Firing Line

- American civil rights at a crossroads.

This week on "Firing Line."

Go tell it on the mountain - [Margaret] The iconic PBS documentary series on the American civil rights movement "Eyes on the Prize" was an instant blockbuster when it aired in 1987.

Then Washington Post journalist Juan Williams wrote the book that accompanied the series.

- One of the ironies of writing this book at this time is that it hasn't been done before.

Here we have what I think is sort of the quintessential moment of modern American history, the civil rights movement, - [Margaret] Now Williams is writing about what he calls the second civil rights movement.

- [Protestor] Black lives matter.

- [Protestors] Black lives matter.

- [Margaret] His book, "New Prize For These Eyes," carries the story forward into the 21st Century.

- When you think about civil rights today versus the names of the past, the Dr. Kings and the like, it's a huge difference.

The agenda is not being set by one group of people here.

And oftentimes it can become diffuse as a result.

- [Rally Attenders] USA, USA.

- [Margaret] As Donald Trump and the MAGA movement return to power, on the same day America celebrates Martin Luther King Day.

- Free at last, free at last.

Thank God Almighty we are free at last!

- [Margaret] What does author and journalist Juan Williams say now?

- [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, the Fairweather Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Cliff and Laurel Asness, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. - Juan Williams, welcome back to "Firing Line."

- Thank you, Margaret.

- On Monday, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States, on the same day that our country celebrates Martin Luther King Day.

If Kamala Harris hadn't won fewer votes than Joe Biden did in 2020 we would be instead inaugurating the first Black woman president.

These are two very different histories and narratives about America.

What do you make of it?

- Well, I have just written a book called "New Prize for These Eyes."

And the subtitle is The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement, Margaret.

And it speaks to this idea that you are talking about, that you can see one moment, we're about to see Donald Trump begin a second term.

But we could be about to see the first Black woman inaugurated as president.

And what I'm speaking about here is, the important point in the book is that we are in the midst of a second civil rights movement whose power rivals the power of the first civil rights movement, mid-20th century.

- You have written about race for more than 50 years, half a century, as a journalist.

How do you assess where America is in its journey towards fulfilling the promise of the Declaration of Independence to Black Americans?

- Wow, you are on target.

So look, in the original book that I wrote about the first civil rights movement, "Eyes on the Prize" 1954 to 1965, the movement really was about passing laws, getting Congress, local government, state governments, to pass laws to affirm the rights of Black Americans as citizens.

And so you get the passage of the Civil Rights Act of '64, the Voting Rights Act of '65.

That's the power of that first movement.

It's why people are marching in Washington in 1963, the Great March on Washington.

Fast forward to this period, as you asked me, where are we now?

And what you see is we are in the midst of a second movement in which people are marching, boy, you know, 250,000 at the Great March on Washington.

Thousands of marches, cities across the country, around the globe, with millions of people.

- [Protestors] Black lives matter.

- And what are they responding to?

They are responding to memes, voice messages, texts, tweets- - Hashtags.

- Images.

Yes.

So it's online.

It's not organized.

The Great March on Washington, you had Dr. King, the rabbis, the union leaders and people came that morning, got out that night.

This doesn't have that organized element.

And what people are talking about is really something quite different, which is, we've got the laws in place.

But now there are people who say the lived experience of being a minority in this country, certainly being Black, Latino, immigrant in this country, still reflects inequality.

We're talking about bad schools.

We're talking about poor housing and troubled neighborhoods.

We're talking about, of course, and I think most pointedly, police brutality aimed at young Blacks who are seen often as thuggish and threatening.

We are having conversations about whether or not race is a legitimate consideration when it comes to admissions to school, to hiring, to cultural representation.

This extends then into public policy, about the arguments about diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI.

And we have a president coming in, to your point, Margaret, who's made it very clear he's opposed to this kind of thinking.

He does not want to address race.

He doesn't want to engage with a person like a Dr. King in the way that President Kennedy, President Johnson did back in that first movement.

So we are at a critical juncture in terms of race, but it's a very different place.

And a lot of people don't appreciate we are inaugurating Donald Trump, a man who has said Black Lives Matter is a hate symbol, a man who has tweeted out people talking about white power.

We could be inaugurating a Black woman.

Wow!

What a moment in history!

And that's what I tried to capture in this book.

- You place the start of the second civil rights movement with Barack Obama's 2004 speech at the Democratic National Committee Convention.

- There is not a Black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America.

There's the United States of America!

(audience cheers and applauds) - This speech and the beginning of this era, it was almost like there was this hope that we would finally achieve a post-racial America.

- Right.

- Which you say turned out to be, quote, "a cruel illusion."

Instead of delivering a post-racial America, there was a backlash.

