Every saturday American History tv documents americas stories and on nday tv brings you the latest innonfiction books and authors. Funding comes from these Television Companies and more including wow. The world has changed. Today a fast reliable Internet Connection is something no one can live without so wow is there for ourstomers value and choice now more than ever it all starts with great internet. While supports cspan2 as a public service. The moderator for reshaping Public Discourse is doctor robert luckett, professor of history at Jackson State University and director of the Margaret Walker center. His books include a collection of essays entitled redefining liberal Arts Education in the 21stcentury and Josie Patterson at the white south dilemma, evolving black advancement. I serve on the board, the book board festival along with robbie. Robbie, take it away. So glad to see such a wonderful audience and its my pleasure to introduce our esteemed panelists today. I will start with doctor eddie glaude. Eddie glaude is a James S Mcdonnell testing with University Professor and chair of the department of africanamerican studies at princeton university, s former president of the Largest Organization of scholars and religion in the world. Hes the author of several important books including his most recent work we are here to talk about today. James baldwins america and its urgent lessons for our own time. He is a columnist for New York Times magazine and a regular msnbc contributor as well as he makes frequent the suppress n on sundays. The hills from all corners of mississippi and is a graduate. Of the mississippi holders. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta Georgia and we are glad to welcome you home. Imani perry is hughes rogers professor of africanamerican studies at princeton university. A prolific author, i dont know you time to find time to write the books you write in the time theycome out. Works including looking for lorraine, bree a letter to my sons. May worry we forever stand, a history of the black National Anthem and south to america, a journey below the masondixon line to understand the soul of the nation. He is a native of birmingham alabama. Doctor parry, i want to welcome you back to mississippi book festival for the First Time Since 2018. I couldnt help but notice in your book you mentioned when you were here you were a little coffee with the book festival because our claim to Margaret Walker being a mississippian. She absolutely was born in that county, should it did go to jackson for 49 years. James kirchick has written about human rights, politics, a columnist for outlook magazine, writer at large for a allmale and nonresident senior fellow at the atlantic council, author of several books including the end of europe, the coming dark agency for cities, the Hidden History of washington. His work has appeared in the New York Times, washington post, wall street journal, atlantic and new york review of books. Hes a graduate of yale with degrees in Political Science and lives in washington dc today and jamie, youre up here with three southerners on this title but we would be happy to welcome you in but also we have three yalies on thispanel appear. For my yale folks and doctor parry also house a i noticed you referenced the late great Robert Harris thompson in your book. I took his class and we took lessons in cabrera and studied the beautiful graffiti on new york city subway trains and everything else. What an amazing man. But were here to talk about their books, welcome everyone to reshaping Public Discourse. As mentioned i want to thank our friends at the Humanity Council and center for the study of culture at the university of mississippi for sponsoring this panel. You were told by your Trustee Program at our panelists use the written word to explore the negative impact of the First Amendment right to free speech can have on specific groups and the potential for civic discourse. I will say i did not have anything to do with writing that description. And im not entirely sure what was intended by the organizers by the whole read ahead shaving discourse much less what some of the negative impact of free speech. I do know that the good folks who organize the book festival and this panel in particular were wellintentioned. I do want to avoid trying to be a little bit too didactic here for the admonition of my good friend, colleague and lady of the city of jackson when i talked to her about this panel she warned me against that so what i want to do is talk about your work and what youve written ttin these beautiful books which differ dramatically in terms of style and subject but i think carry on through line that may help us in a roundabout way do what the organizers of this panel we might accomplish because most of all im just interested in the books and i hope as we go along each of you will feel comfortable enough to jump me in at any point but doctor parry i thought i would start with you and your really amazing book. There is a real lyricism to it that resonates with me, honestly in a similar way doctor glaude, you talked about studying the craft of writing but again it feels like to me they are part of really an incredible literary tradition in the American South especially in mississippi with writers that you pay all laws to like and moody and Margaret Walker and on a note here to that you say you have a special fondness for our capital city of jackson but the south is of course the focus of your book. Theres i think a beautiful and even kind of treacherous navigation here as you explore place and language and family and labor and food and gender and sexuality and you guide us through this maze as you literally and metaphorically traverse the south and ideas of the south south which you contextualize as central to the American Experience in central to a Global Experience really you assert there are south plural , your deep south bias and that the Southern Region of the United States is both shakes the world and then go buy it. Can you talk about this in