Point i may lose my voice, raise your hand and i will know you dont hear me. Im happy to have come here. Its been a lot of years in washington and i was here, as a matter of fact, when some of these events described in the book took place but i was here as an undergraduate in later as a teacher, instructor at howard university. Every nation, of course, has noble times, times that it wants to remember. Times that they want its population to remember. As an ideal of itself move the microphone down, please. [inaudible] [laughter] bath a little better. [laughter] these times that most nations identify are usually wars conquests, for land, conquests or resources and they may be wars for the deposing of a king or a czar or a dictator and they may be wars defending ones self against an oppressor or in invader. But they are generally honorable and bloodied. The best ones are honorable. The worst ones are like the honorable ones only in the fact that they usually swim in blood. But here in this nation 50 years ago there was if fairly bloodless revolution. I say fairly because there was some blood and there were instances of violence and there were instances of torture and there were instances of imprisonment and there was death. But overall it was a bloodless revolution and i like to think of it as a Civil Rights Movement that was truly civil. Because masses of people thought carefully about what was at stake and what was right rather than what was expedient or habitual and they thought about what was elevating rather than merely power trying to reinforce itself. That movement for it to be not understood as one of the most noble and most mature and most sweeping political changes and its inconceivable to me but however it may quote the danger of not being recalled that way. Just in case it is in serious danger of drifting into the barely mentioned in our textbooks and cultural history or in case it suffers an untimely demisee and in its narrative because its promises are as yet incomplete and before that we should contemplate interferee that time as a powerfully moral achievement and of the many paths that the whole movement took none was more significant or more singular then the brown versus board of education. There are certainly many celebrations and memorials and essays and oped pieces all in place to mark and analyze the events of 1954 and the culmination of years that were on the ground and in the streets and in the houses and in the temples and in the churches and in the courts, the combination being that Supreme Court decision but as we pay tribute to those extraordinary times and the Supreme Courts decisionco that signals a real turning point in social policy and law it is still easy to forget one segment of the population whose future was the center of the cause and im referring to the children, not just whoever walked into the schools in the 50s but also the ones who walked into schools now, 50 years later. When i was approached to do a book for children about brown versus board of education thats what i thought of, those two sets of children. The question is how to relate those events to young people who may have anything from no information at all to some vague memory of a class lesson or some adult trying to describe the Civil Rights Movement to them and of course, it may have been very much like telling them about the civil war and they may feel that distance. The question was how to make those days alive for them in a manner that was direct, not preachy, not patronizing enough or burdensome as pests. Photographs were chosen that documented and traumatized precursors to the decision and the decisionsi of the aftermath and even the most powerful images could become merely another lesson or another collection if they were presented with captions that were limited to daytime who, when and where. What really attracted me to the project was the possibility of injuring imaginatively into the minds of the people in the photos and what they might be thinking. Or feeling or could have thought or felt in language that represented the language of the people in the photograph that was also the language of the readers. I wanted to make the experience as intimate as possible. My skills are honed in narrative, fiction and dialogue so i thought i would bring those into play rather than as a type rendering of what was going on and in trying to invent what this person in a photograph might have been thinking to himself or saying to another person it occurred to me something truly unique had happened because i cant think of any Political Movement that is so demanded and so required that required deliberate courage of children and their generosi generosity. Children having to behave in a manner that is not merely to advance him or herself but all children then and in times to come. They were at the most vulnerable age and enabled to become in Something Big and much bigger than themselves. They did it and it was hard and just imagine imagine yourself as i imagine myself eight years o old, 12 years old, 15 years old. Im in a street or neighborhood or building where i believe i am heatedm and i know i am. There screaming at me and grownups as well as children are calling me names. I am so not wanted soldiers with guns have to come along to protect me and if they have guns maybe they need and maybe my life is in danger and maybe somebody out there in the crowd has a gun to. And might use it. Even without those children who went to School WithoutNational Guard support they enter the school all alone and sometimes with a few others of their own race and had to spend the day there. The anxiety of entering any new