It eventually led to Donald Trump's election.

And you say, "No Obama, no Trump."

- I don't think so.

- Because, you know, you write about how he was very careful not to govern as a Black president, but to govern as the president of all Americans.

- Right.

I think that Barack Obama is one of the most misunderstood presidents in our history.

And it's for this very reason, that he comes on the scene and he says he will be a trailblazer in terms of being the first Black president.

He picks up on the energy of this notion of a new America, a post-racial America.

He personifies a great hope.

I mean, remember his poster, "Hope," right?

But once he's in office, he makes it very clear, "I'm not the Black president.

I'm the President.

I'm not post-racial.

I'm the President.

Stop looking at me in terms of my race."

And his relationship to Black America in that way then becomes kind of intriguing because it's almost as if he was saying, "I'm in a forest of people, a great American people, and I'm just one of them.

Don't look at me as different based on race.

And I think a lot of people were sorely disappointed.

You know, I remember the cover of "Ebony Magazine" said, you know, "In my lifetime."

Unbelievable.

That same magazine then, seeing how he fails to respond to so many murders of young Black people by police and all the rest, it says, "You know what, we're disappointed with him.

He's not reading the room.

He's not responding to our needs."

- I want to ask you about that.

You chronicle how Obama was reluctant to directly confront racial issues.

Perhaps the first instance was in the execution of Troy Davis.

- Right.

- A man in Georgia who had been on death row for decades.

Who many believed was innocent.

He was reluctant to comment on Trayvon Martin's shooting.

He was reluctant to comment on the shooting of Michael Brown.

In hindsight, had he engaged on racial issues like these and leaned into it, do you think it would have helped or would it have just created more backlash?

- I think it would have created more backlash.

When you look at what happened in the Trayvon Martin case, where he said, "If I had a son, he would have looked like Trayvon."

And the reaction from some people was, "Oh my God, why did he make this racial?"

So to me, Obama was actually quite an astute politician.

But in terms of race, which was the overcast on his presidency, he was not managing that racial element.

- He wasn't a civil rights leader.

- No.

Exactly right.

So he's a politician, not a civil rights leader.

He gets reelected.

If he had, in fact, done what so many in the Black community wanted him to do, which is really- - He couldn't have been a president.

- He wouldn't have been reelected, I don't think.

- Yeah.

There are some who will point to the fact that Donald Trump did win a larger share of Black votes in 2024 than he did in 2020 or 2016; given the changing dynamics and demographics of the country in 2025, we are actually now closer to this idea of a post-racial America.

What do you say to that?

- When you're talking about the increased number of people of color who voted for Trump in the 2024 election, you're largely talking about young men of color.

And they're saying, hey, I don't think the Democratic Party has delivered for me because, again, we go back to things like poor schools, poor neighborhoods, high levels of incarceration, police violence and the like.

So they're just fed up with the Democratic Party.

And I think they're expressing that by saying, "Oh, look at Trump.

He's got all this money.

He's got all these fancy friends, all these women."

You know, that's what they're looking at.

And they're thinking, you know, it's almost like he's an old time gangster.

"I want to be like that," you know?

- And yet he's a white guy.

So how does Trump get us closer to a post-racial America?

- No.

I think that it's very clear that when it comes to race, he's the one that says Black Lives Matter is a symbol of hate.

And he portrays Black Lives Matter, by the way, as violent, when in fact most of these marches with millions of people, the largest marches in American history, were over 90% nonviolent.

Donald Trump drives racial division in our society.

I don't think there's any question.

And he uses it, exploits it, for political gain.

- You write about one of the cultural successes of the second civil rights movement is that corporations become increasingly racially conscious, especially through their diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

And yet, in recent months, we have seen companies step back from their initiatives: McDonald's, Walmart, Ford, Meta, Amazon.

- Right.

- More.

What do you make of this shift?

- Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States.

I mean, you look at the leadership of corporate America, it's not exactly diverse.

And then you look at that the- - In fact, let me just tee you up.

In fact, corporations that have kept their distance from Trump historically are now embracing him: Mark Zuckerberg- - Yes!

- Jeff Bezos- - That's where I was going.

- Ae attending, I know.

I could tell.

They're attending the inauguration.

In 2021.

- Yes!

- In 2021, listen to this, Coca Cola denounces the acts of January 6th as unlawful and violent events.

And this week, the CEO of Coca Cola went to Mar-a-Lago and presented Donald Trump with a commemorative inaugural Diet Coke.

What does this full embrace of corporate America to Donald Trump tell you about the second civil rights movement?

- Is ass kissing allowed on PBS?

(both laugh) No, but I mean, clearly, it's pandering to Trump.

Trump is the gravy train.

