Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

We're doing two episodes about Birmingham, Alabama, May 1963 with Paul Kicks, author of The New Book

You Have to be prepared to die before you can begin to live 10 weeks in Birmingham that changed America.

Last episode we talked about the bombings that took place in early May to try and

disrupt civil rights efforts in Birmingham including MLK's hotel room.

Today we're going to cut to a few weeks later, late May, and a key meeting, the moment

when Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited novelist James Baldwin, along with a large group

of cultural leaders leaders including singer Harry

Belafante to meet Kennedy in an apartment in New York City. The meeting was spurred

in large part because of the crisis in Birmingham and the rising violence there and tension there and the meeting

itself kind of became a little antagonistic.

We'll go into that room and figure out kind of how the group interacted with each other and if they were able to reach

any sort of consensus or anything that resembled progress but let's go to that

fateful meeting now and I mentioned by the way Harry Belafonte in that meeting

Belafonte of course recently died so this is a chance a little bit to talk

about his remarkable life of activism but Paul Kix here you are welcome back to the

second of two episodes thanks for doing this you. I love being here. And continued

congratulations on your new music. Thank you guys. I appreciate that. And here as

always Nicole Hammer Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. So yeah what's the math here? A couple

weeks between the bombings where we left it off last episode. You hinted in that last episode

...