LADY BIRD JOHNSON: Possible offer of a lovely Aubusson rug for the Blue Room.
The first lady is recounting some decorating issues in the White House. Today, I'm dieting - endless cups of black coffee, one egg for lunch, and then I did sit down with Lyndon and Walter Lippmann but for the conversation, not the food.īRANTLEY: It's Monday, March 15, 1965. LADY BIRD JOHNSON: Monday, The Ides of March. We pick up at the moment after Reeb's murder to see how these stories were born, to find out who created them and why.īRANTLEY: From NPR, this is WHITE LIES. So today - a story about stories, stories about what happened that night and what it meant. You just don't.īRANTLEY: Why was it so hard to know the truth about who killed Jim Reeb? It turns out the answer was embedded in these stories, these rumors about motive, negligence, the nature of Reeb's injuries. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #8: What else was going on behind that we didn't know? It's so much in our blood here that, you know, sometimes you don't know what the truth really is. So much of what people believe about what happened to Jim Reeb is shaped by what they believe about Selma, about 1965, about the civil rights movement and about race in America. I just swore 'cause I always will believe it. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: I think they killed the man on the way to Birmingham. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Slow ambulances to Birmingham. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Well, you know, did he hit his head on the pavement? It was the bad doctors or something like that. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: They say, oh, yeah, he really wasn't. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Anything that happens, there's always a second story. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Stories that went flying going around. And when we started asking questions, everyone seemed to have a story about what had happened to Reeb. So without facts, without consensus, without any resolution, rumors and myths made their way in. That's all you could definitively say about this case. No one else was investigated for the crime, and the case has been cold for decades.
In December of that year, three men were tried for his murder and acquitted. GRACE: Jim Reeb was attacked on the night of March 9, 1965, on a street corner in Selma, Ala. But so why is it so hard to find these people who know about Reeb? JOANNE BLAND: Why? It would seem as though his would've been solved quicker and all of it would have come to light because he was a white man. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Do you think the cause of which your husband came to Selma was worth it? JOHNSON: This minister's going to die, isn't he? MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: I understand one was so brutally beaten that he had to be rushed to the hospital in Birmingham with a possible brain concussion. ORLOFF MILLER: And one of them was carrying a club. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: These were all white men? CLARK OLSEN: We saw a group of four or five men coming toward us.
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