the south . Thank you for such a lovely introduction. Ill start, heres an event and its the heart this speaks to what i was trying to do. Theres some sort of political bad news, you go on social media you see a litany of people saying why cant they just stay, lets throw away this out, lets just forget that and it is a repetition of this account of the south that the south is a place that is backwards. That is the other. Its shameful. So the part of me that began the book is a refusal of that obviously. But to understand what people are doing in that moment, the south is expected to carry the nation s dirty water because it was the site. The site of the creation of the country as such. And so we tell a national anthology, if you want to tell nationalized mythology then you cant tell the story at the beginning. I went to school in massachusetts. I thought Plymouth Rock was the beginning. And thats not just 1619 but not roanoke and we start before going back 100 years earlier than 1619 and 1608, talking about european encounters. This imagination that were going to come to this place and each find a fountain of youth of extraordinary wealth and were going to recapture this abundance and do something with it, and be willing to destroy communities and lies and decrying people down into near nothing in the search and its relation. And to this desire, the imagination to the agreed that thats an origin story. So dpart of, the book is an effort to correct the missed casting of the origin story and address the desire to push the south out of the National Narrative precisely because it actually requires you to tell a portion of the story which is imminent which includes this indigenous and includes slavery although it was anational institution. So for me, the way to tell that story accurately in a way that is not just to make people think or allow it to resonate was not simply okay, were going to go to the Historic Sites and tell a linear story. I wanted readers to feel it when their feet as i walked through the landscapes and encountered the residence between human beings, the idiosyncrasies. The desire for sugar, sweet things to soften theblows of life. Thats what motivates us. So the structure is actually about revelation, intimacy and the way that every where you stand there are layers and layers of stories and more than that, history. s in many ways your book explores this narrative and this need to kind of recontextualize e the narrative. I read an interview where you quoted baldwins the white mans guilt and you said its to history that we all are frames of reference, identities and aspirationsand its with great pain one begins to realize this. Its in great terror one begins to assess and place where one of his and form ones point of view and you tell us in your own book the american idea is indeed itin trouble and it should be. We told ourselves a story that secures our virtue and protects us from our biases. We have to look back and tell a different story without the cross of missed in legend about how we arrived at this moment in our countrys history. Whats the story we should be telling and how do we reimagine this is . D first of all thank you for the wonderful introduction, its a pleasure to be on this panel even though jackson is far north. I remember telling professor perry i was Walking Around and its so big. In some ways its an echo of what professor perry said and thats that stories should involve a kind of serious encounter with what weve done that is has in fact shaped to we are. And so the story of the mpnation is one not just simply of you know, articulating the grand principles of democracy. But its the story of violence. Of cruelty. Its a story in which a certain idea of whiteness has threatened to choke the life out of those veryprinciples that have been so precious. And so america is not unique in other nations in telling itself an idealized story. Thats what nations do, thats what nationalism is but i think part of what baldwin saw at least as i read in this, the potential uniqueness of this place is we offer an opportunity to imagine the country in a way that isnt beholden to the myth of other nation states. That we could actually be it. Part of what ive tried to do is confront who we are, we have to do our first works over and confront the choices weve made that have set us on this particular path as opposed to another and it makes sense in those moments where we grappling with who hewe are and our history, moments where it seems as if we are on the cost of being differently, that the question of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are suddenly come to before. So theres a reason, i see a connection, a relationship between the january 6 insurrection and the critique of critical race theory. I see a connection between the rise of trumpism and the wholesale resistance to attempt to take down confederate monuments through the south. There is a sense in this moment that the stories we tell ourselves most confirm our innocence. And so part of what i tried to do is again to grapple with through this thongoing conversation with baldwin who was a resource, this queer black man who dared to say what he said at the timet he said it , what will it require of us to finally grow the hell up . You know, so i used this quick analogy. You have that uncle in the family that refuses to dress like his age. Im going to date myself, with gauchos on. I just dated myself. Those shorts that come right belowour ankles. They refuse to grow up and part of what happens with perpetual adolescence is that you actually become monstrous. Because you refuse to deal with the reality, the hard reality of life so i think the country clings to adolescence because it thinks thats the only wayit can maintain his innocence. Begin again with my attempt to kind of get at the heart of that because i was dealing with the fact that my daddys daddy and my mothers mother had to go through this. And now my son will have to go through this. And white folks think its all right. And i wanted to justspeak directly