[applause] so good evening Everyone Welcome to the New York Historical society as president and ceo its good to see you on a wintry night tonights program help and history is a part of the distinguished Speakers Series of like to thank mr. Swartz for his generosity which has enabled us to bring so many fine speakers to the stage. [applause] i would like to recognize the chair by executive committee and i would like to thank you for the very many things that you do on behalf of this institution. Thank you. [applause] so all of those that are with us as well with thats a sport on to support of New York Historical there will be a questionandanswer session you should have received a pencil on your way into the auditorium and they will be collected later on in the program and copies of the book would be available for purchase. We are absolutely thrilled to welcome a great friend back to the New York Historical society. Serving as us representative to the united nations, a former president of the International Rescue committee and executive assistant to william j donovan, special counsel and special assistant to attorney general robert f kennedy. Of the franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt institute and investment banker. Also the author of hope and history and we are also delighted to welcome him his daughter katrina as the moderator for this evening the editorial director and publisher of the nation and served as editor from 1995 through 2019. A commentator on us and International Politics for abc, cnn and pdf and articles have appeared in the New York TimesLos Angeles Times and the boston globe among others. She also writes a weekly column for the washington post. Several books including the change i believe in. And now i would ask anything that makes a noise like a cell phone so now please join me to welcome our speakers tonight. Thank you. I cannot imagine a more wonderful thing than spending an evening with ones father. I wanted to say a few words. Almost every sunday morning my father and i would meet at the Kitchen Table we would talk about life and family and laugh a lot and then turn inevitably to the news and the politics to read and laugh and scream. [laughter] and i always learn something from our discussions and debates to come with a much more creative way to think about the challenges that can feel overwhelming as they pulled the country apart or we pull it together. My father has been a witness throughout his life to the country struggles with destiny and to work inside the intriguing men and women to confront challenges to the ones we face now. To reflect those in his new book hope and history and beginning with his childhood in rochester new york raised by immigrant parents in the shadow of the Great Depression he retraces the path to government and politics with the new deal to the Civil Rights Movement to the trump era it is part memoir and part call to action within sight of the american past two chronicle the New York Historical society and Doug Brinkley rights the constant pendulum swings the history with the current predicament ending with a powerful warning with the danger of corruption pose. And the great friend of your fathers rights. And then he rose and justice and memory. And family members here all encouraged my father and joe who could not be here was a great collaborator and a longtime friend of my fathers. He pulled together memoirs, diaries, letters alongside the speeches. And that riveting book of storytelling that you begin, daddy. [laughter] so mr. Ambassador. So in many ways this emerged from a seminar you gave in Prince Edward county with the reopening of the schools and it was the talk about the closest mentors and Roger Baldwin. And in that span is a span of leadership and maybe you could say a few words about your mentors and what they represent to you and your work as wild bill doll donovan. Thank you katrina and collaborating with me this evening that such a pleasure for me may i say how grateful this community of historians across the country is and has grown so effectively the last 20 years it is wonderful to behold and at the forefront it seems to me to be in new york and in the country. And to the group that i identified as very right wing religious organization. The purpose was to raise money that the American Civil Liberties union is celebrating its 100th birthday and the coming year so how do you trust an organization that was Roger Baldwin and i thought to myself to be attacked from the source but not Everybody Knows you dont build an enterprise. With only one person. But baldwin was meeting him when he was 65 from the Civil Liberties union and he transferred from the domestic Civil Liberties to international and that the shadow and then had the sense to know if you want to grow old gracefully then find friends in every generation. And louis brandeis. And then to take a walk. So i put him in that category. You are a Conscientious Objector and katrina and i were in Prince Edward county virginia and a statement from world war i. I thought world war i . So i will tell you the story of world war i and the personalities of two people. To be the greatest hero of that war to win every single battle and wounded three times and was the most fearless and was determined as a great patriot. He also happened to be classified as franklin roosevelt. So the fact he is a conservative republican was passed over the other person to become chief justice of the United States 1941 so donovan was a man of the world. Everybody knew him. He was a major force and hes literally the father of american intelligence. Then he was a Conscientious Objector. And came out a hero because he played piano and guidance and there was a wonderful story and what every prisoner could use with Roger Baldwin. [laughter] host the aclu started with those circumstances like deportation of people and i am thinking when you were with donovan the leading member of the hungarian revolution which in 1956. What did you learn from that experience . Was it compassionate for refugees . That soviet domination began in 1817 and in 1953 with the workers uprising. And that spread over to poland in 1960. So the hungarian revolution was a spontaneous event rarely seen were students were put through the secret service and then they rose up and grabbed arms to begin a fight about soviet socialism to claim hungry for itself. There is a lot of feeling in military circles those days that russias strife was magnified by the satellite states. The hungarian revolution proved just the opposite that it was a great impediment to soviet greatness and the courage of the young people was astonishing thing to see and that was the last Great Mission and so for me the problem with refugees and immigration and we took 250,000 refugees out of hungry overnight and brought them to the United States. They came together to free hungarian. So when we see how we approach the ugliness of how we approached the system of immigration or refugees with different problems. But that refugee problem has a Strong Political aspect to it. The international ive been on the board 64 years and it is a remarkable organization foreign minister and i think its the leading voice of the democrats of america. At know if you can see that the cover is so arresting it is my father walking with Robert Kennedy in paris. Maybe you can tell us about the moment that captures and the trip you took with senator kennedy in 1967. 