Any other gadget that might vibrate or distract us. I would like to thank the sponsors who make this possible and in particular the friends of the book fair. Any friends in the room . Wonderful. Thank you. We are thrilled to partner with you. It is a pleasure to welcome reverend willis. Please welcome him. [applause] good morning. I am pastor willis and happy to introduce two friends and intelligent people. Joyann reid is our first guest. She is on regular prime time programs including hard ball with Chris Matthews and the last word with lawrence odonal. She has written columns for the new york times, miami herald, south florida times, and in her book, fracture barack obama, the clintons, and the racial divide, published by monroe, she shows that despite progress made we are still a nation divided as seen in headlines with the killings of tragedies like Treyvon Martin and the uprising in baltimore. America expected an open dilying about race but discovereded the irony of an africanamerican who is ham strung and held back be addressing racial matters giving many supporters disillusion and opponents sharpened their knives. Joyann reid examines the relationship between barack obama and bill clinton and how they bring challenges to the democratic part y itself. I am happy to introduce joyann reid. Our second author is none other than leonardo pitts. He is winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize award. He is the author of novels such as freeman, and before i forgot, selected columns from his, daily triumphs, tragedies and curiosity. And the author of the coming dad; black men and the journal to fatherhood. The involve grant park begins in 1968 with Martin Luther king juniors final days in memphis. It moves to the 2008 elections then and cuts between the two r eras. His son appears and his long time editor bob carson is primarily fired within hours of the publication. A furious carson tries to find him and his son is abducted by two White Supremecist plotting to explode a bomb at the inauguration in grant park. Both of their lives change by the work and Civil Rights Movement that has begun. Ladies and gentlemen, i introduce to you leonard pitts, jr. I came prepared to just introduce them but hai have bee informed i am going to be a moderator. They have been informed that because of their great works they will first share a few comments about their own perspective work and then engage in a dialogue, they will have a dialogue, and i will serve as moderator only if things get unru unruly. I am going to sit back and trust these two will be civil to each other. I am honored to say i served as leonardos pastor. I was his pastor when he wrote his first book. Joyann and us worked together before as well. They are sharp people. This might be the last time you hear from me. Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, miami. I would like to thank reverend willis. Thank you to the Miami Book Fair and all who organized this event. It is a privilege to be in the same space with leonard pitts, jr. I am prepared to fight you if need me. I think it is interesting we both have a span in your books. 682008 and mine from 19642014. I think the plans between the eras is fascinating because you have this incredible art that the country, and in my book the Democratic Party, but really the whole country takes over the course of the 15 year period. When i started out thinking about fracture i did so in 2013 and did so knowing we were looking at some of it most important years in history. I start would the march on washington that was designed to get congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1963 and introduce in congress after the scandal of the full house door. Then 1964 the act is passed and then of course you had 1965 when the Voting Rights act was passed. S attempting to answer in my book is what does that mean for us . Is it possible to be racial . Do the victories in the 1960s mean we closed the chapter on the race wars in america . I think our answer is absolutely not. We didnt close the chapter, we opened what you might call a third reconstruction. You have see the first reconstruction and know what happened was a vicious, violence backlash which was led by members of what would be the Democratic Party in the south who were leading a backlash attempting to undo any of this Reconstruction Movement to take former enslaved people and allow them into civic society. If you see the period of the middle 1960s as the second reconstruction there was also a backlash and it would change the Democratic Party. I liken the africanamerican breakin almost to the Democratic Party particularly in the south where that was the only way you could exercise any power. It was akin to the acquisitions of block busting when black residents moved on to a neighborhood block and white people protested and moved out. These two parties were transformed by the Civil Rights Movement and the second reconstruction and if you look at the election of barack obama as a third reconstruction that too was attended by a vicious backlash. Certainly not as violence as the first or second reconstruction but just as deep seated and longstanding. We are in the midst of most of it. And some of the ongoing frustrations of africanamerican who are waiting if the payoff of 50 years of striving and fighting. I think we have many fractures in the book still. I could have called it fractures with an s because there are many. Those between black american and White Americans, black americans and the police, and White Americans and the Democratic Party which played a game of pulling in africanamericans and pushing them away often in the body of same person; bill clinton. I tried to get at