And ill know that you dont hear me. Im happyto have come here. I spent a lot of years in washington and was here as a matter of fact when some of these events described in the book remember took place. I was here as an undergraduate and 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 a kind of ideal of itself. Pulled the microphone down. It doesnt stay down,jack. Thats a little better. These times, these noble times that most nations identify are usually wars. Conquests. For land, conquests for resources. They may be wars for the deposing of a king or a bizarre or dictator. They may be wars defending oneself against an oppressor or an 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 a fairly bloodless revolution. Id 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. Id like to think of it as a Civil Rights Movement that was truly civil. Because masses of people fought carefully about what was at stake and what was right rather than what was expedient or have actual. They fought about what was elevating rather than merely power trying to reinforce itself. That movement for it not to be understood as one of the most noble, most mature , most sweeping political changes is inconceivable to me. However, it may court the danger of not being recalled thatway. And just in case it is in serious danger of drifting into the barely mentioned, in our textbooks and in our cultural history, or in case it suffers an untimely demise in its narrative because its promises are as yet incomplete, before that we should contemplate and revere that period as a powerfully moral achievement and of the many paths that the whole movement took, none was more significant or more singular than the brown versus board ofeducation. There are certainly many celebrations and memorials and books and essays and oped pieces all in place to mark and analyze the events of 1954. The culmination of years of work on the ground and in the streets and in the houses and in the temples and in the churches and in the courts. The culmination being that Supreme Court decision but as we pay tribute to those extraordinary times, and the Supreme Courts decision that signaled it a real turning point in social policy and law, its 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 the ones however who 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 ofeducation thats what i thought of. Those two sets of children but the question for me was how to relate those events to young people who may have anything from no information at all to some vague memory of some adult trying to describe the Civil Rights Movement to them. And of course, it may have been very much like telling you about thecivil war. They may feel that distance. So the question was how to make those days alive for them in a manner that was direct, not preachy, not patronizing and not burdensome as a test. Well, photographs were chosen that documented and dramatized the precursors to the decision, the decision and a little of its aftermath. But even the most powerful images could become merely another lesson or another collection if they were presented with captions that were limited to date, time, who, when and where to what really attracted me to the project was the possibility of entering imaginative late into the minds of the people in the photos. 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. And my skills are honed in narrative fiction and dialogue so i thought that i would bring those into play rather than sort of an essay type rendering of what was going on. In doing so, in trying to invent what this person that might have been thinking to himself or saying to another person, it occurred to me thatsomething truly unique had happened. Because i cant think of any Political Movement that so demanded and so required the deliberate courage of children and their generosity , children having to behave in a manner that was not merely to advance him or herself but all children. Then and in time to come. They were at the most vulnerable age when they were asked and able to become involved in Something Big and much much bigger than themselves. They did it and it was hard. And just imagine it. Imagine yourself as i imagined myself eight years old, 12 years old , 15 years old. Im entering a street, a neighborhood, a building where i believe i have hated. Where i know i am because grownups are fuming at me. Grownups as well as children are callingme names. I am so not wanted, soldiers with guns have to come along to protect me and if they have guns, maybe they need them. Maybe my life is in danger. Maybe somebody out there in the crowd has a gun to. And might use it. But even without those children who went to School WithoutNational Guard support, they entered school allalone. Sometimes with a few others of their own race and they had to spend the daythere. The anxiety of entering any new school, new neighborhood for a job is intense but to enter under those circumstances is morethan intense. Trying not to be afraid or at least not showing it. Not misbehaving, not even getting angry. Not making any mistakes and trying not to be heard. And trying to learn under those circumstances. Waiting, really waiting for the day to end and you can go home and be with your own. Knowing all the while that what youre doing is for people you will never know. I wanted todays children to think about that and no that that spirit, that nobility , that generosity was in them to. To give up something, to be brave about something for the greater good. Not just ones personal advantage. Where else could they see that . Imagine that kind of courage from people their own age. . Where else could