That is a look at what we will be covering this upcoming week. For more go to booktv. Org and visit upcoming program. Nathan mccall talked about his book, makes me wanna holler a young black man in America Great he talked about his time and childhood in virginia and his time in rehab. This is about one hour. Allmak cspan author that his joining us today, nathan mccall, thean title is makes me wanna holler a young black man in america. Y where did you get the title . Guest i got the title fromlbum c an old gates alvin they came out in 1971. It is a classic and there was ainne song called inner city blues. Oll a and it says in the song that it makes me want to holler andne in a brought throw up my hands. And so i use that line in a piece i wrote for thepost Washington Post. T on. So it sort of caught on. Li . Cspan what was the purpose of the line . Guest the line was talkinged about the span itself. It talked about the time and thetrife,an d social strife and some of the to same issues that we are dealing with today. Crime and depression, the struggle of black people and g that was the theme of the song. So in singing the song he was kind of expressing his to frustration saying that it allhere makes me want to holler. Cspan where were you born . D a haf guest portsmouth virginia, which is about 3. 5 hours southere . Of here. Cspan how long have you lived there . H e guest welcome i lived there for a couple of years. In th and my stepfather was in the navy. And we were there for a couple ey of years and then we lived instepfat toronto and key westhe florida. When my stepfather got ready to retire from the navy we moved old en. Back and i guess i was aboute nine years old. And so we lived there from thee t time i was nine years old and my parents still live there. N . Cspan what are you doing right now im at. Guest i am a reporter for the Washington Post. N leve i was allowed to write that book. Ook so right now im on the book to le, her. And cspan lets talk about a ho couple things in your life and then we will go to them in great depth. How many different jobs have you had . The i guess i would have to count the jobs in my career as a journalist. My first job was the hometown newspaper. I got that job right out ofe. College and my second job was at the Atlanta Journal anjodtsi constitution. And i was there for about six and a half years. The then i went from that paper to the washingtown post. To prior to then, i held some odd. Jobs and some really odd jobs. Cspan how many times have you been in prison reign. Guest i have been in prison once. Once. I i was locked up more than once. I was locked up once force shooting a guy at it was about four weekends. Be but that was not considered present. That was time in the local jail. L mont several months later, itted a a r committed an Armed Robbery and shortly thereafter words was sentenced to serve 12 years ineeear prison. And i served three years and i got out on parole. Cspan how many times have you been married . And are you married now . Iivo guest twice and i am not three. Married now. He cspan how many children you have . Guest three children. W cspan why did you write this from a book . Guest the book stems from a p perspective piece that i wroteeton in the Washington Post. From i had moved here from atlantalize i and as soon as i moved here i i n could feel it, i realized and i i could feel it that there was anime n difference in the intensity of the crimes in this area and thece th crime and violence than in still atlanta. Atlanta still has problems with cre crime and violence and the level of ndc was different. And so i noticed that. Wa and the other thing was that itmy h brought me closer to my abo hometown. 1 when i lived in atlanta, it wasnt about an 11. 5 drive fromnly atlanta to portsmouth. Ce and so i usually got home about once or twice a year. E after i moved here, i was able to go home much more frequently. And so i would go home and visit my parents and hear about all h that was going on with some ofr a the guys that i was growing up on a street. To ail and some of the same things thathere i was reading about here in diffnce was washingtont and when i read these stories and there were story abou about faithless people and the bu when i story doesnt humanize people i and i often knew the people thate were involved or who were victims were the perpetratorsd and so i knew the stories behindk the stories. Abu i decided that i would writee fel about it and the feeling of going home and reading about all of these tragedies and how it compared to being here and reading about the tragedies and,bout you know, my ambivalence aboutst how it alli and how i was grappling with it in my own personal life and what my journey has beenote like. Iece i wrote this piece and itsecion appeared in the outlook sectionand of the Washington Post. And i was scared to death. I had never written about my own a life area i had always written about other people. And i wrote about my life and it was fun. It was overwhelming. I got a lot of letters. I got a lot of phone calls and i go gott some calls from book agentsnow as well and they called andnk said, i think the you have are book here. So things started happening and we got the book contract. And that is how it happened. En cspan where was this picture taken and what are you wearing . Heywa n guest the picture is taken and some street in washington dc. They wanted ant urban setting and theybu found eight building that had some graffiti on the wall. Drs and sos they told me to come oi dressed like i might be dressed ordinarily. Ar and that is generally what i would wear in the summer. A tshirt and just lightly. Cspan what do you call thep. Cat . Guest i call it tap. Some people call it anotherits sil name. Ha it is similar tto a hat thatt i muslims wear, but its not as muslim cap. It is more optimistic. Cspan what is your anger levelr at this like in your life . Ws w guest my anger lover angerit level is about the same as it is when i was a teenager but the difference is that i know how to direct it and what to do with it. When i was a teenager, i had to s understand this blind rage in me. I knew that i was angry. I knew that i was angry at someone. Me but if you asked me to definebeen able it, i would not have been able to do it. Un and now ide understand it and i understand the source of thatdo th anger and i know what to do with it it. And rn i you know i know how to take itthin g and turn it into something constructive rather thanctive. Selfdestructive. A cspan youll understand whye book im asking this question based on what is in the book. Ha but how would you feel and what is the difdiferffence in the way the you would feel with a white person interviewing you versus a black man interviewing you. Sew guest what is thewere difference . Cspan yes what is the he difference between my faith in someone who would bead black. Sm e guest i would think thatwho someone who is black that is interviewing me would understandot a lot more than you would aboutof y the nature of my journey and the source of my anger. Ou and i think that for you it would probably be more difficult to understand. Rence the difference being that i would assume that ab black persono interviewing me would have also ngs th experienced some of the same things that i have experienced. You know, working in theof the sa mainstream and some of them main frustrations. Even out ond the street. So they would be able to i identify more, i would thinkd lk that some of the things that i would talk about. Eral ti cspan its not once but several times that you say youhits, hate whites and if you do oryou do dont, can you tell us where youh are in your evolution two. H. Guest you know, for a long time i hated whites and that was part of a blind rage because i l felt that my life has been large shaped by forces that are muchno larger than me institutions that are larger than me andces very little access to. Re and all i knew is that those forces and institutions were controlled by white people inludmy the lives of most of the people around me, including my parents they were shaped by those forces. To and so it was easy to say hey then if, you know that whiteu people are evil. You know i hate white people. And that is how i felt for a long time. And i carry that kind of anger right up until the time that iwh went into the white mainstream to work as a journalist. St whit e when i face the mainstream i did not trust white people. And then that white people that were very friendly and those that were very anxious to help an me in whatever ways that theylly xp could. Th and i wasnt really expectinghot matt ando i didnt quite know how to it to respond to that. Dst a and i still kept my distance you know. Hee and so does the demeanor of some of the whites made me wonder. It made it a little bit more sa difficult for me toy say that all to white people are bad. Oul when i went to my second job atame the atlantappen journalconstitution, the samei thing happened and i met a guyshi and there was this guy that came white gu to work for the paper and theear guy was very friendly. Ri cspan what was his name . Hi guest his name is danny bonds. There is a chapter in the bookthe and this guy was the kind of guy that was a stranger to no one. Up to and he says hey, how are you his doing. And i didnt feel the same kind o of bondage or reluctance that ies. Often felt and he was able to you know encourage me to lower o the barrpiers and to open up alitt little bitl more. Begn we begin talking and spending time together and we bothet on ou bic enjoyed writing bicycles. We would ride bicycles on the we weekend and ride and talk and wend would talk very candidly and ask each other questions. Iff the kinds of difficult questions that whites and blacks dont often ask each other and we havedont open dialogue, the kind ofgh of o dialogue that we dont have enough of it oute here. Uld and so he would ask questionswo sometimes that would anger me. Ques and i would ask questions, you know, i would ask him questionsao about white people. As well as his response. Unde and it heightens our understanding of each other turn se it over time i began to see thatt df this guy is really not different from me. G. And i think that he saw the same thing. So my relationship with danny anher l inspired me to take another lookund at other people and other whitewe people around me who were similar. And these are people in the cscious newsroom. Wo i decided and i made au conscious decision that i would open upth and that if anybody extended their hand in friendship to me re that i would be receptive to it. Ws and i was surprised. I mean i discovered that there are a lot of good white people. And i have to rethink my wholeand value system so that ie poi eventually reach the point where i am now which is that i god understand that there are good white people and there are bad white people just as there are good black people and there are bad black people. Ans and so no i do not hate white dont hat people. A lot th ie dislike a lot of the things that i see coming from the white establishment. But thats not the same thing as hating white people. Cspan who is scooby dee . H yes we call him scooby d. Agu guest he was an older guylder than and he had a reputation in thee of the guy was bad in every sense ofuy the word and the young guys in ne the neighborhood, because it was a big thing in our neighborhoodle to to be able to be tough and also to fight. Do and that had to do with some kind of perverted ideas that we had about masculinity. And so this represented the embodiment of that. And so i looked up to the sky admi and i admire this guy and iery decided at a very early age thatwa he was someone that i wanted to hi know. He shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself and killed himself. How long ago . Guest i think that that was in maybe 1979 or 1980. Buddy. Cspan who is shellshocked . Guest i called him my why training partner. Cspan what does he do now . Hip guest he lives in my hometown and he has a job at theing a r shipyard. He is just living fea regular life span. Cspan what kind of pain did you do it him . St cspan what kind of hanging out did you do . Guest we stolen we burglarized houses. Ars everything. Cspan what years to. Guest i met him when i wase in the fifth grade and then wewe began hanging tough leader. N li so itk wouldve been early 70sriso until the time i went to prison. Cspan how old are you now . Stat guest i am 39 years old. Cspan did you graduate . T guest yes, from journalisme . Was not how old are your ir parents . And do they still live in your hometown . W guest yes, they do live in the same hometown and they are both surprised and amazed and they have been surprised and amazed for a long time now. T i made in m they were surprised by the changes that i made in my life. Very surprised. E cspan did you ever come close yo to dying or killing someone . And why are you in thatuille a situation . Guest vote. I came close to getting killed a w couple of times herriot i belong to a group a gang. S and we used to fight on the streets and one day we wereome involved and again more with some other guys and they caught me and my buddy and another guythey ju and theym jumped us. Th and they eat us with lead pipestomp and they stoppedst us. I hin cspan why is that . Thig. Guest well, we were at war. Op it started at a bus stop in the mpete morning and we would compete for girls attention. E we did like them coming to ourtaing corner talking to girls whor ct lived in ourio neighborhood and so the we jumped in one day and theyto one ofhe retaliated. We jumped in and i put a gun to one of the guys had and theye retaliated and so then they caught me and they eat me prettyund bad and i had a brace around myhey at neck. The and they beat me with these there pipes. Went and so there was a moment therebeca where i actually felt like i was going to die because i kept st waiting for them to stop beating me up. Goto and i remember thinking they have to stop they have to stopally. Eventually and they just continued on. Mysel and so i felt myself losing and sehow consciousness and somehow ite stopped and someone helped me i as home and i was all busted up andad bleeding. Retty but i felt that i had come pretty close to death. Ddi another time we went across towna and we were involved in a game more across town and we went to see some girls who lived acrossnd ey town and these guys caught us inwe there neighborhood and we were unarmed and they pulled out the gun and started shooting us. Ed runi so we started running. I and i was running at the sameget me. Time, fearing that one of the bullets was going to get me. Ort and i was fortunate enough too get away. I i had so many close scrapes liketims. That. I came close to killing peopleclses several times. The closest time was when i shot gu a guy. Ean . He and i had plaz. Cspan what does that mean . Guest i dont know. Hing but he and i had had are running throughout the years. Last and it was the last straw. Nd and i my girlfriend and i were at ad carnival one day and plaz and some of his buddies were there and he put his finger and my girlfriends face and and he threatened her and he looked atk c me and according to the street code, that was something i could not let him get away withspecte me because he disrespected me. They say that he dissed me. Onat t and so i had a gun at the time ab and i decided that i had tooclose to shoot him. Ser and he was about as close to me as you are. He was a little bit closerd because he was running and pointing his finger at me. G and so ive pulled the gun out was of his pouch that i was carrying and i pulled the gun out and i shot him. It at and i aimed it at his heart. I and after i shot him i went and th toward him and i was going to shoot him again and there was a friend of mine who is out there who saw this and he called my called name and he said no you dont want to do that. A and he ran up behind me and said you dont want to do that. D so t and so that gave him just enough time to get up. E was he got up and he ran off into the parking lot and i saw him h collapse and so i went home my afterwards and told my stepfather that i have shotwe ne t somebody. O and he said that we needed to gool to the Police Station and ielf in. Needed to turn myself in. So we went down to the Police Station and we were sitting outside this office and we had been sitting up there for a longive cm time. A detective came out and hery its spoke to my stepfather and said i am sorry that it has taken so he aid long here but the guy has been taken to the hospital that your son shot anything hes going topens die. Se if so we are going to wait and seee what happens. Because ifg he dies we have to charge her son was murdered. Hough k well i knew that i have shot this guy. But ita had an occur that thishisg guy might die. And i think a lot of teenagers dont think about theyou know, yoook consequences and you look at tvhot and you see some guy gets shots he holds his arm and you know, he may go off somewhere and dor several other things before hes s sees a doctor. Noti t and that is sort of them notionot a that i had. When is you shoot a guy, but hes not sa going to die. So when this detective said that he might die it dawned on me that i m that ii might be charged witht was the murder. And that was the first time that the whole notion of consequences registered in my mind. Hours later the detective came back. You k and he said i talk to the people at the hospital and they think that hes going to pull through. Is and they said that barely missed and if his heart and it had been if i me it wouldve been a little bitan b closer he would have died are in and i had been praying to thedi sky to live because i had not intended to kill anybody. This and so i was glad that this guy rough. Pulled through. Get cspan what did you get . N guest i was sentenced to0 serve 30 days in jail and givenn a 300dollar fine. And i ended up serving four weekends in jail. And that happens about a month i wa after the shooting and i was on i probation. Some buddies and i were going to h go rob a hotel and we went to the hotel the Sheraton Hotel at the shopping mall. And so we went to this hotel and things were not set up the waypeople that we thought they were going to be. Knowo and there were people there. Bu one of my buddies was actually his there, he was actually very street smart. And he would go and check these i places out in advance and helay out th would lay oute the plan and then we would go and execute thechecked plan. Is so he had checked out this hotel and according to the plan as he em laid it oupt we go in and wehe would hit them at the Registration Desk and we got there and they were having some kind of formal event. In additio in addition to that, they had securityse guards. Tryinto t and so we were riding aroundels trying to think of something to make some money. Do and they said, okay lets do that. So initially we were going with tim the guy who went to the mcdonalds atn a second time tocash pick up cash and then deposited somewhere else. And so we got there and this guy was just leaving. And i had the gun. Fe i was feeling nervous that night. I have always had a strong dance ws f of intuition and i saw the guygh and he walked past me. E rest roo so i walked into the restroom and instead of pulling a gun, ist room walked into the restroom and my buddy came in behind me and said, look you just miss this guy. So what are we going to do . Ll and then they said well we need to figure this out. T so we burst into the Employee Entrance of the mcdonalds and i pulled the gun and i told oneemployees guy to go over to the corner. All of the employees did what they weret told. Some others went over to theegan cash registers and copies bagsgs and begin loading money into then. Backs. G there, while i stood watch with a gun. Na and while i was standing there way the manager is his way into thei ss back office to call the policeso i arne and so i warned him and i an pointed the gun at him not to move. Mnute in a few minutes later he triedainan it again. So i pointed the gun again and put my finger on the trigger and you i said if you move again, im going to bust you. Thatm o and at that moment i was trying not to to decide whether or not to know shoot this guy. Care i know that he was scared and ied was just as scared, but i have decided if he moved again, i would have to shoot and i alwaysfeeling of remember the feel of having my finger on the trigger because irigger, wasy contemplating whether or noti to squeeze it. Tha i believe to this day that if i h had squeezed the trigger ind wouldve shot that guy and that guy probably would have died and i wouldve gotten much more trouble than i did. Cspan tyou call this guy a hed [bleep] what does that mean . Rame o m i guest i wrote that putting myself in the fram e of mind athat this the time. My thinking at the time was that this guy was what we call ane is uncle tom. Sumedwa he was a black manager of an hili establishment and he was putting his life on the line for this business and it angered me that this guy would, number one, risked his life for thisthat establishment because it struck me that it is not worth a ended me also angered me because i didntng t want to shoot him yet i felt that he was going to do im something crazy to force me to shoot him. Th and so i had all of theself emotions going through me and i found myself getting angry with this guy and that is how ia thought about him and they used to talk about youve probably heard people talk about during slavery times in the way that the story does some of thelaves house slaves began to protect the master as if they were hisviewed thi own and that is how i viewed this guy. Cspan what is the difference with the nword . One. Guest it means a lot ofhat things and its one of those i me words that you know the that. English language is crazy like im that. Pend one word can have so many its meanings and implications depending on how it is used in the context is everything. Ou if you call me the nword, i of te will maybe be offended and want to fight. Because of the history of the use of that word coming from whites, you are saying that is a yor bade word. But if my friend, shellshocked had called me back then itshe the modification of it and thats how we pronounce it. And theres a lot of debate inck the black community todayse i whether we should use it at all i and it is a legitimate debate. N because people say if white shou people callld you the nword then you should be offended at anyone calling you that. Is cspan what is a redbone . Guest it is a light skinned black woman. It is a street term and we comel in all complexions from blue and black to redbone being the comp lightest complexion black person that you can imagine. And so it is our way ofcribin describing, you know a lightompl complexion black person stanback what is jonin us guest it is a term that b depicts that you are joking. You hear people today call itn o so ragging. But another term is playing the of devil or you we get people together and they make fun of a each other just for fun andn it it is an art. Strt that i might hone in and you y might look at mike to and say where did you get that funny looking rural and i might say look at your shoes and then you might hone in on my jacket and i would say, what about yourcutou haircut. You know . And we would go tit for tat and it draws a crowd and people would stand around to see who on could be jonin. The if you got the best of me a someone could take you on and you would have a jonin session. Ha some will say look at that funny shirt do you have on, you bought that from tears. A and you might look at them and say your mom buy you this shirt. Very and so sometimes its very family, sometimes it would get very vicious. And sometimes he would have guys s that were doing this so hardone that people would get mad at reacion t them. Cspan what is the reaction you have t gone . An guest the book has been outal a couple olf weeks and i have had people calling me and calling the Washington Post to tell me what they thought about it. Also they ran excerpts from the book in the Washington Post magazine and Newsweek Magazine as well and the response hasrelly been really been great. Cspan what are they telling i hear you . Ost guest one of the things that i hear most often is that people say they were impressed by mythis honesty and telling the story. And that is one of the things that i have to do. I said that i want the book toeho be brutally honest. Myself honest about myself and my life that and i wanted to talk about the lotof pain that i felt in life and the pain that i think a lot of wr i lachman feel and i wanted to write about things that a lot of lachman do not publicly discuss. Cspan what do people come up to you and say ive never readcome this before . People that know me are surprised about all of the things that i did. Weredo i have relatives that said i know y know that you were doing somef things, but i didnt know you are were doing things like that. I had no idea. Cspan let me just stop you. If i would say boy to you, then you would what would youreacti reactionon be . Fed guest i would be offended. Because of the history of thethe use use of the word boy. From coming from white people. Ma historically if a white man s called, referring to a black man an d as a lawyer it was a degrading w term. Consid and so we consider it to besonin offensive. Ou ifr a person in our communityder ba particularly older black people,we they say boy, how are you doing . We understand that they dont mean anything by it. Stand back going back to the yo reaction you talk about the current offense at the and Washington Post and some of theyou reporters you name them what do at di they think when they read this . Guest i dont know as oferal t yet. Ive been in the news imseveral times. Writ cspan what did you write ine washi hereng . Yar and how long has it been . The guest for years. Cspan talk about that chapter. En guest okay. Cspan you had been ratherd, straightforward and honest and they may disagree with you. Eah. Do we have talked about people b that you are working with today. Why ise that . Frm guest i felt that if i wasneif i going to be candid about my life to b and where ive been and thee f things that i have done imi going tof be candid throughout the book and that was my t challenge. Pul i decided that i wasnt going to pull any punches anywhere and idi wrote about what i did outside mai the mainstream and i have alsowas lik wrote about what it was like for me crossing over into the mainstream and how it looked to me and how i felt. I wrote about that at the an washingtond post. And the section that i wrote about the chapter at the post i talked about the editor and i covered city hall when i first came there. And we had a team of reporters that was supposed to work only together. And i was the only black personus on that team and there were fourabo of us. And i felt this competitiveness t on the team that i felt wasnge. Really strange and thisete. Business we compete and we focus in terms of the competition. Theres sme and there is some competition within organizations but the competition that i felt was really intend and it made meable. Very uncomfortable and it maderes me very resentful. So i wrote about it. Any reac cspan you said you have notnot a gotten any reaction from yourb oup colleagues . S that i guest now. Not the ones that i wrote about. Ok atthe but i talked to a few colleaguesed beforehand. I asked them, what do you think . Hing because one thing i wanted to make sure that i was not doing was taking cheap shots atto people. And so i wanted to protect myself in case i was doing that and there were a couple of myyo colleagues, whitue and black and i sent a couple before the book came out i said let me know if you think im taking cheap shotspinion. Here. And let me know what yourethi. Thinking. The and the reaction was mixed. Some said no, i think youre being honest. St he others have said, youre beinge honest, but maybe you dont need to name names. Think and some others have said it. Think it is a cheap shot. Hit cspan did it depend on whether you are black or white . He guest i dont think so. I met tom before i went to thes wrkin post and i was working at the Atlanta Journal constitution and prog i havera gone to this management the Training Program at the university of missouri and theykers would bring these speakers indisus and have Panel Discussions about values and issues in journalism. Cspan what year was this . As guest it was 1987 or 1988. U were it was 1988. Miss cspan how long were you at Columbia University two. W guest a monthlong program and i was there with other othe journalists and all races. It was called a multicultural Management Program and we talkede about issues such as the need to get more minorities in ne decisionmaking positions andimp how important that was. Ome cspan how to tom whitman come into your life . Who well, he was one of the discussn people that came in for a panel about discussion. Well i had and tom was doing some recruiting in personnel fort of the Washington Post sort of traveling around and doing those kinds of names. H so ia have had some history with the Washington Post the yearthe before. Prog the year before i went to there program, i was brought here to interview at the washingtond post for a job and during thet interview i did not tell them cri that i had a criminal record and the reason i didnt tell them is because i had some previous experience as where i was aboutbo to be offeredu a job and then as soon as i came clean i didnt get the job and it was verydecded discouraging. Going, f and so one point i decided if g im ever going to get a career to m going or make another start iot haveto to get my foot in the door and show them what i can do and ou li then tell them about my criminal record. Cspan to july . Guest some may say it was a lie of omission and omission. I but they didnt ask. Ask ou. And i didnt fill out ann man application and many times you u dont fill out a job applicationpro ce until youre being processed forse yo personnel and i think itu wouldve come out then. So they asked if you had evertha i been convicted of a felony. Reco so i didnt tell them, but theyr found out that i had a criminal year record. Er w and so all of this came in to t play ah year later when i was at this program at the university wewe of missouri and we were sitting tab around a huge table having thisssion panelwi discussion verypma w vigorously. S, ad and tom was one of the speakers and he said we are having a hard exmp timele finding quality minorities. So let me give you an example. D theres a young man that we si interviewed recently and ist what has he said that as soon as he said that i knew that he was talking about me and i thought oh, my god, this is my life life. This is the story of my life. Yo and he said that we had a young for a j man that interview for ao job a with us and we like them a lot. And his qualifications were deadeverybody ik ed and he interviewed well and everybody liked him and we werea set to offer him a job. And come to find out that the stt guy was in trouble for Armed Robbery. And so i am sitting there justt. Falling apart and i didnt know what to do. Nted to st there was a part of me that you wanted to stand up and say, wait a minute. Young i am not young man and you kow know, im doing better and i made mistakes. E but i have changed my life. And there was another part of me that just, i was outraged. There was another part that wanted to cry because i was her. N and so he went on talking and iit and decided just to sit and wait and ha see what happens. I was curious to see how other people would respond to that. And so people began raising their hands and then asking questions and one person asked well, what did the relevance of the criminal background have to do with hibas qualifications forqualificaions the job. And then someone else asked would you ask him if he had a criminal record. Y one one by one, the people in the room came to my defense without def even knowing that theye werethe p coming to my defense. None of the people knew that i s had a criminal background and it made me feel s o good. And so i didnt have to say anything. But after the session was over, i got up and people werend standing around talking and i went over and i introduce myselfre ta and i said i am the young man that you were talking about. And so he was apologetic and he jus was shocked. Ap he kept apologizing, saying i didnt know, i am sorry. E and i were just like to say thatm p i dont think that that is an appropriate example for you to use in trying to explain what itlified is difficult for you to findities qualified minorities. Riminal because the implication was we couldnt find any because all of them have similar records, which is not the case. Cspan have you seen him since youve been at the post . G yes, i saw him shortly after i got to the post in the newsroom one day. Intr and i think he remembered and wend we shook hands and we chatted and there was a sort of discomfortl times there. We chatted several times since then. Yh. Cspan he said the movie super t fly had an impact on you when you were young. Ether or we talk nabout the violence onwe television and how it has had anhas had impact on people in thishis co country. Thats a good question. Super definitely the movie came out in the 70s and i think it mightve been around 1972 or 1973. The time and atth the time there were not that many movies coming out that in had black actors in them. Mmunity and so everyone went out, i la think all over the country. Bau and they went out to see this bac movie because it was a movie about a black eye who in his own way was a kind of hero. Decid and so this was a guy thatnot a decided that he did not want to sel work, he wanted to be selfemployed, but he didnt want to be in the system. Earn and he decided that he would sell drugs and try to earn enough money so that he could busines eventually start a legitimaten. Business and that was his game was plan. Real and so this guy was a very cool guy. And so he sold cocaine. And at the end of the movie hef io th sort of rode off into the sunsetas abou and i think that i was about 15 or 17 years old, so young andand impressionable. Ool. And we were like wow, that was cool. That wasan hit. And we talked about it. Everybody talked about it. Pa in and they had such a profoundu know impact on the black community. People started to try to dressct like this guy. It impacted the way he acted. Wit this guy used to wear a necklace spoo with an coke spoon on it. Tutl and they really had a profoundeally impact because black people were b searching them. We were searching for direction. Tion. There was the Civil Rights Movement and people in myre b generation were becomingso we w disenchanted with that and we were looking for alternatives. An so this, for us it looked like a viable alternative and so myctually n buddy actually began dealinghat drugs and he got the idea from that movie. So there is no question in my mind that young people arewha affected by what they watch. U because when you are young and immature you dont have the same kind of filtering system a that adults had. An look at a movie and say you canues reject the values and you cane. Reject the ideas that aren tat promoted in that movie and the behaviors that you see in thatepae movie. You canr separate reality fromit. Fiction. M inour and we dont always get them inown neigorho our households or neighborhoods, but sometimes we get them on tv toda and that is what is hapy. Peningrly today. Ys th you also said in your early days that the kennedys bootleg liquor during world war ii he stole a few things, so what . T yes, i wrote about that in a buies a conversation that my buddies and i were having and we were sitting around talking about alternatives and what we would do rather than go and work for the white man. And someone in the room saidan. That. They said think about the busine kennedys, they started off withey an illegal business and they ran liquor in prohibition and then earned enough money to eventually open a legitimate ense. Business. So if you are thinking at the time it made sense and it seemsnt possible. N cspan were you going to do next . Moe guest i dont know. Vote shortly after that we got ast movie deal. Y we talked about how closely entwined the book industry and the movie industry are. And so as soon as we had this ge bidding war we began getting calls from hollywood. So we got a good offer fromtures, ad columbia pictures and eventually we were able to dod a contract and they bought the rights tory the book and the story. In the director will be john singleton, who is the director stt on of the movie boys in the hood. Hes about to start on another will be movie project and they have said pr this will beo his next project. If anda we have had a discussion about what it any role. