Transcripts For CSPAN2 2022 Southern Festival Of Books 20221016

All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for being here. It is a pleasure to be here. This afternoon of the southern festival books to share a conversation with two incredible authors, christine green and ben raines. Thank you for creating these works and the tremendous depth and value traditionally of americas history of domestic slave trade. So before we get started, ill do a couple of deductions for our two authors, and then i have a couple of questions for them to open up a discussion and then well have a q a, which you guys can access the microphone over here, and then well wrap up. So christian green is a newspaper journalist, the author of the Devils Half Acre the untold story of how one woman liberated the south, the most notorious slave jail, and the New York Times bestseller of some things must something must be done about Prince Edward county, which receives a library of virginia literary award for nonfiction and the peoples choice award and for two decades, greene has worked for several newspapers, including the boston globe, the san diego uniontribune, the Richmond Times dispatch. And greene also holds a masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy school. She currently resides in richmond, virginia, with her two daughters and ben raines is an Award Winning environmental journalist, filmmaker and charter captain who lives in fairhope, alabama. Range is the author of the last slave ship the true story of how the clotilde was found, her descendants and extraordinaire ari reckoning and raines wrote and directed the underwater forest. An Award Winning film explores a 70,000 year old Cypress Forest found off the gulf coast and wrote and produced the pbs documentary americas amazon the mobile tents for delta and raines earlier work saving americas amazon the threat to our nations most biodiverse river system speaks to the environmental diversity about them as aquatic systems. So thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much, danielle, for being here. Well get started. So both of your works sit at the intersection of yourself and domestic slave trade. How did you develop these projects . What drew you to following mary lincolns life and legacy and to begin searching for the goodwill that. Thank you so much, all of you, for being here. And thanks to cspan for being here. And i just want to say thank you so much to the other organizers of this amazing festival. Its just been a wonderful weekend and such a great introduction to authors and new books and music. And im just very appreciative to be hosted here in nashville and to be able to attend such a neat event to. I was working as a reporter in richmond, virginia. Im from virginia and i had just moved back after being gone for. After college, i became a reporter and was a reporter around the country. And i had just moved back after having two kids and going to grad school in boston. I wanted to be closer to my family and i was also working on my first book, which was about my hometown. Something must be done about or accounting, but i thought i should take a reporting job at that time so that i could get to know richmond better. Probably because my kids were so young, it was like easier to be at work as a reporter than home to toddlers. So one day the richmond reporter was out covering Something Else and my editor asked me to cover the story of this african Burial Ground that activists were asking to be preserved. They were claiming that this part of the city, this plot, was a Burial Ground and it was actually covered in a parking lot that the State University of Virginia Commonwealth University was using as a parking lot. And so i really didnt know anything about like that Burial Ground or the area where the Burial Ground was located, which was a slave trading district in richmond. I knew that richmond was, you know, a slave trading town, but i knew very little about the history. And so i was just doing a little background reading before i went to this assignment. And i came across an article on the Smithsonian Magazine from 2008 about an archeology article dig there had been done and had located the remains or the, i guess, the foundation of what was called lumpkin jail also known as the Devils Half Acre and it was a slave jail that had been run by the slave trader named Robert Lumpkin. And i didnt know what slave jails were and i didnt know really about slave traders. And so i was really interested in this story of this jail that was considered one of the most brutal slave jails in america. But there was a couple of sentences in the story that really stuck with me. And the story described mary lumpkin as the mother of robert lincolns children and as an enslaved woman who had been, quote, chosen as his wife or im sorry, not chosen as i quote, acted as his wife. And although i didnt know that much about the slave trade, i knew that enslaved people, black people, couldnt marry whites at that time in virginia. And so i thought, what does that mean . Acting as someones wife . And there are a couple of other sentences that said that she had educated the children and that they had been freed and that she had turned this jail into a school for free. Black men after the civil war. And it had eventually become or had been the foundation of Virginia Union university, one of the first historically black colleges and universities in america. So that story stayed with me while i worked on and i sold the penn state county book, and i wrote it and when i turned that book in my thoughts returned to mary lumpkin again. And so she had she really just stayed with me during that time. I tried to send her away because she didnt provide any documents she had very you know, i was like, you kind of have to you know, he wanted me to write this book so bad, but she really stayed with me. And i thought because of the way that i was taught the history of enslavement in virginia, i thought her story was just different than any story of an enslaved person i had known, especially an enslaved woman. And i thought that her story well, because it was intentionally a race, deserved to be there, to be told, you know, deserved to be widely known. So thats kind of what drew me to the story. So my involvement with the clotilda, which was the last ship to bring enslaved people to the United States, started with a phone call from a former colleague at the newspaper i was working at who had since moved on and was managing the Hunting Department at Bass Pro Shops and he called me up and said, i think you should look for the clotilda. And i said, is it missing. I didnt know the story. I knew, you know, in mobile you drive around and theres a mural of the clotilda and you know, its the last ship that brought enslaved people into the country. But i didnt understand the nuance that it came in in 1860 and it had been illegal to bring enslaved people in to the country since 1808. But this illegal trade kept going. And so the clotilda was the last ship to come in before the civil war. So my friend, the Bass Pro Shop scott tells me this story and that when the ship arrived, they hid it, they burned it to disappear it because the federal agents were already looking for it, because the guy who paid for the whole trip had been blabbing, the whole time the ship sailed to africa. So . So they burned the ship the night it came in. And people have been looking for it for the next hundred and 60 years. So my friend tells me to look for it. And i said, thats ridiculous. Its like looking for buried pirate treasure. Theres no way im going to find it. But he knew i had made a documentary and written a book about the big swamp, where the ship was burned, which i named americas amazon. Its actually the mobile tents on delta and so we get off the phone and i sit down at the computer and typed in clotilda and i read all the history thats available on the internet. Before i got up, i had ordered all the relevant history books that involve the clotilda, and i started my research right then. And you know, if you read the book, youll discover i found the wrong ship first, which was something of an international embarrassment. But i went on and persisted and managed to find the right ship. But thats when i really began to understand the clotilda, because the people who came on it started a community in alabama called africa town thats still there today. They actually bought land from their former enslavers. They built a school for the kids because White Alabama wouldnt build them one. They built a church and this community persisted. And so, you know what i came to realize about the clotilda was this is sort of the origin story for the african diaspora, and thats what makes it so important. I mention that they came in at 1860. Well, by that time, on the eve of the civil war, almost no enslaved people in the United States had been born in africa. They had not experienced the Middle Passage. They didnt know what life in africa was like. They hadnt experienced all those aspects. And so the stories of all the people prior to them, you know, from the 1600s up to 1808 had been lost because no one was recording them. So the story of these people on this ship, because they came so late, was very well documented. Beginning at the end of the civil war. You know, there were newspaper articles about the clotilda starting in 1860 when it came in and this went on. The man who brought the ship in was was treated as a swashbuckling hero for having done this. He was interviewed dozens of times until he died in 1892 by things like the New York Times and harpers bazaar. But every time they would come interview him, they would go interview the africans. And so the africans became very famous. The last one who started africa town, cudjoe lewis, who was the subject of Zora Neale Hurston, spoke. He lived until 1935, so he was interviewed dozens of times. As were about ten of his fellow shipmates for a book that came out in 1940, which is what attracted Zora Neale Hurston. So from the mouths of the people on the ship, we have what their lives were like before they were captured. We have what african slave raids were like. We have what the Middle Passage was like. We have what their time as enslaved people was like and then their time living in, you know, reconstruction south in the jim crow era. Theres no record like it in the global history of enslavement. And so their story becomes a proxy for everyone whose ancestors arrived here in a hold of a ship who cant know, you know, their histories begin at the plantation. There are people were enslaved on and so this tells them you know, it speaks to the longing and the heartache the enslaved people who were brought here had their fears for what had happened to their families left behind or sent other places. It encapsulates the whole story in a way nothing else can, you know and so we have these hundred and ten voices from the past speaking for 12 Million People. And that brings us to our next question, really well. So, ben, your work speaks to joel know hurstons bear when it came out 2018 sylvia do dream of africa of alabama in 2009 Natalie Robertson is the last slave ship clotilda in the making of africa down to 2008. How does your work further deepen the conversations with these scholars have started well. So you know, when when Natalie Robertson started her work as a ph. D. Student, the clotilda story was just a footnote in history. And then sylvia and juice book, both excellent books. She actually managed to trace through things that the africans said in all these interviews and things that american born blacks witnessed and described in other interviews, she managed to trace the people on the clotilda back to individual villages in africa and figure out different regions and tribes and customs and so, you know, i came in and found the ship which is the other leg of this story. You know, we have the histories preserved by those women, and now we have the ship, you know, the vessel that brought these people here. And so that that was a big connection and step. And what i tried to do was kind of synthesize these earlier works. And i went to africa as part of the book and research there and found something that really surprised me. We have this new movie, the woman king, out right now with viola davis. Its based on the people who captured the people on the clotilda. And i have not seen the movie yet. I need to see it. But these were wicked. This was perhaps one of the most brutal regimes in world history. And you can see that there today in benin. So the diamond empires who captured the people on the clotilda and today the diamonds are the modern day fawn tribe in benin are the dominant ethnic group. But all the tribes they captured were also in modern day benin. And so you can tell in in benin, looking at people on the street by facial scarification that things what tribe they were in whether they were the capturing tribe, the diamonds or one of the dozens of tribes, the diamonds enslaved. And its leading to a rift in the country thats been building for hundreds of years. Theyre very worried about a genocide like rwanda, which was just a tribal resentment gone awry. And so the government there is actually doing something similar. What were working on here with reconciliation, you know, that part of that is reparations and all that thats going on there where the government is trying to confront this history and pull it all together. So, you know, one of the things the clotilda story shows is these hurts are generational, the legacy of this ship is haunting three groups of people still to this day, you know, the mayor family, the villains of the story who paid for the clotilda to go to africa. They still wont speak publicly about their involvement in any way because theyre embarrassed of what their ancestors did and theyre hiding from, you know, owning up to that. I interviewed people in africa down who had spent generations denying they were connected to the clotilda africans because that was, you know, they had been sort of brainwashed through tarzan movies and society to believe it was bad to be connected to anything. Africa. And then in africa, the people there are hiding in some measure were from this legacy because of their involvement in sending fellow africans abroad. And so you know, sometimes the only way these kind of things can get brought to light is literally to bring the big, hulking husk of this ship to light and make people confront it and their involvement. To that end, i will say the ship for years after i found it is still buried in the mud in an alabama swamp, which is totally inappropriate. This is an internationally historic artifact that should be dug up. The state of alabama should be chastised and taken to task for not having done really anything so far to move the ball. Theyve done very basic, preliminary archeology. So, you know, i would appeal to the nation. This is one of only 13 slave ships ever found. Its the only one ever found that participated in the american trade. And it tells the story of these hundred and ten people in a way nothing else can. So it should be on display in a World Class Museum in africa town. The community of these people followed and you know, whatever we need to do to get alabama out of the way, lets do it. And i say that as a native son. Can i can i play off of that . So the story of mary lumpkin is also buried in plain sight, right . I was telling you about the archeological dig that dug up lumpkin jail. Well, they had to dig 15 feet in order to to find those remains. But the foundation of pumpkins jail property, half of it is under interstate 95. And the other half is in this little green patch surrounded by a parking lot like state parking lots. And richmond and the dig was in 2008. And guess what . They they covered it up because they had to protect it from the elements. So it was once there was once a creek running through there. And so water was pouring into the site and it was winter and it was in danger of freezing. So they covered it back up to protect it. And i remember, though, these words stuck with me. The arc archeologist who found it said he thought hed come back a year later, you know, to have them doing some kind of amazing work, to display this, to the public so that people could walk where mary lumpkin walked and they could walk where thousands of enslaved people walked before or after sale to the lower south and it still is buried today. You know, its still surrounded by parking lots. And there are just three little metal markers that tell the story of lincolns jail and of mary lumpkin and a few other, you know, little markers around town that tell the story of the domestic slave trade out of richmond. But richmond was the second biggest slave trading city next to new orleans. You know, we shipped an 1840, virginia shipped half of all interstate trade trades were made from virginia. So half of all people going to the lower south came from virginia. But yet and we had this amazing, you know, archeological find, there are very few slave trading sites left in america. You know, if you go looking for slavery, museums, places that tell the story of enslavement through inside peoples eyes, there are none that that really there are very few that still exist. And this is one of them. And to think that richmond, you know, really hasnt made much progress in trying to tell this story, its its very similar to what you said. Theyve made some steps. They preserved some of the land around lumpkin jail that was part of the larger slave trade there. There were other lots of other slave jails there, but its still covered up, you know, and im like, i going even be alive when this, like, you know, when the story finally gets told in the form of the museum, at the very least, there needs to be a memorial that tells the story. And i id love to see a museum so that rich richmond, which you know, is known for celebrating confederate generals with all its monuments, could be known for for being a truth telling city, for being a city that like that told the truth and all of its, you know, and all the tragedy. But that this rich history of so many people who are impacted by the trade there. Absolutely. So putting those to those stories, the narrative of confederate excellence in your mind . Yeah. Is it better . I guess so. Putting the stories of confederate excellence in conversation with the kind of humanity of enslavement, experience of enslavement would be an important part of understanding as americans, this american legacy. Yeah, thats what they asked me for. But i have a question for you, christian. So in your prolog you note that throughout American History and slave women have in tripoli marginalizes angela davis frames rendered invisible by their gender, their race or their class. So that in many ways only the stories of the truly exceptional woman whove escaped slavery have been well documented that we didnt learn about subsequently. So what is mary lincolns life and journey reveal about the liberatory experiences of enslaved black women and their claim for freedom, and also their claim for physical space . Yeah, i mean, ill just start by saying like the only the only one that i really remember learning about as a child and maybe this is true for you, too, is Harriet Tubman right . And what of her story is amazing. Shes an amazing person of course. But if you think about her story, its such a masculine story. Right. And so im like, oh, who told the stories . The white men write her story. She has a pistol. Shes wading through swamps. Shes sleeping under bushes. Shes successfully, you know, fleeing enslavement and then coming back for more. Like what a masculine story. I think of all the enslaved women who couldnt, could not, would not leave their children right. I mean, so the story of escape is not really the story of enslaved women in america. So that so, yes, its exceptional and really doesnt. Is it representative . I think the other enslaved women in our mind become like a monolith of of all the other stories that we hear right. I dont i do think that mary lumpkin story is exceptional. I mean, there it was commonplace for enslavers and slave traders to choose an enslaved woman to have children with. But because she was provided for by him, you know, she ended up inheriting his slave jail. Her story is exceptional in that way. But i also think that her story can be very represent ative of this selfdoubting emanation that enslaved women had. I mean, she used what resources she had to negotiate with Robert Lumpkin so that she could educate her children and free her children and provide for her children. Right. So we know through the story of one of her descendants that she told Robert Lumpkin, you can do what you want with me, but quote, these children have to be free. So we know that she negotiated to provide for them by 1856, the two eldest children who were daughters. So she had five children with Robert Lumpkin that survived. And the two eldest were were daughters and younger. Three were sons. In 1856, they went to ipswich, massachusetts, to attend a seminary. So they were in massachusetts, so they were essentially free, which means that her children got almost a decade head start on freedom, right, than other enslaved people. So that but she was very successful in that way. And she also ensure that they were educated. I dont think those daughters ever came back to richmond. I think they went straight from richmond to philadelphia where while they were in school, she was able to buy a home in her own name while enslaved in virginia. She was able to buy a home in her name in philadelphia and when the girls completed two years of school, which was considered adequate at the time, they went to philadelphia and the two oldest boys went to philadelphia. They lived with another formerly enslaved woman who had been forced to have the children of her enslaver but had been freed at his death. So those four lived with this woman and then mary lumpkin made her way there with her youngest, who was a baby or toddler. By 1860. So she was sheltered in philadelphia for the entirety of the civil war. And then for whatever reason, she went back to richmond, to Robert Lumpkin. In 1865, at the end of the war, probably because she needed resources and it would have been difficult to understand that that he wouldnt have it after the civil war because all the people he enslaved were gone and that property was worth very little. But she and she had inheritance from him. She she inherited everything he had, including that jail. And while it didnt end up being a great resource to pay for things, i mean, many enslaved women who did have some resources provided to them by their enslavers couldnt afford the basic taxes to pay for those properties. And they lost the properties because of something as simple as that. But in her case, she was able to make a mark by renting that building to a white preacher from the north who wanted to start a school for black freemen and a school that eventually became what is now known today as Virginia Union university. So i see her story. Well, you know, really special in some ways because she was provided for by Robert Lumpkin. I see other parts of it as being very representative, you know, of what enslaved woman wanted. They always wanted an education. They always wanted freedom. You know, and they wanted to provide for their children just as as we all do. So this is for both of you, this whole question. How do you see both of your projects as successful endeavors to claim space and reveal more about the live realities of enslaved people . Well, you know, with the last slave ship, what it can do in addition to what does for the larger community, by sharing the stories of these people that that represents so many, it can rescue africa town. You know, the community started by the people on the clotilda, which was thriving. It became a magnet in the south for africanamericans who were newly in freed because the people on the clotilda had only been enslaved for five years. And so they came from families in africa that owned land owned businesses, traded. There were commercial fishermen, commercial furniture makers, you know, all within the people on the clotilda. So their community had this kind of, you know, launch and it was by 1912, the fourth Largest Community in the United States governed by africanamericans, which is remarkable. And thats what drew, you know, Zora Neale Hurston and Booker T Washington and these people to the community. So that ascendance continued up through the 1950s and sixties where we see africa town has grown from the 30 original people to 12,000 people and it sits about two miles from downtown mobile, but it had grocery stores, pharmacies, movie theaters, restaurants, everything a Thriving Community would have multiple churches, and then the state of alabama and the city of mobile started the destruction of africa town, which involved heavy industry and probably one of the most important blows was the creation of a road right through the heart of africa, down to get Hazardous Waste off of interstate ten, going through downtown mobile. And they put it through the heart of africa town. And so when they built the road, which you can go drive on today, it was a two lane road. Its now a six lane highway. And they this is almost hard to believe. But in 1992, they destroyed all of the cabins that the founders of africa town built for each other. You know, they took turns, they bought the land together, and then they took turns building each other, houses the descent of kojo lewis were living in his house in 1992 when they were kicked out to pave it under to build this road. And the house wasnt even in the foot pad footprint of the roadbed. If it were still on the spot it standing on it would be up against the road. But they just took this opportunity to wipe out these cabins built in 1870. And so that enabled more in this industry to come, and it divided the community in half. So i mentioned all the businesses today. African town doesnt have a single business in the community. The population is down to 2000 people and huge swaths of the land in africa town that had houses on them were owned by the mayor family beginning when the africans built the town, the mayor started taking the land they owned surrounding it and building shotgun houses. So they had built about 500 houses in the community. And in 1968, Timothy Meyers grandson announced in a newspaper interview that he was tearing all the houses down because the city of mobile was finally giving africa town water and sewer service. Now, this is 1968 mobile, two miles away, which it incorporated africa town had had Water Service since about 1915. So 1968, he says. Well, the africans wouldnt know how to use it. You know, the people in africa wouldnt know how to use a bathtub if you gave them one. They probably just store food in it. And so he tore down 500 houses, which if you think of all the families living in those houses, that one blow removed thousands of people from africa town. And so the community has been totally destroyed. And part of the vision for the ship and im working with the Clotilda Descendants Association and the African Heritage foundation and other groups in africa down. Theres a vision to create a museum there. There was a Housing Project on 42 acres in africa town that was land stolen from the residents. And to build this Housing Project, which became a crime infested, you know, blight was finally closed in 2010. It was condemned. And so the whole place has been raised now. So theres a 42 acre site in the heart of africa town, and we proposed building a giant museum there to put the ship on display and then using the rest of the 42 acres to create new commercial space. So the people in africa, africa town can run businesses to take advantage of the notoriety of of whats happened in their community. Also, theres talk of building a theater for a black Theater Company in the town and some housing to replace all the lost housing. So thats kind of the the vision Going Forward. And i love the idea of the ship being the vehicle, you know, that brought these people to america. But now the vehicle that can bring their descendants out of the poverty that was inflicted on them in classic environmental racism. And what you talk about in richmond, you go all around america from baltimore to l. A. And you find heavy industry sitting on top of historically black communities that have been marginalized and destroyed. So to think there was a city in the, you know, eighties that had 12,000 people and now doesnt even have a circle k really tells you how dramatic the fall has been and and how powerful the the resurrection could be. I got so caught up in his answer, i forgot what the question was. Did you repeat for me . Absolutely. So how do you see your projects as a successful endeavors to claim space and reveal more about the lived realities and humanity of enslaved people . I mean, i think that we have similar goals for for what we want to happen in our communities. So ill speak to something slightly different. Because i talked about, you know, my desire for a memorial and museum to to tell the story more widely and bring people in. But i, i want the story of enslaved women to be told. And i think, you know, i didnt create this. I dont know if you cartagena, but i didnt create this kind of story. Im you know, im im in a path of a few other people who are starting to tell these stories of inside women, even when we dont know everything about their lives. You know, theres a real pushback like, oh, you cant tell the story because you dont know. Mary lumpkin thought, you know, you dont know how she felt about the relationship. You dont have this and that about her life. And i really push back to that because i think, well, we know that like these stories were intentionally erased and we know that white men were the people who chose which stories got to be told. And thats why so many enslaved women stories werent told. And so i think we have to be really intentional about telling these stories so that you dont just have the exception in our stories, right . So that we can like, know more broadly what enslavement looks like, particularly for women. I mean, for example, i spent some time because i didnt know much about what her early life looked like. I know she was born in 1832 in virginia, so likely born, enslaved. I think because she was considered a light skinned woman and described as fair skinned. Its you know, its possible that her mother was also in a similar situation and that her mother, that mary lumpkin, was born to an enslaved mother and either her and her mothers enslaver or a relative of her mothers enslaver or an overseer. Right. We know that that she had her first child with Robert Lumpkin in 1845 at the age of 13. We know that he owned a or he possessed a child. In 1840 when mary lumpkin would have been eight. Its possible that mary lumpkin is that that eight year old . We dont know if mary lumpkin was purchased alone away from her family, if she was stolen, if she was purchased with a family member, her mother or a sister or something we just dont know. And so, you know, because these stories work well to be told and sort of chronological is the primary thread i really wanted to imagine more what that her life might have looked like at that time. And so i turned to the Works Progress administration, which was a federal agency that finally decided in the 1930s to preserve the stories of enslaved people and if you havent spent any time reading the Works Progress administration and interviews with enslaved people, its a really wonderful way to learn firsthand what the experiences of, say, people were. I mean, theyre not perfect because a lot of times the interview workers, were not well trained about how to interview. Many of them were white and so didnt really understand what they were asking, but theyre still really revelatory. And for me and i looked at those stories from several different states, moses, i dont know if all Southern States have them, but i read them on several different Southern States and you can find them online by just googling that or your like. For example, every year virginia has them in their archives. And for me, that was the thing that changed my mind most about the story. And i feel like we had moments, you know, during the research was some of those interviews as well. Yeah, its like you have this moment where youre like, okay, marys experience was really terrible, but like it was common because i could see it. And these interviews where they didnt really want to talk about you know, the sexual abuse and the violence inflicted on them. But they but it, you know, came up in the interviews and so i feel like my goal is to make telling these stories, like, more commonplace and to be okay with the gaps, you know, to be comfortable sitting with some of the space and the story, you know, for the common good of knowing more about one enslaved womens lives were like so that we can have a wider swath of stories so we can understand more about how the experiences were similar and how they were different. Well said. So that leads us to talk a little bit more about the institution of slavery itself. So how do you see your projects helping to shed light on the human cost of the institution of slavery and its broader impacts on the and social landscape of america in present day . So how do we think about bringing it forward in terms of this legacy . And we can see this particularly throughout africa generally, this environmental degradation, but it also starts in africa. You know, one of the things that is lost in the story of enslavement, the cost in africa, well hear about the 12 Million People who were enslaved. But what i doing this book was about the tens of millions of people who were killed to get those 12 Million People. You know, we have firsthand accounts thanks