school or new neighborhood or childhood is intense but to enter under those circumstances is more thans intense and trying not to be afraidid or at least t showing it and not misbehaving not even getting angry and not making any mistakes and trying not to be hurt. Trying to learn under those circumstances. Waiting for the day to end so you can go home and be with your own. Knowing all the while that what you are doing is for people you will never know. I wanted todays children to think about that and no that that spirit and that nobility and that generosity was in them, too. To give up something and to be brave about something for the greater good and not just one personal advantage and where else in their history books could they see that and imagine that kind of courage from people their own age. Where else could they see adults of all races and all faiths and all classes and professions finding themselves to each other in such a righteous cause. Especially a non literary revolution. Where else can you see that . It still is the most startling thing to me and i am still heartened by it and i hope well, im convinced that Young Readers will remember and will be heartened, too. I want to read to you now just a few words and some of the passages from the introduction to the book where i was hoping to communicate that to young people. I think i can do this without my glasses. No. No risks. I had to cataract operations you will be happy to know in the world is blindingly beautiful. I have no idea what i had lost. This book is about you and even though the name and events in the story took place many years ago what happened before and after is now a part of all our lives because remembering is the minds first step toward understanding in this book was designed to take you on a journey through time in American Life when there was as much heat as there was love and as much anger as there was hope and as many heroes as cowards. A time when people were overwhelmed with emotion and children discovered new kinds of d friendships and a new kind of fear. As with any journey there is often a narrow path to walk before you cank see the wide rod ahead. Sometimes there are closed gates between the path in the road and to enliven the trip ive imagined the thought and feelings of some of the people in the photograph chosen to help tell this story. There are children, teenagers, adults, ordinary people leaving ordinary lives all swept up in the event that was marked all our lives. The first people to step onto the long path were children and their parents and the laws in many states called jim crow laws amended separation of the races in all Public Places and especially the Public Schools. These laws were based on the idea of separate but equal and that meant black people could enter public areas and could use public facilities such as drinking fountains and waiting rooms and train stations and be seated on Public Transportation and go to parks and Movie Theaters and attended schools but not equal. Sitting apart on a bus and not being served through the window of the take out window was humiliating but nothing was more painful than being refused a decent education. No matter how much they argued or how long they complained black families had to send their children to all black schools the matter how far away in many buildings were dilapidated and even dangerous. Textbooks were worn and out of date and there was no supplies or afterschool programs for School Lunches and Sports Equipment and underpaid teachers or overburdened trying to make do and then one day some parents from delaware, kansas, south carolina, virginia and washington dc stepped onto the path and these africanamerican parents formed a group represented by lawyers for the naacp to sue the School Boards that required their children to travel to schools miles away from white ones closer to their home. Their case was named for one of the parents, oliver brown, part of the kansas group and the closed gates were opened by the Supreme Court after many lawyers and thousands of people pushed against them. On may 17, 1954 the Supreme Court justices announced the decision in the case of brown versus board of education and the decision which said separate schools were not equal through many states, cities, towns, neighborhoods, principles, teachers, parents and students into confusion battles were fought to honor, ignore or overturn the decision and many battles were one and some quietly and some were not. The demand to integrate Public Schools grew into a nationwide civilsc Rights Movement to eliminate all racist law that had the right to vote, the right to choose in the neighborhood you wanted to live in and sit in any vacant sink in a public place, marches, protests, counter marches, counter protest erupted almost everywhere and it was an extraordinary time when people of all races in all walks of life came together and when children had to be braver than their parents and when pastors, priests and rabbis left to their altars to walk the streets with strangers and when soldiers with guns were assigned to keep the peace or to protect a young girl. Days full of loud, angry determined crowds and days deep in loneliness and peaceful marches were met with applause in some places, violence in others and people were hurt and people died. Students and civil rights workers were beaten and jailed and strong leaders shot and killed and one day a bomb was thrown into a Church Killing for little girls attending sunday school. None of that happened to you so why offer memories you dont have . Remembering can be painful and even frightening but it can also swell your heart