Its the mother figure. So women become key connectors. There are the social network that exists because the political network. That tried to talk a little bit about that. In the march there are interesting stories of white women on the march. This is right about the time when the man to cut the Womens Movement so and white women who are on the march to have been active in a Civil Rights Movement but the same time are seeing a movement bring to the floor what they see as gender inequalities. Someone talking about how theyre getting enough of the time. And it does not become public story. Black male sexuality, thats kind escalate into a scandal. But underneath the surface these women are holding meetings. What does it mean to be cool. So this generation of feminists is growing end of the sole rights movements. For black women it tends to be more complicated. They still see race as the primary. Many will become feminists, but in the later context and a different time under different circumstances. They might to some to paths merge. At the same time they are intertwined. I want to revisit the question i asked but in a more direct way. So you are a historian. This is certainly not new to you but beginning and launching into this particular book what did you learn that you did not expect to learn . What were you more surprised to learn after having finished this book . A lot of things. I learned a lot of things. Because the well, there are two great mysteries. Just sort of the mystery that i was never able to uncover as a historian which i found fascinating. The identity among the Mississippi State commission is paying someone to report back to them about the happenings of the civil rights meetings. I dont know who it is. It would be interesting to know, but of course it is impossible. The other great mystery to me involves the motives of the man. Afghan named aubrey. At the time he is in his early 40s, a hard worker. And when he shoots James Merritt people assume that he is another white supremacist. And they figure he is associated with the klan, the early newspaper coverage, editorials just blast him as another a man full of hate to. But there is once they start to investigate they are confused as to why. Not that he was by any means a racial liberal had no known connection to any White Supremacist Organization with a complex plan are what. His motives are a mystery. He is still a round. Obviously had tried to call him a couple of times. He lives in the same house and a subdivision south. He has never revealed his motives, never revealed is not a test line. Just an interesting political story. This to me was one of the most extreme sort of stories that shot off the march. When marriage was shot a lot of people within the movement figured it was a conspiracy. This guy was able to walk out of the woods, shoot him three times and walked back into the woods. Despite all that it seemed like people were sort of paralyzed. That probably was not the case. It was not in their interest for someone to shoot james meredith. There would be doing a bad job of that was the case. But the more interesting part is that white southerners think that there is conspiracy. They figured that somebody in the Civil Rights Movement paid this guy from memphis. They paid this outsider the comments you, to wound, not to kalbs. Thats why they used birdshot rather than a single bullet. You just want to want him. There would be a big story and it would turn into a great, national march. That doesnt make any sense either because this is a weird march by one man said. Sonat a conspiracy, i think, holds ground. These competing stories, white southerners seriously doubt that this was a conspiracy. Segregationists use this as a weapon. I find it absolutely fascinating as a story. So wrapping up, what is the final thing you would like our viewers and readers to know about this but . Again, i see the book as a way to tell a broader story about the Civil Rights Movement by telling a very specific, dramatic story but the source movement. It occurs over three weeks. It is a classic story, a story, but this book tries to expanded and eliminated. Sheets off and all these directions. Gives you a chance to think about if youre going to read one book, i hope he might consider this one off. I hope so, too. At that it was kinetic among colorful, detailed, well researched, and it had the combination of interviews, research, and it just made the main characters pop. And those are relevant. Resonates with issues that we deal with today that we have already talked about. Thank you for your time. I really appreciated. Tomorrow night on cspan three, and discussion from the organization of american historians conference in atlanta about the 1964 freedom summer when civil rights activists register black voters in mississippi. It is part of a special friday Night Edition of American History tv beginning at 8 00 eastern on cspan three. Cspan2 providing live coverage of the Senate Floor Proceedings and the Public Policy events, and every weekend book tv now for 15 years the only Television Network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by the cabletv industry and by you to the brought to you as the Public Service by local cable satellite provider. Watch as and hd, like us on facebook, follows on twitter. At the National Book festival in washington, a pulitzer prizewinning Historian Taylor Branch talk about the Civil Rights Movement and his book the king years. This is 45 minutes. [applause] thank you, jeffrey. And thanks to all of you for coming. I this is a very exciting time, and i hope to use the civilrights history to look forward rather than backward because i think all of you as citizens of an equal share of this country devoted to the idea of equal citizenship and that we should aspire to the model of the Civil Rights Era in which even 8yearold children who are denied their right to vote advance freedom and democracy by studying its basic principles and taking risks to make it real. The Civil Rights Movement is about our past and our future which has a number of implications for those of us who are not students. We should be concerned when schools are teaching only history and math. Our citizenship, to some degree, has paralyzed in an gridlock, and that think that we are to some degree responsible ourself, and i am going to try to challenge you with a little bit of that along with, we normally get inspiration from the Civil Rights Era, and it is their him but it is also sobering, the degree to which the comparisons between now and then leave the rest of little bit behind as far as applying those lessons toward the future. This little book, my compact book is dedicated to us to this of freedom and teachers of history. The reason that i did it and shed so much blood by eliminating 90 percent of what i had written over 24 years was because teachers over the years have complained to me that it is half right. My trilogy was half right. Storytelling is what makes history accessible to students. They learned things through human stories, not through abstract categories and argumentation and the labels of analysis linked to dates. They get involved with stories. Therefore, that is good. However, 900 pages of stories is a lot, even for a college teacher, let alone for a highschool teacher, and so they said try to preserve the stories and give us something that is a little more compact as an introduction to this area if you believe that it is so vital not only talk past but our future and that it is crucially misremembered we have a terrible history of misremembering our history. We can turn it upside down it was in my textbooks that the civil war had nothing to do with slavery, the slaves were better off here than they had been in africa and that the people who restored white rule in the south were known as the redeemers. That is still true. It is a religious word for terrorists. So we have to be very careful because race and citizenship and freedom are tricky. We are in a tricky era right now i am using this book to try to teach students now. We have an experiment last spring at the university of maryland. I live in baltimore. To teach a seminar on the basics of so writes history and citizenship to a seminar classroom in baltimore with Online Students from russia and the Solomon Islands and all around the world. When they stand up and gossip about sailboats. Enhanced ebooks are amazing. There are revolutions coming in all kinds of aspects of american life. In some respects, they are thrilling, in other respects they are chilling because none of us wants to be a part of the industry thats made obvious leets, and half of the politics say thats what black people are for. They are the ones that should be in the industry thats obsolete because they have been used to it for 200 years. Blue collar work out of work, farming out of work, all the brunt of that fell on black people who have been behind. The great lesson of the future is what degree are we willing to look to the inspiration and discipline of American History to form Public Policies and trusts together that help us have rules and Public Policy that will advance and help us address the Serious Problems we faced in the Civil Rights Era, when an invisible minority that was 10 of the population with none of the traditional tools of politics. No armies, no newspapers. They were not the newspapers wouldnt even put most of their social events, they would not refer to them by name. They had no banks. They had no police force. All they had was a willingness to study and sacrifice for the basic principles of American Freedom to lift the rest of the country towards the professed meaning of its own values, and they did it. There were children in that era who led it and made adults mumble and stare the problem in the knees rather than in the eyes. You have college students, and in 1963 in the freedom ride and the sitins. They do not think of the issues that affect the United States and befuddle the president United States, at that time, president eisenhower. They were confronting it. By 196 p, when the rest of country was saying, essentially, this race problem of segregation in 17 states that stakes basic freedoms away from a whole segment of our population is wrong and somebody should do something about it, but not me, not now, and i can tell you i, myself, growing up in atlanta, it had finally wore me down. I 4 been trying to avoid it my whole childhood, and i said when i get impossibly old, like 30, im going to stick my toe in the race problem, and no sooner had i said that at the age of 16, i turned around and turned on the tv, and there were children in birmingham marching into dogs and fire hoses, singing the songs i sang in sunday school and not running from the dogs and fire hoses and not waiting until they were 30 or had the advances that i had growing up middle class in thrans, and it was so stupefying to me it changed the direction of my lifes interest against my will. Where did that come from . It was their activity, this stupidity, when the movement about to go down the tubes, condemned by every political figure in the United States from George Wallace to kennedy to malcome x to use small children in those demonstrations as young as 8 and 6 years old by the thousands when they could only get the conditions in birmingham so intimidating to black adults they only got ten or 12, and with the greatest speech in the church that got 10 adults. They were terrified, but they got 1,000 kids to march and another thousand on may 3rd, and it melted the emotional resistance to dealing with the fundamental issues of American Freedom presented by race, not only across the United States or many me as a 16yearold, but around the world, and thats why the greatest Civil Rights Movement is a greater inspiration outside the United States today than inside. They were singing, we shall overcome when they took the berlin wall down. They were singing we shall overcome when mandela came out of prison saying the answer is not armageddon, but a multiracial democracy at great risk and great effort to