to Zora Neale Hurston when she interviewed kojo lewis of what the slaving raids like and when they came to these villages, they killed everyone who wasnt between who was at the age that they wanted. So if you were younger than 12 and older than about 25 or 30, they killed you. And so, you know, the humans left behind these ghost towns all around them. And that was one of the most powerful things. You know, for me to come to terms with and thats this woman king movie, you know, lightly touches on that, im told. But, you know, that cost to the continent of these tens of millions of peoples and whole cultures that were wiped out, you know, kudrows village was destroyed. Everyone was either taken or killed. And it was a large market town, you know, a fortified with a walled compound. So to me, thats one of the really important things that we have to reckon with, not just what happened to the people who were brought here, but what you know, our activities as the United States, a nation that did slavery and but also england and, you know, spain and portugal and holland. What their legacy is in terms of what is owed back for having done this. One of the things that a lot of africans i met talked about was how if they had been to america how they felt shunned by american black arts because they would say to him, point blank, youre the people sold us. And so, you know, that is a really powerful thing to me. You know, the idea of reconciliation is is is most powerful thing Going Forward to bring these, you know, everybody back together at the table. Theres plenty of blame to go around from the africans who who enslaved people to the europeans and americans who enslaved people. And i think we have to start wrestling with that aspect of it before we can get any further. You know, this Critical Race Theory argument thats going on, were talking about history and, you know, to go forward and be hiding that History Today with the internet, its just absurd. That is not the direction of where Society Needs to go. And its the opposite direction of getting past the sins of the past legislature doesnt understand that. Well, no, and nor does ours. In alabama. In fact, i have written op eds and, you know, prominent places like the l. A. Times and stuff saying theyre holding the clotilda hostage through Critical Race Theory. Thats why the state hasnt done anything to dig it up, because theyre trying to suppress the history once again and so, you know, thats what i was trying to do here is on the suppress as much of the history as i could because its incredible. You know, when we hear about weve all heard about how all these cultural things, art and music, etc. , came to america in the bodies of enslaved people. And we see that in real time with the clotilda people because they were interviewed so often and because we have interviews, the americans who watched them, you know, we see their music coming in. We see religion coming in. You know, vote on voodoo that and even food and of the most graphic examples, theres a tv show called high on the hog on netflix, which is wonderful. The First Episode is about benin, where everybody on the cloak tilde came from. The African Women in mobile, starting in about 1870, became very famous for their food, and they would travel to the factory around town. There was a gunpowder factory, a shingle factory, etc. At lunchtime, feed the workmen and what they sold was stew. They called it stew and they were really famous for their stews. Well, benin, you know, okra and black eyed peas come from beneath. In benin, the word for okra is gumbo. These women were making gumbo. And you can go to benin today and eat something that is remarked early, like, well, if you were able to find good gumbo in america. But but, you know, cajun food basically came from beneath is the thrust. So so we see that in these people, you know, so the cultural debts and all that anyway, thats thats i dont know if i question that again so you know it was amazing i guess ill you you because the domestic slave trade that Robert Lumpkin participated in became became so prominent because the Transatlantic Slave Trade was banned in 1808. Okay so the down river or domestic slave trade already existed. That was something i found surprising. Doing this work that it was like it was, you know, a really profound network already. But the need for the domestic slave trade was vital after. After 1808. And the demand for workers was only growing in the lower south for cotton and sugar. And so virginians in particular, you know, only ownership of enslaved was worth a lot of money to them. Right. One thing that we havent talked about today that i think is really important to the story and to my book in particular is the family separation that resulted from this. I know in virginia. Enslavers like to portray themselves as benevolent. I mean, its like still happens today. This is part of whats a big problem with Critical Race Theory. Weve worked so hard to get beyond this idea of the benevolent enslaver and now were just not going to teach about slavery at all. We cant even get past the benevolence and slavery in virginia. But they acted like, oh, its not us that separates enslaved people. Its its the trader. So the trader was portrayed as pure evil and they were evil, but the enslavers were just as much at fault because they would be like, we would never sell the people enslaved. No, they would. All it took was like one expense, like a daughters wedding or someone going to college or the death of the, you know, the primary enslaver meant that all the slave people were separated, divided amongst their children, and so they were separated from their own families. Right. And this this family separation is a huge part of the american story. The american trauma, because mothers were taken from their children, husbands were separated from their wives, children were taken from both parents. Right. And thats a trauma that will never be repaired. And, you know, after the civil war, so many of those people, most people never found their family again. And thats something when you read the Works Progress administration that just came home to me that i wasnt taught right. And so i feel strongly about this teaching. Like we can really understand whats happening in america so much more clearly. If we if we read the words of enslaved people, if it works. I was just thinking like, if High School Students just spent an hour open to any part of one of these works, Progress Administration interviewed and spent an hour reading their the way they viewed slavery would completely change. So for me, its the generation no harm. You know we were talking about like you were talking about the years between when the slave trade, the Transatlantic Slave Trade ended and the clotilda was brought. I mean, thats 50 years, which is what, two generations, right . So this was like multiple generations or multiple generations of slave traders in richmond of slave jail owners. Thats how long the domestic slave trade was separating people from their family members and i think for me, its like the story of 2 Million Girls and women and what was done to them. Like her story is not unique. Like the the abuse, the sexual abuse and the violence, you know, perpetrated against them. Its not the only story. Right. But its a its something we really need to grasp in a way that hasnt been taught to us, has been really glossed over, at least in the way virginia history is taught. Absolutely. I mean, come back to a point that ben mentioned earlier, that its the importance of confronting americas involvement, complicity in the selling consumption, commodification of human bodies in some form. So how do you see your works, your agency, your effort through talking about publishing as a way to actively confront this history, this trauma, this background . Well, one of the things that was important to me was to try and help africa down, come back, having learned what it was, and because it would help in a larger scale. So you know, the africans built a school in 1875, i for their kids and it ended up being ultimately burned down a number of times. And then they ended up getting one of the rosenwald grants, which was the ceo of sears, who did one of the greatest philanthropic efforts. He built 5000 schools in the south for four black kids. And the africa town school is one of the only ones still in the country in operation of those schools. But, you know, the community with with the loss of its tax base and all that has really been falling apart. And the school is actually one of the pillars in the community, the Alumni Association of kids, who are educated there during the heyday in the fifties and sixties, is one of the most active forces trying to rescue africa towns. So you know, we i did a go fund me and we raised enough money to buy 300 copies of the book to give to the school, which was enough for every student and teacher. And i was hoping that effort would grow, you know, and we would get more schools involved. But i was pretty happy to have gotten that to them because its their story and they dont know it because so much of it has been lost. One of the tragedies in American History for African American communities is their history so often has been lost and hidden from them intentionally, even sometimes by themselves. And that was one of the really poignant things was hearing, you know, the president of the Clotilda Descendants Association, a guy named darren patterson, hes a 60 year old man. He did not know he was a descendant of the africans until his mother died because she hid it from him. And said he was a direct descendant. His great aunt, eva, who he saw at family gatherings weekly in the community, was one of the last kids born to one of the africans and his mother told him all his life, dont anything. And he says shes crazy. Shes not african and neither are you, which is a really powerful thing when you know his mother knew full well that she was a direct descendant, but she he what he says is she didnt want us to think about where we came from. She wanted to think about where we were going. But what a legacy to have lost and had hidden for so long. And then you expand that nationally to all the stories that may have been hidden from from, you know, kids by wellmeaning parents and things. So recovering that history is is a really, you know, important step, not just for the africanAmerican Community, but for the American Community at large to kind of realize the contributions and and societal wrongs, you know, that that have been heaped on top of many immigrant communities, but especially this forced immigrant community that get it because it has Everything Else else. Well, ill do a quick answer. While anybody who has questions makes their way to the microphone, because we only have a few minutes to take questions. Unfortunately, im just the ill just say that, you know, i am the same way. I want to shine a light on the history and i like i dont want black americans to be the only one who own this history. This is all of our history. And i want white people to feel an ownership of this. And a desire to preserve the site. I dont know if i was zoning out in the end. He mentioned it, but im trying to figure out how to. How did she inherit the slave jail . I mean, that was that opposed or challenged . Not that i have found, but he left a will. But he did not name her as i mean, some people have claimed that she was his wife. I think thats because churches were involved. You know, and the seminary was involved. Right. But she he referred as i think was my woman. But he named the five children like first middle and last names in the will and claimed them as his and hers, but left her all of that. And i think it wasnt challenged because it was a legal document. And he i mean, he had written that well in 1865. Hmm hmm. And that was somewhat common. I mean, people left things. They freed enslaved people on their death and stuff like that and them property and other enslaved women who were chose. And so the nice word i use were chosen by these slave traders or enslavers also received what they were left in. And a question about the clotilda did they didnt make several voyages carrying slaves. No, the clotilda was a one off as a as a slave ship. It was basically an 18 wheeler of the day. It was built five years before it went to africa. Many of the histories youll read say that it was purpose built for this, but it wasnt. Timothy meyer picked it because his next door neighbor was the owner of it and it was the fastest ship in town. And he knew his next door neighbor like him, was wanting to thumb his nose that the government, they had invested in another guy, i wont go into him, but he was trying to take over a Central American country to turn it into a slave state. And they gave him a ship to to to pursue that. So thank you. Good afternoon. I wanted to say thank you for your excavation work. Im very critically important. The question that im left with is, though, how do we move white people . How do we move people . Pass this idea of the mentality of slavery and that the educational tourism and capital tourism of sites like this or ones that youre trying to build and actually funnel money and resources towards the justice and healing of these communities. Like really giving money financially, help people restore some of these broken ties in the families and and things that people are dealing with. Because i dont i think museums and memorials are beautiful. They havent served us in the ways that are actually generative and help us get past just like people feeling sad. So i just have curiosity around where this book moves us towards really opening up some of those deeper conversations. Well, i think youre exactly right about museums and stuff, but i think weve seen kind of a new model in montgomery with the legacy museum, and its a really experience that i think you leave youve confronted a lot when you leave and you know i think thats the path forward as a piece. You mentioned sentimentality and i think thats been the historical model so far. You, the africanAmerican History museum in d. C. Is is a step in the right. Whitney plantation in louisiana is senators the enslaved person. But i think youre right. Like ive been thinking about that recently, too. A couple people raised that idea with me of like, so what . What does this like, slavery, tourism really do for black people . And i think we need to really wrestle with that. Like while i think agree its really important to preserve these histories and tell these stories. Youre right, there is more that needs to be done to provide for black people who and whos inherited this trauma and you know the generate generational harms of slavery. I think thats not something that i have adequately thought about yet. You know, but were in a moment where, you know, thats kind of happening. You know, my son, hes 26. He went to Public School in alabama. And he always says to me that racism stuff, thats your generation. And, you know, my grandmothers generation, thats not us. And i see that in his friends and his his world around him as he grew up. You know, and in alabama, thats so so i feel like incremental progress has been going along. And now maybe we can start churning a little faster and harder and, you know, shedding light is always the way forward, like with stories like that. And you know, he understands that its not over. But but his point, i think, was, you know, we have a whole different mindset than you grew up with. Yeah. And my kids are teenagers. They have a whole different mindset than your son. So while that is progress, we arent we arent doing to provide for black people in this country. And i think thats a great question you raised and something ill spend a lot more time thinking about and exploring what what we could do rather than just create museums. We have a lot of poorly educated white people who who also could benefit from, you know, some some redirection. So many. Im a therapist, so im thinking about this from a psychological perspective. And i think one of the things that that happening now and has been has been as you guys open up our eyes and as the riots open up our eyes and black people standing up for themselves open up our eyes is that were dealing with the shadow of america. And its not its its throughout all kinds of things. This dealing with native americans, the whole process. And one of the things that i see is im looking at this is that what happened in germany with all the horrible things that happened over there, theyve begun to wake up. And they did it shortly after the war when they began to let us, which stay in darkness day and all the the things happened, never got buried. And they looked at that consciously and they said, we did that. And i when i think about an individual healing, like for, for example, some somebody whos a drug abuse or substance abuser, what they have to do is confront their pasts. And thats thats what were talking about is confronting the past here. And i just wanted to make that statement. Thank you so much. Thank you all for coming. With that. Have a great afternoon. Well be. Bringing you all. The options now. Say. It anyway. Anyway, thanks. So. Much. Do. We guys. Yeah. Have a great right now here. And well have more of tvs live coverage of the southern festival of books in nashville in a moment. In the run up to the 2022 midterm elections, many politicians, journalists and public figures are out with new books about their lives, their work and state of america. Heres a look at some of those books. In her book about donald trump, confidence man, New York Times political reporter Maggie Haberman includes material from three sit down interviews with the former president in america. A redemption story. Republican senator tim scott of South Carolina discusses his formative years and tells the story of americans that hes met whove overcome hardship and contributed our National Life in the myth of american inequality. Former texas republican senator phil gramm suggests the problem of economic inequality is overstated and that the policy debate around the issue is biased by poor Government Data. Journalist and husband and wife. Peter baker and Susan Glasser look back at former president trumps time in the white house. In their new book titled the divider. Former Trump Campaign chair paul manafort, who was found guilty of bank and tax fraud and later pardoned by thenpresident trump, argues in his book political prisoner that the charges against him were politically motivated. Missouri democratic congresswoman cori bushs memoir, the forerunner, looks at her journey from registered nurse to represented live in congress. Donald trumps son in law, jared kushner, released a memoir of his time as a senior white house adviser in breaking history and former Trump Administration u. N. Ambassador nikki haley takes a look at the lessons it can be learned from Women Leaders in if you want something done. And just after the 2022 election, two other high profile political books are set to be released in. So help me god. Former Vice President mike pence examines his faith and journey to the vice presidency and in the light we carry. Former First Lady Michelle Obama follows up her bestselling memoir, becoming by offering advice on how to overcome uncertainty. Those are just of the political books that are being published this fall. You can look forward to book tv covering all these books in the near future. Build out what youre doing, book tvs coverage of the southern festival of books in nashville continues. Good afternoon. My name is nathan buttrey, and id like to welcome you to the 34th annual southern festival of books here in nashville, tennessee. Before we get started with our authors, there are a couple of housekeeping items i want to take care of. First, i want to say on behalf of the festival, thank you to the Nashville Public Library, the metro north nashville arts council, the Tennessee Arts Council and the ingram content group. Those groups have been supporting organization for years in this festival and just want to say thank you on behalf of the festival. I also want to thank humanities tennessee. This organization has been producing this event for years and this event is free and we want to keep it free. So if you would like to learn more about the events here today or other opportunities, too, to participate in humanities tennessee activities or donate, you can go to their website at umt borg. They also have a venmo ad at hq t in so the format today will be ill introduce the congressman here and hell share some from his book and then we will move to senator herron and at the end of the session when after they both spoke, well have some time for questions. If you do have a question, please queue up at the microphones. That way, the folks at home can hear and everyone in the room can hear a little bit better, too. So at the end of the session, the authors and i will be at the signing colonnade. You can get a copy of their books. You can get a signature and maybe ask them some questions. So with us today, first, we have congressman jimmy duncan. He was a u. S. Congressman from the Second District of tennessee, from 1988 until 2019. In book that he has written from bat boy to congressman duncan taps a journalistic flair to provide a series of anecdotes from his storied life as a lawyer, a judge and a congressman. Congressman, welcome. Well, nathan, thank you very much. I have written a book. I was a lawyer and a judge for 16 years. And then i was the u. S. House for 30 years. And all through that 46 year career, i had many strange funny, unusual things happen. So ive written this book. About half of it is serious. About half of it is is kind of humorous. Senator hair and ask me to start off this program and tell two or three of my little stories. Theres 203. The books about 160 pages. But its 203 vignettes from my life. And i tell about my early jobs and and then some of my cases as a lawyer, some of my cases as a judge. I tried the attempted murder, james earl ray. My court was the only court he ever testified in. I tell stories about most of it is about my 30 years in the congress and at one example would be i was flying on air force one one time with the second george bush. And i dont remember why i said this, but i told him that when i was in law school, they used to say they students made the professors, the students made the judges in the c students made the money. But when i said that about the c students making the money, president bush said he laughed and he said, ah, they become president. So thats thats one example i have sports stories in there as you can tell from the title. I spent five and a half years as that boy for the knoxville smokies baseball team. Now my wife, my late wife used to say that that was my biggest claim to fame. I was a bat boy for five and a half seasons, and i think i should be in the hall of fame because ive never heard of anybody else being a bat boy that long that i wasnt. I stayed at that job. Got it. Got it that long, because i did the first season half for free and the next four for a dollar 50 a game. And that was for five or 6 hours a work our fun every day but i was to speak to a chamber of commerce dinner in athens, tennessee, a few years ago, and the main speaker was the famous baseball player, pete rose, and i sit next to him at the head table. And i told him that i was batboy for the smokies when he played for the macon peaches and i probably was 12 or 13 at the time, but when he got up to speak, the first thing he said, he said the congressman duncan, he said, i wish you were a senator, but he said, but you were nine years old when i played at macon, my hair was already wide at that time, i should tell you. And he said that he said, but you were nine years old when i played the macon. He said, what the hell happened to you . I said, i thought i was sitting next to Colonel Sanders up here. And so. My favorite story in the book, though, and ive got funny stories and i and i am pleased that this both liberal saying conservatives have read my book and both have told me that they really enjoyed it. I dont really say anything mean much about the anybody in my book, but and senator herron and i are really good friends but our politics are different. Hes a he is a liberal democrat. Im a very conservative republican. My younger sister, becky, is in the state senate now. And i told her one day, i said, becky, im really proud of you. I said, i think youre doing a great job. I said, i think youre a little more liberal than than i am. And she looked at me and she said, jimmy, everybodys more liberal than you are. But one of my favorite stories in this book is, is about a little boy who wrote to me one time and i want to read the letter to you that he wrote to me. He said, homework does making life at home not fun for many kids. Teachers are just giving way too much. If i get 2 Million People to sign, please ban homework. He said. I dont see how forcing kids to do homework is in any way helpful, especially on days like wednesday, when most of us have jerks and things to go to. Not only does it mess with our schedule, family time and morals, but it also causes a lot of stress it makes many kids. These days are very troubled by homework and can put people in a state from which in which they cannot recover. Said homework is ruining our lives. Id recommend you limit it than it on wednesday or just get rid of it. Im tired of spending 4 hours a day on homework and hey, theres a day in school. You as well extend school. So i can tell you that i got i got a lot of different kinds of requests when i was in there, but i, i feel real pleased that i got to serve not 30 years at a time when both democrats and republicans could get along with each other. The democrats control the white house, and thus the departments and agencies. For 16 of my 30 years. And i feel like i was treated just as well with by the democrats as i was by the republicans and i tried to i tried to do everything our our work as well as i could. Theres another story in my book. And congressman burgess from texas asked me one day, he said, jimmy, how do you get so much in these Appropriations Bills . And i said, just as serious as i could. I said, well, michael, its its not right and its not fair that its based on looks very heavy. Every time hed pass me in the hall about once a week that hed say its based on looks, but but at a certain club in knoxville a few months ago of talking about my book and, i was asked the question, who is your favorite president with what you served with . Whom served and and that that question sort of stumped me. And ill tell you why i told him. I said. I didnt i didnt vote for bill clinton or barack obama, but they were very nice to me. And i know im sure you know, now form p is the most hated man in politics. There was a time when it was richard nixon. Of course, some people. Evan thomas says in one of his books said that nixon nixon lost the president say by 8000 votes have been changed in texas and chicago, both of which were probably truthful allegations about Election Fraud and says he says some of his books. He says the kennedys were surprised that nixon didnt contest the election in 1960 and he didnt because he said he thought it would be harmful to the country so even if he didnt think much of the president nixon and i came from a family that really respect president nixon my grandfather father who was a subsistence farming county, tennessee, and had ten kids and an outhouse and, you know not much more. He used to say you could make it here than if you were not oppressed and a republican, but you had a leg up if you were an and he was a staunch republican. My mother came from a stance republican family and our and so. But every with whom i served was very nice to me. President trump, the both the bushes, i, i will tell you, though, that a lot of the democrats had a little have more trouble with president obama than i did steve cohen, the congressman from memphis. One time pat had some it was getting a president ial and they invited the delegation down to the white house to see that presentation. The only two came were me and steve cohen, because the congresswoman in session that day, well, they had a seat right on the front row. I was sitting next to hilda solis, who was secretary of labor, and she was right next to hillary clinton. But president and i didnt think anything about until steve cohen said the next day, she said he walked up to me on the floor and he said, can you believe that the president didnt even acknowledge us yesterday . And i didnt think that because i. I was pretty nice. We were on the front row and this big crowd in the east room and but steve cohen said if they had been saying that being clinton, he would done everything but have sex with us on the east room floor and and and what what he was what president clinton used to really caught the democrats in the congress more than president obama did. But of course, that didnt bother me. And then one day, president clinton, a president obama came down to knoxville, and i was going to fly down on air force one with him. Well, my chief of staff told me, he said he said, i dont think you ought to fly with president obama. So theres so many people here that dont that dont like him or hate him or whatever. And i said, well, bob is president , the United States. And so i flew down and and president obama was very nice to me and my daughter went and he had asked if i could get a picture of the president with her two daughters, her two older daughters, who were ten and eight at that time. And they were nice about it. They had a little luncheon for us and Vice President biden came as a biden and it was just a small lunch. And then they took me and president obama into a little room and president obama in and he said, my elder granddaughter, who was ten at the time, he said, did you get out of school early . And she said, yes. And he said, its always a great day when you get out of school early and it and she said, yes. But then my older son, whos kind the character, he said, be really great. If he could come to one of those white house beer summit some time. President obama just burst out laughing and he said to my son, he said, have you ever had any of the white house beer and . My son said no. But he said about like do. And president obama laughed again and he said, greg, make sure he gets one of those white house six packs. I didnt know at that time. I didnt know the white house even made their. But my son got a real nice six pack of beer. Ten days later so im ive got so many stories to tell and theyre theyre all in the book and i apologize to my friend sander here and i get started theyre not well run over so thank you for listening to me. Thank you, congressman. I was kind of expecting you to bring some some of that goalpost with you and knoxville after that went from yesterday. Well, i used to tell people all the time that the color is and white. Were almost more patriotic in my district than red, white and so i hear you. Well, thank you. And well have questions for the congressman at the end. Our next guest is former senator roy herron, state senator. He was a Tennessee State representative from 1987 to 1997 and a state senator from 1997 to 2013. He wrote the things held dear soul stories for my son and god and politics how a christian can be in politics. He also coauthored tennessee political humor. Some of these jokes you voted with lh cotton. He now lawyers and rights in west tennessee nashville welcome senator here. Thank you, sir. Im so honored to be here with congressman duncan, who is my good friend. And and his wife, vicki i told vicki last night, we we watched the utah game. Vicki, the congressman, myself and our older son, we watched the utah game last night. And i told him i was going to call my wife and i was going to say, i remember we were when we had the most exciting experience of my life. And i will remember that i was vicki and congressman duncan when i had the second most exciting experience of my life. Yeah, i hadnt quite had the guts to do it. But if youre watching, honey, thats that your story about the the letter congressman reminds of one i got and you cant make this stuff up. Id been a legal aid lawyer right after i came out of law school. President reagan was, and he made cuts to the legal aid programs. Legal. And so he gave me the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of the Free Enterprise system and i hung out my shingle. And like donald cafarella here and and began practicing law. Well, i ran for the legislature and got elected. And then a young woman from gleason, tennessee wrote me a and she said, im writing you for a school project. Were supposed to ask you a question what . I would like to know is why did you leave the Legal Aid Society where you were a big help to people, to to the legislature . I, i wrote her back. Im not sure ive ever her army with the answer to. Im honored to be with congressman. I was talking to rick bragg yesterday. He said when he grew up he wanted to be just like and tell stories just like jamie duncan the dalai lama wants to be as chill as john duncan junior and i aspire to be like him myself. Im honored to be with him. But its not just his style. Thats important. Its also his substance. He compassion borne out of tragedy. Heaven help care for his father and his late wife when they both dealt with cancer. And hes always had compassion for the people of this district and was known for the compassion he brought us. He toured that district and stayed in touch with his people. And he hes fiscally conservative and i consider myself the same. And i want to tell you, it was kind of it was a little tough yesterday when he had to come down here in park and we had to get the emt to put the shockers on him to get his heart going again. When he found out how much cost to park in downtown