67. I think kennedy was running around there were some very personal things that had to be dealt with so said lets go to europe. [laughter] so the two of us went over and began at oxford where he debated vietnam and then berlin was the host but i was thinking of the crown the other day where the queen now is recognized was very much taken by harold wilson. So we spent a couple of hours with wilson it was remarkable to hear what the queen was listening to. And to be very much against vietnam. And Robert Kennedy said we will not do it we just have to pay the price. But it is a big price because putting constant pressure on me we want to be known as the best friends of america and we tell them to get out of vietnam and another aspect is general de gaulle was 6foot four and was the presence wherever he was and Robert Kennedy acknowledge this conversation. And so began by saying as i told your brother. [laughter] you cannot defeat a swamp. Then he goes into the meaning of lower vietnam which was a terrible defeat and that is what the United States was losing. And with a heroic country in terms of fashioning of what we all want. When the conversation is ove over, the general came over and put his arm around him and was 5foot ten to say i will Say Something to you and the wounds that i bear for those of us vietnam has been difficult. My time dealing with it is over. But my advice to you is you have a great future for your country in a larger future for the world and you should protect that at all cost. Do not get involved with vietnam. It is the sole issue your held accountable for. So that picture was taken on the cover i personally was a great fan just out of admiration for his abilities to lead and the creativeness of the thought process. Kennedy was not necessarily. And he felt he was a surface of problems and then churchill thought he was the source of problems for great britain. It was an important meeting. So as they observe based on the level of knowledge is knowledge but they learn and that judgment day trust to have a regular series of things and that the government would come and they had an evening of discussions. This was the case with Robert Kennedy. Certain the vietnam if he was his brothers protector he never disagreed with the forces and only after his brothers death then it became much more difficult because it looked at though he was aiming at Lyndon Johnson but he wasnt. Host what type of relationship do they have . [laughter] there is a wonderful book called mutual contempt. [laughter] there is a picture on the cover of the book bobby sits scowling in the front row of the audience well johnson is speaking there were two people who really dislike each other and found many opportunities to express that especially to each other. It is astounding you just went off to europe for a few weeks but the footnote as you walk down the street and ran into truman capote. [laughter] and henry kissinger. This was 1967. A couple of questions working with Robert Kennedy as a special assistant years earlier and the era of civil rights to reopen the schools in Prince Edward county that have been shut down for four years by whites who refused to enforce brown versus board of education in defiance of that decision tell us about the lessons you drew from that experience of that ongoing urgent quest for racial justice. Its difficult to remember the state of virginia led the fight against desegregation and against brown v board of education the massive resistance were the words that were used. Head of the political system in virginia and once that decision was absorbed virginia took the position that yes the Supreme Court might order us to desegregate schools that they cannot order us to have schools there is nothing in the constitution to obligate us to have an educational system so they use it as a test case this extraordinary county and the heartland of virginia of Prince Edward county between the states and Prince Edward county is where robert e. Lee spent the night of april 7th and then to end the war. So that Prince Edward county setting case know be expected the Supreme Court to resolve the issue but the southern lawyers were good and they used every known to man so when kennedy came to office and found there is a place in america where they were denying american children, he was personally interested. Then the attorney general and to size up the situation and the recommendation. My recommendation was unique and different and difficult. I said let us set up a Model School System to show how this can work meanwhile the courts we will win. Children will not be denied an education and one of the great qualities of kennedy is he was a decisive leader and a very creative leader and was capable of seeing what an idea had is a possibility. And then to undertake this and to set up a School System to recruit teachers from around the country which was a wonderful reminder of how idealism motivates and teachers came from all over the country, paid by the local School Systems to be in Prince Edward county need modern uptodate methods those have not been in school five years came out so they could read and write and i think it was then regarded as an extraordinary achievement that the whites and the blacks accepted what had been done. That was the National Attention we hoped it would get was destroyed overnight before the press Conference Announcing it that Prince Edward county and those four little girls were killed in birmingham so the nations eyes returned to tragedy instead of hope as we anticipated but ended up very hopeful in that schools were open children could move in the next day and Robert Kennedy came down to Prince Edward county i dont think theres a place in america that mourned the death of jfk more because they felt he personally had taken an interest in them. And he did. Its extraordinary to be there for the 50th anniversary of the opening because that night president obama gave his first state of the union anything Prince Edward county voted for barack obama. So today people feel the nation is torn apart living through pain and trauma but the sixties were a time of terrible pain and trauma. I think of that often. There is a resilience to remember especially going to the white house the day after kennedy was assassinated. And the partisan things to the cabinets. And what we are going through is cataclysmic and we are apt to forget from 1963 so the president of the United States was assassinated that was an extraordinary crime it stopped government, people, it stopped all of us and to have seen that over the course of three years the president of the United States we lost a potential president of the United States a very big president and the leader of the Civil Rights Movement in america of mlk and then stopped to think of what that means of those men at that time that is cataclysmic and the fact that was due in large part to Jackie Kennedy onassis who led the nation and Lyndon Johnson who had the extraordinary knowledge of government to share the agenda with president kennedy and bobby and work to carry it out to take advantage of the situation to do it. But yes, we should be very concerned of our government moving forward but if you are at the 1968 convention i say the edge of violence just cover the ground. Many people dont know you have a chapter to try to redress the terrible flaws of the criminal Justice System that exist this is in 1970 after suicide in the prisons to become chairman of board of corrections you are involved with rikers and you brought attention through the media in a way that is happening today. And a lawyer for six months because we had no money at the board of correction for programming. So he came in is one of those in a dip as the executive director and to this day is a major from Prison Reform i hope you take a look at this chapter because it tells a very different story of what life can be in a nation with 2 Million People in prison so to ask yourself every day why