Bill Moyers
January 3, 2014
Clip: Grandson of a Klansman Becomes a Civil Rights Crusader

CARD: Bob Zellner was arrested at a Moral Mondays protest in 2013.

CARD: It was not his first arrest.

POLICE OFFICIAL: Can I have your attention. I’m asking you to disburse.

PROTESTORS: We fight! We fight! We fight!

BOB ZELLNER: Well Moral Monday is really takes me right back to 50 years ago. I was the first white southern field secretary for SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and I was one of the first seventeen that were arrested in Moral Monday.

It was very unlikely that I would get involved in the civil rights movement because my father, when I was a youngster was in the Ku Klux Klan. His, his father was in the Klan. But I was very lucky that my father left the Ku Klux Klan. I didn’t know granddaddy was a Klansman. I didn’t know he hated people because of their color. He was just a nice old grandfather to me – who I loved. And my mother at one point after I became involved in the movement, we were in a march and we were going to march through Birmingham and she sent me a telegram and she said something very hurtful. She said, you have to drop out of the march when you go to Birmingham because your grandfather’s going to shoot you. I marched. And luckily we were arrested at the state line, so I never had to test. But I knew I was going to march in Birmingham and I was pretty sure that my grandfather was going to shoot me also.

PROTESTORS: Hey hey, ho ho, Pat McCrory has got to go. Hey hey, ho ho, Pat McCrory has got to go. Hey hey, ho ho, Pat McCrory has got to go.

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