00:00March 27th, 1961. Jackson, Mississippi. The morning is cold. There is rain. On the way.
00:08And in this city, in the most aggressively segregated state in the Union,
00:13nine young black students are walking toward a public library. They are dressed carefully,
00:18deliberately. One of them, Albert Lassiter, has chosen to wear a trench coat, not just
00:24against the cold. As he would later recall, it was to provide an extra layer of protection
00:29against whatever beatings might come. Another student, Janice Jackson, would later describe
00:36walking into that library as a surreal experience. It was like I was lifted out of my body or
00:43something. They walk through the front door of the Jackson Municipal Library, a library that is,
00:49by law, reserved for white citizens only. They find their books. They sit down. They begin to read.
00:57A librarian calls the police. The students do not move. When officers arrive, they rise, calmly,
01:05quietly, just as planned, charged with breach of peace. Their crime? Reading in a public library.
01:14These were not random activists pulled off the street. They were students at Tougaloo College,
01:19a small, historically black institution in Mississippi, known across the South as the Oasis,
01:26a state that, at one point in time, had the highest lynching rate in the 20th century.
01:32That is the world these students chose to confront. They had been guided by Medgar Evers,
01:37the NAACP's first Mississippi field officer, a man described by those who knew him as energetic,
01:44committed to bringing about integration in public facilities, and they had done their homework.
01:50The books they requested were not available at the Black Library across town. The argument,
01:56you have your own library, had been destroyed before it was even made. Archivist Tony Bounds
02:02puts it plainly, why can't I go in and read a book? It comes back to that, the simplicity of
02:09it all.
02:09They were found guilty. They spent more than 30 hours in jail. That first night, Joseph Jackson,
02:15Jr. lay awake. He thought of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old, murdered in Mississippi, just six
02:21years before. His words were direct. The later it got that night, I was in fear of my life.
02:28Outside, black students from Jackson State began protesting in support. Police met them with billy
02:34clubs, tear gas, and dogs. When the nine appeared in court, two days later, police attacked the crowd
02:40gathered outside. Medgar Evers himself was beaten. Researcher M.J. O'Brien documents this as
02:47the first attacks by police dogs on non-violent crowds during the civil rights era, two years
02:53before the more sensational attacks in Birmingham grabbed national headlines, two years before Birmingham
02:59at a library, and the world barely noticed. Medgar Evers wrote to NAACP leader Roy Wilkins
03:07about what he had witnessed. These young people exhibited the greatest amount of courage in
03:12the face of mounting tension. While they sat in jail, the black community of Jackson responded
03:17in the most human way possible. Families, mostly black women, brought cookies, cakes, hot food
03:24to the jail so that nine young people would know they were not alone. Two years later, June 1963,
03:31Medgar Evers was shot in the back in his own driveway. He was 37 years old. His killer was convicted
03:39in
03:401994. 31 years after the killing. 31 years. In July 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.
03:50The victory, the Tougaloo Nine had walked into that library to demand. It came three years after their
03:56arrest. Their complete story was only told for the first time in the autumn of 2025. Sixty-four years
04:03after the sit-in. Nine people. A cold morning. A library. Books that were not supposed to be
04:09in their hands. They sat down. They read. They refused to leave. They were found guilty of being
04:16present, and they went back to class. Their story is not a footnote. It is the foundation. This has been
04:23the sealed ledger. Stay with us. Sealed ledger. Every record has a truth. We find it.
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