Transcripts For CSPAN2 2016 Mississippi Book Festival 20160821

Please silence your cell phones if you would. In terms of books which i know you all want to make sure you get the books you are going to be hearing about this morning outside the Capitol Building on mississippi st. There are number of sellers who will have looks and adjacent to the industry as the signing tent. In the back page of your brochure you will see this fantastic schedule. Authors will not necessarily be on immediately after the panel so just check the other name and the time in the brochure. We are delighted to have cspan broadcasting live this morning so welcome to jackson. The panel will also be shown on october so if you want to review it again. Thank you for the state legislature for the use of this facility today and i want to thank the authors and the moderators for being here with us this morning. The first panel is sponsored by the university of southern mississippi friends of the University Library so we are grateful for their support and now i will introduce jesmyn ward who is our panel moderator. She received her b. A. And m. A. From Stanford University and an msa from the university of michigan. She serves as the jon Renee Grisham writer residents of the University Mississippi and shes the author of the novels where the line bleeds and salvage the bonds which won the 2011th National Book award for fiction and shes author of the memoir amend the and the editor of the new book just out this month, the fire of this time. She is currently at work on her third novel and she lives in mississippi so welcome. Thank you. [applause] im really happy to be here and im happy with the turnout. I think this is one of the biggest crowds i have ever seen on a panel that i have done so thats great. Welcome to the mississippi book festival and in particular this panel. Im going to tell you about the collection first and then introduced the panelists and then we will get started with questions. I conceived of the fire of this time in the wake of Travon Martins death. That was the year in which i scrolled through twitter and endless pieces of on line journalism and then still desperate for conversation finally turned to James Baldwin, sharp truly honest baldwin. In the fire of this time an essay on religion i found a voice that affirmed my words might die in my despair that from so many years ago encouraged me to keep trudging forward. With the essayist and poets of this time i hoped to create such a document for a new generation, a book together and preserve new voices to reckon with the anger in love at war on americas streets and to serve as a jury and witness. Here with me today are four of my fellow contributors, Garnette Cadogan honoree jeffers kima jones and kiese laymon. Garnette cadogan is the editoratlarge of nonstop metropolis in new york city at less a visiting fellow at the institute for bands that these in culture at the university of virginia and a visiting scholar at the institute for Public Knowledge and new york university. He writes about culture and arts for various publications and is currently at work on a book about walking and im sorry im reading these out of order. Garnet is all the way at the end. [applause] honoree jeffers who is next to garnet is a poet fiction writer and critic and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the arts in the winter Runner Foundation to the library of congress. She is the author four books of poetry and is currently at work on the fifth and exploration of the life and times of the 18th century poet phyllis wheatley. [applause] kima jones has been published in in pr pink scratch magazine. She has received fellowships from penn center usa and dowell colony and is currently an mfa candidate in fiction and rodney jacks caller and msa program for writers at Warren Wilson college. Kima jones. [applause] finally kiese laymon is associate professor of english and African Studies at Vassar College in and the recent grisham writer in residence at the university of mississippi. He is the author of the novel Long Division how to fully kill yourself and others in america and the forthcoming memoir called heavy. Kiese laymon. [applause] so lets jump right in. I thought first i would lead by asking your question about James Baldwin James Baldwin. When i was searching for a writer on the contemporary american black experience baldwin felt inevitable yet he died nearly 30 years ago. So my question for you is what makes his writing continue to resonate and if you turn to him is ideal for comfort comfort and solace. The first thing i should say is my university will get very angry at me i just recently was promoted to full professor. Oh wow congratulations. [applause] and my colleagues might be watching this morning. James baldwin, i have a very involved relationship with him because my father was friends with him so when i first encountered his name on and countered it as my dad mentioning that they hung out at the village together and everything and then i met him when i was 14 and i remember his assistant coming up behind him and tracing a fur collared camel hair coat and i thought thats going to be me. [laughter] but as an adult in graduate school his words along with audrey lords literally saved my life. One of the africanamericans in the program to mind knowledge and the first africanamerican to graduate in poetry and msa program at the university of alabama so its very, very isolated and my friends were the ladies who cleaned the building and we would talk about those sorts of things and i remember you know i was young then. I was in my 20s and i was feeling a real rage in this rage helps me but it was sustained and it was intellectual. It was not messy rage. It was purposeful rage and that was a real lesson that i learned from him. When he began speaking to his nephew who is also his namesake jimmy and at one point he says im paraphrasing, in those days we were trembling, talking about the 60s. But if we had not loved each other we would not have survived. Time and again thats where a return to baldwin. He writes with a palpable force. He writes with the fairness fierceness. Its his love and his belief in the potency of love. And we tend to stand away from it thinking that love, here we go another kumbaya moment. But for him love with this vibrant potent cohesive active forceful thing which allowed us to see with more clarity, which allowed us to see more deeply and to not only see it but see it clearly and with the wonderful thing about him is that he argues for full humanity people whose humanity is treated less than by appealing to a common humanity and so he never is in search of an enemy and is continually recognizing how much the degradation of we can be great in ourselves and he continually reminds us what it means to put ourselves in someone elses shoes and arguing with someone we had to argue as a human being and where never let off the hook for the responsibility to love them. In other words their criticism doesnt preclude a responsibility to love and our love doesnt include us criticizing people. Thats where baldwin i think has not and never will lose his relevance. He continually reminds us how important love is and what potent love should undergird and propel our criticisms and perfections and responses to each other. I think baldwins work is resonating with me ever since i read it when i was 15 or 16 but i think it resonates more during president ial elections in this country because thats when i think we see the most magnificent liars lie back to us, the most magnificent magnificently and one of the things that baldwins work encourages me to understand is political moment particularly when we have their rights hearkening back to this great past that didnt exist for a lot of folks on this panel and the left rallying a american exceptionalism that still seems to disregard the experiences of a lot of us on the panel at think baldwin is saying that american and americanness is rooted in deception is rooted in dishonesty and theres no way for us to get from point a unless we are honest about a and that resonates with me as a writer but particularly in these political seasons when we see the worst of america on display. I think baldwins work is a reminder of what the american nest of us could be. When i think of baldwin he is very attached to my childhood. I grew up in harlem and as a child come, the girl child interested in the arts it was just a really beautiful time. There was a royal reclamation of our heroes especially our literary heroes. It was a time that langston hughes, these people were not far off ideas. They werent people that i discovered in college. They were part of my Elementary School experience and so when i learned about old when it really felt like i was kind of walking into a place where i wanted to be for the rest of my life. As well as the others, he felt like a supreme example of the kind of person and the artist that i wanted to be in the world and the things i wanted to do for myself and for my community. Fantastic. I have another baldwin question for you all. Which ties into this talk. Here is baldwin describing his experience as a reader. He says you think in your pain in your heart breaker and unprecedented in the history of the world. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most read the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive who had ever been alive. So my questions that kind of that quote is what was your experience of participating in this collection . As writers, we all write it in isolation and for the most part we are published individually. Once you have a copy of this book in your hand what felt different about it as a reader and a writer . How does it feel to be part of the choir rather than a soloist . Well. [laughter] i am leo. I was born july 23 and i share a birthday with monica lewinsky. [laughter] its a motley crew and co so its a motley crew. One of the things as a poet who does Historical Research what i find interesting being someone who is 49 is the way that younger folks look at baldwin that we need to take him in historical context. We look at him as one of our great profits but he was vilified by many of his contemporaries because he was a man and so one of the things as someone who does history my essay sticks out like a sore of palm really because its about the 18th century and you know im sure some people are flipping through like what has this got to do with Police Brutality . The thing that struck me about his saying you arent the first people who suffered is that the 18th century is really the og black lives matter. The british were a police force. Crispus addicks was a black man in the first of all in the boston massacre and there were all these other black men who were agitating for liberty and full citizenship. Its sort of radical black feminist so im writing about lack man and i think a couple of people were like why are you writing about but i do think that history is very important because when you reconfigure the president you also reconfigure the past, right . So thats what i think about all twin. He wasnt celebrated as a profit during his time but his words are very timely. All you have to do is go on social media and you constantly see these quotes by him and i find this really interesting because black movements despised him for being a black man. That was not surely black whatever that means and now we are all realizing he was like abraham, you know to us. Minibus ride in silence. It can feel like you are writing in a void and for all those competent writers there is a fear that you might avoid that silence which are writing and he met with that same silence. One of the marvelous things about this book is suddenly you are responding as part of a broader conversation. One of the things that i come to begin we were trembling. Reading the other essays helped give that sense of solidarity. C. S. Lewiss remarks in friendship and giving the definition definition of friendship, oh you too so this book my experiences are not my own and it you too, you too so theres a sense of solidarity but theres also a sense of friendship and that loops around to baldwin thinking we love each other so to have your experiences echoed our in some places challenged and it had that effect but when he was writing to his nephew he got into this issue of innocence where he said oh your countrymen see whats going on. They can go and they can talk to their grandmother. She has seen all these things. She is not hidden. I think of this book like baldwins grandma. Heres this book, a multitude of witnesses saying here is what its like to live in contemporary america. Here is what it has been like to get to this point and here are some possibilities and here are some of the limitations imposed when baldwin talked to his nephew and here are the ways in which we have tried to improvise and fight and navigate around these limitations and here we are in our multitude and its richness and more than anything the marvelous thing about this but it reminded me that what happens to us is not the entire story of who we are. We are more than what has happened to us so reading this book became important reminder and it is part friendship part testimony, part inspiration. You know, during ferguson and during the baltimore uprisings like you i witnessed a lot of that via twitter and i would be up until 3 00 in the morning unable to look away and i did a lot of that with Jericho Brown another contributor in the book and there wouldnt be much to say except oh my god i cant believe this. I cant believe this is happening. And some nights we would just sign off, i love you. If no one else has told you today and love you, i love you announce hindsight i realize how much damage watching hour after hour that footage did but i felt like i really wanted to be a witness to that at that time so when i see my name in communion with these other writers it really does feel like i love you and i want to be here for you and i want to support you in this way. Even after we close our browsers in our laptops we still have to go out into the world and navigate it and show up at our jobs and show up for our families and ourselves in a real way. We cant just slouch through life so it just affirmed for me we are all going through this thats up here but on this level i know these people are here for me. That feels really good and i feel special. Thank you for that. That was a great answer. I just think public expressions of lot joy are part of the reason we are still here, part of the reasons we are all up here today. So when i saw my name in the book and when i got the hardcover, im from jackson. Jasmine you are the greatest writer in my world so i was just like dang, i made it. [laughter] i feel the same way and we got paid. And that is honesty. The second thing i felt her in the process was a lot of different people asked me to use my work for anthologies and often i say no because for a lot of reasons but one is because i often dont have the intellectual work and spiritual work in me to write the representational essay of some but somebodys anthologies so with with this particular anthologies when cathy came to me and said he wanted me and some other folks i was just like you know, there are a lot of Different Things i could have done but i want to be something in that anthology to speak to this joy in this new once joy that i got from the root and the route for me is my grandmama. A lot of people have asked me to anthologies and i wouldnt anthologized that piece in any other anthology in the world because i would have felt comfortable with what was on either side of my piece. These folks provided, massive amounts of history, love. I think that push against this notion of eating an endangered lack male in this way is really crucial so for me it felt like the piece found its way home and im just really happy. We need to say we are happy and im really thankful and happy. Can i just say one tiny thing exactly because i told myself i was never going to be on another race panel because i just got tired of explaining to people, how bad it was to be a black person. Thats not the entire experience but when you asked, i said all right, right . And when my aging came to me and said you know, i said okay im doing it and then they said you are getting paid. I was like [laughter] okay then. And thank you for those groceries by the way. That money. Real well. I appreciate you. [applause] and i just say this really quickly because i havent had the opportunity to thank you all in person but i would like to thank you all for agreeing to be a part of this. Im really proud of it and im so happy that we were able to come together and to form the School Course and do this. The great books of thank you all so much. [applause] i hope you all dont get mad when i ask you all a question. Im curious. So i have a twopart question. The first part is does this anthology provide more questions questions more answers than questions in the second part of the question is what the questions are you sitting with right now . I think what kiese said about representing black joy is very important if we were called, dont use the words anymore coined by nikki giovanni, black love is black wealth, right . My question and i hope i dont make anyone mad asking this question is, why is it always black people who are and why dont why people ever feel like they have the race . Thats my question as i finish this because we arent the ones who invented race. Emanuel kant and david hune invented race and we are living with the wages of that sin. So its always interesting to me that for example when i teach my students and i say to them, when you write a story why is it that no one ever has a race until the person walks into the room . I dont assume that everyone is white, right . I assume that everyone looks like me you know so i think what im curious about is why arent there any books where white people examine and even now as they use the word white i can feel people flinching in the room. If you say africanAmerican Woman or native American Woman people are like okay but as soon as you say white woman people start jumping like you are accusing them of something, right . I am not accusing anyone of anything. It exceeds a script for but i do wonder why it is that this is our burden, to discuss. I welcome the challenge but i would like my White Brothers and sisters, transgender or lgbtq straight as separate to start examining what race means and not from this media call plus guilty place where then it becomes explained to me quiet and not a bad person. I would love to have a real intellectual engagement with what that means that i am curious why hasnt it happened . Thats my question. I think there are more questions than answers and i have encountered different people over the book and the depending on the way you have. That you are left with more questions than answers. The joys of the collection which you have brought together, speaking about the past and the present in inking through the future is that different ones meet you in different places. Come away without any questions really. Just more answers. Here is in a rich way and a joy it what it looks like. But the collection because its in composition with other essays, suddenly these questions began emerging. What might joy look like when we think of lineage. How should we think of lineage, how, how is heritage an important part in important inheritance that ought to be celebrated. How do we write about family, what issues we belong in with identity. With love . And with a rich sense of