He will be in control and they don't, and they fear, I mean, these big companies, they're about profits.

They don't want Trump's wrath.

They don't want to be, Not only do they not want to be the focus of his anger and his rhetoric, but I think that they fear in some ways that they would be, that they would lose out on government contracts, government money.

I particularly find it distressing how Zuckerberg says he's not gonna fact check.

Do you think that there's going to be more division, ugliness, bigotry expressed online?

And people say, "Well, I'm just saying what I think or what I heard."

I just think it's toxic.

- One of the reasons attributed to Kamala Harris's loss in November is, this argument that there has been a rejection of identity politics.

- Right.

- That the left's embrace, and that includes the DEI policies.

This isn't a lasting win, so to speak, then, of the second civil rights movement, is it?

- I think the whole notion of identity politics is so loaded and so negative in the current discussion because we're about to inaugurate Donald J. Trump.

But in fact, identity politics has been in America, from the start, and you want to be white and you want to be male.

And that identity has a tremendous privilege in American society, American politics, American corporate economic life.

That's just American identity politics.

- And yet, I mean, some of the criticism of the DEI policies was that they were somehow more divisive.

- Correct.

- Than unifying.

Right.

- Right, because you but want to talk about race and you want to talk about the fact that people have been excluded or people have been disenfranchised or not given equal opportunity to excel.

And you say, well, if we attend to this, oh now you're doing identity politics.

And maybe that means that we are not rewarding excellence and achievement.

Instead, we're focused on identity.

Instead of saying, wait a minute, we should acknowledge excellence and achievement.

But it doesn't have to be limited in terms of identity.

It should be for us all.

And we want to make steps, take steps to make sure that everyone feels they have an opportunity to excel.

- And if America is to become a great nation, this must become true.

So let freedom ring.

- [Margaret] The iconic figures that led the first civil rights movement: Dr. King, Malcolm X, John Lewis- - Right.

- Julian Bond.

- Yes.

- Two of those original civil rights leaders that I just mentioned appeared with William F. Buckley, Jr. on the original "Firing Line" in 1974.

Bond, who later narrated the PBS series, "Eyes on the Prize."

- Yes.

- For which you wrote the companion book, also wrote the introduction to your book.

- Yes!

- Take a look at what Julian Bond says in 1974.

- I think what has happened, what used to be called the civil rights movement is that it has changed.

Many people think it doesn't exist anymore.

I think it's simply changed.

What you used to have is several organizations, most of them headquartered in New York, but some headquartered in Atlanta, which intentionally or unintentionally dominated this large mass of people in the Southeast, dominated them in the sense that they tended to decide, "We're going to do this, this year."

- [William] Yes.

- "This is the year for voting.

This is the year for public accommodations," and so on.

And it was not domination in the harsh sense, but it was sort of like a master plan being worked out in one locale and shipped out.

What's happened now is that control has gone, and I think it's both good and bad.

It's good in the sense that now you have people in their own towns and cities deciding for themselves what they want to do.

- [William] Prescribing their own priorities.

- It's bad in the sense that you're not always able to focus resources the way you once could.

- You know, most Americans, I suspect, would struggle to name any single leader with the second civil rights movement.

Do you think, you call the second civil rights movement rudderless.

Would it and could it accomplish more legislatively and culturally if it had more centralized leadership and frankly, accountability?

- Well, the accountability thing is very important, again, because the lack of accountability then feeds the critics' ammunition to try to undermine any talk about racial equity in modern America.

But when you think about civil rights today versus the names of the past, the Dr. Kings and the like, it's a huge difference.

Now, in a way, it plays to the idea that this movement, and I'm thinking back to what Julian Bond just said, you see a different kind of energy and you think, "Well, it was organized and it was very clear and an agenda was set."

The agenda is not being set by one group of people here.

It's not being set by the women who started Black Lives Matter.

And oftentimes it can become diffuse as a result.

And then you think it's the victims of the crimes that are remembered, not the leaders and not the inspiration that comes from people.

But also, you can't follow it.

I was taken by what Julian Bond was saying about the message because the message would come from, he said New York, you know, the locus of the headquarters of the civil rights groups and setting an agenda, today we're gonna talk about voting rights or whatever.

And they would also then put resources in there.

You don't have that kind of centralized, direct motion now out in this second civil rights movement coming from the Black Lives Matter, 'cause they're here and there.

- Like there's no organization - I think we have to, as we go into even possibly a third civil rights movement, understand how these activists, they need to engage politically and say, you know what, politics is a necessary step in terms of achieving equity and recognition of common destiny and common humanity.

- One of the forces that is constantly opposing the second civil rights movement you write about in the book is right wing media.

- Right.