and open your mind. Whenever i sheets drying on the linene or smell gumbo simmeringn the stove a flood of memories comes back to me and in 1953 when i travel in the rural south with a group of students we received the generosity of strangers and average in average americans took us in where there were no places for nonwhites to eat or sleep. They were strangers who gave up their own beds, dressed in brilliant white linen, smelling of other times and they fed us from their gardensns and were so insistent on not being paid we had to hide money so they would pifind long after we were gone. These were country people or city people and denied adequate education and relegated to a tiny balcony area in a Movie Theater and backs of buses, separate water fountains, like me they were ordinary people and yet although their lives were driven by laws that said no, not here, no, not there, no, not you. U. Racial aggregation had not marked their soul and the joy i felt in 1954 when the Supreme Court decided the brown versus board of education case was connected to those generous strangers and even now when i summon up my memory of what that decision did and what it meant for all our futures. This book is a celebration of the power and justice of that decision. So, remember because you are part of it. The past [inaudible] the gate was not opened and the road was not taken only for those brave fenough to walk it but it was r you, as well. In every way this is your story. Thank you. [applause] [applause] i have agreed to entertain some questions or even comments with some of the questions are long and they help me by having some of you wrote the questions down on the file cards and i have looked at them and chosen some but i thought i could answer. And i disregarded those i cannot but i did notice about a third of the questions were about the same subject and i think i can read a few of them together. Do you agree with some that even though its been 50 years since the brown versus brown or brown versus board of education, segregation has not disappeared but has reemerged and resegregation with a lot of Public Schools that were all white 50 years ago were slowly evolved into allblack and what should be done against that . I have a notion in the 50s that the work to be done visavis b Public Schools and integration was not simply integration. I never went to an integrated school, i mean a segregated school. I was in a little town l that ws distinguished by its poverty and the people in that town were all sorts of people. Immigrants, Eastern European immigrants, new mexicans, black people, you know, all sorts. We do not have the money to segregate ourselves. Even the interest because as they call it the depth of the depression so we had something on our collective minds. There were different churches et cetera in different social groups but one high schoollif ad for junior high schools in the streets were full of people from leall sides of the world. I never lived on any street that was all of anything. I came to the university here in washington when i graduated deliberately to be among black intellectuals. I say that because i looked at this business a little different back in the 50s. What i thought was there should be enormous struggle for resources, money to go into the schools that were we could surprise in support and i thought no child should have to to walk, drive 10 miles way to go to a black school when one was closer. But i do not think of it as either or. I thought of it as both you should have both things. I knew the black schools undergraduate schools, graduate schools had been splendid and iy had attended one that in those days was as good a school as you could find anywhere and the people who were handling the cases had gone to those schools. Thats where they came from. The educational criteria at the school was higher than any i had been to since and i have been to some. What happened to those schools, of course, is a different story. The consequence of integrationf. Nevertheless i say that to say that i am still not certain visavis this question that now what used to be all white maybe predominantly black and something that used to be, i dont know whatever other ethnic group is now im not sure that we are seeing racial segregation so much as class and money segregation. When it became possible for africanamericans to go to any school in certain numbers at any rate or move into other neighborhoods they made those choices in many instances and left behind those who had no economic choice. There is a benefit but then there is the consequence. The best teachers of some of the best black schools were drained away into other schools, white schools for better money, better pay what have you and there was no [inaudible] in many instances and in other words apartheid had such created its own blossoming professions, black law schools, black schools of architecture, but medical schools and et cetera and black undergraduate schools, private schools et cetera because in black entrepreneurs had a closed and captured audiencea, black docto, black mortician and they all lived together in one neighborhood forced by apartheid or segregation but the doctors that live in the door and the carpenter that lived next door to the whatever and that was the cohesion of the neighborhood. Now, when that was over it was over. Its a beautiful thing to have more choices and of course, some of those choices left behind a different kind of neighborhood that was found there by class and inability to move out. Some of that is changing rapidly now. I mean, enterprise zones and people moving back to the neighborhood and the vote moving