to it. And let me see this real quick when i use the word white folk im talking in generalities to invoke james ti baldwin. I happen to love a lot of people who happen to be white and then theres white folks. [applause] and you talk about whiteness as a choice, the repercussions of whiteness as a choice and what that means ill say you mentioned critical race theory. I think were going to get a shout out while im here. You work for an Organization Called the collective that talks about critical race theory. That we allow our children about this narrative and maybe its okay if our children are uncomfortable with the past because that might indicate they have a moralcompass. And that work is incredibly powerful. But of all the works your book is most specifically rooted in an argument of amendment, the right to free speech and i read another article you wrote entitled the First Amendment created gay america and in some ways i think you might argue of the most leftleaning elements of the Lgbtq Movement betrayed some of what brought about the great advancements in the movements. Can you explore the way the First Amendment can run for your book andidentify it for us a little bit. My book is about people who were among the most despised groups in this country. Again, people whin the Roosevelt Administration are illegal ifrom sexuality are and areillegal. Our deemed a medical disorder by the medical establishment. Gay people, gay men in particular are institutionalized, chemically castrated, lobotomized, suggested to all search of medical torture and homosexuality was deemed immoral from all our major religions. You couldnt even utter the word homosexuality with a sort of unspoken sin it was so awful and in fact i read about the first outing in american politics which happened in 1942 and the majority leader of the senate th referred to this crime, a senator was accused of being an offense to ascension. Thats how homosexuality was treated. And politically because my book is about washington dc and the federal power and the white house and the executive branch and congress and this was the worst secret that you could have. In the city that ran on secrets, secrets were a form of currency and still are in many ways. To be gay was the worst thing you could possibly be, it was worse than even beinga communist. Even at the height of the cold war in mccarthy era america a oucommunist could repent. I communist could become an x communist. In fact some of the most important leaders of the American Conservative Movement were asked communists. A homosexual was barred forever from participating in American Public life. So my book tracks how we got from that period in American History when gay people had to live in a closet. You could not even identify yourself to be a part of this group. You now where we are today where a majority of americans support gay marriage including a majority of republicans. That was the first time last year. At an openly gay gay man serving in thecabinet for the first time , something i would have thought unimaginable not solong ago. And i think Free Expression is so central to this story because none of this progress would have been possible without it. Demonstrating outside the white house, 1965 the first day rights demonstration in america happened for years before stonewall, where all familiar with the stonewall uprising but less people know there was a picket march modeled on the africanamerican Civil Rights Movement marches, a peaceful picket outside the white house in 1965. None of this would have been possible and very active coming out is one of expression, one of the saying to your loved ones and your friends and family to the world that i have been living a lie and im not going to live this life anymore , im going to tell you the truth about myself so i find expression so fundamental to the gay experience and really for all minority groups its hard to imagine any progress been possible without a very robust First Amendment and freespeech culture. A central story in your book is that of one of the great intellectuals and organizers of the modern Civil Rights Movement was chiefly responsible for the 1963 march on washington. You described him as having a commanding presence as well as an ability to motivate arts numbers of people to political action. You note a Young Martin Luther King praised him as a dedicated organizer and one of the best most persuasive interpreters of nonviolence which you say precisely is why Strom Thurmond felt it necessary to destroy him with homophobia but you tell us rustin concluded that i casting off his secret bottle being gay he divested it of the power to harm him. Tell us about the centrality of the mayor in your book. Hes one of the great moral figures of the 20th century. Not remembered as much as he should although theres parts on much looking forward to and he was a chief organizer of the wash on march on washington, Strom Thurmond delivers a speech on the floor of the senate outing him as a sexual deviant. Thats the term that was used. He had gotten a Police Record on his arrest for homosexual acts in california presumably given to thurmond by the fbi. Whats amazing about this is it would have been easy for the leaders of the march 2 sort of expense rustin. This is the most important event in thehistory of the Civil Rights Movement , now we dont need this scandal engulfing it but they kept him on. And not only that he spoke at the march. This and hes been on the cover of led magazine after the march and he comes the first public figure in america to survive and outing. He went on to do many more great things and he didnt let it destroy him so i think this has left is what my book tries to do is its a parallel history. It starts in fdr and goes all the way to clinton through these events and presidencies and heres what you thought you know about this event then theres this other gay secret element that you u didnt know. So so many books have been written about the march on washington butheres this incredible moment we dont know. Or havent