these different pictures and what they mean not just for the Democratic Party but the country. Okay. [applause] good evening, Miami Book Fair. It is my great honor to be Miami Book Fair which has no comparison to book fairs around the country. I am honored to be sharing the stage with my former pastor. He doesnt like to be called reverend dr. Willis, but that is what he is. And with joyann reid from msnbc. We did a show about the same topics and far from fighting like we are here i was sitting there in my hotel room and she is on a plane and im saying preach, sister because so much of what she said has been rattling around my head. My novel, grant park, covers some of the same territory but from a fictional point of view. It is a novel about race and frustration and race and disillusionalment. It takes course over the fall of 67 and spring of 1968 and then the mordern day section is all on one day which is the election day of 2008. There is two main characters and they are both experiencing the disillusionment colored by their own race and experience. You have malcolm who is an africanamerican College Student in the 1960s who has this black power militant who has this life altering encounter with Martin Luther king out back at the holiday inn after the riot that turned out to be his last march. And this encounter reorients him and changes his life view on how we need to go about securing the freedoms we should have. He decides to devote his life to dr. Kings philosophy of nonviolent direction action and engagement. And 40 years later when we need him he is a frustrated man. He has spent most of those years as an Award Winning columnist and here i have to stop. He is not this awardwinning columnist for a number of reasons. He has two pulitzer, i have one. He drives a new corvette and i drive a ten year old toyota. But we share the frustration in the sense of trying to explain what should be glaring obvious to anyone trying to understand race in this country and you feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall and this is the feeling malcolm has as he is coming up 60 years on election day 2008. And he writes this White America go to hell column after the death of an another unarmed black man at the hands of a Police Officer. And this is blowing up this entire career out of the sense of what good is it anyway . What does it mean . I have fought for civil rights, tried to engage people for 40 years, and the power of people not to understand what they chose not to understand has proven far greater than my ability to get them to understand or make them understand. And i have no intention of blowing up my career, i am less wealthy than malcolm, but i do understand the frustration. Bob is malcolms editor. A white guy who was fighting were civil rights in the 60s and engaged in nonviolent direction action and marched and held signs because he felt that, you know, there is a fundamental injustice here and as a Christian Young man he wants to know he has the courage to put himself and his life on the line for justice as he has seen so many other young people in the 1960s do. By 2008, he is a 59 year old man and has compassion fatigue. He is a white guy who says okay, i can understand where the discussion is going and i can understand why we were marching and demonstrating when there was a sign saying whites only or when there was a policy that said africanamericans could not vote. But now you are asking me to care about something called Structural Racism and mass incarceration. What are these things . He is a man who is inflicted with this sense of compassion fatigue. This loss of empathy with the africanamerican struggle and the book is essentially about both of them sort of talking about the journey that has led them from that point to this. It takes up as they are also swept up in a thankfully fictional plot to assassinate the incoming president at grant park. But i think the thing that ties us both together systemmatically is the sense that africanamerican since the civil war have progressed at a rate of two steps forward and two steps back. And i think what she is writing about in fracture and certainly my characters is we are in one giant step back. What is worst for me as an observer or character a lot of people dont know or give a damn. As an africanamerican male i find that horrifying and frustrating. My friend in the first row and i were talking before i came over here about the fact that, you know, everybody looks back on the Civil Rights Movement and you know, there is such normal clarity about the Civil Rights Movement. Everyone fancies they would be an active protesters in that movement and then they turn around and say what is wrong with these black lives matter people . There is a great frustration we are taking one step back and instead of being active and caring and joining forces a lot of people are choosing to stand beside and pretend what is happening isnt happening and africanamerican americans are complaining only to hear their voice. I dont have a lot of in common with malcolm but i will repeat frustration is common to me, him, and i would imagine a great many others. I love the fact you all are doing this. I am going to throw out a Monkey Wrench here. We were addressing the issue of post Traumatic Stress and that is how post Traumatic Stress differs from posttraumatic slave syndrome and the reactions i got were mind blowing. Post Traumatic Stress is one single event shakes you up and you try to get through it. But postslave syndrome is different from ptsd. Ptsd is the result of single trauma. Post traumatic slave syndrome is a continual problem in the community. As soon as we heal from one issue, take for instance the shooting of