they see adults of all races, all faiths, all classes and professions binding themselves to each other in such a righteous cause. Especially a non military revolution. Where else can you see that . It still is the most startling thing to me. I am still heartened by it. And i hope, well, im convinced that Young Readers will remember, will be heartened to. I want to read to you now just a few words, some of the passages to young people. I think i can do this without my glasses. No. No risks with the eyes. I had to cataract operations youll be happy to know. The world is blinding blindingly beautiful. I had no idea. What i had lost. This book is about you. Even though the main event in the story took place many years ago, what happened before it and after is now part of all our lives. Because remembering is the minds First Step Towards understanding. This book is designed to take you on a journey through a time in American Life when there was as much hate as there was love, as much anger as there was hope, as many heroes as cowards. A time when people were overwhelmed with emotion and children discovered new kinds of friendship and a new kind of fear. As with any journey there is often a narrow path to walk before you can see the wide road ahead and sometimes there is a closed state between the path and the road. To enliven the trip ive imagined the thoughts and feelings of some of the people in photographs chosen to help tell the story. There are children, teenagers, adults, ordinary people leaving ordinary lives , all swept up in the events that would mark all our lives. The first people to step onto the long path where children and theirparents. The law in many states called jim crow laws demanded separation of the races in all Public Places and especially the Public Schools. These laws were based on the idea of separate but equal. That meant black people could enter public areas. Could use public facilities such as drinking fountains and waiting rooms and train stations. Be seated on public transportation. Vote apart in movie theaters and attend the schools but not with white people. Setting apart on a bus or not being served through the front window of a takeout restaurant 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, no matter how far away. Many buildings were dilapidated, even dangerous. Textbooks were fueled, worn, out of date. Therewere no supplies, no afterschool programs, school lunches, sports equipment. Underpaid teachers were overburdened trying to make do. Then one day some parents from delaware, kansas, south carolina,virginia and washington dc stepped onto the path. These africanamerican parents formed a group represented by lawyers from the naacp to sue schools that required their children to travel to schools miles away then once closer to their home. The place was named for the parents oliver brown who was part of the kansas group. The closed states 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 a decision in the case of brown versus board of education. The decision which said separate schools were not equal through many states, cities, towns, neighborhoods, and suppose, teachers, parents and students into confusion. Battles were fought to honor, ignore or overturn the decision. Many battles were one. Some quietly, some not. The demand to integrate Public Schools grew into a nation wide Civil Rights Movement to eliminate all races, to have the right to vote, the right to choose the neighborhood you wanted to live in red use it in any vacant seat in a public place , marches, protests, counter marches, counter protests erected most everywhere. It was an extraordinary time. When people of all races and all walks of life came together. When children had to be braver than theirparents. When pastors, priests and rabbis left their altars to walk the streets with strangers, when soldiers with guns were assigned to keep the peace or to protect a younggirl. Days full of loud, angry, determined the crowds and days deep in loneliness. Peaceful marches format with applause in some places, violence in others. People were hurt and people died. Students and civil rights workers were posed, beaten, jailed. Strong leaders were shot and killed and one day a bomb was thrown into a church, killing 4 little girls attending a school. None of that happened to you. So why offer memories you dont have . Remembering can be painful, even frightening but it can also swell your heart and open your mind. Whenever i see shes drying on the line or smell dumbo simmering on the stove, a flood of memories comes back to me. In 1953 when i traveled in the rural south with a group of students, we received generous generosity of strangers. Africanamericans who took us in when there were no places for nonwhites to eat or sleep. There were strangers who gave up their own beds, dressed them in brilliantwhite linen , spelling of mulberry and pine. They fed us from their bibles and were so insistent on not being paid we had to hide money in the pillowcases so they would find it long after we were gone. These were country people or city people. Denied adequate education, relegated to a tiny any area in a movie theater. Backs of buses, separate water fountains,menial jobs or non , like me they were ordinary people. Although their lives were driven by laws that said no, not here, no, not there , no, not you. They racial segregation not yetmarked their soul. 