nashville. Yeah, but let it be a comfort to tell you that he he spent your money like he spends his own money wednesday. He was in washington and and hes right when he says if other everybody else or at least a majority had voted like he did, we wouldnt have a budget deficit. And hes intellectually enough to admit that last time that we ran surpluses was under clintongore. And i wished everybody had somehow put together what the three of them were trying to do in this country would be a lot better off beyond that. He really is truly patriotic. There are a lot of folks that hide behind the flag. Theres plenty of chickenhawk in congress wouldnt send your kids off war, that they wouldnt go serve and that their kids wont serve. But hes worn the uniform and he was brave enough and patriot enough to vote against both of the iraq wars, including the popular one. I have enormous respect for congressman duncan, and i really i truly am honored to be here with you. Youre talking too much about me, roy. Well, if youre going to get book this, this is the one id get his book. Yeah, his book is its funnier than mine, unfortunately, this one that i did is pretty serious. But he really is a great storyteller, as you can tell. And and the stories in the book ive read it marked it up and and glad to have well ill say this our feeling is mutual for each other. I tremendous respect for roy and thats thats i mean thats all is to it so you know i dont know about you all but this covid thing has been something and then you throw on top of that a tornado like went through my hometown destroyed five blocks every building except for a little telephone bunker. I thought for five blocks on the other side of the street from my law office. Every buildings gone except for that telephone bunker. My church i grew up in my grandmother taught sunday in 40 years its gone. Become Presbyterian Church is gone. I mean its just you put all that together and then you see happening in this country and you its its not always you on top of the mountain singing the sound of music or something. And but when i know people like jimmy duncan, they give me hope. They give me hope for this country. And the relationship he had with my congressman tanner was warm and close. And and they found a lot of Common Ground. And i im grateful for people like that. I think our hope is and part of what i tried to say, im by the book. I hope you get both books but if you just get one, get his i mean, do yourself a favor but i hope you get both of them. They so nice together on your shelf. Yeah we call it beauty and the beast. Here they. But you know, folks working together, part of what i try to set out in in the book was areas where i thought we sometimes had Common Ground and some of the issues wound up being partizan and they just were. And i dont back away from that. Thats part of what the stories that are told in the in the book that i wrote. But at the end of it, what i try to do is to go from those issues to, talking about those people that give me hope when i first got elected to the legislature, senator milton hamilton, who was my senator the first time we took a trip together, sir. Hamilton said, you know, were all here. Theres no new issues. Theres new bills, but theres no new issues. And when i started putting this book together and these issues that ive written about over the last three plus decades, i realized just how right he was. And these issues sound contemporary to that ive written about over the last 30 plus years abortion, womens rights, Voting Rights, education, health care, economic justice. Those issues and others are what i wrote about over that period of time. And the folks that you press who did such a great job for both jimmy and me editing and they said, all right, well, not Everybody Knows preliminaries on these things. You ought to write. And so theres a little bit in there that ill explain the context. And they said, not Everybody Knows whats happened since and you need to write about that. So youve got the what i wrote in a particular time, hopefully with explanations, both before after as is helpful to understand the context of the issues. But the sections of the book are are about life, liberty, rights, education, justice, and then finally leadership. And in this leadership section, i lift up two of my heroes, one of them was a republican, howard baker, who and tried and tried to get congressman to become senator duncan. And if peter run, he the one. I believe that. But he was loyal to the people in his district and stayed where he was. But howard baker now he can be fiercely partizan when it was election time, but when it got down the election, it was time to govern. He worked in a bipartisan way. He worked with president carter. He had a chance be president United States and knew if he worked through the issues on the panama canal, he could not win a republican primary for president. But he did the right thing for the country anyway. He helped coauthor the environmental most of the major environmental legislation that this country depends upon. Still today, the clean air act, the Hazardous Waste legislation. Both oh, howard baker. Right. That his father in senator Everett Dirksen was like congressman duncans father. He knew that racism was wrong and Everett Dirksen had helped pass the Civil Rights Act. And howard baker voted for. Well, congressman, father went on this very street. This library sits when the sit ins were taking place right on this street. And you could throw a rock from where was this library and hit where those citizens were taking place when were taking place here they soon were taking place in knoxville, tennessee. And it was john duncan singer, congressman duncans father, who basically pushed shoved, negotiated and worked out so that for the first time in the history of knoxville, it didnt matter what your race is. You could be served at a lunch counter or restaurant or a public in knoxville, tennessee. There were some things then that were out of bounds right now. And congressman, you might want to comment. You might not, but there were some things that were out of bounds. And for your father and for you and for howard baker and for every and for a host of very responsible republicans racism was a card you played in a political context. And so the democrats and republicans together. Well, today were looking at Critical Race Theory, even though nobodys ever heard it being in any school in tennessee. But i knew when that came up, that was about the next election. It was about making race issue when you come down the escalator and youre talking about those people and some of them may be good, but theyre rapists and murderers. Youre talking about racism when youre talking about issues across this country, right now, race is in the heat and the heart of too many of these elections in this country desperately needs people with heart and the character. And quite frankly, the courage to do what congressman duncans done, what his father did, what howard baker and what a lot of good democrats did. And say there are some things were not going to do. Theres some things too important, to this country. My little book is called faith in politics and those people who live their lives that way and live their lives that way are what give me faith in politics. Sometimes when i tend to get down and disappointed in some of the things taking place, i remember what dr. King said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. And i believe that. I believe that with all my heart, i worshiped in church this morning where my wife, the first minister at west United Methodist church, it wasnt that long ago. My wife was on the staff. Well, the Senior Pastor there is now a woman and theres another one. They did have one token male up there. I helping lead the worship. He didnt mess it up. They comforted i look at it i think about i mean we didnt desegregate schools in lake lee county the lives in eighth grade i wasnt sure was for that because glen ray was about to take my position off the Basketball Team because he was a lot better than i was. But i mean, it has just been that recently and yet we are youve got Lucas Johnson back here. Hes written a fabulous that i would comment to you and tell some of the stories of whats taken place and what hes saying and what he knows and the progress weve made. Im hopeful because there are people like congressman duncan and, howard baker and bill haslam, quite frankly, and bob corker and bill frist, people in the other party for me. And we agree on everything, thats for darn sure. And i hope i didnt hurt them by commenting favorably upon them, but i consider them honorable and people ultimately, from my perspective. And this will step on that toes of some and i realize that. But ultimately the fundamental problem, i think in the country right now is that republicans are biblical ignorant and democrats are biblically democrats dont even read the bible. Were literate and the republicans read it and ignore it. And right now it seems to today that instead of pitching hate, we ought to be preaching love. And when you think about what jesus told and the commandment to love, thats what weve got to be about. But the hardest hateful, worst political attack you can make is something that in genders, height in genders, prejudiced, in appeals to the worst. Dennis and thats what you say in the political campaigns nowadays and what this country needs is less politics and more patriotism like congressman duncan exemplified in his service. We need people who are willing to love neighbors love across party people who remember that galatians three teaches either junior great male or female slave nor free, but all one in christ jesus. And if you are a christian and i realize not everybody is, and im not trying to force it on anybody, but id recommend it to anybody. But if you a christian, there is nobody out there that youre not called to love. If you can find it in the new testament. And jesus said, theres anybody out there youre supposed to hate, you wont find it. Its not there what we need more than anything. Congressman, ive gone way too long. Well, i. What we need more than anything is people are really willing to live the faith and not just use the faith as they are willing to be helpful, helpful to their neighbors, all their neighbors. And they are all our neighbors. Was nasa things, as you said, as said about me. Roy, i wish youd just keep going. No, no, im sad, but i am. I do appreciate that you mentioned my dad and way that you did, because my dad hitchhiked into. Knoxville had 5 in his pocket. He grew in what they consider bitter poverty and 20 years later was elected mayor. And in 1958, there was a poll of him. And im not variance and said 80 favored keeping segregation. My dad becomes he became city law director 19 january 1st in 1956. And i can still remember a little boy of seven or eight years old going to he would go into black churches in the midfifties, speak in those churches. Sometimes and he led the peaceful integration of knoxville that time that it was not very easy. You know, we look back now and think it would have been easy, but it wasnt easy back then. And he and three races for mayor, he got. Over 90 of the africanamerican vote and. Thats against some very tough opponents and and of course and then he ran he ran for mayor on a nonpartisan ticket. When he started, he was always an open, obvious known republican. But when he started running for congress and was on the republican ticket, his black vote fell off to about 50 . When i started running my my africanamerican vote was stayed there at the same i think. Thanks in large part to my dad. But i also represented a lot of africanamerican when i was a lawyer and i represented the largest black church in the largest black Construction Company. And then then i became a judge and i tried to help people out. Im pretty sure i was the only republican member of congress who was ever the the grand marshal the Martin Luther king day parade. So i was very grateful that we could get those those kind of votes in precincts where the republican president ial candidates were getting about three or 4 . But at my dad was a kind, sweet, tough man. I was very proud of my dad. You mentioned that howard baker, though, Everett Dirksen, senator baker and my dad and sandra baker both came from scott county, tennessee. And that senator baker wanted his, i think maybe his favorite political story was, he said his first speech in the u. S. Senate 1966. He said he spoke for well over an hour and covered every issue that he could think of. And he said when he got that, the only people in the chamber at that time were the democrat who was in the democrats for a majority, the democrat in the chair and senator dirksen, who was his father in law. And he went up to senator dirksen that speech and asked him what he thought. And he said howard said, senator dirksen said in his beautiful voice that he had his which i wont try to imitate. But he said you might occasionally want to enjoy the luxury of an unexpressed opinion. And and the, you know the, you know, i tell that story for the humor. But in my political i tried to take that advice and ill tell you why i didnt think i didnt think that it was wise to take a stand on issue. You are i didnt think you even could really do justice to if you tried to discard everything. And so my time in office, if you look back at my career, i. I really emphasized to three things. I emphasized. Fiscal conservatism because i was brought up to think debt was not a good thing. And i thought that they, they told me that one time that one of the departments had a big fat notebook about all the members of congress. And at the bottom, theyd have the typical questions asked at hearings. And they said for most of the members, it didnt really have much in that section. But under mine it had how much it cost. And i remember i on the public built buildings and some of the public buildings and grounds subcommittee and we we did all the Federal Building of federal courthouses and so forth at one time the, the head of the secret Service Found that it paid 70,723,000 for a one third acre piece of land in downtown ashington. And this is 20 years ago. Id say, which is a lot more money back then than it will be now. But i just thought that was way too much. So i just blasted out at the hearing the next day the head of the secret service came to me with and he brought four of his people with him. I thought that was a little overkill. But anyway that secret service, he said, well, congressman, we cant build this building in a ghetto. And said to him, i said, well, why not . I said, it might be a good thing if some of these poor that are living in these projects had a real beautiful building right next to him, and they saw nice looking people in expensive suits and nice dresses, briefcases going to work every day might inspire him to want to get out of that ghetto. But anyway, the upshot of that was they said, well, if we. 50 million off of the total project would you go along with it . And 5050 million were just spent a small percentage because they still were going to buy that 70 million piece of property and. We had had a Construction Company in baltimore that one of my staff knew, some people there, they had run a thing and theyd found nine other parcels of property worth 10 to 30 million that could have fit in the vicinity there. That anyway, the the total project was hundreds, millions. But i thought, well, 50 million was was as much as i could have. But i emphasize fiscal conservatism. Second thing, i thought we needed a more humble Foreign Policy i didnt think we should be the policeman of the and i. I became and i tell about this i a very antiwar republican and then when they found out that i was going to vote against that i was leaning against the war in iraq. They called me down. The white house and put me in the little secure room with Condoleezza Rice and george tenet and and john and george was head of the cia. And john and mclaughlin, that was his deputy director. And i asked them i said, lawrence lindsey, the president s economic adviser, a harvard professor, estimated a day or two before that a war with iraq would cost 200 billion or more. And i asked about that. And Condoleezza Rice said, oh, no, it wont cost nearly that much 50 to 60 billion. And well probably get some well get some of that back from our allies, which and shes a smart woman. But they had made that one of the worst estimates in the history of the world. And then i asked him, i said well, if you can get past the traditional conserved the positions of being a a being against huge deficit spending and massive foreign aid and the u. S. Being the policeman of the world and the conservatives, the biggest critics of the u. S. And then youre to war to enforce u. N. Resolutions. I said, if you can get past all those traditional conservative positions, i said, do you have any evidence of any imminent threat . And they didnt. And george tenet confirmed that in his first speech. George university, the day after he resigned. And so George W Bush, who i personally but he ran for president , saying we need more humble Foreign Policy and so and then other thing and i just wrote a column about this recently, president eisenhower, Everybody Knows his famous speech at his farewell address where he said that. Where he warned against the military industrial complex. But if you want to read really antiwar speech, read his speech in april 1953, his first major speech as president , he spoke to the American Association of newspaper editors and is called his cross of iron speech. And he says that that spending money on new warships and bombs and fighter planes and other other aircraft takes money away. People who are hungry and could be fed and people who are naked and could be clothed. And its and and i think it really should you something that probably the most antiwar president weve ever had spent his career the military and im not a pacifist if youre forced theres certain circumstances where i would vote for things but that what weve done in the middle east has just been wrong and wasteful. Thousands of people both americans and many thousands people in the middle east, have been killed. And its just was its been wrong. And so i and you talk about president s, democrats and republicans. And i and ill make some of you mad. I thought president trump, he said and did a lot of things that i wished he hadnt said and done. But overall, i thought his policies were good and but he ran for president saying that president obama had depleted the military that was false and that they said that so much that they got out and i knew that military spending had been tripled over those same years. So you know, you see you see things like that. And the third thing that i emphasize was constituent service. I thought as interesting as i was in national and international issues, i knew that i couldnt control u. S. Foreign policy, but i could people and so lot of my time in congress i felt it was like when i practiced law, people would come to me with their problems and i would try to help them. And i you know, and i really enjoyed part of it. Anyway, thank, congressman. Thank you. We have time left. I want to make sure to open it up for questions if you do have a question, if you could queue up at the microphone so the folks at home can hear, i think we have one coming now. Congressman. And i wanted to warn you, dont ride in roys pickup truck last time i did, i had a heart attack. Two days later, im a professor tzu. I gave some of my students to convince them to come down here today. Theyre going to get mucho extra credit and you, i may have met you before. I was an intern for congressman joe evans. You may remember him . Yes, sir and he we he took me to lunch at my house dining room one time and he said that, oh, theres congressman duncan with his family over there. So you may have been with them. I dont know. You said youre a conservative republican in your district. You have the headquarters of, the most prominent example of socialism in the United States, a tva. I hear tennessee congressman then talking about socialism. How terrible social. But they dont want to abolish the tva or, sell it or anything anymore. Republicans their peace with tva a long time ago and yes i can i can tell you story about that well id want hear it they the point is you you and your father and others came along as howard baker senators and people who worked democrats at the time when democrats dominated state and they were people who were they voted for him or not. You could respect him. I had a Great Respect for howard baker, particularly the panama canal treaty. But now weve got republicans. Im not sure if its a Political Party and more its become more like a weird cult driven by all kinds of conspiracy theories and so forth. And i think its damaging the country. Were turning toward autocracy, i think, this election is and is a choice between democracy and autocracy. And they refuse do anything about any important issues here. I think howard baker would have been concerned about warming and so would and maybe nixon as well. And but they won one of read the one major Political Party in this country that has or in this in the world that refuses to accept the reality. Global warming is the Republican Party and theyre the ones holding up progress, while meanwhile talking about all of these migrants that are coming in, theyre coming in because of global warming. They cant plant crops anymore. Im just wondering what your thoughts are about the future of your party and what they should be doing. By the way, baker to and joe evans used to, although they were different parties, theyd issue press conferences to get press releases together about the projects in the state. Well, i can i can almost write another book about all the things that youve said that. But. I will tell one interesting story you talked about about seeing a tv. My dad was ran for congress the first time in 1964. And and howard baker was running an ultimately race for the senate that year. He won years later. But Barry Goldwater was into knoxville to speak at a Campaign Rally and and they got an advance copy of his speech. And in his speech, he was coming knoxville and was a advocating the sale of tva. Well my dad called howard baker and they decided that they were not going to go to the airport for the rally. If if he if senator goldwater said that. And so. Guy smith was the Republican Editor of the knoxville journal, the morning newspaper. And hes the one who got him that advance copy. So then howard baker called Everett Dirksen and then Everett Dirksen called the goldwater plane. And got that part of the speech removed from that rally. Congressman, can you read about that, this excellent book . Yes. From bat boy to congressman. Yes, i. I thank you. Good. Okay great kind of house to. I will say this. Theres there are bad people in both parties. I mean, for instance it really bothers me that conservatives, conservative students are attacked on College Campuses and that they have to get in extra security when a conservative goes to speak to a young republican or, a Young Americans for freedom and will has written that says that the that the the place with least freedom of speech in this country today is on college and university campuses. And thats that if thats true and im sure you would disagree with that. But if thats true, that would be. You say theres theres some truth that that thats interest that ive got. Yeah. All i can tell you is this. If if you go to any if you would go to any Republican Club or republican meeting in this country, you would find most tea very fine people, very good people who love this country and are sincerely trying to make things better. Thats thats the main thing i can tell you. And i and i spoke about 2000 times to school groups, about half in washington and about half and going around to the schools, east tennessee. And i just i thought, well, i shouldnt do that in a partizan way. And so i told i would sometimes a lot of times they would ask me, they say, whats the difference between the republicans and the democrats . And i would say and i really honestly believe this, both parties want the same good things. I want clean air. I grew up in a family where nobody smoked. I want clean air as much as anybody. Clean water. I want people to have a good education. I want the economy to be strong. I want to. Disabled people to be helped. I mean everything. I want the same good things that senator herron does and there are ways we can Work Together and and im very conservative, but im not an anarchist. I dont want to do away with the entire government. I just want to make it as good as it can be. And that includes tva and other things, although ill tell you another story thats in my book. I went in, i insert one right here. Yeah, well, you you talked the difference between democrats and i reminded of what al gore used, quote, as a career. I thought probably butchering the pronunciation of his name. Senator, and the alleged bully, the the devastating democrats and republic wins is they see a man drowning 50 yards offshore. And so the republicans throw in the 25 yard rope and swim for it. Itll do you good. And the democrats thought, 100 yard rope and then than pulling them man go off to do other deeds and either way the guy that would be the difference between democrats and republicans you know there are important differences i do think but there also is the Common Ground and seem to have lost the capacity with so many now to look for that Common Ground. And what we need is not just people who can blow anything apart, as harry truman said, any jack, you know what . I can kick down a bar. It takes a real a real carpenter to be able to build one. And right now, weve got a lot of you know what, kicking down barns and very few building them. Youve got to youve got many people on both sides who hate the people on the other side. And thats and i, i just dont understand why that much hatred. Trump theres a lot its a its like a president clinton one time i had a meeting with bill warwick and jeff stokes perry, who were two firefighters from knoxville and. I told him, i said in an hour, going to have lunch with president clinton in the rayburn room. I said, and i knew bill warwick. Hed been he was the knox county democratic chairman, but he was a good friend of mine. I said, i might be able to introduce you to the press. And if meet me here at the subway and ill take you up there, will stand right outside the room and i go up and then were standing there and ill hear all this noise. All the reporters and photographers come and then we hear bagpipes and here comes the Prime Minister of ireland and president clinton. And and so i step up there and introduce them to president clinton and president clinton was the best schmoozer i think ive ever been around a really likable person. But he put his arm around me and he said he said, you all take care of this guy down there now. And bill warwick, he said, oh, we do, mr. President. We think duncan is the greatest. And i always wished id had a recording of that because i dont. He knew what he was saying. I believe so. But we have a tough question here. Hi, im congressman duncan. Youve mentioned that you believe that in all the republican groups around the country that a vast majority of them would be really good people who just want good things for the country, but right now, we have an enormous of people in Republican Party who either are election deniers, the 22 election, or are about the other election deniers. And theres a saying that for, you know, for evil to triumph in the world it just takes good people to do nothing. And where are the people in the Republican Party who want the good things for the country, who arent shouting down the election deniers, but in fact, hundreds of them are running for office. Well, you know, its its its water over the dam. And i believe that republican candidates around, the country are speaking about that nearly as much as the as some the media try to say that they are. Theyre talking about theyre talking about the inflation. Theyre about gas prices. Theyre talking about Everything Else. But that but. A lot of the democrats and its understand them all because theyre theyre as political the republicans are they want to they want to emphasize the democrats want to emphasize abortion and they want to emphasize that january six and they and of course, i was interested i saw that Bernie Sanders wrote a column a few days ago in which he said that the democrats making a bad mistake, trying to run just entirely on the abortion issue, because on most polls, the abortion issue is like number six or number seven. So. You know, i dont know what to you about that. The the weve got another election coming up here in few weeks. I think thats more important. I think the election in 2024 is the most important thing. Election of 2020 is over with donald with norm ornstein, a book that talked about the changes in the move away from the bipartisanship that congressman duncan knew in the early part of congressional career to the polarization should now. And one of the things that ornstein and his coauthor pointed out is how the Republican Party, as they had moved equally to the to the polls that the Republican Party is being hit so hard. And now with the election tonight and the just the lack of respect for the truth, its a huge party, huge problem for republicans in this country and good people who are republicans. I tell republican friends about, i said, you know, ive been a small party in tennessee. Im a democrat. But at least ive got a party. You dont have a party now. And and the dominant force right now in the Republican Party in, this state means that that people bill haslam and bob corker and bill frist, i dont think that they could could win today. Bill haltom wrote a book about howard baker and he went to see his good friend John Danforth of missouri, with whom he served. And he said, senator senator danforth, could you and howard baker be elected today in a long silence, senator danforth thought about he said, yes, we could be elected, but we could never be nominated. And thats the danger got right now. When when president , former president , United States tells over 20,000 documented lives or exaggerations or just things that arent true. And when youve got know my problem with Herschel Walker is not that he beat my balls though he did every i think it seemed like every time they played my problem is not even with whatever sense he may have committed in the past. My problem is hes lying today and theres no regard for truth in some of these republican primaries. And thats a real danger thats different than its been. And to my friends, i hope you can retake your party and put back on the noble path that its been on in my little book, which by way you can get with this other great. In my book, i theres an essay on there about why im a democrat. And then after that i say and write, you know, i could write one on how i could be a republican and it sure my democratic friends have but when you look at what abraham lincolns done and Teddy Roosevelt did for, the working people of this country and eisenhower, as you quoted, and people like howard baker, i mean, i could be a howard baker republican if id grown up in east tennessee. I grew up in western say. So i was a ned mcwherter, democrat. So my democratic friends like thats admitting to send that. Youre a mccord, a democrat. But ill you. We missed people who could Work Together for the good of the state and the country and we need people in both parties who are willing to tell the truth, deal with the truth, and move this state in this country forward. We desperately need that. I did try to get haslam to run for the senate seat, but he was a little concerned about the the primary and but i learned my politics, my dad and from howard baker and i, i think that that was a good thing. I was it was good for tennessee and good for america. I think i think weve i think weve stopped. Thank you, gentlemen. We appreciate everyone being here with us live and on cspan. Thank you for sharing your books and your time with us. Appreciate it. Everybody. In the book, you dont like it, but. Will and well have more of book tvs live coverage of the southern festival of books in nashville in a moment. You did you were being nominated for best poster again. Parnassus the big tale, i guess, going to say, senator tim scott talked about his life and political and offered his thoughts on americas. His book is america a redemption story. Heres a portion of his talk. This is a fundamental point. I just opened a New High School in the bronx, district 12, in the bronx, where of the of all the students that started ninth grade in 2015, four years later, only 7 graduated from high school, ready for college, meaning that they started in ninth grade and they dropped out along the way or they actually did earn their high diploma, but still couldnt do math or reading without remediation. If they were to go to college. So that structure, so even with that buy in it like from lots of different groups that reality still exists. How do we get more kids to be able to that first rung to get on the ladder of. I think we have to work a little harder at looking for the solutions already work. We have examples around the country of education options that are available that are successful success. Academy is a great example in new york city where its a Charter School that gets basically 0. 