Treyvon Martin and we turn around and see the choking of another black man in new york, and then turn and see sign people shot in a church. As soon as we can hurt from one hurt another one is coming. What she is saying is this has created a serious backlash especially after the election of a black president as you are addressing now. We thought things might get better but the black community got disillusioned while the White Community got aggravated because this president needed to be accountable to all people and couldnt make the changes that needed to be made. Joy if you comment on that first and then leonardo if you would like to address this posttraumatic slave syndrome. I will start by acknowledging today is one year on since the shooting death of tamir rice, the 12 year old boy who was playing with a toy gun across the street from his home in a community center, who was shot by a Police Officer who pulled up and within two seconds shot him. That was a year ago. The prosecutor in the case turned the case over to a grand jury. Neither of the officers have given a statement. They were not asked to give a statement. There is a judge who ruled there was significant evidence to charge both officers, one did the shooting and one was the senior officer on the scene, with multiple crimes including manslaughter. And despite that ruling you had the prosecutor, who i would like to point out is a democrat, as was the prosecutor in ferguson, this isnt an issue of partisanship. They are fellow political tr travelers. Contrast that with the case in South Carolina where there was resolution in the case of walter scott but only after there was Video Evidence the officers story was false. A 52 year old man got of his car and ran away from an officer who was pulling him over for a minor violation because he was afraid he was going to be arrested for paying child support. There is an africanamerican who is being investigated watches him drop whatever he does near the body and does nothing about it and doesnt try to attempt to recesuscitate scott. Neither did they in the case of rice. In fact they tried to tackle the sister to the ground who tried to run to her father. So those incidents compounded with the Treyvon Martin case. Africanamericans were told our lives are worth nothing. If you can follow a young teenager who has head phones on and walking with a soda. If you can follow him and say he is the aggressor and shoot and kill him and not face any legal consequences then what that means is black lives have no matter. That started the black lives matter. It started with a man who acted like the police and had the ultimate power to take a life. I think what that told a lot of africanamericans is wow, even a civilian can kill us or our children, and nothing is going to happen to them. And it happens again and again and each time it happens the result is no arrest, no prosecution, and then you turn on your phone and you look on twitter and hour after hour you see Michael Browns body lying in the street like a dog hit in the street. Lying there hour after hour, uncovered, uncared for, his family cant go to their boy. You see these things over and over and it produces trauma. It produces trauma in me and i am just covering the cases. You see tamir and your own child. You see the teenagers with their mistakes like when they released the Text Messages from martin. You see a boy and you understand the world sees a ministering menacing monster. Your kids cant do any of the things that boyhood used to involve without fear of death. Your husband cant pull over to the side of the road because his car broke down without an unmarked van pulling up and he ends up shot and killed as in the corey jones case. I think this constant unsafety is where this comes from. When i walk to people who are seniors, adults that are africanamerican or black you hear it is futile. The rodney king case ended exactly the way the case ended in the mcduffy case in miami and that ended the came case as the michael brown. It doesnt matter the individual facts. They all end the same way. Black lives matter isnt a negotiation of nonblack lives it is saying why dont black lives matter . It is a question and then a plea cant black lives matter . Or black lives matter, too. So you see a rolling sense of trauma. I will end it by saying then you have africanamericans looking at this africanamerican president and feel disrespected and how he is treated like he is not a proper man or worthy of the bear minimum. You dont have to call him president obama you can just call him obama. You dont have to listen to him you can call him a liar. There is no consequence to it. I think there is a sense of trauma in the in the black community. And outside of the black community it is probably not recognized or understood but i think it is there. [applause] it is interesting. People often want to cite the poverty rate or the alleged crime larate of the africanamerican or the educati educational gap in the Africanamerican Community. They also ask me whether explicitly or implicitly the same why are black people doing so bad . One guy on twitter, you people have been free since 1865 why are you doing so bad . And the thing i dont think people understand is when you come to understand when you experience the level of benevolence that the Africanamerican Community experienced and the examples joyann gave were from the last five years. When you take that and combine it with the fact we live under an injustice criminal system and when you add that to a media structure, news and entertainment, which as chris rock joked paid us borne suspects made when you look at all of things like the banking discrimination, the housing discrimination, when