Called it a spellbinding gothic narrative. Her writings have included the well received hitlers kiss and indecent secret. Lsu lsu press is proud to be the publisher of her most recent book which came out in september. Entitled George Washington carver. This Research Investigation and the life and career of one of the most remarkable men of the last century, a brilliant brilliant africanamerican scientist, George Washington carver is the first biography to examine his personal life and scientific achievement. It is written in her engaging style in this volume has only been out one month has received wonderful notice in the press, a start reviewed from the fine journal book list which says, this is an extraordinary look at a life of a brilliant man and has garnered a notice in weekly, of review that concludes it is carvers genuine warmth genuine warmth that shines in the story as you navigate both black and white societies. We are proud to be the publisher of this book and honor to introduce its author to speak to today, please join me in welcoming doctor christina vella. Thank you. I dont know if i can live up to all of that. Ink is so much. It occurs to me that if you are not an american and if youre not young, if youre not old you might not know exactly who George Washington carver is. Thats kind of amazing because in 1950 if you had asked any thirdgrader whose George Washington carver . That kid would have known, he wouldve told you everything about him, couldve told you all the things George Washington carver did. If you asked him who the president of the united states, he may or may not have known. Thats how famous carver was. It was a deserved fame. What did he do exactly . He came to the south and discovered there is abject poverty among the sharecroppers of the south because they had been producing cotton on the same lan over and over again. Cotton leaches the soil. So the saying land was producing less and less cotton. The south was in miserable condition, the sharecroppers were starving and he saw that what they needed to do was to find some cash crop that would enrich the soil and at the same time they could sell. So he did a lot of experiments and finally came up with something that was wonderful for the soil, and within a couple of season it wouldnt make it productive and that something was, peanuts. Peanuts and Sweet Potatoes were really good for the southern soil. Peanuts in those days was no more a cash crop parsley. If you told people, you have to plant peanuts theyd say what are we going to do with peanuts . We cant sell sell peanuts. So he set about trying to invent things, trying to make products that would make peanut something that you could sell as a cash crop. In the course of his research he came up with over 2000, over 2000 products made up peanuts. That wasnt all. He took all kinds of things that were useless, things that nobody wanted, things that were going to ways, like animal bones and farmers yard. Barnyard feathers, red clay in the hills of alabama. Alabama alabama was where he was located. Swap sludge, weeds, weeds, all sorts of things, dust. Can you imagine . All sorts of things. He came up with commercial products by the time of his death peanuts was the third biggest cash crop in alabama and georgia. He had actually succeeded in pulling these pitiful sharecroppers out of destitution and made a lot of them at least, good farmers. So there were thousands, i mean really mean really thousands of little childrens books explaining this wonderful man who is a negro and yet he had managed to become one of the foremost scientists of his age. At a time when racism was more viral and then you and i could imagine. You you had to live through it to understand how vicious and pervasive racism was at that time. It was not like a negro coming to the floor today. It was a completely remarkable, astonishing phenomenon. So that its who he was, that is, that is why he was so famous. Well, alright, now you dont need to read the book, right . Oh he didnt start out famous. He had a out famous. He had a life that was as cursed with drama as yours or mine, or anybody. How did he start out . Well, to begin with he was a slave in missouri as a child. He was born on a slave farm to very kindly white people and when he was an infant he was kidnapped. He was taken to arkansas, it was during the civil war when all of the authority has broken down. There is no police, no army in the area to keep order. So gangs come through and they say we are confederates, they were not confederates they were just hoodlums. Or we are union this and of course there just basically gangs of neighborhood teenagers. They kidnapped him and brought him to arkansas with his mother. His mother got separated from him and she was never, ever found. But his owner sent someone after him, traded him for a race horse, and brought him back. Then they raised him. This kindly white man taught george carver, carvers george as he was known then, to play the fiddle, the violin, but he could not teach him to read because he could not read himself. He was totally illiterate. So with little carver was ten years old he desperately wants to go to school. The white school in the town where he lived in missouri would not have him. So with