50 on the dollar, but it produces results that are better than the average Public School in the state of new york. One of the beauties of i think she has over even moskowitz has over 40 schools now and theyre consistently in the top five in the state in reading and science. Whats more fascinating, the fact that 83 of the kids at her school are either africanamerican or hispanic with average Household Income of under 30,000 in new york city. 95 being free lunch. Single parent households. And yet they score above average. Above the majority population in new york city. These kids are outperforming the other kids in the city on standardized tests. How do you do that . Well, she an environment thats conducive for learning. Yes. Theres a friend of mine started a school in charleston called the Meeting Street academy. A guy named navarro wanted to prove that poor kids in poor communities can learn just like everybody else for about ten or 15 more than the average public student in charleston county. Hes able to get those kids within two years in the top 20 nationwide. So theres a model that works. We just need to follow that model. Theres another model in california. Theres some in philadelphia. The truth is, when we when we follow the model that works for the kids, it works out really well. So what is the rationale for the people who know that those models exist and yet continue fight to preserve the status quo . I dont know. Let me you a more indepth answer. I think theres this theory that in order for to save them all. You have to wait until you have solution for them all. Yes. Its as if the house is on fire. Instead of saving as many as you can in the house is on fire. Youre going to wait until you can put the whole fire out and then go inside and figure out whos left. That, to me, just seems ridiculous, but thats how it appears that we are treating education. Second thing id say is that currently Public Education seems to be more interested in adults than they are kids. Big labor unions and bureaucrats have a powerful impact on what the child is going to experience. Thats a problem. Yes. You know, again, i run schools in new york and primarily due to the teachers union, theres a cap on even the ability to open Charter Schools. So in that same district where only 7 of kids. Yes. Primarily because of that force. Again, how do we mobilize more awareness . Attention, action. Its so central to your book because you talk about how education was a central part of your movement upward and these forces are so powerful. They because theyre embedded. Ive often as a conservative, we should be party of parents. The fact of the matter is that when gave the statistics earlier, what it reinforces is it doesnt matter which side of the aisle youre on. The one thing, if there is a Silver Lining in the pandemic and its hard to see any Silver Lining in the pandemic, the one thing is to learning loss. Being out of the classroom exposed the weakness within the Public Education system for all kids. For all kids. So much so that parents reengage at a high level on a consistent basis and they demand participation. They demand collaboration. Cooperation. That is good news for all of our kids. And the more we spend time understanding has happened, the more we should focus our attention on making sure that the policies in place help us bridge the gap. Because of the pandemic and we focus on what actually works around the country. Yeah, i mean, one of the things i love so much about philosophy, whether its in education or an opportunity zones, is that youre looking for innovations that the mold that are actually focused on what will actually help people. So, so talk about opening opportunity zones as well because thats almost a parallel to School Choice and educational freedom. Like how do we attract more of these kinds of initiatives in, you know that if if you know me at all the one thing i love is competition. I play baseball football in high school a little bit in college ran track i love competition. You run for office youre in a competition. So the truth is the question is what is the environment to improve outcomes and reduce cost. Yes. In america, we call that the free market system. It works in education to and it works in opportunity zones. I basically did was a Designer Program that provided more incentive for those who have resources to look in areas that need the resources without gentrifying those areas. And because of the Capital Gains tax deferral and the incentives around it, we saw more investment go back into the poor zip codes than weve seen in my lifetime. Watch the full Program Online at book tv dot org. Just search senator tim scott or a redemption story. And now more live coverage from the southern festival of books in nashville on book tv. Youre watching monsters bone. Monsters bone heroes. Good afternoon. And im joe. Im the director of communications at the Tennessee State museum. This afternoon im a volunteer host for this wonderful at the southern festival of books. I hope youve been having a good weekend at the and a good time here in nashville. Its my great honor to welcome david kay randall to talk about his book, the monsters bones the discovery of t. Rex and how shook our world. Before we get started, i just want to remind you that the southern festival of books is run by humanities tennessee. It is a free event, and it is free because of your community support. You can support tennessee at aq and tna dawg. You do it onsite at the headquarters. Certainly there is a merch booth there. War Memorial Plaza. I recommend you pick up a hat or a t or a mug. You can also use venmo at h20 and and i believe theres also qr codes around the festival. After our discussion today, david will be assigning books at the sign in colonnade up at War Memorial Plaza will head right there after about david. Hes New York Times best selling author of dreamland which is a book about the science of sleep, the king and queen of malibu. About that area of california. Went from a sleepy small town to a place for celebrities and a great song by hole in the nineties. And then black death at the golden about the bubonic plague and its arrival on the shores of america and the early 1900s. It came out originally in 2019 and hardcover and, then paperback right at the start of 2020. An interesting time for that. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the wall street journal and the los angeles times, among other publications. Hes a Senior Reporter at reuters and he lives in montclair, new jersey. Dave and i have been talking i love book, i have young daughters. So when when i was offered to host it, i thought, gosh, theyre going to think im so cool that i am reading a book about the trex because theyre at that age that theyre fascinated by it. And where i want to start our conversation is about a year ago, this time i took my daughters. I live here in nashville. We went up to new york for fall break. And of course, we were going to include a visit to the American Museum of Natural History during that trip. And we watched night at the museum to prep it. My daughters were really into dino, dana on amazon prime, so were very excited. Got up, got early. It was crowded, as it always all we got in where were Wearing Masks and its crowded and that its still little disorienting. It was very disorienting at time to be in a crowd like that, to walk through the halls of this Incredible Museum and make our way eventually to dinosaur hall and stand in front of these incredible structures. And its disorienting and i was overwhelmed by it. And and its hard to read anything. My daughters are pulling and people are crowded and you feel you should keep going. But certainly its hard to get beyond. Wow, thats amazing. I have to go on to the next thing. You, however, also took care of your family to the museum and stood in front of a trex and had a different experience, which you talk about in the introduction, i think sends you on the journey of this book, and i wonder if you could talk about that. Sure thing. Well, first of all, thank you all for coming. And i did we we went to the American Museum of Natural History. If live in new york city area, its almost like a rite of passage. You have to take your kids there. Its almost like if you dont take them to disneyland later, theyre going to say, why did you never do that . So we went to the and our kids were our son was six and our daughter was three or four. And were Walking Around and it was the same experience. Its very overwhelming. You know, thats thing is large museums i think the problem with them sometimes is they have so many Amazing Things so that it gets lost in a crowd. You kind of see, oh, theres, you know. If youre walking through the met, theres a theres a monet and theres a van gogh and. Wheres the water fountain . You know, its kind of its hard to find that way when you want to do so. Our son, though, we were standing front of the trex and he got he became really quiet. And at first we thought, oh, no hes scared. You know, the teeth are as long as his torso, this isnt a good thing. Then he turns to us and says, who found these bones . And it was really the first time i realized that there was a human story behind fossils. And i started going, digging more into goodness, almost like youre pulling out of at a thread in a sweater. And the idea i kept on going after was, how did dinosaurs change culture . It seemed like such a monumental idea, such an alien concept that there were these, you know, gigantic creatures walking over earth 65 million years ago. And even the idea earth was 65 million years old was a radical idea. And i wanted to find human stories to that. And hopefully and luckily i did, which was barnum brown, who was the main character in this book, but way i always like to describe it as you know even after doing this book, im not a paleontologist. I know more about paleontology than i did before, but its still very compared to an actual paleontologist. What i like to make the comparison to in this book is that, you know, some people get into astronauts or the space race and all of that thing, and they really get focused on the spacecraft, you know, how did the rockets actually get us to the moon . And some people are really interested in the astronauts, and im more interested in the astronauts who were the people that opened up idea of dinosaurs to all of us and did they you know, what pushed them to go montana and south dakota and what pushed people to build these museums . We now enjoy every day . Yeah, you mentioned i also took my daughter to the space and Rocket Center in huntsville not long ago, and it was a similar experience. Its overwhelming. Like, this is amazing, oh, i have to move on to the next thing. You mentioned barnum brown. A good part of the book is about him and about his relationship with with henry osborn, who was the head of that department at the museum of Natural History. And then went on to become its its president. Yeah. Barnum brown is the most fascinating character. And theres a theres a book called the American Museum of Natural History and how it that way that you can get in the gift shop up there and i picked it up and i went back to look at it after reading your book and brown gets about three sentences in chapter about osborn, and you devote good part of the book to him. And hes fascinating. And i, i think there is maybe a book all about him, but hes somebody you discover him. If you had discovered him as a kid, you just want to be him. I think so. I wonder if you could tell us him, how he became who he is. And id you to start with a sentence that i underlined that i love because it that its aspiration of how i want people to see me, i think. But lets see. So this is about barnum brown to be in his company unshackling whatever tied you to the present and finding yourself compelled to explore not only the distance, not beyond the distant horizon, but whatever came after that. Pushing past everything known until you reached the blank spot on the map. So he was one of those people whose enthusiasm was contagious. And, you know, when we were talking beforehand, writing that sentence, you know, im naturally an introvert and, you know, thats why i really am able to kind of sit in front of a computer and fall into the past. But im blessed to be married to an extrovert, who is very much has that type of personality that makes you realize whatever talking about. Im interested. You know, you could be talking rocks, you could be talking about snails. You think about music, but you have such enthusiasm for it that it makes me want to learn about a few of is driving you to do that barnum brown he really was he was part of that generation where everything seemed to change it almost seemed it was the beginning of the the modern world in so many ways. And his parents, you know, they moved to they were homesteaders in kansas. He was the youngest of four children. And they you know, he was following his dad on the farm and he started finding seashells and he started wondering, why are we finding. Seashells were 600 or 700 miles from the nearest ocean. And that was the thing that got him stuck on. The idea of fossils and paleontology. And he was really there at the beginning. There had been if you know a little bit about the history of his ontology, there, bone wars, which were two professors who they really popularized you know, the concept of dinosaurs at least in a scientific way, theyre the ones who went out. They they named brontosaurus and all these other things. But nobody really shown people what a fossil or dinosaur looked like. Part of the reason was that its complicated and incredibly hard to build a armature, which, you know, holds a fossil. Thats one thing. Hopefully if you read this book, too, if you ever do go to a museum and you see the trex, Something Else, you realize how much of it is almost a sculpture. Its not just, you know, this, you know, formerly living animal. Its you realize theyve done a really good job hiding everything thats kind of connecting it. And the steel and Everything Else, because this weighs several tons, but somehow its animated and feels lifelike. And thats something i really appreciate. It just, you know, kind of the museum and presentation part of it more than i ever did beforehand. Yeah, that really comes across the the work that goes into unearthing these fossils, but then shipping them back to a location. Then it could take years for them to clean off the rest of the rock, the sediment to get them and then collected them in some position to then mount, which is a whole other art form. You really do a great job of that. Yeah, it seems to that, you know vernon brown, he the pursuit of dinosaurs is really what got him out of kansas. You know he lived on a farm and he hated it. He he thought staying on the farm was a form of and he went to university of and he kind of talked on to these early paleontologist, paleontological digs and he very quickly demonstrated that he almost had this innate ability he would walk into these, you know, fossil fuels that everybody else had gone through, and hed come out with a, you know, fully realized, not trex, a triceratops or other, you know, very Museum Quality level displays. And, you know, i think as you go through the book, hes very optimistic. And he reprised its this idea of bringing science to the masses. But he also has kind of this tragic story. So its you know, he has kind of it mirrors how has worked so somehow in history that is very optimistic but then you start to realize the downsides of it as well. Yeah you mentioned bone wars. Can you expand on what those were and who who were the individual involved . And then how sort of barnum finds himself in in those wars . I guess as a soldier for some of the folks and. Then he eventually goes to work for henry osborn and what osborns role is in those wars because that was really how cutthroat it was to find these fossils and get to them first and be the person to do it. That that wasnt something. Again, you you talk about the pop culture. The dinosaurs are with us. Theyve it it seems like theyve always been with us. Theyre on our tvs and in our books, but that doesnt until. 1867, i might be off on year. We dont know they exist some ways. Right, exactly. So the history of dinosaurs and understanding dinosaurs, it really is cutthroat beginning. You know, the person who came up with the term dinosaurs he was widely hated. He was a british scientist. He was widely hated by his peers. And there was a lot of accusations of backstabbing, Everything Else the bone wars in the u. S. Or to professors copen marsh and they basically hated one another it came from the fact that they had been contemporaries to a certain extent and then one of them was going to put out a paper saying he had found what was called a what he was calling a twisted necked reptile was a dinosaur. What happened, though, was that he put head where the tail he put the head, the tail should be, and the other one didnt let him forget it. So there this animosity that just built and built and built and they did do everything they, you know, they, they paid people to dynamite. The other ones find ends. They would go through the other ones digs the middle of the night and to scatter other bones just to confuse them. There was one incident where incident where they were both in wyoming and they both trying to get their their there. What had they dug on a train going back east and they were fighting over who got to go get on it first, that they literally their and their throwing rocks at each other. I joke around its almost like all of wyoming. It was a sandbox. So they really did have animosity towards each other. But something came out of that, it was the idea that, you know, the west full of these dinosaurs and we need to know more about them and was on some of the first gigs who you know he went to south dakota. He went to wyoming. Went to montana. When there were i think in the book i have the stat but it was Something Like sheep outnumbered people 600 to 1 or something and it really was the middle of nowhere. And the reason he got out to montana in the first place was that somebody had a picture of a triceratops and somebody when they first found it, they thought it was a, you know, a cow or something that had run away. Then they realized, wait, this is something, you know, 30, 49 years old. And they had a picture of it, but they didnt know exactly where it was. So they just said, go to montana, find it. So he basically had go to an area its about the size of japan to find one very small thing. And while he was there, thats how he ended up finding the trex so a lot of this book and a lot of i realized is that so of what we know about the planets history is really based on happenstance and know serendipity and from that you start to realize, you know, earth is so older than weve ever, ever before and its always changing. And then sort of, you know, that little germ of idea of how is it going to change in the future you can kind of build a line pretty clearly from trex to the idea of climate change, because you start to realize, oh, maybe theres a narrative of the earth history, and these are the people who helped us realize that, yeah, theres a part in the book where its clear that this desire to just were going to sort of segway into the of museums in this, which is particularly interesting to me because initially i guess there are universities involved in the bone wars . We havent really made it into these could really be an interesting for but at the time i guess they the first bones do we think the world is about 5000 years old is that just yeah it was a very literal biblical of the world which was done i think someone had done the math through the Old Testament so eventually museums get involved. This picture, which is really interesting and initially i guess the very first museum is, is credited to Charles Peale in philadelphia. Is that right . And it was considered a cabinet of curiosities. Interesting things for people to come look at the idea you can be educated about this or this somehow have an impact on how. We see ourselves and the world hadnt happened just yet but dinosaur bones start to become a big part of of museums and what might bring bring people in and theres another section im going to ask you to ask because. Theyre ask you to read because theres intersection between museums but then also capitalism which is incredible at this time. This is the gilded age people are making an enormous amount of money. I dont know what what the percentage is now, but then you mentioned 1 of the population. They own 25 of the countrys wealth. So at some point the gentleman at the American Museum of history realizes we can tap into these folks for the greater good. But but not a lot. Not initially. But i do want to mention this section first. Theres area i guess its in philadelphia. They they have an early dinosaur and it gets really crowded and then they start challenging the charging admission, which excludes poor from coming to visit. So from there, you get to the opening of of the met and, they realize, hey, maybe we can get get some philanthropy. So i wonder if you might read not the section ive underlined the subject that starts after which is about the opening of the met. Okay. Using the spoils of capitalism to bring culture to the masses was seen a noble calling, allowing one to act both and sell fruit and selfinterest and for the public at the same time and there is this quote that somebody wrote think of any millionaires of mini markets. Well, glory may be yours if. You only listen to her advice to convert into porcelain, grain and rice, the priceless pottery and the root cause of commerce, and to sculpt and marvel. So there was this idea that suddenly, you know, families and especially individuals had so much more money than ever before. You know, they almost were outside of this idea of jeffersonian democracy. You know, they were towered above it all. And you thought, okay, some ways they needed to give it back. They needed to what . Some kind of, you know, release valve. People dont get too angry about this. Well, one thing we can do is we can build this beautiful, beautiful museums in new york. If youve i always i didnt realize this until i worked on this book is that if you look at new york and you look at central park, the matters on one side and the American Museum, Natural History on the other. So it seems very, you know, art and here science. And at the time, it was very easy to get people to go to the art because its, you know, beautiful and its easy to get somebody to donate if they feel that, okay, you know, i have all this money and suddenly i have european masters and Everything Else it was a very kind of going back to the other book i wrote about malibu and the gold rush that as soon as people started getting very wealthy in california, thats suddenly they had to own rembrandts and they had to somehow make themselves feel at the American Museum of Natural History had a different problem, though, is that if you have, you know, a monet or you have something very beautiful, its hard to get somebody. Its easy to get somebody through the doors to see that if you have a bunch of rocks, its not as easy even the you know, if you have gold, its a little bit easier. But if you just have heres some really rare iron ore something or heres a know stump from a tree petrified 2000 years ago, its but its not Something Like know im going to pay for it i want to come in the door. So they had this you know existential crisis for a while. How do we get people interested in science and how do we get people through the doors. And thats where dinosaurs came up. Hmm. So so albert bickmore, who founds the natural History Museum, he realizes, hey, we can really tap in to these Railroad Tycoons and all this money with him as, hey, we can, we know a lot of people in the city. We can educate them. The same thing is happening in other cities, particularly pittsburgh, with carnegie, who, as i said earlier in our conversation, seemed really genuine in his desire to take care of these Blue Collar Workers that are earning him all this money, that theres a place for their to go. So carnegie there are curators and bone collectors have to answer to him. Bickmore pulls in money from a lot of people, so so osborne, who is running the Dinosaur Department of more specifically the vertebrate, but its a specific vertebrate paleontology, vertebrate paleontology, theyve got a lot of people to ask you so that the bones were was reached a different level. Now to really satisfy donors which benefits the museums i guess and benefits the people who are going to visit those museums but not really puts a lot of pressure on barnum brown examples. Yeah so barnum brown, they still they Start Building the museum, they, you know, expand it. And if youve been in new its beautiful. Yeah, yeah its several blocks. Its this fortress essentially of science and they Start Building it and they have all these empty rooms and barnum really quickly realizes hes the one whos supposed to fill them. And he has that. Hes driven by this fear. He never wants to go. He does want. To go back to the farm. Hes hes had this taste of bigger, wider world. And his largest fear is that he is going to not cut it essentially and have to go back. And at the same time. Osborn, hes in charge of vertebrate paleontology. So hes kind of coming from a different edge. He is incredibly wealthy. Hes, you know, incredibly privileged. He he went to princeton, Everything Else. And throughout his life, hes of always floated all of his ambitions on family money, you know hes just kind of protecting this. Hes the nephew of of jpmorgan every morning. Yeah and his dad is the head of a railroad, which is incredibly profitable back then. And he wants to make he must essentially seem like he is the most important person in american science. And he thinks dinosaurs is the way to do that. So hes pushing his explorers very hard to find something. He always feels like hes falling behind. Andrew carnegie is building the carnegie museums. What now known as the Fields Museum in chicago, is known as the columbia museum. Back then, theyre already ahead of the game to. So he really feels like new york and his own, you know, life path be diminished if they dont find something spectacular and. Its really because of barnum brown. I can tell you this. Tell the story in the book. But eventually barnum finds half of the dinosaur specimens are still on display at the American Museum. He is really the one who brought dinosaurs public conversation and them accessible to regular people. And you know if youd now this idea of every time you know you take your kids to the museum or a field goes to miss the embassy, the dinosaurs you really in barnum brown shadow if it wasnt for him none of us would do that. And he starts going off on crazier adventures. Then montana hawaiian because the stakes are high and goes to patagonia, which then takes weeks, i guess, to get on a ship down there. And theres no civilization as we think of it. Its a dangerous trip, but incredible things come of that. And that is a thrilling of the book. Thats why i think barnum is. Hes not the model for Indiana Jones but could easily be examined because there are some moments that you think theres no hes going to survive this. But but he does could you sum up what happens in patagonia to him . Sure. So he goes down there with who essentially a person who essentially he sees as his early hero. They look for bones, though, for they cant find any. And his hero goes back and barnums about to go on a ship and he says, you know what, im not going to go back out. Hes again scared to go back empty handed so he stays in patagonia for about another year by essentially living off the land. And he he finds, you know, dozens of specimens that are now on display in the American Museum. But he also discovers within himself that he can do it, that you know, he has this new confidence of ive kind of gone the wilderness. Ive come back and i can i can make it on my own. And he also starts to kind of learn more the history of how we understand the world. Darwin he went to patagonia as well. And one thing i liked about the book was just kind of learning the personalities. All of these scientist, you know, these icons that weve always thought of. You always think of darwin and you think, you know, obviously Natural Selection and Everything Else. I didnt realize that he got seasick. He had this, he had he had this little letter that he wrote back home. How much. He hated the voyage and. He hated it more with every swell of the ocean. And that, you know, he wrote that like you who have never seen the deep green of the earth, you know, the bottomless ocean can never know how much i hate it or Something Like that. And he was you know, theres i have a couple of pages about darwin just because he seemed so fascinated that he got so interested in all these other that it was almost like he was College Freshman and everything he saw was the most thing ever. So he writes, you know, a letter right now im red hot with spiders. And he got really into spiders for a while and then he and hes going to theyre going through patagonia or theyre going somewhere in south pacific. And hes watching, you know, dolphins at night. Then hes picking up oysters and Everything Else. And he sees these very same exactly what is happening. It happens very small of fish. And he starts to wonder why god would spend so much time making something so inconsequential, so beautiful. And it just seemed like a i dont know. So some like a very sublime thought. It really made you think about just how how much we appreciate Natural Science the natural the natural, you know, the earth and Everything Else in a different way. So, you know, i started looking at dinosaur bones and fossils in a different too that you start to appreciate this in a way that you never really thought of. Yeah. You know, whether you religious or not, just how beautiful this is. Yeah. Since you mentioned one of the questions i was going to ask you later was how doing this research, spending the years you did on it changed you . I assume all of your books living in that world that made you see the world differently. But since you mentioned that, im curious, certainly you see dinosaur displays differently, but do you see the world a little differently . The the earth differently . I think that you kind of have to. Yeah. So ive written four books this is my fourth book and all of them have very different im impressed by some writers who can kind of if, you know, they write about ships or something and every book is about ships and i maybe its just how my brain works. I get bored too easily if. I learned a lot about ships that all go in one book about ships because i couldnt withstand five books about ships. So the first book i wrote about was the science of sleep, it was called dreamland. And that was because i have a sleep disorder. I kick and i started and i talk and i sing and all these other things in my sleep. And i started sleepwalking. And i, i was i walked into a wall in our apartment and i busted my knee and. I went to the doctor and i, you know, im now mobile and im hurting myself. So what can i do . And they said, you know, we dont really know anything about sleep. And thats the, you know thats the secret of science. We dont know anything about it. So this book was the idea of to find all i could about it next book was king and queen of malibu. And it was about the family that used to own all of malibu, california and this long, complicated family saga. But basically, how they had all of malibu. And then how they lost it and kind of the tragic story behind a beautiful place. Then the other book was blacked out at the gate, which is about the outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco in 1900. And about this small group of doctors who essentially save country from it. Devastating and all of us and how one doctor said he was really he was a genius but he also rubbed everybody the wrong way and he was really ineffectual. But as somebody else who barely graduated med school, but hes a very affable guy and knew how to get people to trust, and he was the one whos more hes the one who actually saved all of us. So you kind of go through these i kind of say all of that because what i realized over all of them is start to realize how much people matter. You know, its its easy in some ways to kind of fall into that trap of, you, the great people, the great personalities in history, as all because of only y z people. And its not necessarily that its more. So how did these people, when they were in these situations, how what their decisions how does that still matter . Its almost like if youre throwing a rock into a lake and, you see the ripples of energy that come out. Those ripples are still going. And we just dont necessarily see them. We dont cant feel them, but we do we still live it that way . Know we malibu has celebrities in it and its this beautiful place thats untouched because this woman may orange refuse to develop it and. She was a billionaire in our money was willing to die penniless because she used every last dollar to try to protect malibu them. Keep it you know and her sons sued her and she was almost killed multiple times because of her that we now think of melbourne celebrities you know we we did not have an outbreak of plague that killed millions of people like it did in india and and japan because this person named rupert blew who wanted to, who like his parents, always paid more attention to his war hero older brother. So he wanted to do something that made his parents proud in eyes. And you know why we know what dinosaurs are. Well, there theres once this kid named barnum brown who was after p. T. Barnum because his parents took his older kid, his older brother, to the circus. And they came home, they couldnt figure out what to name their new infant. And the six year old came in and yelled thing. And barnum, because of this kid, this guy, we now know what the trex is and we have Jurassic Park and have all these horror movies billions of dollars and hollywood really can be traced back to this. One person wanted to make a life for himself and he happened to find on the find