Minnesota. We are very careful. We don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. So we hold a lot of things, fearful.

And I hope young people will ask each other in safe environments about the things that are bugging them, that they hear, they don't know the answers to. They need some adult-supervised conversation about the things that bother them.

Because I'm observing, as many of you, the kinds of reports we get in the newspapers now. They're just fearful. They're scary. And they show our picture, most of the time, when things are not quite right.

STEPHEN SMITH: Thank God, we have a little bit more time for some more of that sort of non-Minnesota-style dialogue, if we can get into it more. Yes, sir.

AUDIENCE: Just wondering if you saw the elections in November and then subsequent elections and also the war and environmental issues, coming to the forefront of some hopeful signs, either of those being hopeful signs that social issues-- coming more to the forefront and talking about the way you feel. It's a dire situation now. And does that ring of any hope that these issues would come to the forefront and really be meaningfully discussed and moved?

STEPHEN SMITH: Let's start with the author, and then I'll ask the teacher.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: I'm pessimistic. I am pessimistic. I think that there are people who have learned to manipulate responses of the masses, if you will. And if anything goes against what they say, they know what buttons to push to confuse the issue. I hope that things will improve, but I think with the election coming up, I'm very fearful. I'm waiting with bated breath to see if people are going to react in the way that, to me, makes sense. I don't know. I really don't know.

WALTER MONDALE: I think it's a tremendous challenge, but I'm optimistic. Because I think in American history, there's been a recurrent history of a troubled country arousing itself and moving on to deal with something. You don't want to do it right away. And maybe we're at one of those phases now.

That's what happened in the Civil Rights Act. 250 years, we cheated on that issue and finally came clean over the process of 8 or 10 years. And I think there's been an accumulating agenda of growing problems will defeat us as a nation if we don't begin to deal with it. And I don't know what you're hearing, but when I walk around, I'm hearing that from people. And we've got the power. We can vote. We can change this. We can insist on standards.

JOSIE JOHNSON: Well, my fear-- and I was talking with my friend earlier today about this. My fear is that we have been socialized in American culture to react in anticipated ways. And the people who are manipulating us now know us better than we know ourselves. And my fear is that they do know which buttons to push. And that we are like Pavlov's dog. We are responsive to that because it fits.

And that's my fear, is that when you train people to eat hamburgers quickly and to get 30-second sound bites, and we're not-- and I know teachers are trying, but we're not teaching children to critically think about issues. Because we're not critically thinking about them.

And when you do that, and fast foods in 30 seconds, and no critical thinking-- you can manipulate people. You can start a war tomorrow. You can show some pictures tomorrow. You can do things that automatically create for people this protection of I'd better-- I don't want those people around me, so I'd better do certain things. So I'm not as optimistic. I'm scared to death.

STEPHEN SMITH: We have time, I think, for one more question.

AUDIENCE: What I was wondering is if Mr. Curtis could tell us what it's been like. Have you seen your play yet? Is this something new? What does it feel like to see the story that was in your head-- actually see it?

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: It's frightening.

[LAUGHTER]

I'm giving the impression I'm afraid of everything, but it's frightening. Because, to me, it's much like when I first listened to the book on tape with LeVar Burton reading it. He didn't do it the way I would do it. The answer to which is, then I should do it. If I've got complaints about it, then I should do it. But it's always difficult when you have conceived something and you see another person's interpretation of it.

But I think, I have-- The Watsons Go to Birmingham was originally picked up as a movie by Whoopi Goldberg. She wasn't able to sell it. And I had kind of mixed feelings about it because I know that when you take something from a novel and make it into a play or into a movie, so much of it has to be cut. And in cutting, there are certain scenes that I would have cut and certain scenes that I wouldn't have cut. So it's a frightening thing.

But I have seen the production. It is beautiful. It's beautifully done. The cast is just outstanding. Everything about the theater is great. I have a few quibbles with the script, which is to be expected, I would guess. But I think overall, I was very, very impressed with it.

LEE-ANN STEPHENS: Can't you tell that she's a teacher?

[LAUGHTER]

That's a teacher question. You can tell.

STEPHEN SMITH: Well, with that, I think that we should wrap up so we can go and see this play. The one thing I will say is that you have a lovely voice. And if you would like me to help you produce a book on tape, just give me a call because you'd do a great job.

CHRISTOPHER PAUL CURTIS: Thank you, Stephen. But I went through that. That is so hard to do. I'd gone into a studio to do the last part of Bud, Not Buddy. And about four pages took about four hours. Every time I'd speak, they'd say, OK, you're speeding up. OK, you're slowing down. Don't shake your leg. Don't-- so thank you, but I have to decline on that.

[LAUGHTER]

STEPHEN SMITH: All right, let's thank our panel.

[APPLAUSE, CHEERS]

GARY EICHTEN: Stephen Smith, executive editor of our American RadioWorks documentary unit, closing out a panel discussion on Human Rights and Social Justice held at the Children's Theater Company of Minneapolis.

Panelists included Former Vice President Walter Mondale, Teacher of the Year-- Lee-Ann Stephens, Minnesota Civil Rights Activist Josie Johnson and Christopher Paul Curtis, author of the young adult novel, The Watsons Go to Birmingham-- 1963.

A play based on Curtis's book is running at the Children's Theater Company through October 7th. Well, that does it for our Midday program today. Gary Eichten here. Thanks for tuning in. And we hope you can join us 11:00 to 1:00 tomorrow for Midday.