really been considered in context. So yes, that was an interesting and important moment in not only civil rights history but obviously gay American History. I dont think its been appropriately considered. Im just shifting of it, doctor perry one of the kind of common themes of your book that you come back to time and time again is challenging rightfully in my mind the notion of american exceptionalism. Arguing that quote american exceptionalism is extolled, we must ignore all American History that includes slavery, crimes against amenity and the flipside of american exceptionalism is southern exceptionalism where the rest of the country blames us for being the bad part and doesnt accept any of the responsibility of its own claims of White Supremacy and racism. You say we need a National Narrative, can you explain your critique of an american exceptionalism and for you what that new narrative looks like. It really is a direct echo and where writing partners. But i will say im actually hesitant about sort of the National Mythology of and skeptical of them as i agree thats what nations do. I hope thats not what writers do though. We tell multiple stories and the stories serve functions and theres a part i say in the book the book is a true story. So if its part of the story is to understand and actually what happened in the south when they were talking about you know, the international struggles around oil. Where theyre talking about cotton and the way the us becomes an international power. It actually, the region as it is at the center of the way in which the United States had moved the world and also the center of us politics when we think aboutfederalism. But the revolutionary war, why is washington . Its because the Northeastern State paid a revolutionary war debt. They didnt have a large enough body of free labor and didnt have tethe clients either. To understand that though does not mean that we have to romanticize it and we have to grapple with for whom stories do we tell because we can just as we can tell these romantic stories and one of the other things they talk about is we often, its phenomenal how often the Founding Fathers extricate themselves even though though their southern but theres a way in which the Political Class is so heavily planted. So we tell the story without the other part of the story but whose stories that i think theres an method here. If you tell the stories from the underside you also get this remarkably beautiful history of resistance and dreaming and imagining a different kind of order. So for me, this question is we have to think about it too full. We have to be honest but we also have to acknowledge the complexity and the glorious miss and ill say it really quickly just because it was just itresonated. When i wrote about the playwright Lorraine Hansberry there had not yet been a book that talked about her as a clearly identified lesbian woman. She wasnt out but she wrote i am a lesbian woman. Something which baldwin didnt do. He was known but so to think about how do we reread her story in light of actually telling the new story . Theres a reason all these documentsare preserved. A reason why hethere is a tiny file that was kept of all over pseudomonas work with thatwas lesbian themed. So now we have more stories, the question is what do we do with them to actually and now im going to steal from him, imagine our country. Or our world. Your book as you mentioned this the telling of this important grassroots narrative and for you its feels like such a personal search and just the power of the story. Its so wonderful and you also have this incredible st quote that moves me. You said the ethics of building a just society begin at the place where you can touch another person and the moral imagination reaches out further. I love that, canyou talk about your personal exploration and what that means to you. Ill just say quickly about the ancestor, as i found this ancestor in the 1870s and 1880s census and i was doing sort of a geological thing which romanticize the story of who you are so i had in my head one day im going to find first but its a birthplace maryland and i was like, maryland, all right. And of course its one of those moments where the conception of the south which did not coincide with who i am as a scholar because its obviously once youre going back she was born in 1769. Whichalabama is not that old. Its so course theres the internal trail of tears of south africans from the upper south to the deep south with cotton. So but i found this woman named easter but she was born in 1769 and now she was born before the nations settled, colonized. What does it mean to look through history and look through the lens of someone who was and it says her parents were born in the United States. Born in maryland w. So shes geological structure, either way its been a long time in this land. And what does it mean to be someone who watches, who is laboring in tobacco fields probably and watches the nation constitute itself without consideration of her as a member. And its just to try to keep telling the history from that lens. You also want to look at that history of undocumented workers, and catfish farms here. Doctor glaude, you called for a world of society that reflect the values of kiall human life no matter thecolor of your skin, gender or who you love. I think in the end your book is actually very hopeful. And even in the title of your book you explore how baldwin held on to hope for us throughout it all. As he tells us in his last novel just above my head, not everything is lost, responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication one begins to end. You talk about this in the context of the after times that you say that were in now. I just want you maybe if you can reflect on that and why you think baldwin held onto this hopefulness and why its important for you to look that up what you mean by the after times. I get the phrase after times from walt whitman. Edhes trying to make sense of what happened in the context of in the aftermath of this war and