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 dried sheets can sum up my memories 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 was not entered, the gates were not opened. The road was not taken only for those raised enough to walk it. It was for you as well. In every way, this is your story. Thank you. [applause] i have agreed to entertain some questions or even comments, some of the questions are long and they help me by having some of you wrote questions down on file cards and i looked at them and chose some i thought i couldanswer. And disregarded those i couldnt. But i did notice that about a third of thequestions were really 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 brown versus board of education, segregation has not disappeared but has reemerged as resegregation, 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 done a notion in the 50s that the work to be done viscvis Public Schools and integration was not simply integration. I never went to an integrated school. I mean, a segregated school. I live in a little town that was distinguished by its poverty and the people in that town were all sorts of people. Immigrants, european immigrants, mexicans , black people, you know, all sorts. And we didnt have the money to segregate ourselves. Or even the interest, because this is as we call it in the depths of the depression so we had Something Else on our collective minds. There were different churches , etc. And different social groups and there was one high school , for junior high schools and the streets were full of people from all sorts of places. In the world. And never lived on any street that was all of anything so i came to a university here in washington when i graduated deliberately to the model, black intellectual. So i say that because i looked at this business a little bit differently backin the 50s. What i thought was there what should be enormous fight and struggle for resources, money to go into those schools that were weak in supplies and support and so on. I thought that no child should have to walk or drive 10 miles away to go to a black school when they lived, when one was closer but i didnt think of it as either or. I thought of it as both. You should have both things. I knew that black schools, undergraduate schools, graduate schools had been splendid. I had attended one but in those days was as good a school as youcould find anywhere. And the people who are handling the cases for integration at all gone to those schools. So thats where they came from. Educational criteria at those schools was as highand higher in any i had been to and i have been to some. What happened to those schools of course is a different story. Its a consequence of socalled integration. Nevertheless, i say that to say that i am still not certain viscvis this question now what used to be all like maybe predominantly black and something that used to be i dont know, whatever 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 in any way or to move into other neighborhoods, they made those choices in many instances and left behind those who had no economic choices. So theres a benefit and then theres theconsequence, the loss. The best teachers of some of the best black schools were drained away into other schools, white schools for better money, better pay, betterbenefits, what have you. There was no debt for black school in many instances. In other words apartheid had created its own blossoming professions. There were a black law schools, black schools of architecture, black medical schools, etc. Black private schools, etc. Because and black entrepreneurs had a close and captured audience, the black doctor, black morticians and they all lived together. In one neighborhood of course by apartheid or segregation but the doctor lived next door to the carpenter who lived next door to the whatever andthat was the cohesion of neighborhood. Now when that was over , it was over. And its a beautiful thing to have more choices. Of course some of those choices left behind a different kind of neighborhood that was bound thereby class. That inability to move out. Now, some of that is changing rapidly now. I mean, enterprise zones and people moving back into neighborhoods, tons of people moving away from urban areas back into the south so its changing. Its fluid. That i think is better. Then the obvious reason, the fourth segregation but in this route to this sort of completely diversified world that we seem to need and desire, there are moments when you will find certain schools that are 80, 90 percent black. Some parts of the countrythey are 80, 90 percent latin. Im not disturbed by that. Provided that all students in all schools have a relationship or a familiarity with other people in their life outside of 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 doesnt really matter because many people were taught in living rooms and logs but it does matter and the resources have got to go into those schools. Anyway, thats a very long sort of creaturely answer to the question about is it awful now that theresstill some kind of reintegration . My feeling is that all of these struggles were for more choices rather than fewer ones. I think there should be girls schools area and i think there should be religious schools. And i think there should be all sorts of places you can go and learn and feel comfortable. But not the forced and of course, i think the major thrust of the government and the state should be the absolute support as its current prime budgetary requirements and interest in the publicschools. Now let me see if theres anything else that i havent covered in that long answer. Theres one here thats a little tiny bit offthewall butits sort of interests me a little bit. What advice you give to graduating College Seniors that are considering pursuing a career in print journalism. Its a noble calling, i suppose. But you will have tochange