the carvers permission he went 10 miles to and new Freedmens Bureau school that was opening in missouri and he went to school there. How does a 10yearold survived byyearold survive by himself . Well, he goes to work for a family and he works for them during the day and works for three or four months until he saves enough money that he can go to school and by schoolbooks. Then he goes to school for three or four months until he runs out of money, then he goes back to work again. Thats the way carver survived. From the age of ten until he finally finished high school when he was in his mid 20s. He was a drifter, he went to all the upstart townsend kansas and all around to try to find schools where he could work. There is always work because theres always settlers, this was the west. The settling of the west. When he graduates from high school in his midtwenties he got together all of his letters of recommendation, all you do when you want to apply for college, he wanted so badly to have a college education. Of course a number of colleges turned him down. But one, they had advertised it was very open institution, were open to everybody, were open to all sorts of people, he gathered all of his information and he applied to this college. When he got there he walked, by the way 25 miles to get there, he gets to the college, they take one look at him and his smiling black base and they said all we met we are open for indians, not negroes. So he was turned away. He did not have enough money to get back to where he came from so he stayed in the town, he borrowed a washboard and tub and started taking in laundry which which is his way of sub porting himself. Laundry is very cheap to do all you need is a soap and washtub and he can wash peoples clothes. So he washed and washed and iron close to supporting himself. At one point, he even went out and tried his luck at homesteading. This is a time of government was giving people land if they would build a shack on it or below house on it, build a sod house environment. So he gets his stake in a little lamb. And when i learned about this when i was in college it didnt sound too interesting to me. Homesteading in the west, yeah. Well when you get these documents and you read exactly what they required of the people who are getting the land, the sod house had to be just so much, most of the sad houses were about the size im walking in. They were the size of a big bathroom. You had to build a sod house and such and such a way, you had to plan so many trees, then he see the inventory of what people had in these houses. You see the actual documents that they wrote to enumerating their chairs, their washtubs, their beds, the plants in the windows of their little sod houses. By the way few want to build the sad house i know all about it, theoretically i i can build a sod house for you. But it is so much fun to get your hands on these documents and see, this is the real history, this is what is what is really worth looking into how on and history four. He got lonely for Classical Music, for for opera, for books, for discussions and great authors. How did this little kid learn about great authors . Where did he hear Classical Music . He was hardly permitted to go in , even a white church where he could hear music. How could he learn these things and develop a taste for these things . I dont know, its almost enough to make your religious, to you religious, to wonder how did someone like that conceive of such marvelous taste, such high culture. So he goes back and he tries again and he manages to get into an art school. He was a wonderful painter when he was a kid on the farm, course they didnt have pain but he used to take flowers and boil them, crush them and get paints out of them. He would take tree stumps that were bare and clean and would make paintings on the tree stumps. That is how he developed his artistic ability. So he gets to this art school and hands okay for about three years and is about to graduate, his teacher tells him, lucky you have no future at all as a negro artists. You are going to be a beggar. You have got to go into something where you can make a living. I want you to apply to Iowa State College to the Botany Department and get a degree in agriculture. He said, they wont take me. She said yes, they will take you. My father my father is the head of the Botany Department. So he went to Iowa State College and he worked his way through. He lived in the toolshed that he found on the edge of the campus. A toolshed whose previous tenants were only rats, had no plumbing, no water, no electricity, had nothing. It was a bear toolshed. He moved into it and lived in it all the time he was in college. He worked as a janitor and took in laundry from the other students in order to stay to keep himself in college. Now if iowa state state was not just any college, iowa state was the harvard of agriculture schools. While Agricultural Schools we see what his Agricultural School . Listen, in those days it is hard for us to realize that america could not feed itself then. We were importing food. People were desperate for scientists who could make a selfsufficient and foo. Agricultural science was what it is today, its something everybody wanted to get into, everybody