self. And suddenly it has found all of these emerging it is a terrific thing about the book is questi of as the neck. And then has that had been bef so i find myself and thinking there are more question is zero or more answers. But even as a rider one off the things it didth was giving me answers to wait as a way to write different problems say that this has not been a problem as a rider but it is a shortcoming so high you inl with terrible pain no way that does not become burdensomeutc and away the you cannot extract yourself . So there are some answers or ways to go ahead on but recognize that is not reduced to one demotion or rs a for the of contemplation so how do i write to and bring peoples that theythe way have marginalized to have limitations put on them . I remember that people that these expectations for whatpect you have been told you are capable or incapable and o part of the reason i write this is to show you that i have begun this five beg different times then i rip that up so how do i say here all the different ways and in no way that will let you transcend all of this day by day . With the stereotypes so are limitations . So how do i convey all of that improvisations that people have executed to get around it . How do i write in a way that has empathy . Is such a hard thing to say to put yourself in someone elses shoe. How do i write into that. More than anything there is a question and it has not gotten how do we make that case at the same time for the common humanity . As a point of the bridge but also for humae same time appealing to our common humanity. What better better ways in which we can point to a bridge but also not let up and pointing on the other side of the bridge. What what are the ways that affirm strongly and forcefully in his humanity of people who are black and white at the same time and make it clear to others at the same time it is not an attempt to exclude anyone. And that by the to grading others you have thereby degraded yourself. As i was writing the question that stayed with me, the question that continues to stay with me is what happened to sandra brand . I think about it every day as a woman whose travels a lot for work and all fit in alone, when im going from state to state or wherever i am at time i was thinking, am i going to get back home . Im thinking this woman left a Job Interview and never made it home. That is the question for me. What happened to her . Her . What happened from the moment she was put in that car until she showed up in the morning. So justin invited me to be part of this anthology and i was going through trying to decide what to do i know that they write speculative fiction, but the the most natural thing for me was to contribute to a speculative poem because i felt like i really wanted to work with the perceived ambiguity. To me thats not very ambiguous about what happened but the notion of ambiguity, i also wanted to work with black joy. For me when i think of the south i think of being in charleston, South Carolina in the summertime with my cousins. I wanted to work with these things and look at what perceived horror is, what supernatural horror is . To me it is horrifying. It is nothing short of a horror story to think that a woman could be pulled over and within hours be dead. So the question for me is, what happened in that self . I had a had a feeling that other writers would not necessarily, they dont do genre work so i wasnt expecting a bunch of poems is can be a way for me to address it its about a woman who is always on the go and alone. I could be pulled over and stopped and then what . In the idea that there could be a recording, that there could be an actual recording yet no indictment. What does that really mean. What are we up against . So when i am of reading through the poem and the anthology is still think about it and i think we have to keep that in the front of our minds as we continue our work. An entire life and lives are lost. And recorded. Isnt that every horse story . Theres a recording but there is no real closure at the end of that. So. So for me thats the persistent question. For me i want to answer that question and speak to be in in the space today. The space. Morrison wrote two decades ago that she wonders what happens it to the imagination of a black writer who is constantly conscious of represented their race to a group of people who consider themselves racist. Its not a rhetorical question. She asked what happened to black writers who are constantly forced to deal with, reckon with, carry the weight with what i will call the worst of the white folk. So after i read the anthology i thought a lot more about that question. Being in the space today im even forced to think about the question because of the audience and because of history of this space. We are right here next to that plague which means a lot. As a black artist born in jackson, the easy thing for me to do would be to talk about how messed up that vegas, to talk about why we are considered the worst of the white folk and really to try to do the work that James Baldwin had already done. Which is to teach white folk that they are white. Thats the easiest thing for me to do. Reading this anthology encouraged and reminded me that theres other work to do. That is heavy work, dealing with our been in the space next to that, in the space where lots of black bodies have been terrorized and this tear has been sanctioned. It is important, crucial work for us to do them for me in particular to do. If im doing that work sometimes im not talking about one in my relationship to abuse, the ways in which i have been abusive. Im not talking about my relationship as a survivor and victim of sexual abuse. Im not talking about web been emotionally abusive to others. Im not talk about misogyny. Not talking about all of these things. Reading the anthology encourage me to understand that sometime when folks ask me to write about folks asked me to write about what it means to be black which is them wanting me to feel like to be white, i said you can use google. Then i need to get to work in uncovering, explore the nuances of other things that make me might have little to do with white, desire to terrorized bodies like mine. I hope you understand what im saying. Reading the anthology, get to the answer again. Any nudges to get back to this answer that telling white folk how messed up they been to us is not always what needs to be done. They need to hear that but as writers and artists i might not need to tell them all the time. When i do that im actually not loving myself in ways and that leaven the children that i dont have. But i think the anthology encourage me to do that work. I think it is time for questions now, is that correct . From the audience i dont know exactly where you should go, there is a podium,. Yes please use the mic there so we can hear your question. Questions. Im scared. Good morning. I want to thank all of you for being here. As a want to say to the professor that they sent their warmest regards. I want to contextualize the fire this time with two other books which is between the world and me and also, invisible world got the whole world watching. In looking at those three books and looking at what youre dealing with, essentially the issue of White Supremacy in 2016. My question is. My question is for me as a port and short story writer is, my thesis was on James Baldwin in his talk about love as a whole, humanistic approach, my question is, in 2016, these problems still exist. Is there ever going to be a time when black folks have to come if we are not going to reevaluate black nationalism is the answer, self determinism. Because a statistic thats interesting for me is that 80 of black people that are employed by white employees have only 20 of black people that are played by africanamerican americans which means we can feed ourselves because we cant wouldnt this be self determinism and how black people take control of their own institution . Wow, that was deep brother. So, wow, wise eyes me that has to make somebody mad in the room. That was a billing question. I do think there are several vectors to what you had said. I think the economic Self Determination is really important. As someone who is dependent on my mother side from georgia sharecroppers who lived off the land, i just remember all of my uncles hunted and fished. All of them kept gardens, my mom and her sisters kept gardens but the men kept gardens too. So very quickly, yes i think that vector is something we need to explore. Black masculinity is a problematic place that we need to have ongoing work. I think it what brother garnet has talked about in terms of love. As a black woman who loves my Black Brothers i dont want to blow up any bridges to them. I do want to challenge them to talk about black masculinity in a way that acknowledges that they could have paid without foregoing strength. There is strength in acknowledging that. When we talk about economics as the key, this is probably what is going to your tape people. We have to think about the fact that west african economy of the 18th and 19th century was based on the trends of manic slave trade. That was not brought in that was in a collaborative effort with your pains, that does not mean white people in the room that mitigate these european ugliness and brutality against us. You can acknowledge something, we can chew gum and rubber tommys but i think facing everything on economics is a bit problematic. But i would like to say is to me the key to dismantling White Supremacy is humanity. Not whining to them, white folks please love us. I am loved by god and thats what i worry about. I dont enter into a room of black people, white people or anybody else caring that they love me. I try to spread love but if they dont let me im okay because i know my master is. I do feel that humanity is the key to acknowledging a common humanity. That seems like a cool by our moment. It is very complicated because when you think about slavery you think about the fact that at the same time at the Transatlantic Slave Trade was going on imperialism was going on. And then the intellectual apparatus of dismantling not only black humanity but native indigenous humanity. So youre able to treat people badly because you think theyre one step above orangutan. Because she does not feel as strongly about her baby. As a dog feels about it puppies. When you dismantle peoples humanity then what it does is make you feel better about treating them badly. You see what is happening with donald trump, yes i said his name and what we are seeing is the fact that you get all of these disenfranchised poor white people who do not understand, its not the color folk that are keeping you from having power, its people like donald trump, right. [applause]. So you have people who do not understand because everybody wants to feel better. I struggle with classism even as a marginalized person. So that is what i feel about those factors. I been enjoying the essays is that you can write your own and thats why like the form so much is because its way for me to not admit or admit and get away with how much i dont know. So this is not an insult or to demean the question maybe its a little bit above my pay grade or maybe a lot above my pay grade but i say this much for myself and i hope im not being presumptuous when i speak to the writers that theres so much work to be done and if we look at it and say what is happened, why are we still here . Worse still having some of these discussions, why we still fight in the same fight . But i remember again going back to baldwin who is much at the center of our discussion where he pointed to his grandmother as a witness to say heres how we respond to those who plead innocent, heres proof, here is a witness, go ask her. She is not hidden. Is not hidden. You know where to find her. And so i think part of what all of us are doing and what this book is doing is to say here is to say like baldwins grandma, heres the book that you plead in a sense that heres something to do with your professed innocence. So in arguing about exclusion one of the first things you try to do is to say well lets find ways to say you are not an excuse. So at the very least as writers one of the things that we have to keep relentless scented bear witness and that means to professing and are full humanity and all of its richness, all of our joys and frustrations, all of our potentials and resentment but here we are in a past limitation any mansion in the force that you pose upon us. One of the things i think were arguing for is not so much withdrawal as much is to say we have every right not to be excluded and so one of the things this book is doing and all of us are doing as readers essay what is it mean to live and move and having our being with everyone else and not have to deal with having that excluded or push away from us because of our complexion or heritage. Next question. Thank you. Apparently thank you for creating such a work of love and hope. My question deals with a mississippi writer who is also next patriot. Often times children write the first sentence and living with jim crows that he learned the first negro lesson when he was very small. As a collaborative effort of all the writers together, did you find that there are certain, and i liked your handsome bloatware youve dealt with this and then there was this joy, did you find that there are certain ethics that are coming through the 21st century . Maybe not jim crow but maybe sam eagle . And through those ethics do we as both a father and educator, some of my wonderful students are here today, do we have a responsibility equally to teach on these ethics of living so they are not the trave on clouseau lovingly dedicated the book too. And if not, what them beyond your book can be a healer for your book of apparently . I think that theres nothing i dont want to say theres nothing we can do to prove herself to white people so they wont kill us, but theres nothing for us to do to prove to white people to prove so they wont kill us. Its not pulling up her pants, its not dressing your certain way or having a certain haircut certain haircut for certain kind of speech. So for me there moments in my life when i am afraid maybe i dont want to say what was on my mind and those are the times where i really have to mentally become more fit and challenge myself to speak up more to do the brave thing because i think about the people i am responsible for and i think about the people i love and who love me and who i can cry too. I think about my mother, my sisters and brothers and my nephews and niece. It when i think about those Little People in my life im thinking i need to do the brave thing now to make it easier for them. I need to do the loving thing now to make it easier for them so on a micro level i want to be the aunt that takes you to radio city music hall. Lets go cookout in the summertime, lets go to the lake. I want to have those everyday experiences of, we are living our best black life because i have no control of what happens in the world. That is the most difficult thing to reckon with. That is what i think what renders us or we feel so helpless because really tray bonds her baby didnt come back we know emmett hell is the same thing. She sent her son with her father and he never came back so i can never say so to be black to keep you safer, i just want to fill them within endless capacity for self love, love, love of community, for family and relationship and hope that that they can have their best life so the best of it is saying it does where the depression comes in, because i cannot think about that every day, i cannot think about the way that this weight person wants me to be. I have have to navigate this world, i have to get up and go out and i dont know what black you want me to wear today. When you see me, when you see my body, when you see my hair, mild fit and make up, i dont up, i dont know what youre thinking, what expression a black that is. For some i should be laughing and cheering and i should be your hey girl, so i dont know what kind of blackness you expect me to and body are not. So not gonna gonna do that. So i can only be myself. [applause]. I would like to say quick thing. Were talking here about limitations and one limitation that dont want to put on this book is to think that it is a black book just talking about black people. As youre talking about what kind of ethics youre living in on a significant thing about this book what it asked over and over again is in all the writers asking the same question . What does it mean to live with difference . Were living more and more in a pluralistic age. This election is in part and other things that are frustrating us and having to raise her eyebrows, is the way people are talking about what is it mean to live in a pluralistic age . Its not really talking to about what does it mean to be in a black america, its also asking the question what does it mean to live with difference. What you whatever you like it or not thats where you were moving more more. This book is also addressed in question that extend well beyond black and white. Its how to we live with difference. Theres a responsibility for ethic of living instead of living with difference. I tell kids this all the time look touch and be aware, listen to others and to actually be active and be a part of it. So it works both ways if youre saying to even tell the kids that are black what is it mean to live with those who might not particularly care for them or think of humanistic. Are we out of time . Okay we have time for one very short question. I will keep it short. What affect and influence did Richard Wright have on your career particularly with respect to some of the things that you have talked about today. I want to test that in particular since he grew up here and was educated here in jackson . Richard wright, my mother taught at Jackson State University for a long time. She had had me when she was a student there. Richard wright and alexander are the reason that im upper today. I think they do very different work but important work. Richard wright taught me as a young writer that it was okay for me to be angry. For me to be artistically angry is a big, black boy my mother necessarily tell me i needed to do constructive things with that anger but she did not say needed to use my art to explore that anger. Richard wright showed me that there are some parts of anger i could explore. Its crucial to talk about Richard Wright to talk about Margaret Walker alexander two. I think what happens is we focus on right and its crucial and lord knows that hes under explore. But Margaret Walker alexander is the woman who literally told me that i needed to write to and for my people. She told me because she was a friend of of my mother that there is a difference between writing for your people in writing to your people. As a 17yearold ident understand that. Reading this anthology finally understood what it meant to be in the community with folk who are writing for an assembly putting our community are back and going where we are going. It is much more in this american and a place to write to your folk. Its hard to say this in this room that is mostly white. I hope the young black folk understand what im talking to you when i say this. Its imperative, you cannot love someone and can indicate to them. Everything this American Literary enterprise is telling you to communicate over the person who looks like you to talk to that person behind you. Its a necessity if you love your folk to talk to your folk and write for your folk and to understand if you come from a people primarily made a living and the life out of writing to and for the black folk in mississippi in the deep south. Speefive [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] working budget or working health or working education or working pensions or Small Business or whatever committee im really focused on that evening, if i go to sleep, wor late keep working on the edge. And this is very read some of the novels alleged that that religious bent around bac around, and that of a copy of the translation a of the train and the really concerned me but the difference of course, with the bible and the new testament is a teaching them which is recognized by the of theresed b and that is more peaceful. And i am reading another translation. Maybe there is a lot of violence so reading a biography of polygram in thely l lake the chronological their written in different times and even pieces of them written at different times. And then you found out there were sent to babylonnt sixxit different times. Is probably a little bitpe shorterl because there is a repetition to repeat the samee person were times so that is a good way to read the bible. Over a short period of timeo re it is to just over three months. You just look at the number of pages that its got, and you divide it by the number of days in those three months, and then you read that many pages each day. And the advantage of doing that is youre looking at the big picture then instead of individual verses which we sometimes get hung up on. So thats a little bit of what im reading. [laughter] and what im doing with my summer. Im on a plane trip to wyoming pretty much every weekend and, of course, you have to come back again then to vote, and thats a threebook trip. So you can get quite a bit done there besides the studying that i have to do on the plane. Booktv wants to know what youre reading this summer. Tweet us your answer booktv or you can post it on our facebook page, facebook. Com booktv. Heres a look at some of the current best selling nonfiction books according to the Los Angeles Times thats a look at some of the current nonfiction bestsellers according to the Los Angeles Times. Many of these authors have or will be appearing on booktv. You can watch them on our web site, booktv. Org. [inaudible conversations] and booktvs live coverage of the Second Annual mississippi book festival continues now from the state capitol. This is an author panel on education issues. [inaudible conversations] good morning. Welcome again to the 2016 mississippi book festival. [inaudible] all right. I think were ready to get started. Welcome to the 2016 book festival. This is our panel this morning on schools and change. I just have a few housekeeping rules. Please remember to silence your cell phones. Books of these and many of the other authors here today will be available outside the state Capitol Building. The booksellers are out on mississippi street, and signing tent is directly opposite that. Youll see in the back of the program the full booksigning schedule with authors and the times that theyll be signing today. Were delighted to have cspan broadcasting live with us today from jackson, mississippi. I want to thank the state legislature for allowing us the use of this facility today to come together. I want to thank the authors and the moderators today for helping us celebrate literature and the written word together. Also todays, the sponsor of this particular panel, i want to thank the Mississippi Humanities Council for their continuing support of the humanities and what were all doing here today. Id like to introduce Charles Bolton who will moderate todays panel. Hes professor of history at the university of North Carolina at greensboro. Hes the author of the book William Winter and the new mississippi a biography, also hardest deal of all the battle over School Integration in mississippi 18701980, and the book poor whites of the antebellum south, tenants and baylorers in central carolina. Welcome and thank you. Thank you. [applause] good morning. We have the authors of two memoirs this morning both that look at Public Education after mississippi schools were desegregated. One looks in the 1970s which was immediately after integration occurred, and one looks at it a few decades later in the early 21st century. I thought i would start off, though, by just giving a little bit of historic call context which does draw on my own book, the hardest deal of all, and we have a little bit of extra time, i think, because unfortunately you may have noticed two of our panelists couldnt be here today because of unforeseen circumstances, and they actually were both more history than memoir. So i thought i could maybe provide a little bit of context. So i promise i wont give you a fullscale lecture though here. So for much of the 20th century, probably youre all aware mississippi had a dual School System, had a black School System and a white School System. And that did present some difficulties for a poor state like mississippi because it could barely afford to fund one School System, much less two. And yet for many whites, especially in the, you know, early part of the 20th century into the mid 20th century, one of the most important things was that in looking at a quality education was that schools be segregated and other kind of Educational Measures were not nearly as important. But the consequence was that what really was created in mississippi was a somewhat mediocre School System for whites and a sorely underfunded School System for blacks. And that system of education came under attack from at least two fronts throughout the 20th century. One was from black parents and black educators who from the very beginning were with trying to get more resources for black education. The other was from a federal government that increasingly was concerned with this issue of ending racial segregation, and there are a lot of complicated reasons for that. But segregated education was perhaps the most obvious example of why the jim crow system was inequitable. If you wanted to look around and see that separate but equal was really not equal, the best place you could look was the schools. I mean, there were all kind of aspects of southern life were segregated during the jim crow era. You had segregated water fountains but, you know, everybody at least got a drink of water even if, you know, the fountains themselves maybe looked different. But in schools almost everywhere you looked, it was unequal. The materials, the training for teachers, the pay for teachers, the length of time that people went to schools, the Actual School facilities, and thats why its no surprise that when there is a legal challenge to segregation, that it comes in education. Im sure most of you are familiar with the brown decision in 1954 which is about education, that the Supreme Court ruled that segregated educational facilities were inherently unconstitutional. And it was a relatively it took a long time, but it was a relatively easy case for groups like the naacp to make because the evidence was kind of overwhelming. The federal government support, theres a variety of reasons for why over time the federal government became more interested in ending this, and i wont go into all that, but certainly by 1954 when the brown decision was handed down, it was a unanimous decision by the Supreme Court. But even then the court was a little bit unsure how to implement it. The implementation decree of the brown decision said that schools should be desegregated with all deliberate speed, which as you probably recognize doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Deliberate means slow and speed means fast [laughter] so, of course, white people fastened on the deliberate part and said, yeah, well get around to that one of these days and the blacks, of course, thought it should happen right away. And it didnt happen right away despite the efforts of black parents and other black activists to try to make it happen. In fact, for ten years there was absolutely no School Desegregation after the brown decision. The first School Desegregation in mississippi doesnt happen til 1964. And part of the reason why it started to increase there was, again, because the federal government became a little bit more active. In 1964 there was the 1964 Civil Rights Act in which the federal government said that schools could lose their federal funding if they discriminated. The next year there was another piece of federal legislation, the elementary and secondary education act, which for the first time the federal government allocated millions of dollars for elementary and secondary schools. Again, mississippi is a poor state. They needed that money. And to get that money, they were going to have to change, and they were going to have to start or ending the dual School System. And so there, again, there are further changes, but theres also continued resistance. And while theres some kind of token desegregation from 64 until 70, theres the dual School System is alive and well in mississippi. And finally theres another Supreme Court decision in 1969 which was a mississippi case, the alexander v. Holmes case in 1969 in which the Supreme Court sort of revised that all deliberate speed timetable. Basically said that the time to do this had long passed and that schools must be desegregated now. And they meant that especially for those mississippi districts that were party to that suit, they meant not even wait until next school year started, they meant were going to do it in the middle of the year. And thats part of the story that tina and john are going to tell you about. And so it does happen in mississippi pretty quickly. So i want to go to tina honor and john jones who are authors of the first memoir haha were looking at today, its called lines were drawn remembering courtordered integration at a mississippi high school. Tina horne lives in houston, mississippi, but she grew up here in jackson. But in houston in addition to an author, shes a dentist, a Small Business owner and a farmer. John lives, till lives here in jackson still lives here in jackson, and in addition to being an author, hes an attorney here in town. And they were students at Murrah High School here in jackson which was one of the historically white high schools here in jackson. And they were in that first group of students that were there when the schools were finally integrated on a massive scale because of the alexander decision in the spring of 1970. So, john and tina . Impressive crowd. I dont know if there are any Murrah High School graduates out there. I see one or two, three, four, good. Good. And everybody holds their hand up high. Tina and i graduated in 1973 from murrah. In 1969 the fifth Circuit Court of appeals had the case involving the jackson Public Schools and said thou shalt desegregate first, they said on december 1st of 69, were going to flipflop faculty and staff by the time the Christmas Holidays are over. They gave us a couple of extra weeks off for christmas vacation, which was pretty cool. We had no idea what we were coming back to because the court said this ten days thou shalt flipflop student bodies as well. So it became the most radical desegregation that the courts could come up with without really having an underlying plan. It was kind of chaos, at least in the early years. We, i went to bailey junior high. The first morning that it happened, there were i tell in the book when the, about 3 or 400 black kids showed up on Riverside Drive right out from bailey. It was like a bomb had exploded in bailey, and every girl and most of the guys were fighting for the only pay phone in the facility in the school calling their mom and dad and said, theyre here we didnt realize it was going to be this. And what we always heard was, well, all during that day, you know, moms and dads were pulling up to bailey junior high to pick up these white children and take them back to our comfy neighborhoods out to the northeast. We always herald that that night jackson heard that night jackson prep got started at a meeting in the basement of the First Presbyterian church. It was not responded to very well. By the time we were in the tenth grade, the court went one step further. I went to brinkley which was a previous allblack high school near the jackson mall. I was so ignorant, you know, growing up in northeast jackson i didnt even know where brinkly was until we had to find it on the first day of school. But we went over there. The fifth circuit had predicted wed have 507 white people attending brinkly. We had 83. 671 black children. And we were thrown together without any cushion or anybody telling us really what was going on to sort of make it on our own. And we did. After a tough start. By the time we got to murrah in our junior and senior year, we had, frankly, gotten to know our black classmates well must have as individuals well enough as individuals that it really worked. Integration was a success in 1972, 73. Actually at murrah through 1975. We had about 35 white student roll, student enrollment, 65 black, but it really worked. It was probably desegregations best success story. And i have looked it up. It probably was. We had really good participation, and we got together and became Close Friends in a way we would never have accomplished had we been left to our own devices. In 1977, long after we well, the year we graduated from college, there was a second mass exodus out of the jackson Public Schools by white parents. Now murrah is majority africanamerican. It still offers a splendid Educational Opportunity for people who go there. But i think what it shows is that the radical desegregation that we went through that made integration really work for the first time over an extend period in the history of mississippi didnt work over the long haul. And its a real shame. It should have. Weve still got a long ways to go on it, but our experience was a very positive one after a rough start. And it just shows to us anyway that if you have, if youre close enough in proximity to people, then race becomes an irrelevancy. You just learned about each other as individuals, and you can move on with great success. And thats what happened to us. I wish it lasted. This is tina freeman horne. She was a cheerleader at Murrah High School in my time. [laughter] and became a dentist and now lives in the houston, mississippi, but this book wouldnt have happened but for tinas hustle and kicking me in the rear end every time she needed to. This is teen from a. Tina. Morning, and thank yall for having us here. Id like to thank University Press for publishing our book and the people that put on the mississippi book festival. This is a lot of fun. The first time ive been here. Our book, to set the stage, i was born in 1955 which is where most of the participants were born in that year. And mississippi was different back then. We didnt have all the electronics that we have today, we spent a lot of time playing outside, and our lives were built around the neighborhood schools. We had power elementary in jackson, Bailey Junior High School was right up the hill x then there was murrah are high school. And if you wanted to enroll in college, it was just right around the corner, and then there was a Medical Center right across the street. So our lives in the white area where we grew up were safe, and our education was pretty good. Most of us were just rolling along, happy and ready to go to murrah. That was our dream, to go to Murrah High School and be a cheerleader or a murrah miss. Murrah high school had a great Football Team back in the day, and i dont know how they do now, but they were always the big eight champions. And the quest for excellence was something that was instilled in us in Elementary School through Junior High School and on up. We thought, god, i want to be good. I want to win. I want to be a National Merit scholar like all those other more or rah miss murrah mustangs. But then in our ninth grade year, just unexpectedly to most of the general public that didnt understand all the historical backgrounds that were going on within the legislature in our state, they changed the schools. And where we used to walk to school, we were supposed to then bus. But actually, mamas had to take us all the way across town to an area hay didnt know anything about they didnt know anything about. And this not only, this was the same for many of the white kids and many of the black kids at that time. We were all confused, you know . In the black neighborhood, many of the participants were wanting to go to brinkley which was at that time a very good Athletic School and had wonderful teachers, and so they were excited about that. So we were forced as a social experiment to integrate. And we did. And at first the schools we were sent to, i mean, we were all confused. We didnt know what was going on. We werent happy. Some of us got pushed around, hit, things happened, and you can read all about this in the book. But we have 63 participants that give a different story, and thats the beauty of it. Everybodys got a different idea and brought home different takes from it. So its set up on a timeline. We talk about being a child in mississippi and what we experienced, remembering the black and white water fountains. Yall remember that . And then just the segregation that existed at the time. And then we go through Elementary School and up to Junior High School and our experiences, and then we Start Talking about the chapters on where the radical desegregation actually happened. And my part that was i went out and collected some stories, and the interesting thing for a lot of us was the mixing of the cultures. We had different ideas about what a band was supposed to be like. We had testimony about the band director, and he wanted the band to play the good ship lollipop. Well, robert gibbs said, no. [laughter] you know, youre going to have to change that. And it took time for him to change. And what was a real stiff band and stiff white culture with dancing a certain way, we learned how to move in a different way. And our black classmates told us we had no soul. So they taught us how to have soul, and we learned a little bit about each other through time. By time we got to Murrah High School, we had what we described as a camelot which is where we all got along, and we loved our school, and we all cheered together for a Football Team who had lost every athlete on the Football Team except one. They all left and went to jackson prep. And a coach this makes the story so good is a coach came in after jack carlyle left and went to jackson prep named bob stevens. And bob stevens walked he was a real cool, calm guy. Came from Central High School. He walked into the gym, and he would pick out a boy and say, son, how would you like to play ball . I can help you out, were going to have a good team. And we had a winning team that year, it was wonderful. I mean, we built something out of nothing. You know, we took deaf station, and we devastation, and we made some beauty out of ashes. It was a great time. And johnny and i recognized that we lived through something wonderful. And through the years our classmate our class has been very close. We would have, like, fiveyear reunions and all, and johnny sent out afternoon an email which started all this. And he was complaining about the state of the jackson schools. I didnt really understand it because i live in north mississippi, and my children go to a Public School, theyve been since kindergarten, and it was a fully integrated system. And its a very good Public School in houstonen high school, and my kids enjoyed it, and it was very normal. And i just cant understand that jackson had regressed and was not going the way that our Little School had gone. In the community to turn out the way that the integration and the desegregation was supposed to turn out. So in his email he said something about the republicans, and im republican, and hes a democrat [laughter] and so we had an argument. And thats how the book got started. He said, well, you write your story, and ill write mine, and well see what happens. So we did it, and we gathered other stories. Alan huffman, who is a classmate and an author whos written many books that University Press has got some on on display outside that you can get, and then Clay Byrne Barksdale who is in charge of the Barksdale Reading Institute at ole miss later, he taught for one year at Murrah High School after he graduated from ole miss. And he helped us with the book too. So this is, i wanted to just read a little bit a story from robert kelly. Robert kelly was one of our classmates, and i went to visit him in birmingham. He and his brother have kelly construction. They had big i was a little intimidated when i saw how big it was and all the machines and all, but he sat down and talked to me for several hours and just shared some really good memories that go all through this book along with a lot of the other classmates. I grew up in shady oaks, and when they integrated the schools, i was in the ninth grade. I remember that year. We were sent to bailey. And we got to bailey, mike adams mother dropped us off, and i realized that i did not know one white perp in the world. White person in the world. Not one white person. I remember that day, and it was like, wow, which was really weird because in itself it showed how segregated we were as a city and a community. To think, what were we, 14 or 15 years old in ninth grade, to be on earth that long in jackson, mississippi, and did not know one white person. I remember that day, it was very uncomfortable for me because i was very anxious and just didnt know what to expect. I also remember how it was when we went to the first class. All the black kids would sit on this side, and the white kids would sit on that side, and were all looking at each other because it was just a new experience. Now looking back, im so glad i got a chance to experience that. I think it was not only good for our city, but it was good during that time for the entire country. He also said he really liked the lunches at Bailey Junior High School much better than he liked the lunches in his school. I wanted to read another one. This is by freddie. Freddie was a Football Player at murrah, and he became fast friends with charles irby. I dont know if yall remember the irba family. He had several children. Well, charles was in our class. And freddie sometimes would visit with charles irby, they would ride around town in his familys house in east jr. Over eastover, the citys most affluent neighborhood. We started sharing with each other, i would go to charles house, and charles mom was a great lady. She wasnt outspoken, she didnt come out much. She was just a mother at home, and she did a great job. Charles told me one time that the thing you have to realize in life regardless of what you do or how you do it is you have to deal with certain people at a particular time, and by prolonging it, it was going to make it even longer and harder to deal with. To to get tossed over in the salad. Toss it up and make it happen. And thats why their business was so successful in town, because they dealt with so many different people. But interesting stories. Yall get the book. [laughter] let me, let me get bring michael into this discussion. The other memoir that we have represented here today is written by michael copperman, its teacher two years in the mississippi delta, and its literally just right off the presses. I think michael saw a copy of it for the first time last night actually. [laughter] but michael currently lives in oregon but from 20022004 he worked for teach for america, and he taught fourth grade in the mississippi delta. After 1970 the mississippi delta was interesting in that almost all the white people left the Public Schools in the mississippi delta. And literally there was a new dual School System created in the delta of a public School System for blacks and a private School System for whites. Although as one black man from the delta remembered, he said that white people had always had private schools in the delta. He said the only difference was that after integration they had to actually pay for them. [laughter] okay. So, michael, you want to tell them about your yeah. So im, my book is called teacher, and its about years that i spent teaching in the rural black Public Schools of the delta. Im not a historian nor did i grow up in mississippi, and so in part by story, i guess, is about an outsider, thoroughly outside of the black binary of the delta, coming to a place that, you know, was utterly foreign to me where in some ways i didnt, at first, belong at all. Of course, id never felt i wronged much in oregon where belonged much in oregon where i was born and raised because im, you know, part russopolish jew and part japanesehawaiian. [laughter] went to Public Schools where i was often the only asian student os to the only minority or one of a very few. And i went to stanford, and as people do in college, you know, found my calling, i thought, fighting for right, you know, organizing the multiracial issues forum around, you know, advocating on the census to be able to check one more box. And then i, then i ended up joining this organization to called teach for america and marking mississippi and being sent to a place that was really unlike anything that i had ever known. I havent written a book thats ideological or thats rhetorical or didactic. It may be political in ramifications, but its not a political book. Its not a sociological or historical treatise, and its also not, as i just noted, its not a story about a white teacher entering a rural or urban ghetto and saving minority children, you know, from the poverty that afflicts them. That wasnt my story at all. Its not purely a story of success, its mostly a story about children. And their stories and their voices and how they stayed with me, haunted me, changed me and made me into the educator that i have been for the last ten years in oregon where i teach low income first generation students of color at the university of oregon in a sort of modest attempt to retain them. The delta made me into a teacher. And the book is basically a reflection in many ways. It also considers the public School System and the public School System here and elsewhere. I wanted to say as i come back to mississippi and face a mississippi audience, but i suppose outwardfacing since there are those people who watch cspan2 somewhere in the world, that i think that the tendency of most americans outside of mississippi is to want to dismiss what is said about mississippi or about segregation of the Public Schools as being about backward mississippi. As if this was purely a problem that could be contained within the state of mississippi. My ten years in oregon teaching students who remind me of children i taught have shown me that this is not, in fact, a mississippi problem. Things are starker here. The history, perhaps, is more immediate. But socioeconomic inequality and educational inequality is an issue we see all across the cup. It is not a mississippi problem at all, and it is a shared problem. Its not something which outsiders from mississippi can dismiss as just being mississippis issue any more than, i think, for mississippians or the sort of mississippians who come to a panel on schools in jackson, you know, have the right to say, well, thats just the delta, and the delta is backwards. Be youre american, i think if youre american, i think you are a part of that history. I thought i was outside of the history and realized i had benefited from privilege of various kinds, not racial privilege, but other ways in which i had had an easy way of things. I went to excellent Public Schools that provided me excellent opportunities. I had the opportunity to go to stanford. And i had always been able to take advantage of the things around me. I had enrichment. Children that i encountered in the delta, they had something really different than that. And since i heard tina reading a little bit, i wasnt going to read anything, but then i thought, well, i could do more with a few minutes than probably i could do trying to talk at you about a book. This is from near the end of the book which is mostly about children and their stories. This is all there is. The world tells delta kids. These fences to keep you in or out, these sippedder bloc cinder bloc walls. This queue of tin roof shacks, these skinscorched flats and this ragged edge of cot upon thefield that you cant claim or sow or reap, you cant. I came and declared, you can, saying it again and again hoping each time it would sound less hollow. People speak of how idealism ought to be tempered by experience, growing older, becoming wiser. Theyre wrong. You cant restore faith. I wouldnt have been teaching a decade now at the university of oregon if it werent for those two years of delta, would long after have are that traded in a day i see fourth graders grown up that i taught, and a part of me imagines somehow im speaking directly for the children, directly to the children for whom i wanted so much. Yet back in promise, the children i taught walked the dusty streets headed nowhere, and i dont have it in me to help them. To fail again to save a child who doesnt have a fighting chance. Trying to get back to the man i was and imagine choices. If i could trade my comfortable life for theirs, if i could free them from poverty, would i . Its easy to say of course when there are guarantees. Instead, i dream of carrying children to safety from fires, of weaving the way through a dark wood with a line of children following grudgingly blinded until we arrive at a city with clean, bright streets and theyre with me despite all our doubts. Weve arrived. But when i wake, the relief is bitterly lost. Im alone in a highrise apartment, and those children are worlds away hearing the bark of a stray dog, the whistle of a train, a train bound elsewhere. And if i close my eyes, i can still hear their voices. Hey, now, how you going to do me like that . That dont count as no strike. What the capital of oregon is, mr. Copperman . Everybody live in a tree out there, right . Laugh how come you got to always talk so careful, mr. C. . Like hello, my children. Today is a day when we speak using all the words in our dictionary. Mr. Copperman, how come you not black and you not white, but you say you like nos . Dont you got some asian person music so you aint stealing folks music . But, mr. Copperman, how you know you dont like a koolaid pickle if you aint had none . Mr. Copperman, this is a poem i wrote for you. Roses are red, violates is violets is blue, you making a face like you stepped in poo. [laughter] heres a real poem. Roses is dead and violets dead too cuz i on fire and this just burned you. That aint no poem. You cant use no swear words in no poem. Mr. Copperman, is that a poem . Mr. Copperman, mr. Copperman, mr. Copperman. And theyre with me again, clamoring to be heard, hair shaped close on the boys and braided into tight braids on the girls, the uniformed polos starched, sitting straight and listening, slouching with arms crossed or buried in a bean bag chair. Or speaking while doing the heel toe twostep at a sock hop beneath the strobing lights, arms and hands waving, demanding my attention and calling out joking, being absurd and serious and smart and so full of joy and anger and outrage and curiosity. Such kids. And so it is that the further i am from the delta, the clearer i hear them. Perhaps nearness in distance is how the past clarifies as it resides for reach. Too perfect to bear. Those kids are, after all, no longer children but fullgrown men and women who likely have jobs, children of their own, aspirations and adult burdens. Theyre no longer my charge, but theyre with me as they were, their faces bright and voices loud. And because what happened then is inalterable, its possible to love them purely as they were without the need to have them behave or achieve. Perhaps thats why ive begun to forgive myself for having failed them buzz might be i didnt fail because maybe i didnt want to fail them. While i could with ugly in all my frustration and all the arrogance be naivete of youth, i was not such a bad teacher. Not as good as they deserved, but as good of a teacher you should the circumstances as i could manage. There was nothing wrong with me or wrong with them, but there was so much trauma and loss that for a decade i couldnt understand why i kept gazing back, mulling over what was gone. I left a part of my heart in the delta that. Since i left, ive always held back a little. Im willing to risk everything again back when i didnt know you couldnt change the world through force of will. A part of me will always remain with those kids, to see their upturned, eager faces and have time for just one more chapter if allowed, one more times table and one more lesson, one more chance to be with them and so be whole again. To be simply and only teacher. [applause] and thats what my book is about. [laughter] okay. Well, i think well go ahead and open it up to questions from the floor. There is a mic here in the, at the podium here in the middle of the room, so if you would come there to offer your questions. Michael, i dont mean to exclude you from this question. Your chance of answering it would be as good as mine would be. And i grew up here. So, john and tina, during i guess about 25 years ago there was another influx of caucasians into the public School System mainly in Elementary School and neighborhood schools. And so my question to you is why do you then think there was then another outflux of caucasians from those schools . Well, thanks, george. Because my children were that age. There was a serious effort made by white parents who had grown up and gone to Murrah High School and so forth starting an Organization Called the parents for Public Schools that has now that is now a nationwide organization with chapters all across the nation. And its worked in most every place except jackson, mississippi. Now, i dont know what it is about jackson. Ive got my own theories, but theres a lot wrong with what has happened here that we didnt have from the very beginning to this day almost any leadership on this issue. We had William Winter, our great governor and our great hope, i think. Im a big fan of governor winters. His girls went to school with us. But beyond that weve had very, very little leadership. And there is something about the way the White Community responded to serious desegregation efforts in the early 1970s, and that was to move to the northeast as fast as our cars could carries. As soon as we carry us. As soon as we got to the northeast and filled up all the areas along the colonial country club, we busted over into Madison County and Rankin County and created those great neighborhoods and, frankly, those great Public Schools. Madison Central High School is a great Public School. Northwest Rankin High School is a great Public School. All full of children that should have gone to Murrah High School. But it was the way that the White Community responded where we never had any white leadership to come before us and say, slow down, lets get together and think about this seriously. And im, i think thats as good a reason as anything else, george. Im going to jump in here. I know im not part of the panel, but ive lived in jackson for eight years, and my daughter was part of the jackson to public School System, and i was proud to have her at a fantastic performing Arts Magnet School as part of jps. This fourth and fifth grade, there were five white students in the entire school, and my mom asked me one day, she said are any of those families from mississippi who have their kids there . And all of us or were from somewhere else who had those students. And that experience was both one of the hardest things, but also the very best things about being here. And i feel it changed my fourth grader, now fifth grader in a new part of the country. Race means something so different. It means something and nothing for her, which i think is the best thing that could have happened. So i hope that we keep having these conversations, because it has to change. Amen. My question is for mr. Copperman. I actually read the precursor to your book in the oxford american, your article, and at the time i read it, i had just started teaching in a title i school, a high school in mississippi. And i was from the the outside, i was from charlotte, North Carolina, area. So it really resonated with me, your article. So my question is, because im still at that same school nine years, ten years later, why did you, why did you leave and what words would you have to those of us who are still, you know, under the weight of that feeling of, you know, trying to move these children . I put it in the book, but i a part of me still hasnt forgiven myself for leaving any more than i think the kids i taught understood why i would leave. At time, i thought i was leaving about a girl, so thats my easy answer. [laughter] but mississippi and especially the Public Schools in mississippi, they need educators like you. Maybe my place wasnt in mississippi, it was a difficult place to be me, as i discuss in the book. But the little girl that that oxford be american piece centers around thats at the center of the memoir, right, who was a genius and who was out of the public School System by the age of 9, she deserved better. She deserved more opportunity. She deserved teachers who were more able than i was or who would become more able than i was then. Im sure, as you know, two years that is, you barely know what youre doing. Nine years . Maybe. I still learn something in the classroom every day because im really doing something closer or to teaching Public School in many ways with the children i teach than i am acting like a College Teacher or most College Teachers. But what would i say . I would say, i would say youre stronger than me, and i hope that everybody appreciates your service. Mississippi needs people like you. [applause] hi. I actually had the privilege of working for a ram very similar to teach for a program very similar to teach for america in little rock, arkansas, really great. And i found that while i was from the south and so kind of, sort of had an idea what southern schools were like, a lot of people who came from other places had a lot of assumptions about those schools, obviously. How have yall seen those assumptions affect the way that we educate and the way that we deal with our schools . Are you refer aring, im not sure if this question is for me, are you referring to teachers . Teachers [inaudible] yall really. I think, lets see. I think that, i think that there are a lot of assumptions that young, idealistic people have when they have no understanding not just here many mississippi, but here in mississippi, but what our Public Schools are like all across the country in low income areas which are often minority area ares, right . Because of history areas, right . Because of history. I was immensely naive, and i think that i did harm at times in imagining that i understood what was happening or what i needed to do or why children wereis