it. In many instances. Because of the huge corporatization of all media including the press where the independence and aggravation and the provocateur role that journalists used to play is rapidly disappearing. When i was a girl and maybe some of you also had a grade, ninth grade, maybe 12th grade education so they thought they were the people and they said we, they met all of us and now that they all go to graduate school, and get honorary degrees and huge salaries when theysay we , they mean them. I was listening to something last night. Amanda edwards has written a book about edward r murrow, his idol and i was amazed to learn that he didnt go to stanford. He didnt have a degreethe way he said. He was a nice workingclass boy from seattle or what have you and felt that he didnt have the credits so he reinvented them and then when he no longer had to, after the war reporting he changed it and but in the beginning he felt in order to be in that crowd he had to give himself some false props. But he was a stellar reporter who subsequently i think left rather disappointed way journalism was changing but anyways, if you have a tough heart and a very sharp mind, just go in it and see what happens. But its a dangerous field now. For independent thinking, i need. Do you think the Supreme Court should have been more specific in the implementation of its order rather than all illiterate speed . I suppose but that wasnt going to happen it might as well have saidall deliberate speed. Thats one the way one of the ways it gotthrough. It was not overnight. There were whole counties who closed their schools. For years, five, six, seven years they closed down the Public Schools and everybody had to go somewhere else read a provide for the white children to go to school but little black children had to go to detroit and laces. Can you believe that . They just shut them down, they werent going to happen. The question here and i think a couple of other ones about the achievement gap. You believe its useful breaking down success or failure along color lines and what do you believe can be done with those . Mustschools do it or can it come from community . I think i can, and i feel very comfortable doing that. But in my own heart of hearts, i think the changes come from parents. I really do. I hate to say that so blatantly because im aware of the fact that more and more schools are dumping the teaching job on to parents. Spending hours of doing homework with children in school and its more, not because of more and more knowledge but less is being done in many other classrooms so im very mindful of that. On the other hand, i get a lot of questions about, how can i help my children or my child read better . Would you suggest we do to make children read . I always ask them you read . Do your children see you sitting somewhere, oblivious to everything because you are reading a book . Do they see you really excited about the book are going into the library . You salivate were panned when you get this book and you cant wait to get home and read it . I say this to a hypothetical parent because whether they do it or not, they will see whats interesting to you and where your pleasure lies. That helps. Not just having books lying around but being active participants in the process. Sharing stories youve read with your children. But you think this means . What does this mean . Etc. We are, as adults, parents, im not sure how much we say matters to children but i do know but we do matters a great deal and they are very sharp, their antenna is up and shivering all the time. They are like little mind readers, they have to be because they dont know the whole language. Remember once, a 4yearold cavein, picture he had drawn and he said look what i did. I was doing something and i said, thats lovely. He just tore it up right in front of my face. I said why did you do that . He said because didnt have a smile on your face, it was patronizing. You know that little, it was true, i was trying to get rid of him. He recognized it and had what it takes to tell me about it by living it up. I realized he knew as much as i knew when i was a kid. You remember how you really had to tell who was lying and who wasnt . That sort of thing. So because they have this sharp intelligence, i think parents can make enormous differences in how children behave and learn. Huge boxes were sent to me, some i knew i wanted in the book and others were just sent me and i picked them out, i picked them when i felt suddenly that i knew probably what this guy was drinking out of that fountain or what they were thinking when they were sitting at this soda fountain. You can go here or there. Someone that appealed to me, the photograph appeared to me, i was able to do it. The editors themselves wanted me to, on something i may not have chosen. More questions about segregation and i tried to comment as truly as i could about the complexity of that. Not wanting the necessity of doing numbers, 50 this or that but at the same time, wanting choices available for groups. This question is a group ending because its about an ending and it will end this session. This is not a story to past time. Remember the story to past time. This is the story. Thanks. [applause] saturday evening this summer, tb is opening up our archives and we are spending time with a wellknown author. Our focus is on the late awardwinning novelist, toni morrison. She appeared on tv over a dozen times and up next, were going to show you a program from 2010. As of the New York Public Library and she was joined by author and activist, angela davis to discuss Frederick Douglass memoir. Good evening. [laughter]