wanted to know about. So he goes and take a culture science and he goes to a school that produces three secretaries of agriculture, u. S. Secretaries of agriculture. And a Vice President ial candidate. In other words he goes into a school where all of these people will become bigwigs in government. He. He gets to know them all, especially henry a wallace, henry c wallace, and james wilson. They love him. They think he is a genius. He begins to explore collecting plans, identifying plants, finding various various uses for plans, he does all sorts of things with his knowledge. They give him the room to do it. They publish articles and they praise and encourage him, they let him do Serious Research and they think he has hung the moon. So they give him a position there. He gets a masters degree and they give him a full fledged faculty position, he is a professor. While everything is turning up roses for George Washington carver, he has a niche in a white institution, he is doing important research, he research, he is praise, he is valued, everybody adores him, and i tell you if you had read the thousands of letters of this man you can understand why people adore him. He is funny, he is kind, he is sweet, he is positive, he never has a critical word to say about anybody or anything. He is humble, and he is so mary. He has a joke and a funny, something funny and something humorous about practically everything. They love him to death. Do you know what happens . A man named booker t. Washington who happens to be the foremost black man of his time passes through iowa and wants an interview with George Washington carver. He asks him to come to tesco g institute, alabama, there is nothing secondary school really, its really like a Vocational School in the hills of alabama and to teach. Carver falls under the spell of booker t. Washington. Now booker t doesnt come off too well in my book, actually who is probably one of the most on pleasant, ruthless, and contemptible people i have met in history. He did wonderful things for his race, i dont begrudge him and his two white people, and if you idle blame him. You had to do what he did you had to sell yourself out, that part i can very well excludes excuse. What i can excuse is the abominable treatment he doused out to everybody who is personally connected with him. His. His teachers, his wives, his cohorts, anybody. So he has a very broad relationship with booker t. Washington not in fact ends without woman he was in love with selling herself off the top of a building and killing herself. Well our time is a lot shorter, im all a lot more verbose than i ever mean to be. I should tell you that if you think carver had one of these ideal lives, besides fighting and making booker t. Washington and himself wretched with a 19 years they were together, finally booker t finishes, he dies in carvers career is allowed to take off. When he is 60 and he is famous everywhere in the world, everyone knew space, everyone knew his name and he was somehow exempted from all of the racial hatred that all other black suffered, he fell head over heels in love with a 23yearold white man. That affair lasted for ten years, and in the course of that carver was thought to have one of his products, for a cure for polio. So he was also massaging people with his oil, 12 hours a day. People who lined who lined up in front of tesco g begging for help. I want to tell you before i close because this is very important. Carver never accepted a fee for lecturing, he, he refused to take out patents, he gave away every product he developed, 500 products from barnyard feathers for heaven sakes. Thousands of products. Of products. He gave them away to corporation same, i want them to be used, i want people to develop them. I dont want to company to make money for them, i them, i want them to go to people. He became the free consultant, volpe consultant to those companies so they could develop these products. Thomas edison offered him over 100,000 per year to work for him. Carver refused to stay at tesco g at a salary of 1000 per year because he said whatever i do here will go down to my people. Everyone will know that black people are capable of anything. If. If i go into Edison Laboratory they will not know that. So, i have a lot more to tell you about carver but i will not be able to. I want to thank you so much for braving the wind and water and coming. You have been a great audience keep George Washington carver in mind. Thank you so much. [applause]. They can that was a fascinating presentation. Said a little louder please. [inaudible conversation] it because that is something i did not go into, booker was was mesmerizing, no one was more mesmerizing than carver. I think he had a father complex. Booker was like the demanding father he could never satisfy. He always accepted his criticism, always believe the trash that occur would tell him. Always try to please him and he could not separate from him. It was his weakness really. Thank god booker died in 1950 and carver lived. So he had a long time to develop his product. If booker t had been all live all that time we probably would not have known who George Washington carver was. I was taken aback by the fact that you see these tremendous products and how bare his lab was. He did not even have a bunsen burner. When he would request Something Like a grind to pulverize to see the components, a little 9dollar measly grinder, they would refuse it. They counted the stamps he used and limited him to a number of postage stamps. Was a lab he made up from going to dump heaps and getting glass, broken glass making Different Things out of it he could use for test tubes. It was the most primitive lab that you can imagine. Not even a Grammar School lab was better than this one. Is that it . Thats good im i was afraid someone will ask a question i do not know the answer to. Thank you again. Clapmac. That was a fascinating presentation, you did a fabulous job. And how he represents the american dream, he embodied that. I know you are all interested in asking more questions, you can see her up arnzen noble book signing desk from 1130 1215. Shell be signing her book. Thank you for coming to the presentation, i hope you enjoy the rest of the festival. [applause]. [inaudible conversation] this is book to be in cspan2,s television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup. Tonight at 7 00 p. M. Eastern, npr correspondent tom gelled and looks at the impact of the 1965 immigration and nationality act. Then at 8 00 p. M. New york or proofreader, mary nourse discusses grammar. A9 00 p. M. Eastern on book tvs Author Interview program, afterwards, attorney Roberta KaplanRoberta Kaplan talks about the defeat of the defense of marriage act. At 10 00 p. M. Eastern paul canker examines the transformation of the american family. At 11 30 p. M. Glenn back sits down to talk about his most recent book, it is about islam. That all happens tonight on cspan twos book tv. Saw every year tens of thousands of americans are charged with fines after an eyewitness comes forward and ids them. But what is the sign say . Well one third of the time when an eyewitness pick someone out of an actual lineup, they pick out an innocent person. One third of the time. Out of the first 250 dna exonerations in the united states, 190 of them involved mistaken eyewitness missed identification. So it is we have these problems . Will smaller memories dont work like cameras. As we may assume they do. Simply saying something something does not commit it to memory. There are many things that can negatively impact how we encode and rake all of memory. White guy, trying to remember a black suspect versus trying to remember a white suspect. In studies 50 less likely to be able to do a correct identification. Whites seen someone at midday versus dusk has a big effect on how well you will be able to remember and make an identification. Whether you are physically exerting yourself at that moment of encoding the memory, that is often the case when youre suffering a crime. I think the bigger problem with eyewitness identification has to do with factors in control of the police. Memory is lost and easily corrupted. Research suggests by the person administering the lineup, Little Things like when the witness starts to pick out one of those illicit people sent to the person, maam, we have plenty of time take your time. That just seems like a prudent thing to tell a person, after all, a mistaken identification can do rail a whole case that is already being worked by detectives. That is a good thing for officers to say. Researchers suggest no, that can lead to misidentification. Same thing with justin after the person has pick someone up, good job maam, you you got the suspect we brought in. How does that change things . While subsequently, those individuals given that feedback feel much more confident, they remember better after the fact just bite that little subtle push. One of the biggest problems with eyewitness identification is we tend not to do just one, so this particular case they brought the victim and initially to look at photographs. She looked actually at john jerome white, then they brought her back to do the in person lineup. She picked him out again. Then they brought her into court where she said, yes i see the man who attacked me in the court today. So that from the jurys perspective perspective well one, two, three, youre out. Clearly she remembered very well but what about the second two identifications . Was she remembering the person who attacked her . Or was she remembering the photograph she saw a week earlier . When she was brought into court where she remembering the man who attacked her . Or was she remembering the person who she now seen twice before. We know from know from research that simply seen someones picture on facebook can make it more likely we will pick them out of an eyewitness identification lineup. What this means to me, is we need to handle eyewitness identification how we handle other trace evidence. Think of how careful we are with the blood sample. How careful we are to preserve it, how we carefully track the chain of custody, with memory what we do . We let people go out in the world talked other people, go, go back to the crime scene, go over the events many times in their own head, what does that too . It corrupts the memory. We need to think about ways that we can treat all evidence with scientific care. You can watch this and other programs online at book tv. Org