This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Cool Zone Media.

On May 22, 1967,

George Ware took the stand in a crowded courtroom in Nashville, Tennessee.

Ware was 27 years old. He'd graduated from Tuskegee University with a master's degree in biochemistry in 1965, but he quickly abandoned

the job he got up north after graduation for something he thought was more important. He went to work for the student nonviolent coordinating committee

as an aide to Chairman Stokely Carmichael.

And by 1967, he was planning Carmichael's college speaking tour

as the national coordinator of campus programs.

That was the job where was doing

when he'd been arrested in Nashville a few weeks earlier.

On the stand, he calmly denied having incited a riot.

He was cross-examined for hours about the beating he'd endured at the hands of the Nashville police.

He denied, having called the officers,

honkeys, and he denied egging the crowd of black college students on,

by yelling things like, let's get the white police.

He had no idea, who owned the pistol, police had charged him with carrying.

How could he know? He hadn't carried it at all.

No one had. The police found the gun in someone else's car that he'd ridden in briefly that day.

Criminal charges related to his arrest in April were put on hold pending a verdict in this lawsuit,

which challenged the constitutionality of Tennessee's riot and disorderly conduct statutes.

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