The killing of Bonita Carter in 1979 changed Birmingham, and its leadership. Protests following her death forced the city to reshape its police department, four decades before Black Lives Matter made its greatest impact. It was a decade after Black civil rights leaders had gathered in Birmingham to make 14 points to their white peers in Birmingham, to demand acknowledgement that Black people were still treated as second class citizens.They pointed out longstanding police violence against Black residents, that Black people consistently were given less courtesy and respect from police. That white people got a benefit of the doubt as Black people got a bullet. Today, conversations across the country are almost the same. On the final episode of Unjustifiable, John Archibald and Roy S. Johnson discuss what has changed, and what Bonita Carter still has to teach us.Show Notes:Guests: Uche Bean, Brian Burghart, Catherine Conner, Shelley Stewart, Jasmyn Story, Randall WoodfinCreator: John ArchibaldHosts: John Archibald & Roy S. JohnsonExecutive Producer: John HammontreeProducer & Audio Engineer: Alexander RicheyProducers: Amy Yurkanin and Marsha OglesbyScore: Thad Saajid, Austin Motlow, David Marsh, and Danny Ray Wilkerson, Jr. Additional music contributed by Jeremy Smith.Music: “Jackson” by The Pollies; Single Lock Studios; “Tension” by Todd SniderVoice Acting: R.L. Nave, Barnett Wright  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Unjustifiable Chapter 6: Point 14

Who is Officer George Sands? The Birmingham police officer had amassed more than a dozen complaints before fatally shooting Bonita Carter. He’d been seen as a problem by some city leaders, while others protected him – saying he was just a symptom of a poorly trained police department rather than a rogue bad apple?Before being elected mayor, Richard Arrington had been shocked to learn Sands was Bonita Carter’s killer, for he had been in so much trouble before. But Sands was protected by the powerful police union, and county rules that restricted the authority of the mayor.Arrington set out to integrate and reshape the police department, to change the shooting policy that had left so many Black men dead. But would it be possible to remove Sands?And, given all that’s happened since, how does Sands feel about that night in 1979?Show Notes:Guests: George Sands, T.K. Thorne, Nathaniel Bagley, Richard Arrington, Uche BeanCreator: John ArchibaldHosts: John Archibald & Roy S. JohnsonExecutive Producer: John HammontreeProducer & Audio Engineer: Alexander RicheyProducers: Amy Yurkanin and Marsha OglesbyScore: Thad Saajid, Austin Motlow, David Marsh, and Danny Ray Wilkerson, Jr. Additional music contributed by Jeremy Smith.Music: “Call on Me” by Cedric Burnside; Single Lock StudiosVoice Acting: Ike Morgan, Jeremy Smith  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Unjustifiable Chapter 5: "Shoot her again"

The status quo was broken in Birmingham, Alabama, in the weeks after the Bonita Carter killing. The city once known as Bombingham, as the Johannesburg of the South, reeled from protests, and counter-protests from the Ku Klux Klan. A scientist, a former college dean named Richard Arrington who had long been aligned with that white progressive mayor, David Vann, broke away from the mayor to launch his own campaign. A committee formed by Vann to take testimony from witnesses to the shooting – one of the main reasons we can reconstruct the events of the crime – found Officer George Sands had no cause to shoot Carter. Yet Sands remained on the force.Just sixteen years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched through the city, the election of 1979 would prove pivotal for Black residents exercising their voting power. How would voters decide?Show Notes:Guests: Richard Arrington Jr., Richard Mauk, Scott Douglas, Solomon CrenshawCreator: John ArchibaldHosts: John Archibald & Roy S. JohnsonExecutive Producer: John HammontreeProducer & Audio Engineer: Alexander RicheyProducers: Amy Yurkanin and Marsha OglesbyScore: Thad Saajid, Austin Motlow, David Marsh, and Danny Ray Wilkerson, Jr. Additional music contributed by Jeremy Smith.Music: “Haverford Impromptu #2” by Sun-Ra; and “Lay it Down” by Donnie Fritts  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Unjustifiable Chapter 4: Catching the Devil on All Sides

