Lawrence O’Donnell: In your book you write - the book you’re selling down there at barnes & noble today, “the civil rights movement was a few years in front of me. I was too young to participate when they first started the freedom rides and the sit-ins, so on a day-to-day basis it didn’t have an impact. I just kept going to school, doing what I was supposed to do, and stayed out of trouble. I didn’t go downtown and try to participate in sit-ins, counter to our real feelings, we decided to avoid trouble by moving to the back of the bus when the driver told us to. Dad always said, ‘stay out of trouble’ and we did.” Where do you think black people would be sitting on the bus today if rosa parks had followed your father’s advice?

Hermain Cain: My father was not given Rosa Parks’ advice. Here again, Lawrence, you are distorting the intent of what I said. I was a high school student. The college students were doing the sit-ins. The college students were doing the freedom rides. If I had been a college student in the in the 10th or 11th grade, you’re under 18 years of age, you didn’t need to get arrested and be in the middle of that, that was the intent of what I said relative to me not being involved. Now, I was impacted by that on a daily basis simply because I was living in Atlanta, Georgia when all of this was going on. It was not prudent, this is what my dad meant. It was not prudent for a high school student to be in the middle of what was going on in terms of those demonstrations. And thanks to Rosa Parks, yes, she struck a chord with a lot of people that helped to lead to the desegregation of the buses as well as she was a big part of the whole civil rights movement. And we are very grateful to her for that.

O’ Donnell: Mr. Cain, in fact, you were in college from 1963 to 1967, at the height of the civil rights movement, exactly when the most important demonstrations and protests were going on. You could easily as a student at Morehouse between 1963 and 1967 actively have participated in the kinds of protests that got african-americans the rights they enjoy today. You watched from that perspective at Morehouse when you were not participating in those processes. You watched black college students from around the country and white college students from around the country come to the south and be murdered, fighting for the rithts of african-americans. Do you regret sitting on those sidelines at that time?

Cain: Lawrence, your attempt to say that I sat on the sidelines is an irrelevant comparison that you’re trying to deduce from that particular -

O’Donnell: It’s in your book

Cain: - point in time

O’Donnell: It’s in your book.

Cain: Now Lawrence, I know what’s in my book. Now let me ask you a question. Did you expect every black student and every black college in American to be out there in the middle of every fight? The answer is no. So for you to say why was I sitting on the sidelines, I think that that is an inaccurate deduction that you are trying to make. You didn’t know Lawrence what I was doing with the rest of my life. You didn’t know what my family situation may have been. Maybe, just maybe I had a sick relative, which is why I might not have been sitting in or doing the freedom rides. So what I’m saying, Lawrence, is with all due respect, my friend, your deduction is incorrect and it’s not logical. Okay?