this. So lets get to that to that part. 1902 in hell hell creek, isle creek, montana barnum finds the very first trex and theres no other specimen. He finds that and really things for paleontology museums for dinosaurs because there are i mean there had been a lot discovered before this theyve been displayed the Public Interest is not kind into it but its not incredible what happens when he discovers those bones. So the public before had seen dinosaurs almost like a novelty every time they had a dinosaur to display. So lots of people came, but they left just as quickly because it must have seemed like this is just you to use an outdated term like this, like freak show, you know, this is this kind of thing. But the trex was different, and not just because it was more physically intimidating. You know, when you first look, when barnum brown first looked down, he saw these jaws and teeth, it was really like a time machine. He was the first person to go back 65 million years and see this. But when you have, you know, all the before the trex, all the dinosaurs were all herbivores. And its very easy to see dinosaurs almost as just kind of this boring. You know its pretty its big interesting. Yeah, its just crazy. And its like if you remember the first Jurassic Park, its like the swelling music, beautiful part of the John Williams score. Then the trex comes in and it totally changes everything because you realize the drum of life, you know, predation, predation invasion, you know, how do you survive how do you protect your loved that has been going on for millions of years before humans entered the scene and . Then you start to realize, too, that if you have a creature this big, it has to eat a lot. So therefore there has to be more dinosaurs overall, it has to be more life. And if you have a creature thats big attacking you, preying on you, there must be some of defense mechanism. So starts to evoke a more complex relationship of life overall and starts to start to realize wait. Earth has had this daily drama and you know, its been going on for a long time. And you start to realize that, you know, there it the one thing i was i go back to my paleontology i we spoke about this before about peeling is still even after doing book is so intimidating to me in so many ways is that you have to make all these chains of logic that you have to know. You have to know so much about anatomy to say, okay is, you know, this is a whatever, a leg bone and from that i can say or this what the teeth look like from that i can make this assumption of how big the animal was and from that because how big this animal was. I can then make the assumption of it ate and then if i know what it ate and this is what the ecosystem have look like. And for that ecosystem and it must have had the weather must have been this and there must have been this. And, you know, there must have been this many you animals overall, you have to say like because of x, y, because of y. And you really can build this complex world all based on one assumption. And i, i cant do that. Some people can. And why the p ontologies that are not but the trex was really what made people realize theres so much more here. Its not just these giant creatures with long necks. They seem gentle. Yeah. If you have a question and i hope you. Theres a microphone set up over here because we are. I didnt tell you we were live on cspan. Were live on cspan. So wed love to capture your audio. So so please do. Now, if you have a question for david, step up to that microphone there. Weve about 15 minutes or so. Is that right . Im so the public are the the imagine it captures the publics imagination because right now theres violence and theres fighting with the dinosaurs. And there theres a a battle for survival, which maybe kind speaks to some american ethos. I guess theyre about the struggle to survive. But then its something that vicious dies off that also then says, well, then we can also with all of everything we can do, we can also die off. And that then sort of i think maybe public realizes, okay, well, what happened . So that question starts to occur, right . Exactly. Was kind of the unspoken question of. You know, you see a trex mounted front of you and you realize it was, you know, a battle. I quickly lose. So how did this how am i still alive . This thing is not so that became a big question. And, you know and at the time that question filled in by a lot of prejudice racism of you know it has to be this or that and thats one thing before i started this book, didnt think there could be a connection between dinosaur and racism. It almost seems like a potpourri to say those two things are connected in some way, but osborn one of his legacies at National Museum was that he really he was this person who thought that what he called nordic culture was was the epitome of, you know, if you if you think of all of creation as a story, essentially, then know a white anglosaxon person is at the top of that. So it was a very easy scoreboard for him in a lot of ways that humans have the capacity to care for their young. They have more intelligence, just more loving in general, and theyre alive. And dinosaurs are not so there. There must be a reason for that. Paleontologists now, realize that a lot of that not true in terms of just the dinosaur of it, that trex basically as intelligent as a chimpanzee they did care for the so many of these kind of assumptions from 100 years ago are now proven to not be true. Yeah that was you can also if you dont want to go up to the mike you can raise your hand. Ill just repeat your question if thats helpful. Yes. Just curious if you ran across during your book the i grew up in a really religious environment and i was more real because the bones of place. So look at what point in that backlash against the discovery star did you so so the question is about kind of about a religious backlash to the idea that that the world the earth was older than 5000 years because you see that even today, that thats prominent. What point does backlash happen from a religious perspective . It happened more once dinosaurs were well part of the culture most they were very popular at beginning it was almost this sense of amazement by everybody and it was an idea that dinosaurs must have died out in the great flood or something or, you know, for some reason, no, it wasnt told to build a boat big enough to hold all of them or something. And it was more of this sense of curiosity and it almost seemed like they didnt know what to make of them as over generations, though, as a certain more part of education, part of a bedrock sense of this, is what the world like. Thats where we start to have a backlash in the same way that you have backlashes against lots of other things as, the world. And its almost like the book i talk about. Its almost like you have this book and it tells you the story of everything and then suddenly you have to add new chapters to it. And wait a minute, these later, chapters no longer square with the earlier chapters and you had the cognitive dissonance and those so it had to, it took a while for that to even be established once dinosaurs get, you know, the science of dinosaurs are taught in schools and theyre taught and Everything Else, it becomes established fact thats when you have kind of people pushing it back against it. One of the things i interesting as a museum is that theres this tendency to think that history is set right or what been decided as having happened is sad. But then there new technology and new research which starts to shift the way we see those things. So yeah, even now, right were seeing dinosaurs at one point the trex is positioned on what they call the godzilla pose at the museum up with the dragging. And then its not until 1990. So so the how we see the dinosaur in cartoons now on shows is not that old 30 years. Yeah in terms of that presentation but but even in yes weve a mic right there if you can use i think of a map of dating back these of bones i think of carbon dating but i wonder how barnum saw these things out in the wild and knew they were as old as they were i assumed there wasnt Carbon Dating Technology at point there there wasnt carbon dating but they did more. So it was look at the layers, the, the strata of the sediment. So they realized that theres something called the katiba boundary which they had a sense of barnum was one of the very first people to recognize this. But the kt boundary is basically the layer of sediment happened when the giant asteroid hit what is now the yucatan peninsula peninsula, mexico. It covered the entire world with certain types of sediment and you basically see theres theres earth, theres fossils below it and theres fossils above it. But for layer, theres nothing. So basically thats where everything died, they didnt have a good sense though, of exactly, you know, the 65 million or 70 million or 80 million. It really was just a guess and it was based what else what we find in near it that makes me realize this is kind of the same era. Thats one thing. I was always surprised going through the book, too, is i always think they found the dinosaur. They found a trex. And thats the monumental thing. You know, when you found the trex, there was also turtle there, too. Know we talked about the turtle, but its that same idea of this was all of life was happening at the same time and the process of fossilization for for an animal to become fossilized its very difficult. You have to have the exact right conditions. And a lot of it was because, you know, an animal died and it got swept away and then it was covered very quickly. So the oxidation didnt happen so quickly. So thats why you might have a turtle next to a trex or Something Like that. And thats all that just makes you think. One other thing. But first, before i forget so barnum brown fern found the first known trex and then he found the next to known well so he found three. There have only been about 50 t rexes ever found and theres i think ive stated this in the book too. So trex has lived for about ten or 15 million years overall and scientists now that theres Something Like 2 million or something lived in lifespan trex total that ever walked under the earth and of those Something Like only 2000 could have been fossil ized and you know barnum brown found three of them. So it just makes you realize incredible it was that he he found not only one, but three. And if you do go to the American Museum, that trex you see there is not the very first one that was found. It was actually the best of number two and three, because osborn really wanted to put on a show so thats he he really wanted to find the best display. So if you want to see very first trex ever found is actually in now. Yeah because they they sold it for fear of new york getting bombed right and it might be safer during war two it might be safer in carnegie. And thats one of those things you kind of talk about that ripple of history. You realize why is why is the trex and pittsburgh lost . Because there were scared that they were going to be german dropped in new york city and they didnt know what they felt like they could get they could replace lots of things they can replace this. So at the same time they the met they much empty and send almost all of it to the to the biltmore. Yeah. And they sent the trex. Pittsburgh. Yeah. Thats fascinating. One of the things i want to talk about for the next minutes is this lingering issue with the culture. Youve got the natural History Museum, one side of central park, the met art and Natural History separate. Although you have benefactors seeing the benefit of that, but no ones collecting dinosaur bones for. Their for their personal collections like. They might be with art. Although that kind of changes in the late eighties 1987. Is that right when the first private auction at sothebys for a trex for an entire trex and then it happens again in 2000 2020 that right gosh. And the millions of dollars. So what what was that like so yeah. Its impossible for a museum to spend 9 million, right. It becomes a much different story that trex because it becomes popular its kind of transcend and science is now part of culture. So there at the sothebys auction, they have the listing. You know, they said a trex stands up very nicely against a picasso or else thats in the same echelon on now. And they thought it was going to go for 10 million or something and it went for. 31. 4 million and private two. So at the time they didnt know who the the the purchaser was. Now they know that it was dubai, the government of dubai, because theyre going to create a new Mattress Museum there. And nobody thought it was going to go that high because it also had the more you learn about dinosaurs the more complicated and confusing it is in some ways they sold it. They also, it did not include intellectual property and you think how i why would a dinosaur have ip . Yeah like you cant make tshirts you cant make toys you cant make anything. And thats how museums recuperate it a lot of the money so become this issue now of its very hard to have a sense of you know if you if youre a Museum Natural History Museum if you have a trex or not really is a scoreboard in a lot of ways if youre in the big leagues you have a trex. If youre not, then youre just regional museum. Yeah. And you know so when there was a trex nicknamed stan went for auction in 2000 and that was the one that the field museum they came up with a lot of money from with the help of mcdonalds to buy it. But i think the North Carolina museum of Natural History, they were a big bidder because they thought that was an idea for them to kind of get into the bigger leagues. Yeah, there was a partnership. Mcdonalds and yeah, somebody else was involved. Then there were happy meals. There have been number disney. They are part of it too. Thats right. So its this the issue now is that, you know, trex especially of all dinosaur fossils, theres theres money in it, but a trex especially. Theres tons money in the you know, in the book i talk somebody found a juvenile trex and. They want to sell to a billionaire. They didnt know how to get their attention. So they put it on ebay ebay and and you know, ebay told them put it down. And they didnt understand why that i own this. And is my property. So it becomes this question of like, is it trex or any other fossil a commodity . Is it science is it what the what duty do you have to it . Its a it based on law. Its its your private if its on your land, its your private property. Weve got just 2 minutes. I, i really recommend this is a fascinating book you will fall in love with barnum. Theres some tragedy in his life, too. But this is wonderful. Weve less than 2 minutes now. What what has piqued your curiosity . And youve said, ive got to go down that road now im done. Im a dinosaur, i dont outsource. Im about to start working on the next one and i dont want to give away too much, but it has to do with a around the world race. Oh, so. And same era in 1924 you we mentioned a lot of your books focus on this turn of the century period, which is fascinating. People accomplished quite bit. And my wife and i always talk about how did they do that many things. They didnt have tv. They they didnt have phones. They werent distracted that they could go where their curiosity went, where travel around the world to do the research that would nice especially postcovid. I would like to go something what is it with norton . Will they give you the money to travel around the world . Im im going to im going to hopefully will. Im going to pitch that. Yeah wonderful. Well, you can buy books at the parnassus tent up at one Memorial Plaza and then youll be signing books right next to that at the signing booth. Well take a walk up there. I guess were just winding down now. So thank you so much for joining us. Its really been a pleasure, david. Thank you for having. Youre watching book tv and well have more live coverage of the southern of books from nashville after. And tonight on book tvs Author Interview program. Afterwards, mark of Bloomberg News looks at the creation and growth of youtube and, how its changed our society. Hes by politico tech policy reporter rebecca kirn. His book is like comment subscribe inside youtubes chaotic rise world domination. Heres a portion of the interview the other constituency is the viewer. And i think you can see from my reporting shows that you can you can clearly make the argument that, you know, what youtube has done for viewers is this amazing, massive entertainment free entertainment information that never existed to decades before. And we kind of take for granted, take advantage of now. But its also theres not a lot of transport, currency for you as a viewer. And ill give it like one one interesting example. So the past few years as youtube has responded to a lot of criticism theyve instituted this policy called what they call borderline videos. And so these are videos that dont break their rules about hate or harassment, graphic violence and supporting kind of extremist positions. But they go right up to the line of and this is a really arbitrary line. What youtube has done is a pretty powerful tool, which is, okay, were just not going to put these videos on our recommendation engine. So its the traffic. Those once theyre removed from the youtube recommendation system, it really plummets because that is a majority of views videos as people being recommended footage, you know just kind of autoplay, you know, one video that jumps to the next or that panel of videos on the screen if looking at a desktop computer, me as a viewer, i have no that this video in front of me has deemed borderline i have no idea. This video, you know, is is potentially violating some rules in questionable territory. And and, you know, that of the creators at the same time, dont have that indication either. And thats sort of that part of the reason many one of many reasons why the creators feel shortchanged especially compared to traditional, which is also on youtube. Right and and that all kind of came to a head talk about in the book in 2017 with the ad you call it and just that was just talking about the tensions with some violent extremist content being promoted on the platform by certain creators and that being tied to advertisers who do not want to obviously be associate with that content. Other examples videos that were also viewed as offensive that ads were still running on. So could you kind of talk about maybe what led to that and what were some pretty dramatic changes that happened after that time period . Yeah, i think there are there are a couple of things going on. One is sort of wonky business, right . Like google is a Digital Advertising company like it makes its majority its money putting ads in front of your search results, then putting ads across the web either on website banners or youtube videos. This has been a Business Model that has fundamentally reshaped how marketing works. And, you know, it kind of took this what traditionally was like a handshake agreement on madison avenue. And literally, it you know, im a im a company and i want my ad to run on this tv station in this show or on this billboard right. What youtube did but google did was it this upended that it said like we can will serve out your ad to where it will reach the best consumer. What they did. Was it and they will do it in an automated way. So they built this fantastic lee complex Automated System equivalent to sort of a Financial Markets that with all these exchanges and markets and like basically these a lot of software to determine when to you an ad that youre most likely to click on. So what happened in 2017 was you and i were reporters that found that some of the major household brands and names, even nonprofits, were sponsoring terrorist videos, extremist neonazis, the kind of inappropriate material that if you sat down a, you know, chief marketing officer and said, youre spending money on this, they would not want continue doing so and they didnt want their names in the headlines associated with and this was you know was a relatively small percentage the budget but it just demonstrated how this this model had been built and built so quickly and wasnt prepared to deal with the kind of avalanche of advertisers exiting. Right. And then after i mean, they did end up having change some of their their business and Digital Advertising modeling and also it led to some major changes in how they content, i think as well this was also, i guess the second point was this was the beginning early in the Trump Presidency in the era and you had, you know, major advertisers were much more cautious about and id say even venture to say like did not want to go anywhere near remotely political issues and topics. And then you have youtube and google that also wanted to steer clear of of anything kind of remotely political. There were the beginnings, this accusation that the company has a bias against conservatives. The us. So you know their response was pretty i would say it was pretty severe like the number of changes they made and youtube now versus youtube in 2017 looks profoundly different and they put in effectively like safeguards and systems to make sure that their advertising business would continue to operate and and and on some level, that has worked very well that the they the earliest numbers we have for youtubes financials from the company is that in 2017, they made 8 billion. Last year they made close to 29 billion in advertising. Its been Phenomenal Growth. And so at least on one metric, they have you know, satisfied advertisers theres certainly questions about whether or not theyve satisfied regulated or concerned from parents. So you know you name it watch this program in its entirety tonight at ten eastern before we start talking. So your book tvs coverage of the southern festival of books in nashville continues continues. We were all. There. I watch it on. Welcome everybody welcome to closing day of the southern festival books here at the Nashville Public Library this afternoon is on the many lives of andrew young. This will be a conversation with journalist and author ernie suggs. Im harp, the director of the nonprofit Pat Conroy Literary Center in South Carolina and also a previous festival author. And im honored to get to host this particular session. We will have time for audience questions near the end of our time together this afternoon and. I will remind you all of this again later. But there is a microphone set up for that very use over there. So were going to ask that you all ask your questions. That end of the room you may have noticed fancy technology in the room. We are streaming this on cspans tv and use of the microphone will will help us all get all of that content out there. So thank you all so much for being with us at the Nashville Public Library. By way of quick introduction or not so quick introduction because, its quite the impressive bio journalists and author ernie suggs has been a reporter for the Atlanta Journal constitution since 1997, currently covering a variety of breaking news and investigative stories for page a1. He previously reported for newspapers new york city and durham, North Carolina. Hes a veteran of more than 20 years as a newspaper reporter and has covered stories ranging from politics to civil rights to Higher Education. A 1990 graduate of North Carolina university with a degree in english i have one of those to look at us both employed is my eagle pen writing well very nice yes huh. Ernie also a Harvard University nieman fellow. He is currently on the nieman board of trustees and. Hes the former Vice President of the National Association of black journalists. So please join me in welcoming suggs everybody. Thank you. Were probably going to spend most of our time talking about the subject. The book global citizen, andrew young. And this is a beautiful book for those of you who hadnt had a chance to to see it. But i want to start our conversation by talking a little bit about you, ernie, and sort of getting to how you got to be the chronicler of of the ambassador. So as i mentioned in your bio, you arrive in atlanta about 25, 26 years ago at a time when a number of the pantheon civil rights leaders were still actively involved in the city. So can you talk a little bit about what it was like for you as a reporter as a as a newspaper guy coming into town at that moment . Well, i came to atlanta. I moved to atlanta in 97, the year after the olympics. Okay. The paper didnt hire me during the olympics. I suffered beef with them on that. But i came in 1997, and i look at ive always talked about it as kind of like walked into i walked into what i consider the second second set of Founding Fathers was still living atlanta. So i moved to atlanta and john lewis was there. Ktb he was there, Hosea Williams was there. James orange was there whose daughter just passed away. This i just found out just recently, coretta king was there. All of the king children were there and andrew young. So i was there as a young reporter covering these people. I still remember vividly the first time i actually met scott king, and i still is still like this, i cant believe i met. You know, i was just sitting this close to home when we met. And so i was able, you know, my first job was covering. I was like knight cops, you know, being a newspaper reporter at a large newspaper, my first job was night cops. But i eventually became the race reporter or the urban affairs reporter. Now, you know, in covering civil rights. So i was covering all these people that ive read about and and watch documentaries about all life and just covering them. So i always say, you know, people always ask me, you know, how i get to write Andrew Youngs book. I tell them, ive been writing it for 25 years because ive always kind of known his life. Ive always kind of chronicled his life post, civil rights post and mayor and. Unfortunately, in 2000 and in my you know as a as a writer and as a journalist, ive always to write a book. Every journalist wants write a book. So, you know, in 2020, wed lost john lewis, c. T. Vivian and joe lowery. Within three months of each other. And john lewis, our city, vivian and joe lowery, have been men that i approached previously to, hey, lets sit down and write a book. Lets consider writing a book. Jill i wrote his own book. Keep vivian was writing his last book when he died. So when they died, you know, i felt that, you know, andrew young, was the logical step. The logical person for me to approach, to write a book. And his birthday was coming up. His birthday is march 12th of this year. He turned 90 years old. So it was a Perfect Timing for me to write to found a subject to write about and for a subject whos willing to sit down and have his story chronicled and understanding the importance of having his story chronicled as he was approaching 90 years old. He talks about he talks about as touring the country, promoting the book and talking about the book that he wrote his book and easy burden in 1995. And thats the biography is a thick biography. We all weve all read these thick biographies and he says that this book and not because i wrote it but he says that this book is better because its a illustrated account of his life as well as the written word so his grandchildren can pick it up, people can put it on this literally coffee table books. They can put it on a coffee table and read it, put it down, pick it up. You know, the next day, a week later, pick up or read another chapter. And its something thats easily accessible. And it kind of tells a story in two ways. And the written word and the visual, it does so beautifully too. And i think that speaks to, to your credit, a journalist as a as a whos in the business of concise that it comes alive the page. And in these very digestible ways. But as you say it is it is a highly visual book as well. And as we were talking about just minutes when i saw it for the first time, i thought this would make a great Museum Exhibit and apparently im not the only person to have that thought because it exists in that format as well. Would you mention that just briefly. Yeah, its we have a museum in atlanta called the millennium gate museum. Its about 15 years old. It looks like the arc de triomphe in paris. So a lot of people dont even realize a museum on 17th street. So for those of you from atlanta and, its a beautiful exhibit. Its basically, you know, the pages of the book that have been theyve been repurposed into a museum, into a Museum Exhibit. So the three lower rooms on the first floor of the museum housed the housed the exhibit. And we also have recreated Andrew Youngs office a lot of his personal artifacts are there, like his emmys, you know, trophies and art, you know. But the i think the most important thing, just all the visuals, all the photographs are on the wall, all the portraits on the wall that beat that that kind of recap kind of give you a cliffsnotes of the book and kind of recaps his life, you know, you can kind of just kind of walk through his life. And you mentioned the pen center in South Carolina. We are moving the exhibit. Theres been the exhibit has been on display in atlanta since march, but were going to move it in november to the pen center in south. Then were going to move it to North Carolina in my home state. So very proud of the whole fact that we were able to kind of carry his story forth throughout the south you know, in the exhibit, it seems like going to have multiple lives in the same way that the ambassador lives. So thats a nice parallel. Lives, many lives. Thank you for the correction. Appreciate that. Well, lets build on that first second thing, because im how someone whos been been covering this subject for 25 years would encapsulate it would distill down what ultimately is the historical importance of young why does he deserve a book an exhibit of this kind for who perhaps is not yet immersed in that story in that chronicle who is man. Well, i think when you look at the books title, the many lives of andrew young, he has many lives. I mean, i approached him. I met him in 1995. I had just recently graduated from college and. He came in town for a book tour or a book in durham, north london, for an easy burn. By then. He had already been mayor of atlanta. He already been a civil rights leader. Hed already been an ambassador. And my interest duction to him came in 1976, 1976, 77, when i was a child and jimmy carter was president and i was a big fan of jimmy carter. He was like first president that i knew. And being a child of curiosity and in the seventies when you were looking for a role looking for black role models, the fact that andrew young was the first black u. N. Ambassador to the United States wasnt something that was significant. Me so i was introduced to him as the u. N. Ambassador, not as a civil rights issue. I didnt realize he was a civil rights leader. So afterwards so when you talk about the many lives of andrew young, you look at the fact that this heres a man who grew up and segregated new orleans. He went to Howard University one of the premier you colleges in the country he he doesnt like to say black colleges but one of the premier colleges in the country he left that to become a pastor of a small church in georgia. He left that to move to new to to do Ministry Work for an organization that hed moved to georgia in 1962 working model with the king jr he left that at the mouth of the kings assassination to run for congress where he was in the first class of black congress. Congressmen and women from the south since reconstruction. And he left that to become a un ambassador. He left that to become the mayor of atlanta. He left that while he was the mayor of atlanta. He brought the olympic to the United States or brought the olympics atlanta, which is something that no could have ever foreseen. And now he runs a foundation. So he has these many lives and it looks, you know, the thing thats interesting about him is that its as if, you know, every decade he of reinvents himself and he looks back. But he doesnt really look back if. You pick out, you know, if you pick a part of his life and a hat and you pick out mayor of atlanta. Yeah, theres a whole book in that. Theres a whole book on being a u. N. Ambassador so i wanted in the book to kind of distill all of these different aspects of his into one easily readable book. I think thats the challenge that you gave yourself and succeeded at so well because as you say, there really is a book length study to be written on any these positions that hes held and there are so many the course of 90 years and for for a man of that age to still be as active as he is through his foundation, not just here locally, but internationally, hes out of country today, in fact, doing whatever calling is has led him to do. And i want to talk a little bit about, you know, how how he interprets how he prioritizes those those elements when hes asked to do that. But in a couple of interviews about this book ive seen him do, he keeps talking about his blessed life. And thats a he uses in the book as well. But also his accidental life that these werent necessarily positions that he saw actively time time again. And he tells a great story about how and why he came to to run for congress, that these werent things that he necessarily thought he would be doing. But somebody needed to do it. And there he was. So would you talk a little bit about about that aspect, about the accidental or the blessed aspect, the accidental life of andrew young . And i think its part of him being humble as well toward end of Martin Luther kings life. And as you know, he was a key lieutenant from all king jr. Hes right here in right down the road. Im not sure how far we are from memphis, but, you know, he was there when when dr. King was killed. But one of the things that dr. King talked about in the last few years of his life was how were going to move