the greed of the gilded age where in win now. And really talking about where were betwixt and between where e something is dying andsomething is desperately trying to be born and we dont know what choice were going to make. And all ofthe texture that is part of the environment. In the midst of that liminal place. All baldwin and he didnt say i am a black gay man, i have to respond tothis. He didnt write it down because baldwin was deeply suspicious of identities that fixed him. He had this decidedly liberal commitment to private public distinction because it was really interesting in this regard but in 1956 he publishes bonnies room. And he couldnt publish in the United States, he had to publish it so he says you cant hold that over me, i told you. So hes out, i interviewed angela davis about this. And she was like a little girl every time she talks about James Baldwin. She says he was out there all by himself in so many ways. But baker was in the closet, baldwin was not. [inaudible] but the distinction is not baldwin we were talking about because she was not out. Theres no argument. I want to also say karima jeanpierre alongside peter. I have to respond to your buyers remark. John here in terms of the administration. Was buyers coworkers. I believe it was Adam Clayton Powell junior one point alleges he and Martin Luther king were lovers and there was a riot going on. [inaudible] baldwin said in an interview in turkey, the king has been murdered, hes trying to commit suicide and really trying to grapple with this book that was supposed to be kind of an autobiography but was added as he describes it was this nice motherfucker. A reporter from 70 came over and there was a party, jimmy was Holding Forth and he asked him about hope and baldwin gave him that filled smile and he said hope is invented every day. So when i invoke hope its not optimism because if you have to invent hope every day it means you have to be backs despair every day. If it is blue soaked hope, its that moment in duboiss souls of black folks where hes grappling with the fact that his son has died and he cant find comfort and he says this is hope, not hopeless butunhelpful. A hope not hopeless but im hopeful. Bb king would translate that as nobody loves me but my mother and she could be jiving to. Theres hope that shes still at the end of the book is this an abiding, this unflinching faith in the capacity of human beings to be otherwise. And i think if i didnt have that faith, a guy would drink too much whiskey. But be, i think i would also have turned my back on the tradition of which i come. So theres nothing about the he condition of slavery that would lead anybody to believe was experiencing especially in the third book on mississippi. That theres any condition other than being a slave as possible. Except there could be moments where someone in their eyes exhibits profound lust. For a moment yoyoure at the cabin and you hear the innocent sound of laughter, children who might witness in a moment of unimaginable cruelty. But that sliver of love, that sound of innocence opens up space for how its determined to see beyond the capacity of onescondition and imagine otherwise. Expect aftheres afro pessimists in the room so that when slavery ends what do these people do, they are starting walking trying to find people to love so emerges out of right in the context of full encounter with the ugliness and cruelty of life. Not a denial of. Youve got to look it squarely in the face and their announce your faith. In the capacity of human beings to walk through that mess to the other side. Along those lines you tell us we cannot shrink from our reach, it is the fire that likes the kill. Thats my daddy. My daddy was the second africanamerican hired at the post office in louisville mississippi. He knew he had precocious kids so he movedus to the hills. To the white side of town. Where they had eight sidewalks and baseball fields vewere cut every day. And one night, we woke up the next morning and the back window was shot at. With a pellet gun. And my dad responded by shooting a 12gauge and blowing the top of the tree off in the backyard ofthe people who shot our yard. And it takes you back again. He couldnt stomach and how can i put this . He didnt suffer white folks easily. Because he had experienced something in his childhood that was deeply moving. And deeply wounding. This wasnt something in the 19th century, something he still alive to this day. And so the rage, how can i put this quickly . If youre not rageful somethings wrong with you. So part of what im trying to do and this is why baldwin helped me with my own anger, my own father daddy issues, this is why i love the best seniors book. Because he helped me grapple with my old man. Because he was grappling with this power towering figurewho was my hero. In so manyways. Theres this sense in which baldwin taught me how to keep in balance love and rage. Malcolm said as long as your south of the Canadian Border youre in the south. And so that legacy is in me so i just cant understand how people lose sight of the miracle that is the invocation of love. And so its the combination of the two that im trying to hold andbaldwin taught me how to do it because that was a rageful black man. One of the most searing moments of the modern Civil Rights Movement is james cheneys funeral. He delivers that eulogy and he feels what youre talking about right there. And he seen which we didnt know before the gift of the book. Hes looking at then and seeing that baby in new york. So that rage is later as long as you south of the Canadian Border youre in the south k because its new york not just mississippi. I want to let our audience know were going to open it up for questions so if you do have questions come to the mic and we will happily field a couple of them here in a few minutes. Janie, i want to give you an opportunity to jump in here and tell us a bit more about the stories of the people that youre writing about, c how it sits within this conversation. One of the men i write about was a man named