all of us. This ire spir ration has gone around the worldings and we have been, to some degree, trapped in it. Im going to give you two reasons that eng were trapped in. They all grow out of the book. They are not the kind of thing i try to teach young people in absorbing the stories and inspiration, but they are ideas that i think we should address today as citizens and gridlock democracy. I mentioned them on the news hour the other night and got a real double take. I said the real unexamined question in american Politics Today is to what degree the underpinnings of partisan gridlock are racial. What [applause] as we came out she kind of danced around that, came out, and said, do you mind if i ask president obama, if i interview him, if he thinks the underpinnings of gridlock hes suffering with so much, threatening to shut down the government right now are racial . I said, obviously not. He said, im throwing you urn the bus. The next day, she got an interview with president obama and said this historian says this, and obama danced around it. It is dangerous. It is delicate, but race throughout American History is the gateway to the advancement of freedom and blockage of freedom. Its the gate way where we go through. Two ways of looking at it. 1963, 50 years ago, segregation ruled. 17 teen states, wallace inaugurated governor with the famous speech, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. He talk about nothing but race. Fifty years ago in september, this month, he flew to baltimore, my home city, and announced he was going to run for president and never mentioned race. He never mentioned segregation again. He turned on a dime when the mash much on washington made it obvious that in the future, talking overtly about race was no longer going to be respectable, but addressed it and said hes running to restore local government against Big Government by pointy headed bureaucrats, tyrannical judges, and tax spin legislators, and he never denigrated the race of any person or group of people in history, and peoplemented to believe it. Thats the beginning of remembering history and beginning of the vocabulary of modern politics. If you dont believe that Big Government opposition today and that the notion that what makes me safe and makes me free is not all of the pain staking ties built up, and the pistol i carry in the star books, if you dont believe that thats not driven, by race, ask yourself why is it analyzed, and the Big Government in the pentagon, in the Homeland Security agency that frisks you, but whenever you get into an airplane, no, its only the Big Government to put you in a position that makes you fearful or anxious. Thats Big Government. Thats where it comes from. Thats why obama care works only as a slogan that mentions obama and, therefore, a racial signal and obamacare and a piece of legislation without anything about it and doesnt address the fact that if you got rid of it, presumption is we have a anywhere van that system. This works miracles, but its the most expensive in the world, and we convinced ourselves that it is irrational system to route including for a dental checkup for vast bureaucracies in profit making insurance companies. [applause] the choice between obamacare and unspecified anywhere value that tas not anywhere van that is driven by irrational fear and apprehension similar to the fear we all face on things that confront us in the mod earn world, even me in the Book Business. My Book Business is dissolving in many respects. We all have to adapt to that. Now, lastly, and i want to take questions because im trying to say our democracy is as simple as these wonderful stories of the 8yearold girls marching into the fire hoses, by its basic and challenges as democracy itself, and were not dealing with it very well today. Its easy to say that gridlock belongs on the other side of the people, cueing Big Government, and transmuting latent fear and hostility on racial grounds to the government itself. It was a destructive movement, great to go to basics, but its reinvolving around government that had allegiance to the king. Hard work began after that. What kind of government are we going to build . Everybody from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther king is saying were going to build something together by through government of the people by the people, for the people. Thats what patriotic. Thats what they have in common. Thats why i call the modern Civil Rights Movement mod earn founders, doing just what they did. Our side, the people who appreciate the movement is come police sit in our gridlock for two reasons, and they are not easy to talk about, but i throw them out because we have to get out of of this, out of the notion we have is for the other side to drop dead. [laughter] the people who appreciate racial as pelgts of advancement in American History, historically, from the very beginning of our republic through the civil war, through the progressive era, through the Civil Rights Era, and now today down to obama, people who appreciate the racial aspects talk only about race. They do not enlarge it or Pay Attention to the lesson Martin Luther king and the Civil Rights Movement talked about the larger premise of judgment and justice, and used race as a doorway to talk about it. The people on the other hand who showed up at the march the other day, and this was, to me, the most hopeful thing about the march. You had representatives from all the collateral movement that benefited from the Civil Rights Era. The gay rights movement, the Civil Rights Movement, Womens Movement, disabled movement, on and on, im standing here, thats half the formula. Make Race Relations the doorway to benefit everyone. Dr. King said famously in the line the first to be forgotten that when the Civil Rights Movement was rid of segregation in the first, the chief beneficiaries would be white southerners because the system was imprisoned psychologically, economically, politically, and in a system of segregation that depended on keeping people l degraded. It was