away from areas back to the south so its changing and its fluid and that is better than obviously the forced separation but in this route to this completely diversified world that we have seen to lead and desire there are moments when you will find certain schools that are 8090 black in some parts of the country 8090 latin and im not disturbed by that. Provided that all students in all schools have a relationship or familiarity with other people in their lives outside of scho school. But the question becomes what they are taught, how well they are taught, the quality of the teaching and the money. I keep saying the money because sometimes we get this notion that it does not matter simply because so many people were taught in living rooms and logs but it does matter and resources have got to go to those schools. Anyway, thats a very long sort of teacher the answer and theres the question about you know, is it awful now that this is still some of reintegration and my feeling is that all of the struggles were for more choices rather than fewer one. I think they should be [inaudible] i think there should be all sorts of places for you go and learn but not the forced and of course, i think the major thrust of the government and the state should be absolute support as its prime budgetary requirements and entrance into the publiche schools. Now, let me see if theres anything else i have not covered in that long answer. There is one here thats tiny and offthewall butin what adve would you give to graduating College Seniors that are considering pursuing a career in print journalism . [laughter] is a noble calling i suppose but you will have to change it. In many instances because of huge corporatization of all media where the independence and the aggravation and the provocateur role that journalists use to play is rapidly disappearing and when i was a girl to maybe some of you also journalists y had a grade, ninth grade 12th grade education so they thought they were the people and they said we and they meant all of us now they all go to graduate schools and get honorary degrees and when they say we they mean them. [laughter] i was listening to something last night and matt edwards wrote a book about [inaudible] and i was amazed to learn do not go to stanford the way he said and did not have a degree the way he said and was nice working from seattle or what have you but do not have the credits so he invented them and then when he no longer had to he changed it and pick came clean. But in the beginning he felt he had to give himself these props but and it was stellar reporter who subsequently, i think,ar was disappointed that we journalism if you have aut tough heart and a very sharp mind go at it and see what happensh but its a dangerous feel now. I do think the Supreme Court should have been more specific in the imitation of its order rather than speed. It would not happen so might have well that all deliberate speech and thats one of the ways they got there. It was a long, long time and not overnight. There were whole counties whoho called their schools and for hayears five, six, seven years they close down the Public School and everyone had to go somewhere else. They would provide for the white children to go to certain schools but black children had to go to detroit or places and can you believe that . They shut them down and would not have it. The question here and i think a couple of other ones about the achievement gap and do you believe its useful ringing down success, color lines of what you believe can be done to close this gap and can schools do it . Thats an entangled question and problem about the gap. I have those tests test class, thats what they test. They dont test black people doing better than or asian but they test a certain kind of culture and i think i could distribute blame and a number of places and i feel very comfortable doing that. [laughter] but in my own heart of hearts i think the changes come from parents. I really do and i hate to say that so blatantly because im aware of the fact that more and more schools are dumping the teaching job on the parents and they spend hours and hours with their children in school and its more and more burdensome, not because theres more knowledge but Less Investments being done in many of the classrooms so im mindful of that. On the other hand i get questions about how can i help my children or my child read better or read . What do you suggest we do to make them read . I always ask them do you read . Do your children see you sitting somewhere oblivious to everything because you are reading a book . A do they see you really excited about going to a bookstore . Were going into a library . Do you salivate or pants when you get this book and you cant wait to get home and read it . Do you . I say this to a hypothetical. Because whether they do it or not they will see what is interesting to you and what is fascinating to you and where your pleasure lies that helps. Not just having this lying around but by active participants in the process and sharing stories that you have read with your children. What do you think this means et cetera. We are as adults and parents im not sure istence of segregation, and i think i tried to comment as clearly as i could about the complexity of that. Not wanting the necessity of doing numbers, 50 this and 50 that. But at the same time, wanting choices to be available to groups. This question is a good ending, because its about an ending, and it can end this session. Beloved ended with the refrain this is not a story to pass on. Is remember a story to pass on . Definitely this is the story to pass on. Thanks. [applause]