- You mention Fox News, your current employer.

- Yeah.

- And former prime time hosts like Bill O'Reilly, which you mentioned.

He's stirring up racial tensions.

And you recall how Fox News pushes misleading narratives about Black Lives Matter and critical race theory.

What role does right wing media play in getting us to the place we are today?

- It's the echo chamber for the backlash.

So, in the Trayvon Martin case, it becomes the defender of the man charged with killing him and says, oh no, he was pummeled.

And, he was the victim.

And you think, wait a minute, the victim was a kid who was walking home from the 7-Eleven with candy and a drink.

- And a hoodie.

- A hoodie, unarmed.

And you say, Oh no, but he looked thuggish.

The hoodie made him look threatening."

And the right wing media, when it comes to Black Lives Matter capitalized on all the missteps made by this kind of diffuse organization, trying to find its way and trying to, in some cases, stumble and even involved in misappropriation of funds and lack of accountability.

It feeds this right wing media obsession with the idea that, "Oh no, these are violent, corrupt people.

Stop thinking of them as paragons of virtue trying to rise, help us Americans and us globally, rise to a new level of racial injustice."

- Trayvon Martin is no Rosa Parks.

- Exactly!

- Is the point they're trying to make.

How do you think about your role in right wing media?

- Oh.

So I don't think there's any question, I am sort of the foil for a lot of the right wing media.

I am allowed in the door to make my point.

No one tells me what to say, but I always joke to people that I'm on panels with three people who have a contrary message.

And the host also oftentimes has a contrary message.

And I get the last question, so I don't get to frame the debate, and I get the worst lighting.

- How do you do it?

- I can show you scars, but- - Like what?

- I think the kind of personal distress when you feel like, you know what, people are ignoring, lying, spinning, not allowing you to be heard and not engaging with you in an honest conversation because they're intent on the spin and this goes to who they're talking to.

So I'm allowed into the conversation and in some cases welcomed, I mean, on a platform that has, Fox has a huge audience.

- Yeah.

- And I think it's important people say to me all the time, you know, thank God you're there and thank God you bring a message that's somewhat different.

But I understand that I'm in the position of being a contrarian or a foil to a larger message.

And the larger message is delivered to a base that doesn't want to hear about race, for example, as we've had this discussion about my book, doesn't want to talk about race or doesn't want to have anybody else say there's something wrong with the status quo when it comes to race relations.

- Is it exhausting?

- It is.

- Donald Trump seems to be staffing his entire administration from Fox News.

Okay, that's not true.

He seems to be staffing his administration in large part from Fox News.

You've worked with Trump's defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, whose hearings were this week.

Based on what you know about Hegseth, having worked with him at Fox News, is he qualified to be Secretary of Defense?

- If you're asking about is he prepared to run the United States military, a huge military, the biggest in the world with billions of dollars in assets, I just had never seen any evidence of that.

- Does it give you confidence that so many of your colleagues will be in the Trump administration, or does it concern you?

- I think it's a parody.

I just, I can't believe it.

It's like people who are TV people and they're fine TV people.

In some cases, they're fun, they make you laugh or they call out, pompous behavior by government officials.

But are you able, really, to run the Defense Department?

Are you really someone who should be taken seriously in terms of setting the agenda for the American people?

I just think it's a different ball of wax.

But apparently for Trump, because he watches Fox so constantly, these people loom to him as paragons of how the world should look and work.

I think he picks people, by the way, for looks.

- You place the start of America's second civil rights movement with the keynote speech that Barack Obama gives at the 2004 DNC convention.

Is there a chance that the bookend of the start of that second civil rights movement really is the second inauguration of Donald Trump?

And what's next is a third civil rights movement, which you've referenced?

- I think that we are in a moment, and this is why it's so important to me to write this book, that we have to understand that it was not just that there was a first movement or, as I assert in this book, that there's an important second movement taking place, but that, gee whiz, we're now about to merge into a new day of a third civil rights movement in which the people who stand for more equity and inclusion and better understanding of race relations in a shifting demographic are going to have to evolve, change their tactics, respond to Trump, respond to his base more successfully.

They did not.

That's why Trump is back in the Oval Office.

But getting involved with politics, not simply saying, oh, those are a bunch of politicians or that's the establishment.

No.

That was a losing hand.

Now, this third movement is going to have to say, no, you win at the ballot box.

And that allows you then a greater megaphone to stand up and explain to people, Black people, white people, people in the rural south, people in the urban north, why it's so important to talk about race.

- Well, when you write that third book about the third civil rights generation- - I'll be very old, Margaret.

- We'll welcome you back to "Firing Line."

Juan Williams, thank you for joining me.

- Margaret, thank you for having me.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

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