Frank Kennedy who was a harvard trained phd astronomer. He was workingfor the Army Map Service in 1967. He was the sort of Geospatial Intelligence agency. This is a couple months after the launch of sputnik so we write at the height of the space race. Hes fired at the federal government for being gay. This is how hes obsessive and allencompassing this purge of gay people from the government was at the height of the space race in a larger trained phd astronomer. And he becomes the first person in such circumstances, gay person to challenge his firing. In some sense is the rosa parks i guess of the gay movement. And he tries to get his firing overturned. He tries to appeal his case all the way to thesupreme court. They dont us into it. He tries to get the aclu to take his case and even the aclu will not take his case and its important to o understand how lonely the american homosexual was at this time that the aclu was to defend, it would defend the communists and people who were accused of communism and leftwing sympathies but they would not take the case of a gay person fired by his government. He goes on to found the Mattachine Society organizes protests outside the white in house in 1965. Hes instrumental in getting the americanpsychiatric association to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. These the first openly gay person to run for congress in washington dc in 1971. And i really 97again the fact the point of this conversation today this is all through the first te amendment, everything that ive listed through the arguments persuasion, appealing to the better angels of our nature and one thing im worried about in this country now and i feel it on bothsides. There are just slots of the country that are beyond persuasion. Theres people who cannot be talked to and i think thats a real danger for our democracy and we determined there are people who are sort of beyond the scope of persuasion of dialogue. Then that im concerned about for the future health of our ability to work out our problems. As we went for audience members to maybe come to the mic id like to welcome you to jump in. Part of what resonates with me about that example is that it precisely is the same time this man. [inaudible] in Huntsville Alabama the red star arsenal is working. So there are a literal nazis who are from germany who are working in the space race in alabama while the veteran, black veterans are living in jim crow order and this example of this gay man in his, i think part of the, i think the just to echo to tell these stories is doing some work in terms of advocacy but also how adequately that the person who purchased that car that goodman and cheney were in was Lorraine Hansberry because she held the country. Of new york. And this is a person that you know, even her closest friends in the movement did not know that she was off same gender loving person. Please, if you have a question for our panelists tell us who youare . Individually your works are fantastic. The intersection of your thoughts in this Panel Discussion is just amazing. What a gift. Doctor perry i read with deep interest south america and you captured something that i could not have articulated which is there is a denial of the very thing that gives us power and of course were giving that collectively, it is part of our origin story but it is also i think something that is within each of us individually and each of you in your work that you are discussing touch on this like the pretense maybe the necessary pretense, i dont know to deny. The south is a scapegoat for things that the nation was doing and in fact doing to come into being. But for the wealth that came from slavery, there may not be an america. So i wonder if you could this core conflict, the th selfdelusion is at the root of our very existence and power. One of the powerful insights of baldwin is there is this insistence, lets put it differently baldwin seemed to suggest this that the messiness of our interior lives is reflected in the ugliness of our exterior world and if we were more honest with who we are, what had happened and covered up in the American South, theres a reason my hair is so straight. What was happening under the cover of night, where the relationship between race and power was so intimately connected. If we told the truth about our desires, about our thoughts and failures maybe we could build a better world so theres a demand for a certain kind of introspection on a personal level that hes been parallels with whats required at the National Level so we have to become better kinds of people if were going to build a better world. They just left that to me. [laughter] my question to the panel or comment and question is this. It seems youre all advocating for truth telling and complete truth telling. My question is simple and that is how for the general public, how in this context of such vitriol, how do we create an environment of truth telling for the general public . . I feel i have to address an uncomfortable subject because im just going to get an example. I know theres a lot of controversy extended to the invitation given to alice walker speaking later today and the reason is because shes made shockingly antisemitic remarks and as a jewish person i find it deeply offensive. She e has said shes use the term enslaving humanity, shes endorsed a book that said the jews perpetrated the holocaust upon themselves, that this should be taught in public schools. Thats the craziest thing that jews are our son of alien wrapped alien race of people. As horrible as i find these fi remarks, i do not believe she should be canceled. That she should be censored. That when shes speaking later today i do not believe she should be shouted down. The same rights that she amhas to say these really terrible things at a moment by the way where we see increasing antisemitism in this country , when jews represent half of the victims of religiously motivated crimesin this country , the same right she has to saythese things is the same right i have to criticize them. And if i