the Movement Forward. And one of the way to move the Movement Forward was through politics and to for for black leaders to emerge, to run for office, whether theyre running for mayor, you know that was in the late 1960s. We saw the first generation of black mayors in. And in major cities like cleveland in later in atlanta places like that but also to run for congress to run for you know higher offices state of statewide Offices National offices. So that was kind of a logical step. And the moment the king died and, you know, everybody is kind of looking for their own path to a lot of people suggest that, hey andy, why dont you run for congress . And he was had had to be convinced by people like Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier and lena horne, people who were still in the Civil Rights Movement, who were in the Civil Rights Movement helping out. But they also kind of saw that, hey, we need to move forward. And by moving, we can we can we can establish ourselves in a different way. We can be a different kind of leader. And, you know, andy was like, maybe julian bond should run. You know, were talking about atlanta or talking about georgia, maybe bond should run or maybe someone else run. They said, no, we want you to run. So thats when you talk about the accidental life of, you know, one of the accidental aspects of his life is that he did not necessarily want to run for congress. He did not necessarily want to run for mayor of atlanta. He was you know, theres a great story in the book about this old black woman who who basically cursed him out because she said, you know, you came here in atlanta in 1960, 1961, you were nothing. We made you who you are. We sent you to congress and now we want you to run for mayor. You act like you dont want to do it. So kind of shamed him into running for mayor, as you know, became the second black mayor of the city of atlanta. I love that story because his response to her is Martin Luther king jr me. And she says, yeah, we made him too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Atlanta has a very strong, powerful black community. So yeah, they made me feel so well. I want to veer off topic just for a second here because you you mentioned something in in the ambassadors past that i think kind of parallels things that are happening right now or perhaps dont you as as a writer of contemporary atlanta may be able to speak to this . Or rather, do you see that same sort of thing happening, the black lives movement, where the next logical is to take positions of, power to run for office, to go from being a protester and an activist to being a leader in in a legislative or civil position. I do think its its i do think its its an ever evolving position that we are in as were still continuing to kind of find our way and were still continuing to kind of put out progressive options and progressive as this become a political term, but put strong, smart people who are running for office, you know, in atlanta, we have Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams and for fairness, Herschel Walker. So we do have we are seeing a spate of great young politicians who came out of black colleges, stacey and raphael out of black colleges, spelman and morehouse. Yeah. You know, corey bush and illinois and missouri. So we do. We are that. And shes a perfect example of someone who came out of the black lives matter movement. Lucy mcbath came out of the black lives movement in a that her son was killed her you know, her son, jordan davis, was killed. So she took that as a baton to run for office. So were seeing people enter office and take a different path. But i think they still built on the foundation that was kind of set in the 1960s that we if were going to make a difference in the country, if were going to make a difference in our lives and communities, that we have to be represented, have to be a representative voice at the table if youre not representing a voice at the table, then you know nothings going to change. Or the changes that are going to be made are not going to have an impact on you. Positive. So, you know, so thats what leads. Andrew young into congress a sort of similar that were maybe experiencing again now but lets talk about what leads him out of congress as. Well his relationship with president carter, his work as a united ambassador. What his relationship with carter like it was. Its a really great relationship. Now. Yeah i was that president carters 75th wedding anniversary last year and andrew young was one of the honored guests. You know, and their relationship while andrew young was in the nations was was good as. Well, but one of the things about andrew young and ive talked about it in the book and ive talked it on tour, is that andrew young isnt afraid to say what he wants to say and do what he wants to do. So sometimes i can get you in trouble. One of the Great Stories and i dont have this in the book is my favorite tv show when i was growing up was good times and our kind of were every line of every show. And there was one episode in which and this is again, 1974 and they were talking about something. And michael, whos a young militant in a family, is like, im going to speak mind. Just like andrew young speaks his mind. And it was just like this of random, you, andrew young in 1974, talking how how he speaks his mind. And andrew young as a United Nations spoke his mind. He got a lot done. But he also he did things unconventionally, you know, he spoke to countries and leaders and countries that that i wouldnt say president carter didnt want him to talk to. You know, president carters people werent necessarily it didnt necessarily im talking to or he was overstepping his bounds in certain ways. So, you know, technically, you know, he got fired from the u. N. , from the united i mean, president carter wasnt reelected. So he wasnt to write. Interesting long term as u. N. Ambassador, but he got basically fired. So that was a blow to him. But you know, again, hes a person whos able to kind of reinvent himself and, kind of rebound. And, you know, he came back to atlanta, broke it, didnt have any money, you know, and daughters about to go to college. So he had to kind of reinvent himself. Was he going to go on business . Was he going to travel and kind of settled into the mayor . So hes hes always able to kind of like land and land very well. Yeah. Yeah. Hes very candid about that moment in the book, too. I remember that story very specifically where hes considering, you know, what the mayor salary is and what thats not going to pay to send kids to college. And yet somebody needs to do this. And now hes back in atlanta. Yeah, but that thats probably the part of the story that is most interesting to me because thats where if you dont know the full context of the life, the career trajectory doesnt make sense to go from having an internationally position to being mayor of, a town that on that point was really in a difficult spot. Yeah, but also kind of i dont mean to cut you off, but it also kind of everything builds upon itself. His. Is the things he learned as a u. N. Ambassador impacted how he ran the city of atlanta. You know, the contacts made the fact that he saw he moved to atlanta in 1960 and 61 and he tells a great story and i hope i kind of ramble on, but the first time he came to l. A. Was i think it was 19. And some of my dates are kind messed up. But he came to atlanta in 1948, and he at the butler street ymca, which is on auburn avenue. And if youve ever been to atlanta, auburn avenue, this great black one, it was once called the richest street in the world, and it has the polished ymca, which is where people it was the black ymca. He came there to stay at the ymca in 1948. And the klan actually marched down auburn avenue, which is the richest black city, richest black street in the world, as a show of intimidation. He comes back later on and driving through atlanta probably in 1950 or the mid 1950s, hes driving through atlanta and he sees a rat walking down possibly elm street and he slows down because he says that he doesnt want to hit the rat because rats have more and more respect in atlanta, georgia, than a black man. He didnt want to get in trouble for running over a rat. So the fact that he can move to atlanta. Work with Martin Luther king jr representing in congress, then become the mayor of the city within 20 years is a remarkable in and of itself. And the fact that he saw in atlanta that he knew it could be an International City he knew it could be a city that, wasnt, you know, birmingham it wasnt little rock, not even, you know, nashville, that there was Something Different about atlanta with the airport with the businesses that were there. But this was this thing that they call the atlanta way where how blacks and whites have kind of come to an agreement that because of business relationships and because of whats going on with Higher Education in and in the schools there, that we can Work Together if we kind of put our minds to it. He saw that and the fact that he was able to bring bring the olympics into, you know 30 years after he moved to atlanta and was scared to run over a rat, says something about what he was to pick up how hes able to kind of use those skills you learn as a u. N. Ambassador to kind of woo Different Countries and to woo to come to atlanta for the olympics to kind of like bring money. And, you know, lana has the Busiest Airport in the world, the has, you know, several fortune 500 companies, right. In atlanta, the biggest building in atlanta. When he moved here, you cant even see it now because. Theres so much you know. Yeah, its grown, you know, theres i talked to his daughter. She said when he drive around the city, hes just he has this big smile on his face because a lot of that is what hes he is a lot of what we see now is what he was to plant the seeds that he was able to plant. Its a remarkable legacy. And it does take someone with a Global Vision to do it as well as he did. And as quickly as he did, too. Yeah. When ive seen you do interviews together. He talks about that you know of the many lives of andrew young that seems to be the one that he wants to focus on that he feels closest to his own sense of who he is as a human being. But im really curious for a little deeper dive, the olympic story as well, because hes so often points to that as sort of the quintessential andrew young Success Story for for those sort of unfamiliar with the concept and the history of this very rarely do cities make money when they host the olympics. You sort of do this for the goodwill. But he did the opposite. He did it in a way that ultimately was profitable for atlanta long term, not just during during the event itself. So when he was approached, we talked about him in. No, though, when he was approached about the possibility of atlanta, the olympics, everybody on his staff said it was crazy idea. Shirley franklin, who became first female, first woman mayor of atlanta several years later, was his chief of staff and a very brilliant woman. She said, this is a crazy idea. Were to go broke. And if you think about the 1996 olympics, do well. But some by the time the pitch was made in the mid 1980s, you know, you think about montreal in 1976, you think about other major cities that held the olympics. They were all broke. The basically left them broke the only olympics that made money. Recent note was los angeles 1984. So he of took he kind of took advice from mayor bradley in los angeles as to how a city can host an olympics and make money and not necessarily make money because it wasnt you know he didnt see it as a moneymaking venture but not lose money which is very important because you know the olympics coming to montreal is perfect example. They come to town, they build these buildings and then the olympics are gone and the cities are left with all these white elephants. Yeah, he didnt want that. So basically he talks about it all the time that you know wall street paid for the olympics. Wall street paid for atlantas airport because he was able to kind of leverage those relationships, leveraged businesses convince businesses, convince Foreign Countries to kind of invest in atlanta, to build stadiums and to to to reduce and to expand the airport all of this stuff is is taxpayers pay no money for the olympics nor the airport in atlanta and thats you know, thats his Lasting Legacy as he sees it. Thats what hes like. You thats what hes very proud of. The fact that atlanta didnt go broke. And we hosted the centennial olympics. Mm hmm. And it got value of it. That continues to be valuable to this. I mean, the city, the stadium, the olympic stadium, i remember being there for opening ceremonies, you know, after the olympics, the Atlanta Braves moved in there. The Atlanta Braves moved to cobb county. And now that stadia has been re reinvented as a football stadium for georgia state, which has become this major urban university and the Andrew Young School of Public Policy is you know, you see that his name right above, you know, its a downtown campus, but you see his name on this building and its 25 stories up. You know, the Andrew Young School Public Policy. So it all kind of reinvents itself. It all kind of like, you know, full circle. I wonder what its like for him. Have you talked to him about about what its like to drive around atlanta and see his name all over everything to see, i think two statues to himself as well. And he entering is a interesting person. Hes very humble and hes very i guess when you reach 90 things dont impact you as much as they you know i see myself on tv im like calling everyone else trying to twitter right now to say this is like on live tv. But you know he you know i think there theres seven things in atlanta named after hes like you said, its two statues. Theres a school his wife theres theres school named for his former wife. Theres a st andrew young street. And he just kind of like those kind of things. I think he just takes it, you know, hes like, you know, hes appreciative of it, of course, but hes like, you know, its not that big of a deal. I think hes more or more excited just about how the city is, just how the city has grown and what the city is that and how hes contributed to that you mentioned his wife and that sort of prompted me to go in a direction that i wanted to make sure we covered as well because there are quite lot of stories in here about his family, about his his two marriages, about his parents his grandparents as well. How does he make sense of the importance of family, multigenerational family in who he is and his how do you make sense of that as his chronicler . I think thats important. I mean, if you talk to andrew young now, he is hes always talking about his kids. Hes always talking about his grandchildren having arguments, his grandchildren about how they live. Theyre not in a bad way, but just how, you know, you argue with grandchildren. And he always talks about how whenever hes arguing with them, theyll pull out their phone and ask siri and cyril, you know, hes always often wrong because you know, but he lives his life now at service of his wife and children and grandchildren because when he was a child, you know, he lived with his he lived with his parents, but his grandmother lived there. His elderly grandmother and his brother. So he was hes always been a part a of a Strong Family network. He married young. One thing about his grandmother, again, this is kind of a connection to family is that his grandmother raised his grandmother gave birth to, five children, but she raised six more. So she raised all these children. And in the black community, you know, its its not uncommon for people to raise other peoples children. His grandmother was that was one of those people. And talks about how as she got older, went blind and how he would to her every day he would read the bible newspaper every day. So he was able to kind of draw closer to his grandmother a whole different level because he was so she was so dependent on him. He was so dependent on on what she was teaching him. And kind of he carried throughout his life. You know, he married, he met, you know, he got a job. He got one of his first jobs preaching in a small kind of an internship, preaching job. And he stayed with a family in alabama. This familys daughter was in school and he saw the photographs of her and thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world and said, im to marry her and she comes home for the summer and they meet and he marries her. Six months later. And he stayed with her for 40 years, you know, and they built a family. And she passed away in 1994, i believe. And he remarried. So hes been married 40 years and 25 years. So hes been married pretty much all of his life because he sees the importance of family. You know, he understands the importance of family. His daughter, who is the andrea, whos the head of the georgia aclu, plays a significant role in his life and his and as well as carrying on his legacy of service. You know, shes a you know, and of his children do that. So its his great that hes built and family is at the heart of all of it. What was interesting to me about about well ill focus on the first half of the question about his early life. Two things. One that its so well document and that not just that there are a handful of photos, but beautiful photos actually professional photographs in some cases of of his childhood, in his youth. But also that, you know, this is not the vision that his father initially had for him, he had a very particular profession in mind. Would you talk about that and his relationship, his fathers parents . Well, let me let me talk the photos for sure, if you dont mind. Yeah. One of the one of the great things about one of the fortunate eyes on me in doing this book is that his is so well documented. As we mentioned hes hes 90 years old, but as a child, he was born in 1932, both of his parents were college educated. So they had they werent rich, but they had a little money and the fact that, you know, if look at the book, you have photographs of him as baby studio photographs of a little black child as a baby, which you dont see much of in the 1920s and thirties of of of photographs taken black children because we just didnt have the means of doing that. So the fact that his life was so well documented and so well documented basically from the he was born up until now with all of his different jobs that hes had that made it easier for us to kind chronicle his life in the book. The second part about the second part of your question about his relationship with his, he had a Good Relationship with his father, general, and that, you know, his father also lived a nice, long life as well. So they had a great relationship. However as i mentioned before, his father was a college man. His father was a dentist. And i think all of us, you know, i think a lot of times, particularly in the black community, if you are successful and you have children, you want your children to succeed, you better. And i think this is every family what you want, especially in the black community in the 1930s and forties, you want your child to be better than you. So when have a black dentist in and new orleans whos treating you know hes treating celebrities like joe louis and. Louis armstrong but he also has a dentistry in which he treats poor people and for free. He wanted his son to kind of follow in his footsteps and go to university, which is where his father went, which is a premier black college and become dentist. So andrew young went to Howard University with the intention to please his father by becoming a dentist but he goes he gets to Howard University and he is this is probably the first time and one of the only times in which andrew young did not do well. He didnt do well in college, although he graduated in four years. He was not a great student. You know, was on the track team, his own swimming team. He plays the fraternity. My fraternity is a smart fraternity, but i dont know whats going on with them. But you know, he didnt do well in college, so. Yeah. And the reason why he didnt do well is because his life or his heart wasnt to becoming a dentist. He wanted to do Something Different. He didnt know what he wanted to do, but he wanted do Something Different. He thought maybe he wanted to be a teacher. He thought maybe he he he obviously thought was going to be an olympian. And he thought about being a pastor. But, you know, pastors dont make any money. All right. So his fathers like, you know, youre going to be a dentist. So when he graduated, he barely graduated four years of howard. His parents drove up to washington, d. C. , to pick him up and bring him to new orleans. They couldnt find a hotel, of course. And anyway, between. So they stopped at a religious camp in, Kings Mountain, North Carolina, which is my home state. And they spent night at the religious resort and again, hes an athlete, so he runs up Kings Mountain one morning to kind of clear his head and according to this story, he runs up the mountain and. He he passes out or something happens to him when he wakes up. And this is you know this these are kind of stories you read. You know, or or mythology or the bible where he wakes up and the whole world is different he sees everything different. He talks about how the leaves are greener and the sky is bluer and the grasses and he sees the cows. And if god if, if god made all of this, he made all these vivid colors and all these complex things and complex creatures. And theres a purpose for me. So he wakes up, he runs down the hill, and he at that particular moment says, im going to be a pastor so he tells his father and his father is upset. You go back to his fathers story and his father as much as the great relationship that he had with his father, his father refused to pay for him to go to graduate school to become a. So you go to hard for seminary in hartford, connecticut his father refuses to pay for that. So he has a fine job. Hes he works three jobs. Hes like he works at laundromat. Hes hes a janitor. He does all this work to pay for himself to go through college because father wouldnt pay for it. But his father wanted to be a dentist. So, you know, that was a very significant part of his life because. He not only defined his father, but he also kind of charted its course for like the first time. Its like im going to go the way that i want to go. Im going go the way that ive been led to go. And his father, you know, he didnt pay for his college, but, you know, they were fine. So it wasnt like, you know, im i hate you or anything. So it wasnt an estrangement. Yeah. At what point does cause do they reconnect does as well not that theyre disconnected but at what point does his father say you maybe i was wrong about this whole dentist you know he never did you know, his father. His father never, you know, this is a guy again, he was he became a congressman. He became the mayor. All this while his was alive. But his father always felt that he should have been a dentist. Now he has a younger brother, walter, who followed his father into dentistry and is still a i dont know how old walter i think its probably 87. But he still has a practice atlanta, so hes still practicing dentistry. So walter, you know, following in his fathers footsteps and made them for me his father but his father never forgave him for doing oh yeah thats fascinating part of the story. Yeah. But the Kings Mountain story you alluded to is sort of that heros quest slash superhero origins. Thats a call to adventure and to be so committed to it that hes going to just dedicate and figure out how to do it, how to pay his own way into this life. Its pretty remarkable. And he you know, he once again, he wasnt a great student at howard, but he goes to hartford and becomes a aplus student. You know, he gets all these opportunity to go and, you know, churches all over the south want him to come. And organizations or religious organizations in the north want him to come and work there. So he really goes there and thrives and this totally different kind of student. We were talking a little bit in the green room about his sense of faith, and thats word you introduce. But but i think its. Its one that i think about a lot, too, was as i was reading the book, not just his spiritual faith, but his very humanistic faith as. Well, and that seems to be informing work that hes doing right now. I mean, as a 90 year old man, he doesnt necessarily have to do anything he doesnt want to do. Yeah. And yet hes still trying to put good goodness into the world. Hes still trying to save the world through a different set of tools and a different set of resources. But it is sort of the culmination of all these connections and work hes done up until this point as well. So would you tell us a little bit about what his foundation does . Yeah. So were at an event a couple of weeks ago with the Harvard Black Alumni Association and one of the students asked, you know, at 90 years old that with all the stuff youve done, why . Why are you here . Why are you why arent you just your feet up at a beach . Just i think his feet are at a beach now. Right now. But he said because he still has work to do, you know, he still feels that theres work to be done to make this country and the world better place. And i think what the andrew young foundation, which is his foundation, is nonprofit and hes working on ways in to he wants to figure out a way to feed, you know, 6 billion people on earth and find the alternative sources of food, finding alternative sources of income, doing things with the mississippi. You know, he grew up in new orleans of on the mississippi river, trying to find different ways in which the river can be used to to to to people and sustain people. So with this foundation, hes kind of moved on to another phase of his life to kind of like, okay, im going to not necessarily sit back and relax, but, you know, use this foundation for good, use this foundation to heal people, the foundation to to get everything ive learned in all these worlds and, all these different lives, to put it all in, to kind of make the world better. So the kind all the everything that hes been given he wants to now give back. So is a Philanthropic Organization its a charitable. You know, hes going to work in africa. Hes done work in the middle east. Hes done work in the caribbean, and hes done work in atlanta, you know, just kind of like, you know, looking for ways in which to to share. You spend the money he has gotten or to spend the money that hes raised to kind of, you know, feed people. So, as you know, joseph williams, whos another great civil rights leader, he has hosea feed the hungry here. We had joseph feed the hungry, which every thanksgiving and christmas he would literally go out and feed hungry people in atlanta. You know, thanksgiving and christmas dinners. And andrew young says, you know, im doing the same thing. But no, you know not in a bad way. But you know, hes kind of the same. Hes feeding the hungry as well. But just thinking about different ways in which it can be done. Mm hmm. Yeah. So different of, you know, an actor that. Yeah, yeah. But both amazing models of leadership. Yeah, yeah. Put yourself in there and use the resources that have for the good others. Before we open this up to audience questions. So thats here like five minute warning gang. And remember, please do come up to the microphone over there to help us all out. Im really curious about how what, what would say would be the great of his life. You know, so often we read biographies or autobiographies because interested in fascinating people and he is certainly that but were also looking for ways to live a life and to live a life of purpose for 90 years is pretty remarkable. So know what what advice would give if he were here to give it to, do you think . Thats a great question. I mean, i think it would just be to kind of live your life and you know, ive he and i are on a on a kind of a book tour right now. And we you know, we run all over the country will continue to go all over the country talking about the book. But he has kind of taught me necessarily told me, but kind showed me through his words and actions about how i can be better and what i can do, how i can do things differently. But i that if you were to ask him that question would be just to kind of follow your lifes to follow what you to do. And also not to be afraid of of taking a risk, not to be afraid of listening to other people. Like you said, you know, he want to be a congressman, nor did he want to be the mayor of atlanta. He to be convinced of that, he had to take that risk. He had to take that challenge. So i think its like kind of following your heart but also be willing to take a challenge and be willing to to to sacrifice yourself, to be willing to fail. I him you know, i think ive asked him a couple of times on the tour has ever failed and he said, you know, i cant remember a time that i had failed. And this is a person who has done everything whos whos whos always took risk. And, you know, sure hes probably lost money in an investment or something or, you know, whatever. But you know, hes always been able to take risk and, do things and, you know, and if if it doesnt work out hes on to the next thing or if it does work after, you know, hes gotten bored with it, it move on to Something Else. I mean, this guy is one, you know. Yeah, i go to his house and he has like, you know, of course he has the olympic torch and all this kind stuff, but he also has him. Hes just like, you know him, hes all over all of his house, but hes just a sitting there, just say, oh, i wanted to tim miller for that or whatever. Right . But i mean, he has an amazing, diverse renaissance person that hes done everything. Its just like so amazing. Yeah. Yeah. He does seem to be what we would think of as, as a lifelong learner, too, a guy who keeps putting himself new positions where he doesnt necessarily know how to do it, but hes going to figure out how to do it, and hes going to surround himself with the people who will support him, who will teach him to. He also seems like someone who has been out mentors, which is perhaps why hes become that for you as yeah, and thats often the way that cycle works also. So i want to ask perhaps one more question before will happily take yours if anybody wants anybodys brave enough to approach the microphone. If not, ive got a couple more that i throw in for the good of the order here as but you mentioned being on tour with and im curious over course of working on the book putting this together in a relatively quick turnaround time, what from what ive gathered and then out and having public conversations and private conversations with him, is there anything that youve learned about him that just brand new information to you that is shocking or interesting . This is a great question. I think that the one the one thing that i was very shocked about, which i already mentioned was, the the whole Kings Mountain story, which i thought was just the most fascinating thing. But in terms of just kind of being on tour with him and knowing him and getting a hang out with him at the hall and just out. Yeah. Is that he has you know, hes taught me a lot, you know, and just kind of listen to his stories and kind of, you know, a lot of the stories know where hes going with them. I know exactly how hes going to phrase it, because ive been with him for so long. But listening to these stories and kind of understanding him and him teaching, me, theres two quick things ill mention, please he and i went to washington, d. C. And in we we fly to washington, d. C. , and were ready to go find the car and were there for like one day that were going to go and speak, come back the next day i take a suitcase with the suit like three pair of shoes, all this stuff and i said, you know, well, were to go meet the car. Im going to go get our bags from the baggage claim. And he says, im gonna have your bags and this is my bag. He pulls out a briefcase like, well, heres your clothes, you know, were speaking, were speaking tonight. Then we to get up and you know, he said, i have my underwear in here. I had my toothbrush in here. This is all i need. And that said so to me about how i was i had all this stuff to do, this one day event, and he had this little and that goes back to, you know marching from selma to montgomery. You know, when you were marching, all you needed was a bag and an apple and a sandwich. Thats you needed. And, you know, thats that that right there just guy who has you know he knew nelson mandela. He knows every president since Lyndon Johnson and he is still going around the country with a bag with a toothbrush in it, which is amazing. And that just says, you know, that kind of changes my priorities as well and the second story oh i almost forgot the time we had an event at the Carter Center and i had all this stuff i had all the stuff here in dallas. Yeah and i, you know, he said, why do you have all suffering now . Lets just talk. Lets just have a conversation. And he learned that when he was a pastor in the 1950s in North Carolina and georgia, he said that if youre going to read your your your, then the people arent going to trust you, then theyre not, you know, your congregation is not going to trust you. So it has to come from your mind. So he never reads from paper and ive been trying to do that, but its kind of hard. So, i mean, you know, every day hes kind of teaching me Different Things and hes not necessarily sit down and im going to teach you something, but hes telling me things that im kind of picking up and becoming better myself. So i just want to correct. Yeah. Of his hes sort of modeling things for you for us. Yes. Thats fascinating. Thats still the core of who he is. Exactly is to moments from his very young life that still inform who he is later. Yeah, yeah. I dont do exactly what do but i do something