They crafted this case and won in rosedale and the decisions that was rendered said children cannot be discriminated against based on the color of their skin. It was an incredible victory for 1924 but appeals came where we were sitting and they ruled against it which made it became state law and it was appealed again and it became law of the land of the country and the Supreme Court in 1927 and over the course of those three years this family was back and forth, they didnt know what to do with their children, if they were safe in the south, or north, they landed in arkansas, the whole legacy of immigration and the role of immigrants in the Civil Rights Movement and overall construction of the south has kind of been pushed to the side because it doesnt fit easily in four paragraphs in a textbook which is why i devoted this book to it but i would love to see more come out and look at the fact there were enslaved immigrants in the mississippi delta, plantations outside new orleans, this legacy of ethnic minorities being forced into horrible conditions and transitioned into whiteness, this family was fighting a racist case, we want to be accepted as white, into whiteness, it is very confusing and luckily, got my hand in it for a couple years but i hope a lot more literature will come out Going Forward. One of the things we have seen a rash of in recent years is a modern assault, public assault on africanamericans. We know that is not a new thing but a historic thing. Thinking of your book, when we think of the historic assault on black bodies we think of the institution of lynching, we about the newest report from the equal justice initiative, lynching in america which is its third edition now, recalculated the number of known lynching plant in america and we note it is the number of unknowns because there are others who disappeared. Mississippi was number one in the nation per capita in total number of lynchings. Over 73 years there were 654 lynchings in mississippi but known lynching every six weeks per 73 years in the state of mississippi, nationwide it was 4084, more than a lynching a day for 73 years. One lynching per 70 years of american history. Your story tells a different kind of narrative about the assault on black bodies and would love to hear you talk about that. One of the things we have not done in society in not coming to terms with our history is the fact that we still, in arkansas, that is what i researched, we still do not know the depth of the assault on black lives. One of the books that i wrote was about the race massacres of 1919. Despite the amount of research that has been done, for so long, there was an effort to believe this socalled rot that occurred in eastern arkansas where i am from, had arrived, by blacks who were attempting an insurrection as sharecroppers, they formed a union, up until 2000, the research cried out for at least a recognition that what had happened was a massacre of africanamericans estimated at 200 to 250, black women, men and children were shot down in the cotton fields by a combination of troops brought in from camp pike and this was in 1919. Really until almost the year 2000, historians debated we really dont know what happened in phillips county. In fact, we do know what happened, to the extent we have enough evidence to call it a massacre. We know the five whites were killed and that is the extent of how many whites were lost but up until 2000, we still saw in our history books, we really dont know what happened and that is one of the things we have to come to terms with, we have justified so much of what has been done in history without any evidence because of the pain of all of this is overwhelming if you really start and try to think and that is why i began this introduction, counting the ways africanamericans have been discriminated against, but even worse, what the consequences have been in our society. We also dont contemplate city politics, talk about these stories, when we tell the story of the modern Civil Rights Movement, the political transition from edward prompt to Willie Harrington tell us . More than i have time to tell you about. To king willie, traces of political evolution of methodists from the undisputed king or bosse of memphis, to the election of the first africanamerican mayor in 1991. Boss crump maintained his political power for those many years because of the africanamerican vote. Africanamericans were voting in memphis, tennessee, long before they were voting in my home state of mississippi just across the state line. Some people have said, historians have said boss crump manipulated that vote and in some cases he did but at least for africanamericans this growing africanamerican population in memphis who were leaving the plantations of mississippi and arkansas, in some respects louisiana going north, those who didnt go to chicago, detroit, milwaukee, cleveland stopped in memphis or st. Louis, the ones that populated memphis saw boss crump listening to a little bit of their concerns when nobody else would care about their issues. They gave their political allegiance to boss crump. The book contains a lot of characters who were courageous or cowardly in memphis when it came toracial equality and fairness. But the one thing that i took away from my research for this book and it was an unbelievable enjoyable experience for me as a person who grew up around memphis but living in mississippi, boss crump talk about ida wells from hollis point mississippi, the first africanamerican millionaire in the south who lived in memphis, Robert Church was from holly springs, mississippi, fled mississippi, sufficient reasons at that time. The thing that struck out for me when we talked about the politics is this. Africanamericans just wanted a seat at the table in memphis. They wanted some participation in public affairs, they wanted to hold public office. They didnt want to run the whole city, they just wanted some input. At every turn for for 75, 80 years, the white establishment said no, we are not going to give you a seat, we are not going to let you sit on the board of john gaston hospital in memphis even though the majority of patients in the hospital were africanamericans, we wont let you do that, so he kept fighting