What was it about the killing of Bonita Carter that sparked police reform? The search for that answer led the Reckon Radio team into the bowels of the Birmingham Public Library, to a recently discovered box of “Birmingham Police Shooting and Incident Cards.” These cards, seen by almost no one in decades, detail the lives of hundreds of people in Jefferson County, Alabama – the deaths of hundreds, killed by police and security officers and written off, seemingly casually, as “justifiable.”Almost all the victims are Black. Almost all are men. Many are young, teenagers, shot in the back as they ran, or walked away, or were simply suspected of a crime as trivial as picking up a few bucks off a lunch counter. What was it about Bonita Carter? The answer in these files and others, which indicate that more police in this one county shot as many as 500 people in the last century, that they were not just allowed to shoot people they believed had committed a crime, they were expected and encouraged to do it. Especially if the suspect were Black.Show Notes:Guests: Cynthia Carter, Brian Burghart, Jay Glass, Uche BeanCreator: John ArchibaldHosts: John Archibald & Roy S. JohnsonExecutive Producer: John HammontreeProducer & Audio Engineer: Alexander RicheyProducers: Amy Yurkanin and Marsha OglesbyScore: Thad Saajid, Austin Motlow, David Marsh, and Danny Ray Wilkerson, Jr. Additional music contributed by Jeremy Smith.Music: "Vehemence," by Thad SaajidVoice Acting: R.L. Nave, Barnett Wright, Danny Ray Wilkerson, Jr.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Unjustifiable Chapter 3: The Shoebox

Protest began to swell in Birmingham began to swell the night Bonita Carter was killed, and it grew larger and larger in the days that followed. Black people, who had marched for voting power and integrated water fountains and lunch counters a decade and a half before, took to the streets to condemn police violence from a department built by Bull Connor. The killing of Bonita Carter seemed to be the last straw, especially when the mayor, a progressive named David Vann who had helped push Connor out in the ’60s, hesitated to discipline the police officer who shot her. The killing demanded change. What was it about her that seemed to mobilize a city?Show Notes:Guests: Solomon Crenshaw, Nathaniel Bagley, TK Thorne, Richard Mauk, Richard Arrington, Jr.Creator: John ArchibaldHosts: John Archibald & Roy S. JohnsonExecutive Producer: John HammontreeProducer & Audio Engineer: Alexander RicheyProducers: Amy Yurkanin and Marsha OglesbyScore: Thad Saajid, Austin Motlow, David Marsh, and Danny Ray Wilkerson, Jr. Additional music contributed by Jeremy Smith.Music: "Hard to Stay Cool," by Cedric Burnside; Single Lock RecordsVoice Acting: Nigel Thomas, Sheikilya Thomas, Alexander Richey, Barnett Wright and John Hammontree  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Unjustifiable Chapter 2: Anger and action

June 22, 1979, just another evening in Birmingham Alabama, and Bonita Carter and her friends ride their bikes to a convenience store as the sun sets. What happened there would change their lives, and their cities forever. Chapter one of “Unjustifiable” reconstructs those events, moment by moment and step by step, from the vantage points of onlookers, participants, store workers, witnesses and police. By the end of the night, a police officer named George Sands fired four shots into a car, killing the unarmed young Black woman, after a white man pointed to the car and screamed that she was dangerous man with a shotgun. Carter’s friends screamed too: “It’s a girl in the car!”They were ignored.Show Notes:Creator: John ArchibaldHosts: John Archibald & Roy S. JohnsonExecutive Producer: John HammontreeProducer & Audio Engineer: Alexander RicheyProducers: Amy Yurkanin and Marsha OglesbyScore: Thad Saajid, Austin Motlow, David Marsh, and Danny Ray Wilkerson, Jr. Additional music contributed by Jeremy Smith.Music: "Ain't Gonna Take No Mess," by Cedric Burnside; Single Lock RecordsVoice Acting: Alex Williams, Finn Jasele, David Perry, Jonathan Sobolewski, R.L. Nave, Ike Morgan, Alexander Richey, Barnett Wright, Nigel Thomas and Sheikilya Thomas.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Unjustifiable Chapter 1: 'It was a girl in the car'