quite similar im director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, as i mentioned, and im a conroy protege, one of many, one of hundreds who perhaps sort took under his wing. The very way that youre describing and i give public lectures about, pat, in 2 hours. So, you know, at any given time, i probably 12 hours of conroy content just of on a loop in my head yeah none of which replaces actually getting to spend time with him getting to have the experiences that you are having with andy young. So you know, i envy you that its been its been a blessing, but those two figures actually overlap. You mentioned penn center earlier, so i want to mention this and perhaps this will be our closing question in absence of an audience question, dont be afraid. Microphone, you are right there. But penn is where the the turing exhibit from the book many lives of andrew young is headed. And for those of you who havent seen book yet, it is highly visual. So very excited to actually get to see the exhibit. But the reason its going to penn center, because andrew young was there, dr. Was there, julian bond was there, Jesse Jackson, all of these rights leaders were there in the 1960s because that was one of the few places in the country where blacks and, whites could safely gather together. And it was a haven. I think thats probably best word of activity during the Civil Rights Movement and at time, pat conroy was a High School Student before high school and his teacher, whos very progressive ally and advocate of a teacher, gene, understood the importance of that and wanted pat to to see it to experience it firsthand. So six year old pat conroy, andrew young at whatever age he would have been at that time and met dr. King on a street thats now named for dr. John, that all of those folks, it was transformative for him. But what was like for andrew young have you to him at all about his penn center experiences . I think i have. But all in all of his experience have been these like little pillars in terms of him, of filling out his life, you know, sinaga is a pillar that a lot of people dont about. You know, he was in selma, but, you know, being South Carolina, being around Martin Luther king, being around all these civil rights leaders who were his mentors, you know, all helped kind of create who he is now. So the penn center, the like i were going to move our museum from atlanta to the penn center. So thats the reason it meant so much to him in that experience. Meant so much to him thats perfect that we do have an audience question. Do we have time for a very quick question, too. Two questions. One is you were saying that many strong leaders come out of these historically black colleges and universities. Have any strong black leaders come out of the white universities. And second question is, id like to know what role andy young had in the Civil Rights Movement. What could he do that martin king couldnt do that made a major contribution to the success of movement . Okay. Well, in terms of and i just before i got here, i visited fisk university, the great university, the great hbcu here in nashville. But yeah, you barack obama came out of columbia, w. E. B. Dubois was the first black person to get a psc from Harvard University. I forgot mae jemison went. But yeah, after he went to fish, after he went office. Of course yeah yeah thats why i said well yes so historically black colleges as well as predominately colleges have been educating black for years. But i the historically black colleges because for close to 100 years thats the only place we could have gone to college. Thats why i went to undergraduate at a historically black college. So we cant underestimate how important these institutions are, which is why i went to west today and i thought it was important that if im going to be a national, even for a couple of hours that i visited. Your second question, more distinguished youngs role, the Civil Rights Movement. What did he do that the Martin Luther king couldnt do . Yeah, well, mean he carried if he carried on Martin Luther kings legacy in a different way. Like, as i mentioned, he was able to go into politics. He was able to run for mayor of atlanta, run for mayor of the Martin Luther kings birth city. Same thing with Jesse Jackson thing. But julian bond, all these who were proteges of Martin Luther king jr actually continue to carry his legacy in politics or philanthropy or civic duty. You know, john lewis, for example, john lewis was, another nashville student. John lewis went on to become a congressman for 33 years, you know, and john lewis talk specifically about fact that Martin Luther king jr. Brought him from nashville to atlanta on a bus because john lewis having trouble in school and invited him to atlanta. So in 1963, john lewis, the youngest person to speak at the march on washington. And ten years later, hes in congress. So these are kind of things that kind of that legacy that carries on. Rodney king got at the age of 39. So he lived a very relatively young life. But his legacy and the people that worked with him and followed him continues now until this day. And it continues through to the young. And as i mentioned, james orange was james orange. His daughter just passed away today. So thats kind of another pillar in that cohort, that whole king legacy that continues to go. Yeah and ending on that note on the on the note of legacy may be a good moment to conclude our conversation with with ernest. So everybody join me in thanking friends for joining us today. Yes. And once again weve been talking about the many lives of andrew, which ernie will now be signing on the plaza. Thank you all so much for joining us here at the southern festival of books. Thanks, henry. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, well done, sir. Thank you. Thats good the glass away. This way. Yeah, i think i drove by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Im sorry to close the so sorry. That and well have more of book tvs live coverage of the southern festival books in nashville in a moment. Senator tim scott talked about life and political career and his thoughts on americas future. His book is america a redemption. Heres a portion of his talk. This is a fundamental point. I just opened a New High School in bronx, district 12, in the bronx, where of the of all the students that started in ninth grade in 2015. Four years later, only 7 graduated from High School Ready for college now meaning that they started in ninth grade and they dropped out along the way or they actually did earn their high diploma but still couldnt math or reading without remediation. If they were to go to college. So that structure. So even that buy in it sounds from lots of different groups that reality still exists. How do we get more kids to be able to have that rung to get on the ladder . Success. I think we have to work a little harder at looking for the solutions that already work. We have examples around country of education options are available that are successful. Success academy is a great example. New york city where its a Charter School that gets basically 0. 50 on the dollar, but it produces results that are better than the average Public School in the state of new york. One of the beauties of i think she has over even moskowitz has over 40 schools now and theyre consistently in the top five in the state in reading, math and science. Whats more fascinating is the fact that 83 of the kids at her school are either africanamerican or hispanic with average Household Income of under 30,000 in new york city. 95 being free lunch. Single parent households. And they score above above the majority population. And in new york city, these kids are outperforming the other kids in the city on standardized tests. How do you do that . Well she created an environment thats conducive learning. Yes, theres a friend of mine who started a school in charleston, the Meeting Street academy, a guy, ben navarro, wanted to prove that kids in poor communities can learn just like everybody else. For about ten or 15 more than the average Public School student in charleston county. Hes able to get those kids within two years in the top 20 nationwide. So theres a model that works. We just need to follow that model. Theres another model, california. Theres some in philadelphia. The truth is that when we when we follow the model that works for the kids, it works out really well. So what is the rationale for the people who know that those models exist and yet continue fight to preserve the status quo. I dont know. Let me give a more indepth answer. I think theres this theory that in order to save them all, you have to wait until have a solution for them all. Yes, its as if the house is on fire instead of saving as many you can in the house is on fire. Youre going to wait until you can put the fire out and then go inside and figure out whos left. That to me, just seems ridiculous. But how it appears that we are treating education. The second thing id say is that currently Public Education seems to be more interested in adults than they are kids. Big labor unions and bureaucrats have a powerful impact on what the child is going to experience. Thats a problem. Yes. You know, again, ive run schools in new york and primarily due to the teachers union, theres a cap on even the ability to open schools. So in that same district where only 7 of kids. Yes. Primarily because of that force. Again, how do we mobilize more awareness . Attention, action. Its so central to your book, because you talk about how education was a central part of your movement upward. And yet these forces are so powerful. They are because embedded. Ive often said as a conservative, we should be the party of parents. The fact of the matter is that when i gave this statistics earlier, what it reinforced is, is it doesnt matter which side of the aisle youre on. The one thing, if there is a Silver Lining in the pandemic and its hard to see any Silver Lining in the pandemic the one thing is the learning loss. Being out of the classroom exposed the within the public system for all kids all kids so much so that parents reengage at a high level on a consistent basis and they demand participate and they demand collaboration and cooperation. That is good news for all of our kids. And the more we spend time, understand ending whats happened, the more we should our attention on making sure that the policies in place help us bridge the gap. Because of the pandemic and. We focus on what actually works around the country. Yeah, i mean, one of the things i love so much about, your philosophy, whether its in education or an opportunity zones, is youre looking for innovations that, break the mold that are actually focused on what will actually help people. So to talk about these zones as well, because thats almost a parallel School Choice and educational freedom, like how do we attract more these kinds of initiatives in, you know, that if you if you know me at all, the one thing i love is competition. I play play ball and high school a little bit in college ran track. I love competition. You run for office youre in a competition. So the truth is, the question is, what is the best environment to improve outcomes and reduce cost . Yes, in america we call that the free market system. It works in education to and it works in opportunity zones. I basically did was i designed a program that provided more incentive for those who have resources to look in areas that need the resources without gentrifying those areas. And because of the Capital Gains tax deferral and the incentives around it, we saw more investment go back into the poorest zip codes than. Weve seen in my lifetime. Watch the full program anytime at. Just search tim scott or a redemption. The finalists for the 2022 National Book awards were recently announced. The annual awards were established in 1950 to celebrate the best in american writing. Since 1989, theyve been overseen by the nonprofit National Book foundation. In the nonfiction category, this years finalists include Megan Orourke for the invisible kingdom. Rehema winning chronic illness imani perry for south to america a journey below the masondixon to understand the soul of a nation. David quammen breathless the scientific race defeat a deadly virus. Ingrid Rojas Contreras for the man who could move clouds a memoir. And robert samuels, tolu olaru nipa for his is george floyd. One mans life and the struggle for racial. The winners of this years will be announced in new york city on november 16th, and book tv will be covering the awards ceremony. And now more live coverage from the southern festival of books in nashville on book tv. Hello, everyone. Good. My name is kashif andrew graham. I am outreach librarian, religion and theology of vanderbilts divinity library. And im so excited to be today with hala allen, who is author insurrection. Hawa is attorney and author whose work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune los angeles review of books lathams quarterly and the baffler, amongst other publications, she lives and works in new york city. Now, as a side note, the southern festival of books remains completely free. And we want to keep it that way. So please visit us on the web at ww dot humanity tennessee dawg to donate or you can also donate via the festival of books app. So how is going to read for us and then well a conversation and well open it for an audience. Q a and when the q a starts, please the mic in the corner just get better audio. However, take it away. Thank you very much because so im going to read from third chapter of the book called a house divided, which largely talks about the insurrection act invocation during the civil war and leading up to the civil war, which is interspersed with my personal narrative from which im going to share this excerpt and the subtitle for. This portion is irrepressible conflict. I had much interest in history. The subject in and of itself was not the source of my disinclination. I was educated in a Public School district in Suffolk County island that was well resourced. For that reason, drew residents to purchase homes and qualifying neighborhoods, ensure their children could attend. One of the primary or secondary schools encompassed by the district. Im not ungrateful, but entire experience was an ordeal much of the history i remember studying was presented under the moniker of social studies. A catch all for certain fields of learning, including history and geography that. Unlike, say, math or english didnt neatly fit into any other discipline within the schools curricula as a proverbial only black kid. My class, i just. I dreaded social studies class in part because whenever the teacher would make mention of the word slave or slavery. Several of the kids would turn to glance or outright stare. Me i would sit there at my desk on the receiving end of these looks and awkwardly pretend i wasnt being forced on display or whatever we were discussing at that given moment was clearly causing the white kids to feel uncomfortable and. Their Immediate Response was to project that discomfort onto me. I have the vocabulary at the time for this silent interaction laced with malevolence, but i remember how i felt ashamed. I know what i felt ashamed about. Again as i then left the words to name the source my feelings. However, was being made clear with the uttering of the word or slavery and. The almost accusatory stares in my direction was that my present day being directly associated with enslavement, a badge of inferiority was mine and mine alone to carry whenever. Slavery was discussed in the classrooms. Not only could i count on the stairs, but also the teachers reassurance that. We, meaning all of us, present day beings, learning social studies at that very moment, should not judge those historical by our contemporary morals. I never felt included in that we are the bomb of historical, which seemed intended to soothe the potentially guilt, potentially guilty consciences of the white kids who managed to thereby distance themselves from the karma of any and ancestral enslavers, while pinning the burdens of slavery, the enslaved onto me historical relativism, but choice of their sense of innocence while their in my direction seemed to project some kind of guilt. Beyond the context in which i supposed to be learning history. The subject matter itself presented barriers to my early willingness to engage with it. My grade school with history consisted of names, dates, notable events and geographical that i was compelled to memorize textbooks and recite on test and which then, frankly would promptly evaporate from my mind. The textbook presentation of history as a simplified, sanitized list of chronological factoids, largely devoid of narrative, is, of course, intentional. The project of teaching history is from the project of imprinting with a sense of nationalistic identity and patriotic fidelity. And this, at its core, as paradoxical as it is guided by a single selfcontradictory intention to teach what happened in past without really teaching what happened in the past. It is mission that is ultimately impossible. What i remember learning about the civil, in short, was that it was a american war, fought to end slavery. It was long, bloody brothers against brothers, etc. Despite the barrage of names places and dates i was confronted with in my state compelled study of history, i came away with what amounts to slogans, the kind that infiltrate and remain lodged in ones memory long after the details of the product that was being sold have faded from recollection upon a closer reading while clear that the civil war did effectively slavery. It is also clear this goal did not drive the country to war in the first place. Yet i was taught more or less that northern brothers came to arms against their southern brothers because slavery was wrong. Well, i cant pretend to remember precise details. I was taught. I am certain that the lesson impressed upon me was the moral rectitude of white. Only years that i figure out that just because the civil war formally ended slavery did not mean, that it was fought in order to end slavery, as Frederick Douglass stated, quote, the south was fighting to take slavery out of the union and the north was fighting to keep slavery in the union and, quote, only years later, did i discover that the unions enlistment of soldiers in the war against the confederacy was considered by Union Military a Necessary Evil to the flagging morale and defection. White soldiers. As w. E. B. Dubois writes in black instruction in america, quote, freedom for the slave was the logical of a crazy attempt to wage war in the midst of 4 million black slaves and trying all the while sublimely to ignore the interests of those slaves and the outcome of the fighting. End quote. It was only years later that i found out the emancipation proclamation, in essence, a utilitarian move to induce yet more enslaved people to flee from their masters and join union union ranks. A governmental offer made to consummate civic transaction military service in exchange for freedom. In fact, lincolns to arm soldiers and formally emancipate slaves during the civil war was considered by confederate officials as a move to incite insurrection. Concurrent with historical erasure is the selective imparting effects, omitting whatever is disruptive to the sanitized, nationalistic portrayal of history, while including and highlighting whatever bolsters it. I am particularly stubborn about filtering and selectively ignoring anything that i can tell is being aggressively marketed to me. Although swan songs of freedom fighting Founding Fathers, i repeatedly came across in a variety of media were time and again deflected by my own selfprotective willful ignorance. I just did not want to know, though i was repeatedly being taught happened when whatever happened, who did what and to whom. What was was why . Why these things happening without this distinct perspective, without any narrative throughline. I was simply unable to care. This socalled history. Any reckoning with the why or, any unavoidable facts like the existence of slaves or slavery, or mollified by historical, and that useful yet illusory notion of progress overshadow a violent past with both the evidence, the promise of a bright future. None of these observations are new. W. E. B. Dubois himself in the last chapter of black reconstruction in america, writes that history is propaganda, lies agreed upon that are characterized by libel, innuendo and silence with respect to which evil must be forgotten, distorted and skimmed over. When dubois wrote black reconstruction, he was not merely recording history, but revising it, and he so in the face of so many pernicious theories or schools of thought, including that of archibald dunning of columbia university, who interpreted the reconstructed reconstruction period as a grand mistake. When northerners interfered with Southern Affairs using federal military as mortal blackmail while inept, the were elevated to political power. They were not equipped to wield. In fact, presented the paper that would become black reconstruction. At a 1909 meeting of the american historical, which dunning himself despite the papers gracious reception at the meeting. It did not influence contemporary scholarship reconstruction as, David Levering lewis noted in the introduction to a 1998 edition of black reconstruct, quote, african scholars were not silent, only unheard or dismissed the White Academy and quote, during the 20th century and beyond, historians have continued to challenge such renderings, connecting the lines between names, dates and names, places and dates, narratives that expose biases and dispel the spell. Persistent. So it is then that in my reading and, relearning of history, time has no and the true definition of history that is any history that is actually with learning is news. It remains the case that all is considered. News isnt inherently new, but only new to the one who has no knowledge of it. The conciliatory notes conciliar notion of progress notwithstanding. Current events often are not new, but merely reincarnated versions of history. Thank you very much. Wow. Well, firstly, i have to say, the whole thing of being in the classroom and you know, its a social studies segment or session where were talking about slavery and all the kids turn around and look at you. I i absolutely relate to that. All of a sudden, im like, i am all of a sudden the ambassador or, you know, for slavery. Like, why all looking at me, im learning about this, you know, just like, you know. So i got my really two that i wanted to talk about a moment early on in the book. When you describe the scene with your white boyfriend at the time. So barack obama has just been its 28 and in what i describe as sort of an afro pessimist fashion you can correct me on that. You sort of say white people going to be afraid now or are white people to be afraid now that a black person is in charge and you are a white boyfriend is very upset by that statement and slams the computer, your computer down. But im speaking the election in general. Do you think that with Barack Obamas white americans were seeking absolution and if so, do you think that perhaps that statement stoked that Barack Obamas election couldnt fix things and maybe that was what your boyfriend was afraid . Well, this is the interesting part of the book, and well, ill just ill just give a little preface. We understand what were talking about. So the book insurrection rebellion, civil rights and the paradoxical state of black citizenship focuses on the insurrection act 1807, which allows the president to dispatch federal troops and or federalize the National Guard of the given in order to suppress domestic unrest. So the book essentially about the various instances in the insurrection act was invoked and sort of toggles back and forth between these instances in history and my own personal narrative and, my own personal reflections. So in the context of that overall, the first chapter where youre picking this material from pretty much sets the scene by just looking at the legal landscape with respect to antebellum, south and we get these sort of categories of the enslaved and the white citizen and. Well, not, not quite yet the white citizens, but rather the the enslaved prior to, you know, the constitutional invention convention. I go a little bit, you know, further back in time in order to sort of set scene there and in that chapter i go back and forth between these various passages that discuss the sort of fear of slave insurrection and my personal experience of the election of barack obama. And without being explicit, it what im really trying to do is really consider whether or not these fears that were contending with in the present day are and are are basically the lingering emanations from what we as a country encounter during that time in terms of the fear of black uprising. Right. So so in that context its interesting that you asked me like what do i think people thinking and im always im not reticent to to say what i think people are thinking because throughout the throughout the book i am essentially speculating about the role that, emotions and, the sort of mode, that sort of sort of feeling based motivations that there might be behind what we see as sort of rational invocations of law. And, you know, the sort of revision of history as a sort of march toward progress that seems somehow, you know, sort of rather than very messy at the time. And something that, you know, is sort of a and isnt im talking colloquially, not necessarily historians, but of a rather than something as that is a sort of manifest of various, you know, difficult emotions. Right. So in thinking about fear, i did speculate as fear as being a a of underlying reason for anger that i experience that slamming down of the laptop in my or in the response to my admittedly remark, you know, which i just made in passing, really think about. But in sort of, you know, carefully picking out certain from my life that i thought could animate the various chapters, the book, i thought that would be a good one because it shows that perhaps as im speculating, right . The you know, despite, you know, this election of the first black president and all that, you know, celebrations in the street and whatnot, were still dealing with the sort of undercurrent of, you know, the the the sort of the unfunny, well, unexplored. Well well under explored and still present of, you know, tensions around this idea of, you know, White Supremacy versus a black supremacy. Right. And then doing to us what we did to them essentially. Right. Because the during the antebellum period, you know, the fear of slave wasnt necessarily about from what i read in any event, about the fear of, you know, black people in the United States and whether enslaved or not seeking, you know formal freedom and equality, but rather, the idea that there could be a flip the hierarchy and then, you know, there would be this sort of black power in charge that will then revenge for essentially what they had suffered. Right. So i so i do speculate about that and i speculate about how these you know, despite fact, they were Walking Around acting as if, you know, thats ancient history and that were living in the present. And none of these issues are really affecting our everyday. We are sort of inheritors of the the consequences of these Legal Definitions inherit as inheritors of this history. And you know were not should be purely, you know, just navigate our lives spontaneously in a grassroots manner where were sort of incorporate these sort of conditions, narratives and responses and into our daily perceptions of things, right. So, you know, i, i definitely would say i while i was speculating that this this the reaction that i encountered was sort of somehow related to this fear that i was looking at, you know, in the context that antebellum time and sort of seeing it pop up, you for a moment. Its like in a in a, you know, in a sort of, you know, way that was i was being sort of reprimanded. But you i ended up i ended that anecdote with asking with asking him, are you scared . Right. So it was a its its really i just gave myself the license to do what i think youre absolutely not supposed do as a historian because im not a historian, which is to of sort of pry into the and minds of people and say what think people were thinking without necessarily having any evidence of doing that. So there is a sort of meditative, speculative sort of inquiry into these sort of underlying motivation ones that do touch things like these sort of fear based emotions. For example, in that first chapter, right. And i think i mean, i think what you do, i think its skillful the way that personal history and history, which person your past, your personal history is history, but the way in which those things intersect, i think is is you do that with aplomb. And i would also say that, you know, historians who do not acknowledge i mean, theyre getting an object heavily but it is just not its not real. I mean you always have sort of a viewpoint and i think better to acknowledge that and write from that place right. And im glad you said that, because in an the legal history, you know, looking at these insurrection act invocations and my personal narrative, i was aware that what i was doing is sort of allowing the reader a peek behind the veil is like, who is writing this . Like, who is this person . Especially since i spent a lot of time critiquing this idea of narrative, right . And the idea that were not just, you know, history is not just about imparting facts, but its doing so in the context of a narrative which is implicit right and i sort of expose myself as, you know, perhaps a unreliable narrator. Its to the reader to determine that. But nonetheless, its like i present this and then i also present some some anecdotes about myself so that the reader can see where im coming from and perhaps do own analysis of whether or not the sort of larger portrait that im painting, you know, aligns with they consider true, considering how i have sort of sort of betrayed my own, you know preoccupations my own maybe weaknesses and reverence, for example. So yeah. And you youre essentially putting yourself forward to say you analyze me here i am, im laying all my cards down on the table. This is im this type of narrator right. And as youre you know, deciding if this is true or worthy of, you know, your trust, ive laid that out the table for you. And im also being explicit about the fact that im putting forth a narrative, also a theory. Right. So what i will say in terms of the insurrection act 1807, again, it allows the president to deploy federal troops or have to deputize the National Guard in order to suppress, you know, instances of domestic unrest. Fairly unusual to from the federal level domestically, because its typically the state governor who has the commander in chief of National Guard. And then they would engage in, you know, deployment of those troops as they saw fit. But when they were either overwhelmed or at the federal level, i think the executive that there were some violations that they were unable or unwilling to remedy in the state, then you can have an a sort of invocation of the insurrection act, whether unilaterally or at the request of the state governor. So what i saw largely was that there was this pattern with respect to the usage of this act, which really surprised me. It was used most recently to suppress the riots that occurred los angeles in 1992, but you might have first heard of the insurrection act if if you, you know, have at all when. George, george. Okay, thats a freudian slip. When donald trump threatened to invoke it in response to the george floyd uprising in 2020. Right. So people were very dismayed and they thought, this is you know, this is this is an overreach of federal military power. It actually is very much in line with a pattern that had i sort of uncovered looking at the insurrection act beforehand right and is this is in line with this pattern of using the act in order to either suppress socalled race riots . Again, you know the l. A. Riots in 92, the that occurred in baltimore, d. C. And chicago and Martin Luther king jr was the detroit riots of 67 and detroit riots of 43 going even further back in history, you can look at the bleeding, right. The contest over whether kansas would be a free state or a slave state. And you know, when the border ruffians from missouri where to wear infiltrating in order to disrupt you know the the process determining you know the status the state that the insurrection act was invoked in order to suppress that instability and then a military historian actually links the dispatch of federal troops to suppress the nat turner rebellion to the insurrection act as well. So theres this sort of race right, to sort of, you know, line of of of invocations. Then on the other hand, you do have these implications in order to enforce the civil rights of africanamericans. And, you know, the i think the ones that resonate most with, you know, people from, you know, just a know theyre theyre sort of general relationship to this history as the desegregation of Public Schools in mississippi, mississippi, alabama and arkansas as well as the of the the the insurrection act to the rights of civil rights protesters to march from selma to montgomery. So there are there are other instances, and they are they dont necessarily fall in line with this trend. For example there were there was an invocation and seattle and tacoma washing tend to suppress unrest that occurred when white Union Laborers were trying to force Chinese Railroad workers out of the city in order to protect their sort of dominion over that that of work. So but nonetheless, do see these eruptions, though they in all cases they dont include africanamerica. You do see these eruptions occurring