degrading to everyone, and when that went, what did you hear about . The sup belt. You never heard of the sun belt when it was segregated. It was the hook worm belt. We were poor. They said as soon as the civil rights bill passed, not quite 50 years ago, but the city of atlanta built a today a stadium they didnt have and lured the first team, atlanta braves, from milwaukee to thrarnt, opening up the whole world. Every politician in the south who touches the Civil Rights Movement stands on its shoulders. For its prosperity, for the homes and dreams of the daughters, and university of university of North Carolina that only admitted nursing students in the 1960s. We take all this for granted. We need to have an open minded discussion where were all more comfortable about talking in talking about race, but were not paralyzed in talking about race only. Were not fearful that were going to insult some spokesman for a different racial group were diminishing them by talking about things they set in motion that liberated everyone. The larger justice. The reason civil rights education is so valuable because its accessible to children. Its because it addresses issues of freedom that affect all of us. It makes race the gateway to the promise of democracy, and that when you recognize the deficiencies of the democracy today, in the race, in our jail, in our poverty rates, in our school to jail, in our drug wars, it is not imprisoning you there in the race issue and in hopelessness, but it is going through that that you realize the larger connections and responsibilities that the Civil Rights Movement once opened with less resources, less hope, facing more difficult problems when app audience like this, in my lifetime, would have everybodys palms sweaty, just for fear that a mixed audience draws either the clan or police or would have somebodys father lose their business because the customers thought they were race mixers. That kind of terror is gone. In every breath that we draw, our gratitude for that kind of freedom should never be taken for granted through the history. We not only regain the balance, but what it means to be devoted to this, the tools, literacy, the crosscultural genius at the heart of america to address the problems before us. Thank you. [applause] i was trying to mix in scowling with inspiration, but i appreciate that any way. I just dont want to be come place sent with something so serious. If were not thinking about what were doing wrong, were not, as my football coach said, if its not hurting, terrorist not doing any good. We have time for questions and until they stop us, and i raised difficult ideas, but the questions are not on that. You can ask this is a vast subject. First question the other day was plaintiffively, is it true Martin Luther king was only fivefootsix . [laughter] yes. Next question . Yes, sir . I compliment you on a speech full of wisdom, really, just have to listen and be totally impressed, and i think the most ironic thing with your speech is that the people who can benefit the most, work 300 yards from where you are speaking are not here to listen as we did of beautiful speech. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] just one quick comment on that, the members of congress didnt show us the march on washington 50 years ago either. There were on only a couple. In 1963, they had a quorum call to spread in the record the names of anybody not there because they wanted to attack anybody who showed up at this march. Never be convinced that the march on washington 50 years ago was a warm and fuzzy event. There were riot troops stationed all around. They canceled elective surgeries, and, to me, they eliminated ban lick tore sales for the First Time Since prohibition, but, to me, the real kicker is that major league baseball, which has played right through floods and world war ii and everything, a week before the march on washington, postponed not one, but two washington senators games, the day of the march and the day after for fear wed still be cleaning up the results of armageddon. Those are the unspoken signals of race. Most of us deal with race, deal with it 99 subliminally before we deal with the concepts that we frame. Its not to say framing cop cements is not and dealing with it, adjusting, and governing ourselves is not our highest duty, but were kidding ourselves when we think were in complete control over this thing, and some of this, to some degree is not racialized. Racist is a difficult word because it means overtly organizing your whole life around the system. We are all racialized, but the question is what do we do about it, and how much of soul, minds, and inspiration were going to apply to it. Yes, maam, on this side. Hi. I wrote a book called why you talk so white, and it was about questions asked by my peers because i learned to speak well, i guess. Speak white, thats all right. [laughter] when i was interviewed in the don imus debacle, i got asked a comment was made about you just explain stuff to us on the radio in a way that made talking about race safe for lack of a better word. As i listen to you now and agree with what you say, what strikes me is we need some kind of language, we need to learn how to speak about race so that it is not threatening to either side, any side, all sides, whatever. How do we learn that language in a day of antagonistic, internet comments, the moment somebody says something, and the world we live in . Yes, very difficult because people when you try to raise the summit at all in todays media age, people only listen for the first pitfall, and when they get the first pitt fall, the conversation is set. Its trying to get a spit ball going the other direction, and that is our atrophy in public discourse. The Civil Rights Movement the thing is, that Movement Never took they faced that problem too. They couldnt get stuff in the newspapers, but that was not the end of it. That was the beginning of it. Well, what are we going to do about it . Do we have to write down names and addresses of the reporters, badgering them on the stories . Do we have to amplify words with witness and sacrifice . You know, we need to make the real challenge, never make stumbling blocks in the final stumbling block saying, you know, they have to drop dead. I think the key, which you probably sounds like you already have is that every conversation about race as affected american democracy should be starting with the prejudices that talking about race makes us bigger. It enlarges the story, not pi onhole the story. Theres not some people who talk race and only want to use it as a grievance and bang people above the head and not opening up, but we have to break that, and say there are conversations that this is the gateway, historically, and every other way, the gateway to a larger freedom for everyone. Theres no magic answer, but i think the first answer never take todays fail your as the end. Its the beginning of the question, how do we get around it . Thank you. Yes, sir . [applause] thank you, very much. You are nothing but a youre a ball of fire, man. [laughter] youre a ball of fire [applause] i mean, so you inspire me. You really do. I think more white people need to learn to talk like you do. [laughter] because if they did, wed open up this conversation. Im back from the university of maryland, and we are in college park, taking on this issue, especially in the area of health and health disparities. We believe this is where jim crow was still hiding out, and i hope that one day you take this on to expose the pinnacles of racism and discrimination that have permeated our society. My question is this, theres sometimes pain when we delve into the story. What helps me is the photos and images of that people lynched, there would be a festival, a picnic, children, who were those people . Who were those children are are now adults . What fear do they have in going into that history . Thats deep, man. How do we deal with that . That trauma that we have all experienced as a people, get through the trauma and get through the healing side. Well, thats a tough question, but you opened up i cant tell you how many people i interviewed in mississippi going back 30 years or more now, how many black folks said they were raised told in their households, do not talk about emmet till. Why . Its em baring. The story is painful and revealing of our helplessness. Its not just a white issue because youre afraid to offend or display ignorance or that thing to get over, robert kennedy, naive and silly about race as anybody, but he kept banging away at it. He was existential. He would do something to somebody, feel guilty about it, talk to them, asked why, and he groomed doing it. I think thats what we need to have, but the images of lynching, they are very, very difficult issues for both races, but, to me, they are they are little emblems of how quickly people can, in the future, those people will adjust to those memories, and we remember about race what we want to remember. It to the degree that you can turn it upside down, and thats what we really have to guard against in all conversations to go through that pain and say theres something bigger and better on the other side, but its part of the courage it takes to be a democratic citizen in a country that says the people are the ones who are responsible for the government. If the governments screwing up, its not just the people in the government, it is me. Diane nash, one of my favorite people from the Civil Rights Era, and some of you may know her, but she was a leader of the sitins, freedom rides, everything. Her family was harassed by the fbi. Dm one of the interviews with her, i said, diane, i showed her fbi document the about what they did done, petty little things. She said, oh, i dont bother with that. That was hoover. What do you mean that was hoover . Thats the fbi. They did terrible stuff. He said, yes, but i blame us for hoover. We left him in a position of arbitrary secret power for 50 years and anyone who studies American Government in the 6th grade should know you get what you got on art karat, whose world was small and wanted to run things. I blame us. Hes diane nash, black, cannot vote herself, but assuming responsible for hoover insteds of victimhood. Thats an amazing example to me of the wisdom young people she was 23 years olds when shes doing this stuff with hoover, so theres a lot of wisdom here, no easy answers, but it really makes our history just enthralling, i think. Thank you, and keep on keeping on. Yes, sir. [applause] on the subject of national gridlock, i was contemplating we could ask for a party specific plague. For one side or the other. I dont care which. [laughter] absence this, moving forward, this stupid, crazy gridlock. You got to apply all your heart, soul, minds, and body to try to detach some people on the other side from the irrationality they are trapped in. The antiBig Government side, seems to me, pretty much reached the called sack because theres a larger and larger body of the people. It appeals to fear, anxiety, but pride in theceps of saying, well, if i didnt just have all the public obligations and people asking me to, you know, pay small amount 6 food stamps, id be better off. I dont need any of our public conveyances. Im better off digging my own plumbing. That appeals to peoples pride, but its not true. We have to figure out ways to show people if they had the same initiative, same education, the same genius in sudan or in ire gray. We get a lot from what we built together. Our checks clear, roads meet, public speech is a glorious example of the cooperation, but its invermontble, taken for granted, and it makes people susceptible to politicians saying you may be scared of the other people and even better if you listened to me and strangled the government in the bathtub, and we have to figure out ways to peel off people some people are that way, very, very wealthy people are lobbying, spending money to basically have the government pay them. They rely on great masses of people diluted by propaganda. We have to figure out how to address that