and fighting, and culminated in the election of doctor harrington based on two factors, one with the assassination of doctor king in 1968 which started the influx or outlooks if that is a word of residents from the suburbs and the second one the desegregation of memphis through bus to jang which also completed this out migration of whites to the suburbs and that allowed the africanamerican population to be the majority population and culminate with the election of doctor harrington, first African American mayor in 1991. The one major point i took away from this point is voting is critical and that is still the case today. Voting is critical for everyone. I have said this, my wife has heard this a lot of times. The message that i have is if you dont participate in the electoral process you get who you dont vote for. We have seen that far too often. I think we saw that last year, we got who you didnt vote for because the voting was not as robust as it should have been. There were times in the past, 1964 for example, when the voter turnout in memphis for the president ial election was 90 . Can you imagine turnout that is 90 . That is unbelievable. It was in 64 because Lyndon Johnson, they didnt want goldwater in there. People in memphis turned out in droves to vote for Lyndon Johnson and he won the election. We are lucky in president ial elections to have 60 . Sometimes 50 . Local elections may get 40 . Rarely get that. What this research told me is if you dont participate in the electoral process, you are giving up your right to really complain about what is going on and you do get who you dont vote for. That is my message. We are getting close to having q and a with the audience. If you have questions i hope you will come to the podium and line up to address them directly. I want to throw one more question as people come to the podium. It seems to me all of these are stories i wonder has taken so long for them to be told. They are difficult stories. I wonder about that and the reactions. It is convenient on the part of whites not to come to terms with their history. It has been part of our tradition in arkansas. Im not an academic historian in the sense that i dont teach. In some ways all too often at one point in our earlier history, act, additions not saying that right. Close enough. They want to protect themselves. May not like to hear that but people one to 10 year, 10 year tenue but if we were not going to admit how bad things were in terms of what i listed, then we were just going to say we dont know the extent of it and of course there are so few africanamericans hired at the university of arkansas and other institutions, it is Getting Better but until we have representatives, people of color in academia, we are not going to have that kind of participation or that kind of truth telling. I will be brief because i want to get to questions. There have been books about the assassination of doctor king going back as far as ivy wells but i dont think that was ever any attempt to connect the dots between the most powerful political figures in the history of memphis and when you look at memphis as a place with a strong position in the mid south it was a dominant place back to the 1800s where cotton came from mississippi to be sold so memphis was a critical place. I dont think anybody ever connected the dots between the most powerful people and that is what i was most happy to do. In Forest County is an effort to make it look moderate, there was tons of sources once you started digging. The city fathers made a real effort, a lot of violence happened early on. And 64 there was an amazing Civil Rights Movement built from the 40s to the 50s and they came out with freedom day protests because there had been a decision he had to register black voters so he defied it, they protested him every day but what city fathers decided was to make sure the white resistance was nonviolent so they took a nonviolent approach and the media got bored and left. It is really important for us to realize looking at charlottesville, that violence is horrifying and terrifying but nonviolent oppression is awful and terrible things to peoples lives and keep them out of city government, so many amazing people i learned about, we talk about old myths, clyde tried to desegregate southern men, they framed him for something he didnt do, stealing chicken feed and they did m have access to the hospital where he died of cancer. People stood up there. When you look at the resistance the greatest lesson i took from my research is the resistance in the Civil Rights Movement, i go into 20082010 and they continue to resist and fight for their rights, amazing women say that too, amazing women like Jamal Jackson was 16 and daisy harris, a mother who when they arrested her kids showed up at the Police Station in 1964 and started screaming and yelling they better not mess with their kids and their kids back. We might have to take keep resisting. And in Donald Trumps media. I will use one big word this whole talk, that is history ugly, the study of how history is made. The reason this book wasnt written yet is because it was really hard. And the central family defendant undocumented immigrants who crossed the Canadian Border illegally at night, and recreate that accurately as a historian, historical fiction would be great. I needed footnotes, we need to find people who hid from the census, hid from government workers, if we were talking to someone 100 years from now, talk to your neighbors, get oral history from the lady in the street, it is much history as you can from voices that were not, and the office was across the hall, and his calisthenics routine, every prayer he ever said at bedtime and people i want to hear from, 9yearold chinese girl, has no voice in this narrative, no one thought to keep it. When the verdict was handed down by the us Supreme Court in 1927, that story was at the back of the paper, the Associated Press copy, cut in half, and it was some debutantes wedding. Journalists have a responsibility to make sure we are maintaining voices and coverage that makes sure of what this nation is. Have questions for the audience, tell us your name and where you are from. I am from madison and i am struck by the fact that confederate monuments redirected 50 or 60 years after the event, Woodrow Wilson raises them, well documented, two or three generations after the great upheaval of the civil war we are now 50 to 60 years past the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement. I wonder if the panel would comment on what parallels they may see and if this is because in those two or three generations are we forgetting or are we remembering away that is painful . One of the things that was frightening to me when you see those videos was how young those men were and we like to think racism is dying out, there has been this sense that it was built up in the 2016 campaign, this has been building and and politically correct mirror, rates under there and what you have is the sense, that they are being alienated, there are people that are suffering in poverty and what willes of that is try to divide poor whites from people of color because if you get those matters together they wouldnt stand a chance. Would have a different political situation. A lot has to do with a sense of alienation and White Privilege and in a sense, this is their country, and in our fight to talk about it it is important that we address that and teach our history better and truer. That led to a question i have had and i want to read if i pull it up now two sentences from the mississippi declaration of succession, i cant pull it up so the first says hours, our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery and none but the black race and can do this because of the tropical clients but we have debates over whether it was states rights, the language is clear in that. My question is one of how you as writers deal with history and misstatements of history, how we in Todays Society engender empathy for each other. And dont have a change, some of the greatest moments of change in american history, how do you see your role in that and how do you see us Going Forward . I am writing and talking every single day on these issues and the only way to do that is be persistent and i think my readers, half of them lovely, the other half, well, you know. You know how they feel. Anything whether they love what i write, say on television or whether they hated and they once my president at the university of memphis to get rid of me from the campus, i have been consistent on these issues ever since i started writing opinion columns 11 years ago. We have to be consistent about it, continued to explain that history. A lot of people dont know, the ones who keep saying this they havent read the constitution probably. They are hearing what other people are saying. These 20yearolds, 21yearolds, have no idea about the history. They are believing what somebody else has told them. It is unfortunate our political leaders are doing too much for political reasons, not doing what is right, the we are in the shape we are in. If only we could have people who have the political will to say i dont care about the next election. I care about the quality. I care about civilization we are in, i care more about that than i care what is going to happen in 2018. I loved what president obama tweeted, no one is born to hate, i think that is true. People are taught to hate, learning history is so important. It makes you angry to see these, in the Civil Rights Movement it is about going out with love. I think that is something to think about Going Forward. That is important. Many thanks to each of you. Should we equate a memorial to confederate war dead or cemetery to a monument to a political or military leader but anything on this is nuanced, the memory of Ronald Reagan laying a wreath at a nazi cemetery . Do we get some . It is interesting because i am before coming on here texting my reporters we have a confederate monuments in williamsburg, the city i cover. The question of what is our role, do we say there is a monument here, that is the story, what we do now in terms of this conversation, living in mississippi when it was a Big Conversation about the flag after what happened in charlotte. What i dont want to do is say taking the statues down will solve a problem because i dont think it does and a lot of people say that. I dont want to look at them, dont think they should stay there. The problem stops when statues come down, that is when the conversation starts and the same with the flag of the state of mississippi, if we just take it off our flagpole we are not doing justice to the history of how that flag was erected in the first place. People should be made aware this nativism, verlyn racism is a part of americas history and toppling statues doesnt push away, just takes it off of the Central Square but that doesnt mean it is not there. We have to make it a first step but not the last one. This is a long, hard road and there is no way to separate that from the creation of the nation itself. We go back to jamestown in 1607, we have slaves on that ship. I dont want to say it is not part of our country. Thinking we are going to take statues down may let people think they are off the hook. The reason i started reading what i did in the introduction is white supremacy, simply by taking statues down, people feel like they have done something and we are not going to do anything else, when we have this incredible, laundry list, of things that we could be working on that will make a difference in the community instead of ending up like we are in little rock right now with so much white pride in private schools and that is where we are, when in fact there is so much more we could be doing that we have not done and those are the things i listed in the introduction. I hate to do this but thank our panelists for the robust conversation. [applause] thank you all for being here. Buy some books. [applause] [inaudible conversations] that wraps up booktvs live coverage of the mississippi book festival in jackson. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading the summer. Booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Host joining us on booktv is peter james hudson, the author of this book bankers and empire how wall streetet colonized the caribbean. What was your goal with this book . Guest i think theres a number of goals here. In the first place it was to