either, you know, to sort of suppress these race riots or enforceable rights, largely with african African Americans or black people in america being the subject of this act. So thats overall context in which i intersperse my personal narrative of with these incidents and was a very an interesting guide through history as because given that ive just admitted i never liked studying history, but using the act as a sort of entryway into history was really illuminating because i saw this pattern not only of the use, you know, to suppress race riots or enforce civil rights, but also, you know, it sort of destabilized this of progress, which and back to your, you know, notion of afro pessimism, right . Yeah. I dont know if i myself were proclaimed afro pessimist, but dont i dont disclaim the title. Okay. You know, im fine with that. But, you know, this this idea of progress and you know, the you i like always think about you know these commercial maybe car commercials or you know insurance commercials with Martin Luther king jrs i have a dream, you know every every year and you know, this idea that weve come so far, not that necessarily. We havent but in in the context of this act, when i look at this history, i see that what we have taken to you to be progress seems to be concessions in an ongoing and bloody battle over the full incorporation of black americans into the United States citizenry. So i know theres a lot of you know, acknowledgment that, you know, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were passed after the civil war. But, for example, you know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that was passed right at the right after. George wallace is famous stand in the schoolhouse door. Right. And then we have Voting Rights act of 1965. That comes right on the heels of bloody sunday. Right. So we have these of insurrection act incidents that seem like flashpoints that that coincide with these major incidents and african American History and sort of show the sort of war like over you know, you know, black freedom and or what we like to package as progress. Yeah, thats solid. And then of course of the legislation comes forth and it doesnt have teeth. And so its largely symbolic. But since youre talking about as were talking about insurrection, i wanted to talk a little about language. So chronicling the shift in language from black to crime or black person to underserved person, i forget exactly which example specific example you use, but say you offer this phrase, which i think is succinct matano me aids and abets myth solid. So im about how this is true in the way that in terms of the terms insurrection, protest and how those are employed. Yes, thats thats my main preoccupation. Im very glad you asked me that, because im very attuned to how language on the one hand, obviously think we can do. We tend to think of it as as acting in a passive, something that is purely descriptive, something that, you know, basically details a verbally, you know, as an communicate some sort of events that occurred in the world. Right. But theres a way also in which the language actually creates events. Its a its a its a productive. Instrument. Right. So that you use language, you know, youre it can be used in an active way. You sort of create or maybe even distort the ones perspective on the given that youre describing. Right. And ways, you know, this doesnt always have to be malicious, not necessarily malicious intent, but, you know, were all coming from our own perspectives, our own biases. So of course, the way that we describe the world is going to say as much about us as it does about what were describing right. So when you come to insurrection right. So this is the insurrection act. Passed in 1807. There is no definition of insurrection in the act, if it were passed, you know, in 1987, you would probably verbose with all these different definitions on these qualifications and maybe they would say insurrection when example of more people are doing such and such when theyre armed or whatever it is, i dont know. They might have come up with a Legal Definition. So there, there is no Legal Definition in the of an insurrection. So i do make this case that it was that the insurrection defined in practice and it gives us this very interesting through line where. We see, you know, this sort of the sort of warlike contest over incorporating black people into the citizenry of the United States. But colloquially, right. These terms are also used. Its not just that we have these legal interpretive interpretations or legal pronouncements, but we have these what i would call a culture war, right. Where the discourse this is like this sort of battle, like terrain over what are we going to name certain events. And weve seen that for a long time in the context of you know black uprisings like do you call them riots do you call them rebellions right. When you call them riots, what youre is sort of imputing a sense of youre imputing i guess blame or culpability on the rioter. Right. Because youre youre its so its that is the picture that comes to mind when you hear right. Like the sort of wanton destruction of property and you know, the, like a sort of loose cannon running the streets, just, you know, committing arson, destroying things. Right. When you hear the word rebellion, then you start to think, well this person is not just acting, you know, just you know, spontaneously and with some sort of malice in their heart responding to some other sort of injustice that theyre rising up against. Right. So weve already had that on that context of black rebellion. Now, fast forward the january six. Its you know, its like is this was this an insurrection or . Was this a protest that got out of hand . Maybe best it was a riot, you know. So were having these these contests, again, the nature of what we should call these these incidents and in a way, i think its very clear how the use of a particular word is, not merely descriptive in that case, but it does is it creates a perception in the mind of the public, which then creates a sort of, i guess, kind of prepares the public for, what, a later legal pronouncement will be or what a legal interpretation will be of that event. Right. So i thats why we were seeing the ferocity over what to call, you know, for example january six, right . Because you call it if its a protest that got of hand and you then maybe what comes to mind as protesters generally have First Amendment rights and that should be protected if it gets a little bit out of hand. And, you know, should we really, you know, bringing down the, you know, the gavel, these people then when you say insurrection, you start to think about, oh, this they were trying to trying to violently overthrow the and this is like a massive crime threat to democracy, right and then the context in which you understand the event shifts and that prepare cars the terrain for then the judge to come in and then decide one way or the other how to interpret these events. Right. Yeah. And in, in the book you take issue with the term peaceful protests. Why is that . Thats i mean, i have that sort of taught to me as right way. Yes. Yes do you take issue with that . Well, i dont have a problem with peaceful protests in and of themselves. Its the terminology that i have that it did great me because. Theres this idea that a protester when you qualify a protest you have to qualify it when you use the word protest qualify it by peaceful in it almost it implies that a protest, you know, in and of itself might be violent unless unless you attach it attached to this peaceful the good kind where yeah. The good kind of protest. So theres that. But also it to me it just grates because sort of speaks to this idea of sort of language edge war that were engaged in where we have to, to sort of insist that a particular event be characterized in a certain in order to fend off, you know, certain kinds of interpretive issues. I would then leads us to legal action. Do you see what im saying . Absolutely. So i dont see term peaceful protest as being benign. The protest itself might be the peaceful and going to be benign, but usage of that term is, one, which is trying to characterize the in a particular way for a, you know, basically i and i as a, you know, coming from a legal background, i basically see it as characterizing it in that way in order to then frame event in such a way that it requires protection, right. And this sort of, you know, in the same vein as, say, the civil rights protesters marching from selma to montgomery. Like thats the insurrection act was invoked in order to protect the First Amendment rights to march peacefully. Right. But when we had a donald trump threaten to invoke the insurrection in response to the black lives matter protests nationally, the response to his threat was like, no, no, no, these are peaceful protesters. Right . So that that terminology was used at an event to try to shield them from that action and in a way, recharacterize them and perhaps in the same way as the civil rights. And im not saying that this is im not quibbling with the intent. Im quibbling the fact that this even has to be done and the fact that we have these polarized perceptions of the state of the same events, and then were constantly engaging in these battles and all of it to determine were going to describe them in order to sort of shape, you know, the cultural perception and manage, you know, sort of legal action and state action and police and military action. Right. In this context. Right. So one thing i will say about the black lives matter, the threatened invocation of the insurrection act by donald trump, response to the black lives matter protests is that its a perfect of how insurrection, in a sense is in the eye of the beholder, because he could very well have this, you know, looked at all the the reports well, they many of them came out afterwards. But if he had been in a different mindset he could have seen the protesters who were coming under fire. But the rubber bullets and tear gas, you know, and you know, all this Police Brutality, there are at least a thousand reports i think i saw on one. You know, later investigation just getting sense of exactly like where the violence was prompted, who was prompting the violence. So he could very well have responded in the way that Lyndon Johnson did and said were going to invoke the insurrection act to protect black lives matter protesters right to peacefully protest, right. So it depends on how the the person who has the power to sort of invoke these this legislation and looks at it. And thats where we to something that you would we used to call critical theory. Yeah i dont i dont know anymore who knows i mean been like yeah i went out. Exactly. I come from a time when Critical Race Theory was about, you know, seeing how laws that are, you know, facially could be applied differently depending on the sort of racial characteristics the people to whom its applied right. I dont i still dont understand. The new Critical Race Theory is, although i understand that its being argued about at School Boards and and whatnot, but that said, i think this act is a sort of really interesting test case to see how people perceive themselves on one side or the other of this sort of notion of the potential insurrectionist or the violent person. Yeah. And especially i think because a lot of folks, this is the first time like in, in when donald trump suggested that he would use this act. This was the first time people i think a lot of people had heard of it, of course. And they have that association and and are not necessarily aware the ways in which it was used too. Exactly. Africanamerican protesters. And so thats its interesting. Its going to be interesting, i think, to see how people relationship to that the act change is over time, time. And i think and thats and i think what were dealing with right now is the the culture war aspect. Right because were were waiting to see how could be potentially interpreted in the future and the fact that the term insurrection was applied to the you know, the january six ralliers. Right. Sort of seems to be setting a sort of narrative mood or a narrative tone that is somewhat foreboding. Right. And so its in a way, its like foreshadowing, right . And its sort of like sort of prepares the public perhaps you that sort of invocation being used in that context. And what i will say, i mean, if just to be clear about the historical. In the 1870s, Ulysses Ulysses s grant did invoke the insurrection act in response to ku klux violence in South Carolina and throughout the 1870s, hed something called the enforcement acts with a language is very, very close to the insurrection act in terms of the right for the authorization of the president to use to dispatch federal troops. And you call forth the militia to, you know, the law or suppress domestic unrest purely in the context of enforcing 14th and 15th amendments, you know, the sort of fledgling of freedoms of the of the newfound freedmen and women, as well as suppressing the kkk. I think one of those acts, one of the enforcement acts of the 1871, is called the ku klan act for that very reason. Right. So there are this is not a completely a completely unprecedented narrative shift, but even in the context of what calling, you know, the january 16th correction. I mentioned sort of at the coda of my book because all of this was happening while i was trying to finish and it was just very interesting that like all the themes i was talking about were coming out, you know, in the current as i was finishing. But nonetheless, you know, that what you could well interpret the action to interfere the certification of the election as a way to suppress you know black vote right because a lot those mail in ballots were at least interpreted or associated with black voters. So i dont know. I mean, its in a way its its a lose its a lose association. Its nonetheless a pattern that seems to be reasserting itself over and over. And i think for me, anyway, this was a very useful exercise to reexamine in the context of creating a sort of larger tapestry where i can fit these facts into it and they just dont seem random, but like i can now see, okay there is there seems to be a pattern there seems to be some sort of cycles that we continue to through. There seem to be, you different characters sort of enacting like the same kind of, you know, sort of actions or had it seemed to seem to have same kind of underlying preoccupations and motivations despite the, you know, the linear progression time and the fact that we are, you know, the now and not in the past, right. Was they making progress . Yes, exactly. Okay. Were going to take questions just a moment. So get those ready. But i had an aha moment when. I was reading. I want to talk for a minute about as a model defendants. Hmm that is. Wow. And you quote Toni Morrison here. You know there will always be one more thing right and so the model defending, it seems to me, assumes that will eventually encounter the law or death by police. And so my concern is, if youre living as a model defendant, i think youre describing this as sort of like a tax that we, you know, are burdened by. But if youre living as a model defendant, who is it for . As its not really for you . Because if you were to die, i mean, look, is it for you know, is it for that your family that will be left behind . I mean im really about that. Okay. Thats an interesting point. So the model i talk toward the end of the book about this concept of, you know, being a black citizen in america is its like being a model defendant. And thats a take on the of the model plaintiff in where you had the naacp and other civil Rights Groups that would carefully choose black plaintiffs for you know to cases because they didnt want them to have any blemish or stain in their personal history that could then affect the merits of the civil cases that are bringing forth. So then, you know, we we know about claudette colvin, who . Rosa parks. Right. But then think she you know, she had an abortion or she had a child as a teenager. There was something in her past that would have made her sort of put her more under scrutiny and perhaps then therefore affect the of the case. So then rosa parks was you know, the became the sort of primary sort of icon or model in that context. So i, i thinking about that. I said, well, perhaps living as a black person, United States is like living as a model defendant because youre on the defense essentially. Right. And but, you know, none that youre youre sort of on the defense despite and perhaps even having a valid or a valid case that youve injured. Right. Or that you are have been subject, you know, to some kind of mistreatment. Right. So this was i discussed this in the context thinking of Trayvon Martin or, thinking about Michael Brown and as those sort of new a new were sort of that spate of cases of black Police Brutality against black young black men where, despite the fact that both of these young men were shot and killed, you know, in dubious at best dubious circumstances. But, you know, what seem to be increasing the library closes. 20 minutes okay rather than three or four for a library card, just make your to the service desk from the first one where we still have more to talk about. Yes. Or are they where they seem to be, where they seem to be targeted. One case by the selfappointed neighborhood watchman, george zimmerman, and the other case by the local police. So they, in effect, were victims in the classical sense of the word. They were killed. Right then. The the the narrative, you know, shifted to sort of discuss their personal character or whether, you know, Trayvon Martins hoodie Michael Brown was no angel, according to, you know, the New York Times, etc. So theres this idea that you they had it coming in some way and there was this you know, so there was again, narrative war between, you know, one side sort of sort of painting them as, you know, sort of prospective criminals or its sort of associated with criminality. And another side to redeem them by saying, no, they they were young kids or Trayvon Martin had skittles. Right. Were constantly engaged in this sort of battle of language to sort of reconstitute events, you know, in preparation for, you know, the civil or the civil trial that will ensue. Right. So i did talk them as model defendants. And i said, you know, could sort of extrapolate from that to own experience and feel like when you say, you know, what are you defending yourself against . I would say just in the act of acting, you know, going your business in everyday society, theres a way perhaps, you know, but i would say i was engaging with you as as a black person. I may try to present myself sort in a fashion that will not invite you scrutiny. Right . Right. Of course, its sort of like that twice as good thing. Like theres theres a long history of this as a not just, you know, this is not just it just happened to me, right. This theres a theres this ongoing engagement with this, like trying to present yourself in a way that you would be impervious to any kind of attack or or even criticize. Right. And its its its unhealthy. Yeah. Yeah, i agree. Agreed. Okay. We have time for probably two brief questions. Does anyone have a question . You do. Please proceed. To the mic in the corner. Any burning questions. Oh, okay. Yes, please go right ahead. I am tracy. Thank you for being here. I just a practical about why you took on the project of writing a book and writing this book specifically at this point your life. Well basically so theres sort of background to all of because i didnt just you know i didnt kind of decide write about this this is a very intricate thing to decide to write about. But what really was that . I was just curious at the time when Hurricane Katrina was occurring, i was curious why. There had been such a delay in the federal response, and thats when i uncovered the insurrection because was, as it turned out, although the governor of louisiana had asked George W Bush, then president , to dispatch nfl all military, you know, assistants or and all federal assistance, you know, including the through the stafford act, which is, you know, invoked to allow for federal in the event of a manmade or Natural Disaster and in which the troops dispatched, wouldnt have the authority to sort of arrest anyone or search or seize evidence, that kind of thing, the way they would under the insurrection act in any they would be there just to sort of assist local Law Enforcement and sort of be acting a passive sort manner under the direction of the governor. So governor blanco did make that request in a timely fashion. But George W Bush didnt want to send any federal through this draft stafford act. He wanted to send them through the insurrection because there had been all these reports of violence. I remember that in the superdome, theyre saying theres you know, there are people know, being attacked or even murdered. And there talks about, you know, rape and then rooftop sniping, saying rooftop snipers. And a lot of these reports, they just its just like that. Its almost like the fog of like the fog of Natural Disaster. There are these fears that people are just going to, you know, become this sort of hobbesian kind of. Yes. The looting, the fear of the looting. Its like the fear bubbles up again in contexts. I do talk about that in my book. So that sort of overtook the actual facts on the ground and it created this sort of exaggerate bubble of rumor to which George W Bush said he was responding when he wanted to use the insurrection act. However, the governor did not want him to use the insurrection because she wanted to maintain control over the all the military response on the ground. And in fact, i dont think she necessarily it seemed like she didnt a too much of a care about the safety of her constituents because in her public remarks, she didnt mention Borrowing National troops from neighboring states and, saying that they had, you know, these, you know, semiauto, automatic rifles that were locked and loaded and they were ready to shoot to kill if meanwhile, this is the context in which people stranded in a and a flood and a flood in major city. So i thats when i discovered the act and thats when i was curious what else has this been used . And then i saw the history and then i wrote a legal article about it and then started writing a little bit more mainstream articles about it, which caught the eye of my editor at norton. And then we discussed how to sort of present this in a way that would be more palatable to, you know, for mainstream audience. And thats where the interweave and a personal narrative came in. So that kind of came in as a last stage of the as a phase of this research. But it was very interesting to see how, you know, despite the fact that that was a Natural Disaster we still were dealing with the same themes over and over again where, you know, you have these disruptions and then these are the same age old fears rise up to the surface and they distort how people perceive, the events on the ground or, you know and create and the which then create a state legal response you know so these so so these you know invoke invocations legislation and interpretations law. These are not as rational as we would them to be or we would like to believe them to be in all cases. And this is certainly. You know, this book pretty much touches on that know throughout these various instances. All right. Well you so much thats all the time that we have how allen everybody thank you if you wish to purchase insurrection well be at the tent in just a few and enjoy the rest of the festival. I hope you enjoyed weekend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you much. That was great. Great, great. Yes, im very very. We were experiencing some technical difficulties with. If you missed any of our coverage of the southern festival of books and can watch it online at book tv dot org. Just click on the fairs and festivals tab near the top of the page. Tonight on book tv Author Interview program. Afterwards, mark burgin of Bloomberg News at the creation and growth of youtube and how its changed our society. Hes interviewed by politico tech policy reporter rebecca kern. His book is like comment subscribe inside youtubes rise to world domination. Heres a portion of the interview. The other constituency is the viewer. And i think you can from my reporting shows you can you can clearly make the argument that you know what youtube has done viewers is this amazing mass of entertainment free entertainment information that never existed two decades before. And kind of take for take advantage of now, but also theres not a lot of transparency for as a viewer. And ill give it like one one interesting example. So the past few years as youtube has responded to a lot of criticism, theyve instituted this policy called what call borderline videos. And so these are videos that dont break their rules about hate speech or harassment, graphic violence and supporting kind of extremist positions. But they go right to the line of them. And this is a really arbitrary line. And what has done is a pretty powerful tool, which is, okay, were just not going to put this videos on our recommendation engine. So the traffic on once theyre removed from the youtube recommendation system, it really plummets because that is a majority of views on videos as people being footage, you know just kind of autoplay, you know, one video that jumps to the next or that panel of videos on the screen. If youre at a desktop computer as a viewer, i have no idea that this video in front of me has been deemed borderline. I have no idea. Video, you know, is is violating some rules are in questionable territory. And, you know, that of the creators at the same time dont necessarily have that indication either and that sort of that of the reason many one of many reasons why the creators feel shortchanged especially compared to traditional media which is also on youtube. Right. And that all kind of came to a you talk about in the book and 2017 with the ad pocalypse you call it and just that was just talking about the tensions with some violent content being promoted on the platform by certain creators that being tied to advertise who who do not want to obviously associated with that content other of videos that were also viewed as offensive ads were still running on so. Could you kind of talk about maybe what led that and what there was some pretty dramatic changes that happened after after that time period . Yeah, i think there there are a couple of things going on. One is sort of wonky business, right . Like google is a Digital Advertising company. Like it makes its majority of money putting ads in front of your search results and then putting across the web either on website or on youtube videos. This has been Business Model that has fundamentally reshaped how marketing works and, you know, it kind of took this what traditionally was like a handshake agreement on madison avenue and its you know, im a im a company and i want my ad to run on this tv station in this show or on this billboard ad. Right. What youtube did. But google was it this upended that and it said like we we will serve out your ad to where it will reach the best consumer. What that did was and then they will do it in an automated so they build this fantastically complex system equivalent to sort of Financial Markets that it have all these exchanges markets and regulate basically a lot of software to determine when to serve you an ad that youre most likely to click on. So what happened in 2017 was you know, reporters had found that someone a major household brand names and even nonprofits were sponsoring terrorist videos neonazis the kind of inappropriate material if you sat down you know chief marketing officer and said youre spending money on this, they clearly would not want to continue. So and they didnt want their names in the headlines associated with that and this was you know it was a relatively percentage of the budget. But it does demonstrate added how this this model had been built and built so quickly and wasnt prepared to deal with that kind of avalanche of advertisers exiting. Right. And then after that, i mean, they did end up having to change some of their their business and Digital Advertising modeling and also led to some major of of changes in how they moderate. I think as well. Theres this was also i guess the second point was this was the beginning early in the Trump Presidency in the era and you had, you know, major advertisers that were much more cautious and id say even to say like did not want go anywhere near remotely political issues and topics. And then you have youtube and that also wanted to steer clear of of anything kind of remotely political they were the beginnings of this accusation that the company a bias against conservatives in the us so. Their response was was pretty i would say was pretty severe like the number of changes they made and now versus youtube in 17 looks profoundly different and they put in effectively like safeguards and systems to make sure that their advertising business would continue to operate it. And and on some level, that has worked very well like that. The they the earliest numbers we have for youtubes financials from the company is that in 2017, they made billion dollars. Last year they made close to 29 billion. And advertising, its been Phenomenal Growth and at least on one metric, they have, you know, satisfied advertisers. Theres certainly questions about whether or not theyve satisfied regulators or concerned from parents who said, you know, you name it watch this program in its entirety tonight at ten eastern. Weekends on cspan. Two are an intellectual feast. Every saturday, American History tv documents americas story and on sundays, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction and authors funding for cspan to come from these television and more, including michael and. How its not going to end. Actually actually, medco, along with these companies, supports cspan as a public service. In the run up to 2022 midterm elections, many politicians, journalists and public figures are out with new books about lives, their work and the of america. Heres a look. Some of those books in her book about donald trump. Confidence man, New York Times political reporter Maggie Haberman includes material from three sit down interviews with the former president in america. A redemption story. Republican senator scott of South Carolina discusses formative years and tells the story of americans that hes met whove overcome and contributed to our national in the myth of american inequality. Former texas senator phil gramm suggests the problem of economic inequality is overstated and that the policy debate around the issue is biased. Poor Government Data journalists and husband and wife peter baker and Susan Glasser look back former president trumps time in the white house in their new book titled the divider. Former Trump Campaign chair. Paul manafort, who was found guilty of bank tax fraud and later pardoned by then. Trump argues in his book political prisoner, that the charges him were politically motivated. Missouri democratic congresswoman bushs memoir, the forerunner, looks at her journey from registered nurse to representative in congress. Donald trumps son in law, jared kushner, released a memoir of his time as a senior house adviser in breaking history. And a former Trump Administration u. N. Ambassador, nikki haley, takes a look at the lessons it can be learned from. Women leaders in if you want something. And just after the 2022 election, two other high profile political books are set to be released in so help god. Former Vice President mike pence examines his faith and journey to vice presidency. And in the light we carry. Former First Lady Michelle Obama follows up her bestselling memoir, becoming by advice on how to overcome uncertain anti. Those are just some of the political books that are being published this fall. You can look forward to book tv covering these books in the near future. If youre enjoying book tv, then sign up for our newsletter using the qr on the screen to receive the schedule of upcoming programs. Author discussions, festivals and more. Booktv. Every sunday on cspan two or any time online at book tv dawg television for, serious readers. Im excited about tonights speaker and. I wanted to remind you a different time in life there used to be, as most of you all remember, a sort of a trump card ace, an ace, if you will, that any kid on the playground could pull when tyranny was afoot, when somebody was criticizing their behavior, what they were saying. Its a free country. Kids used to declare, you remember that its a free country thing. Its a free country. We were part of a collective civil agreement. We all understood that we believe it. We knew so an abrupt loss or a taking or a surrendering of our depending on your perspective would have sounded absolutely. But so did things that we have encountered in are still encountering not able to buy soup at mom and pop store down the street a local retailer but having to go to a Big Box Store being ticketed for in a private pond a mask that was designed as a surgical shield for a splash shield, deciding if which experimental drugs you would take into your body or that the department of Homeland Security may consider you a terrorist for not agreeing with the government narrative, which could so discord undermine public trust in u. S. Government, undermine or excuse me, or undermine public trust in us institutions. You say things that undermine trust in government institutions. Is that incredible irony . I mean, thats thats blows my mind. So could there actually be Serious Campaign by a small group of powerful people to ensure that you own nothing or eat insects and have functional privacy . Is there really a plan