you look at health care discrimination, when you look at the labor of the Agricultural Department discriminating against africanamerican farmers, and the deaths of black men and women who somehow have this habit of expiring while in police custody, you realize the question is not why are black folk doing so poorly but my god, how are they doing so well . Really [applause] which is my i am intrigued when i talk about posttraumatic slavery syndrome. I think there is truth to that but it goes beyond. It is not just slavery. It is a century of jim crowe, it is watching emmitt tills and Treyvon Martins killer get off scott free. It is all of this stuff and all of this stuff in a context of a country where your countrymen dont seem to notice or care. And i dont know where that comes from because again in the 1960s some of the greatest soldiers were africanamerican freedom. And some of the people who suffered and sacrificed the most were young white people. James work is one of my personal heroes. He is a 73 year old retired minister now. But back in 63 he had his back broken and his teeth kicked out in montgomery for freedom. So the template is there. But for some reason, in this era, there is this, i perceive, okay. This is my perception, in this era, there is this thing where you sort of have to prove what is self evident. To take black lives matter, the discussion suddenly becomes why dont you say all lives matter as if the reason the expression black lives matter sprang up is not as redisciplidisciplined. Anyone with a conscious is reason that phrase was chosen as self evident. Instead of dealing with the issues raised over by people feel the need to say their lives matter instead of dealing with that we are having a semantic argument about black lives matter versus all lives matter and that great philosopher Chris Christie coming in and tells us black lives matter is a terrorist group. And im looking and saying did they blow up a building i didnt know anything about . And suddenly this becomes a story. What it does, and the purpose of why it is there, is you know chuck d, the rapper, has this expression i coopted weapons of mass distraction. Whenever we get too close to the truth, truth that indicts, truth that causes pain, truth of i dont want to see this because i have an image of how america is, and for me it gets, and not just for me for a bunch of us i would say, it gets frustrating and crazymaking. I never expected president obama to do a lot on matters of race because i thought he would be ham strung by the politics of it it. He has performed to my expectations. When he has absolutely had to as in the Charleston Shooting and the shooting of Treyvon Martin he has spoken to it and spoken with eloquence but you have to push him. Yet still the way president obama has been treated you would think flavaflave had been collected to the oval office. And joyann touched on it. The absolute disrespect, not of policy, not of programs, but of person. Here is the thing. If you dont disagree with your president , and i am talking about any president , over his or her hopefully administration [applause] that goes for clinton, obama, and bush although i thought bush on more days man this. I have done it. I criticize him on the drone strikes and the rollout of obamacare. This is not criticism. When you have legislatures, not fools on the radio or fox news, but legislatures calling him uppity and an aide to a state legislature sending out an email with the president s and you add in the image of the president as a chimp, and a sign of a tea party rally, and ted nugent calling him names. This has served as a wake up call for folks seeing the country in ways they dont want it to change. Demographically this country is becoming [applause] demographically this country is becoming something different. The birth rates say within most of our life time this is going to be a country where there is no such thing as a racial majority. There is no longer a white majority, black or hispanic majority, we are all going to be minorities. If you have been Gladys Knight all of these years and suddenly you a pip many folk in White America are discomforted and angry and scared at the idea of we are all going to be pips from now on. I will close with this because i sense myself going long. To the point of your book, i think you address in grant park, the idea that 1968 had an impact and i would like to respond quickly, in the same posttraumatic slave syndrome, one of the questions the author raised is why is mama or dad not proud of me . And that plays into what the children are feeling comes out of this. It wasnt good to tell our little girls they were beautiful because they may be taken and rape but to tell our strong men they were strong and capable because they were going to be sold off. That mentality has trickled to the point where in the miami herald today one of the members of our church wrote an article about his two little twin daughters going to school and not feeling like they are smart. They have been put into a cast that says you are just average but they are really very bright. What would you tell a mother or father about dealing with an issue today . Our children need self esteem. You are giving them something to think about. You have children and grandchildren how do you deal with them . I would say you cannot give anyone selfesteem. They earn it. But the thing i would tell all children is you have to be and i am not saying selfcentered but a little less concerned with looking good in the eyes of the folks around you and have your own standard in terms of this is what i can do or achieve. I told an africanamerican who was doing well in school and that was causing