had the opportunity to her, what i would tell her is a quote i saw yesterday in the Civil Rights Museum which is an excellent museum and it was from Julius Rosenwald who was the jewish owner of Sears Roebuck who funded, i didnt know this, over 600 schools for black children in the early 20th century and she saidsomething that struck me. She said the hoarders due to ce race prejudice, home to the jew more forcefully than others of the white race on account of the centuries of persecution they have suffered and still suffer. So thats what i would tell her. I wouldnt want to shut her down and silencer, i would want to see her and persuade people. Some people perhaps will le never be persuadable but we need to have these conversations, we need totalk to one another. [applause] i want to Say Something quickly that was said earlier. Your point about the question of how do we, what do we do . And i think this is why banning is so pernicious because it certainly reading is one of the principal things we do and is part of the work of truth telling but also the discovery that facilitates truth telling and its criticalreading. We read material but we dont read to be passively taking it in. You read what you read and then you sort of engage in some evaluation so the fact that theres so many books that are being taken out of libraries iband we do have jurisprudence ruat the Appellate Court level but pulling books out of libraries is unconstitutional. Theres some control educators have over what is in the classroom o, and pocketed way in public schools. Then theother thing and i think this is important. And im trying not to go on too rslong about this but we have a general misunderstandingabout what the firstamendment protects. The First Amendment is about governmental action. It talks about freedom of speech but is also religion and freedom of assembly. We think that the First Amendment is supposed to protect us on these corporate platforms. These are private institutions, they can expel anybody they want. So one of the questions that were faced with and were talking about wanting to have a space for Public Discourse is actually the consequence of the loss of the public sphere. And then the history of the public sphere actually being a place that destroys the capacity oflarge groups of people in particular , historically people who are historically subject to all forms of bigotry who did speak in the public sphere to be punished for it. So we both are dealing with where is our public sphere also its retaliatory as opposed to answering back, if someone does something maybe that makes space to be answered back but also we have to be honest about the violent associations, the history of that. Absolutely. Weve got two more people in line for questions. Im going to ask them to offer wtheir questions back to back or feel them at the same time sas we close out the session. Thank you all. Were so blessed to have you here. I want to honor reverend frank figures is a little gentleman in jacksonville who tells every audience that we have a challenge to do what we can from where we are with what we have. And in the spirit of that that doctor perry theres a point in your book close to the end where you say when will we allow curiosity and integrity to tip over into urgency . Would you the meaning of that for individuals in the moment that we are in now. Good morning and thank you all for appearing. My name is kevin prince. A little closer to the. All for appearing, my name is kevin chris. In the last 10 years or so theres been a renaissance of historical black figures that may not have had the type of exposure or may not have been advantaged historically in everyday culture. Namely James Baldwin or others. What do you see as the reason for this rebirth or renaissance for his work and where does it go from here forward . The simple question ill answer. I think there are a couple of simultaneous ones happening. Baldwin in the academy has lowered and flourished in the James Baldwin review. There are scholars minding his work for generations that has bubbled up and then theres a movement, black lives matter reaching for a resource to kind of, to offer ways of accounting for help they are mobilizing, how they were were in the black movement struggled so baldwin was everywhere in the context of black lives matter. So i think theres a combination of work in the economy and in the streets and then theres the fact that we are just catching up to it because he was finding this, grappling at the end of his life with what we are encountering now in so many ways so i think its the convergence of those two things is the short answer. Just say quickly, i remember when we had that season when we were watching black death over and over again m. Turn on the computer, turn on the television and its infuriated me. They just play white supremacist snuff films of black people being killed and people kept telling me its raising awareness. And i say what does awareness mean without an imperative . Its meaningless. You know, because otherwise we become collaborators so i guess thats what i mean again and the book ends with george floyd and the fact that he is when he said mama you can hear houston in his voice and i think about and also his being in this crew that this question of quthis sort of enlightenment that there are all these weproblems in the nation but we still not answer the question what are we going todo about it . We want the book to end with a challenge and i think that that having of be in ones bonnet is part of living, what are we going to do about it should not be an abstract question but its a question we have to pose to ourselves literally every day. As a quick aside, when we read the beginning of this book it ends puritans and she ends with american jeremiad with the jeremiad for him so the beginning actually foreshadows the form of the e end of the book. Watch booktv every sunday on cspan2 and find a full schedule on your Program Guide or watch online any time at booktv. 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