Reckon Radio presents: “Unjustifiable,” an investigative series from Pulitzer-prize winning columnist John Archibald and Roy S. Johnson examining an overlooked moment of civil rights history in the heart of the South. The story begins in 1979, when a police officer with a history of complaints shot and killed a 20-year-old Black woman named Bonita Carter. Her death would forever change the course of Birmingham, Alabama.The legacy of Bull Connor’s police department looms large over Birmingham. Even today, black and white images of dogs and firehoses used against Birmingham children and foot soldiers are touchstones for protestors demanding police reform. What was it about the death of Carter that motivated Birmingham to change, 16 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. penned a letter from a Birmingham jail and four decades before Black Lives Matter. In a six episode series, “Unjustifiable” tells the story of Carter, the protests that erupted and the change demanded, resulting in the election of the city’s first Black mayor.Archibald and Johnson also examine a century of police killings in Birmingham that had been ruled “justifiable.” They’ve identified 500 people killed by police in Jefferson County in the 20th century. What was it about Bonita Carter? She came to represent them all.“Unjustifiable,” is produced by the award-winning team behind the Reckon Interview and Greek Gods. It features original music recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, at Single Lock Records.Creator: John ArchibaldHosts: John Archibald & Roy S. JohnsonExecutive Producer: John HammontreeProducer & Audio Engineer: Alexander RicheyProducer: Amy Yurkanin  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Trailer: Unjustifiable

In a follow up Reckon Radio’s acclaimed series “Greek Gods” and “Recused,” Reckon by AL.com is launching its newest podcast: The Reckon Interview. What is the South? A place? A people? A lifestyle? Each week, on the Reckon Interview, host John Hammontree explores that question and more, with some of the most interesting minds in the South – authors, entertainers, artists, activists, and thinkers. Join us as we learn how this place shaped them and how they’re reshaping this place. Think of it as Fresh Air but with a lot more humidity. 

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Episode Notes In the 1980s and 1990s, Jeff Sessions fought political corruption and drug traffickers as a U.S. Attorney and Alabama attorney general. He didn't mention immigration until his first term in the U.S. Senate. It started with questions about special agent staffing, and ended with one of the most controversial immigration policies in American history. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

S2E3 - Recused Episode 3

Episode Notes Years before he was the U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions served as the Alabama Attorney General. And in that post, he faced a situation similar to the Russia investigation. It involved a Republican governor, cries of a "witch hunt" and a marble shower stall. Listen to this episode to see the similarities between Sessions'handling of that case and the way he dealt with the Russia investigation. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

S2E2 - Recused Episode 2

Episode Note In 2016, Jeff Sessions was announced as President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general. For nearly two years, he held his dream job -- but the experience turned into something of a nightmare due to ongoing investigations into allegations of Russian meddling in the election. Sessions recused himself, drawing the ire of the president. But did you know Sessions political career was almost over before it began? In episode one of Recused, we're going back to a 1986 judicial confirmation hearing. Sessions became just the second person in 50 years to be rejected for an appointment to the federal bench, due to allegations of racism that would haunt him for the rest of his career. We know how Sessions' story ends. But how did it begin? And what about the fallout for others involved? This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

S2E1 - Recused Episode 1

Episode Notes Reckon's John Hammontree spoke with U.S. Sen. Doug Jones about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Doug Jones: The Reckon Interview

Episode Notes Reckon’s Amy Yurkanin dives into the untold story of Jeff Sessions, from the people who knew him best. • How did Jeff Sessions become President Trump’s most controversial cabinet member? And what led to his downfall? • Did you know President Trump wasn’t the first person to pressure Sessions to look the other way during an investigation into the executive branch? • What was the political fallout of Sessions’ failed judicial confirmation hearing in 1986? • How did he become one of the most anti-immigration Senators in the United States? • All these answers and more. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Trailer: Recused

Episode Notes A 2017 law gave the right to vote back to tens of thousands of felons, but few of them know about the change. This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Time Served

Episode Notes Episode Four: What does The Machine teach students about real world politics? John Archibald shares his reflections on how student politics has real world ramifications. His wife Alecia also describes how she was forced to choose between her sorority and her relationship in college, illustrating the difficult decisions young women face during their time on campus.

S1E4 - Greek Gods Episode 4

Smart stories about the South. Subscribe to Reckon Radio's first narrative podcast, "Greek Gods," an examination of The Machine, a secret society that has been described as "the most powerful fraternity in America" with tentacles reaching to the State House, Washington and beyond. Hosted by Amy Yurkanin and John Archibald, winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize.

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