her to lose friends. And the thing is sometimes walking to success is a onelane road. Sometimes to get where you have going you have to walk one lane and pick up on the other side. I would say you have to have tunnel vision and only see your end goal and ignore every other message coming at you. There are children on the south side of chicago, children in this community that are having to walk through hell just to go to school. Trying to tune out and crowd out violence and want and hunger and messages they are not as good at all day in order to get into the door let alone to pass standardized test. So you have to develop a tunnel vision and ignore all of those messages if you can and try to find the circle of people around you who will lift you up. It isnt easy. But i remind young College Students is dont post cardize past heroes. You write about dr. King in 1968 and by then he was a pessimistic man. He was in chicago going what am i doing . We have all of these problems we thought we solved in the south and here i am in chicago with the same housing discrimination and they are not letting black kids in the school up here. It is no better up here. He was disillusioned by the war. Johnson was sending young men off to die in a far off land they didnt even know where it was. Black lives matter that was john lewis. He was that angry, militant young guy who had to get reeled in by the elders and pastors. Everybody has an ark and everybody has the growth. You can get where you are going but we have to focus on that. We can take questions from the audience now. I am wondering from your point of view, or even in your book, if you take on the issue of immigration . Like miami as an example who is going through so many of the same issues in the early 60s with the sitins and even earlier because of the immigration of many white people down here. It seems like even in like 1962 it was the cuban revolution so that overshadowed everything going on and the black community lost footing. There seems to be a resulting rese resentment of the power structure. How has immigration in the United States changed blackwhite power issues . I will say it has been remarkable to watch the extent to which things like voting restrictions are increasingly turned against latino americans almost more so than africanamerican because of the rising population of the latinos. And you have this irony in the Republican Party where the elites understand they have to do something to broaden the base because the population is getting 2 nonwhite every four years it is going to be harder and harder to win the elections because you have to get north of 60 of the white vote and that is not easy. Romney had 59 and lost by seven million votes. It is not easy. There is this irony that the elites understand Immigration Reform as a net plus. T but at the base of the party there is a rejection of that idea and that the public religion search institute, prri, did an American Value survey, and they found overwhelmingly white class americans reject the idea of Immigration Reform and the majority believe immigrants with a drain not a help, the majority are angry hearing a language other than english spoken in front of them, and dead set against any Immigration Reform. I think this is an issue that has to get worked out on the right. Increasingly the base of the Republican Party is no longer listening to the elite. The elites have been saying we have do Immigration Reform since george w. Bush who was actually smart on the issue. The base isnt listening anymore. You are seeing in donald trump the essence of reach on the right which the base of the Republican Party is no longer listening to issues like Immigration Reform to the detriment to their base. That study you mentioned would i be correct to assume everyone answering was native american . This is a fascinating data point and i think it gets to what we talked about like the fatigue of White America. There is a data point in this survey saying there is a high correlation between voters who say americas best days are behind it. A majority, large majority of tea Party Affiliated voters and majority of conservatives say the countrys best days are behind it. Where as the majority of democrats, africanamerican, and latinos say the best days are ahead. There is a high correlation between that and that statistic that says white men have lost culture influence. So you are seeing that ethnic insecurity affecting politics. Lets take the question question. I dont know if nthis is a question or a comment. It is a question. I grew up before the nword. I grew up in black people called you nigger and that is what i got called. In california, very democratic state, it is something i learned from that town and since then is people take care of their own. You dont see police roll up on police and shoot police. Firemen go into a burning building they take out or firemen. Military soldiers same concept. My question is how can we as black people and citizens get in that group of our own where we are actually taking care of our own . If we are all americans why are we not taking care of all americans . Why just africanamerican or hispanicamericans or fema femaleamericans. I think the problem is it has never been africanamericans who didnt understand that. Africanamericans spent years on skin dying and hair straightening trying to become part of the whatever. It is africanamericans who have been historically rejected for many years. But i take your point. I think your point is absolutethry ideal. We should come to a point where we say us, or we, we are talking about the United States all of us as americans. But the fact of the matter is we are thought there yet and that is not on africanamericans. After being shut out of mainstream white institutions africanamericans went and built their own which only makes sense. If we cannot go to the bank of america we will have the africanamerican bank. If your artist cant get signed on Columbia Records we will have motown records. The shut out didnt happen because of africanamerican people. I get that a lot where people talk about hyphenated americanism. Like we chose this. We have been trying to be unhyphenated americans for a long time. Since 1865. Yeah, i mean, i was going to say quickly scarcity is often the enemy of unity. Never underestimate the power of Economic Security to divide people into tribal groups. You have a shrinking work class as well. And you do have a shrinking particularly working class that doesnt have the same prospects. It is very difficult even in this beautiful town. The neighborhoods to raise kids in integrated school are very few in this multi culture community. With the invent of Charter Schools we have seen a new emphasis on the resegregation. I feel like it has been one step forward and three steps back on integration. So just school insttegratiointe. There are studies showing the integration efforts of the 1950s have failed. Selma is a town that is 65 africanamerican and the Public Schools are only 2 white. The vast majority of white families go to Public School and the vast majority use Public Schools. If you walk through chelsea in new york the Public Schools are all black and you see the white children walking through in uniforms going to private school. What happened after the brown vs board and the democrats who wrote the southern laws they were talk about brown v board and refusing to adapt to it. What wound up happening, particularly in southern states, is localities passed rules allowing families to chose schools not by location but making a choice of different kind of schools with the Charter School being the latest outgrowth of this. Because families have a choice people are selfsegrigating their kids. The schools are as segregated as churches unfortunately. I would cosign that. White people wouldnt stay still long enough to be integrated with. Al i would say the best is for all kids to go into a world where everyone doesnt look like you or think like you and it is best to interact with people at the earliest possible age. I think that is basic good essential development. But in my home town of los angeles they chase white people to the mountains or the desert. And at some point, you have to say, okay, byebye and work on making the schools that are left better. That is where i am. It is painful to me because it means compromising on what i considered a cherished ideal. But i dont think the priority is less on integrating the schools than making sure the schools are the best they can be. If we have done that we have done a lot. Next question. I was a young Freedom Fighter way back in selma [applause] not only that i was thrown off the bus. A bunch of us were thrown off and i was one of them. My back still hurts to this day. You were on the bus where . Selma. The marshalls came on and threw us off the bus when the bus was moving and my back still hurts because of that day. Here is the whole thing if one of us is not free then none of us are free. And that is the thing we have to remember. That is almost wordforword about what james werg said in the hospital with his broken back and his teeth kicked out. What was really sad is his parents, who he thought he learned these values, his father told him you let those nword use you. Can i say, too, i think everyone agrees about the heroic quality of that period in american history. But in a way if you look at the argument made by chief Justice Roberts in gutting the Voting Rights act it is so postcardized now. I write about the two different conversations happening but for a lot of White Americans it is like we fixed that in the 1960s so people are saying why are you still complaining about that. And i think we put a lot of this no culture or society wants to be the bad guy in their own narrative. The truth and reconcilations we achieved in south africa were mainly by black south africans. We made the germans go at gunpoint. And it is difficult to convince a country that comes across as darth vader to this group of people. I think that you are taking an argument that is difficult for americans to accept. We want you to accept the villainary of your history. And for black politicians there is a particular rule in order to become what president obama is, a national speaker, your job is to go passed the past and talk about the progress. The moment you dont do that you a race man. If you say but but but. You are not supposed to do that. I think because in the psyche of most countries people all want to be the good guy and not accept maybe our country is not so perfect. This our last question. This is a tough conversation to end but we thank you for your thoughtful and courageous leadership and are grateful for you spending this time with us. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] we chose the years 19621964. Tell us why you chose that time . I wanted to honor this city and what it gave america. Motown, one of the threads i knew was there from the beginning, started in 1959 and that was the legendary 800 loan that berry gordy got from his siblings in paris. Until it left in the early 70s, i wanted the early motown because of the Emergency Energy of that time. I wanted civil rights so that brought in the famous walk in 1963. I wanted the automobile i wrote about to be the mustang. It was being conceived in 62 and 63 and unveiled at the worlds fair in 1964. The book begins with the first motor car review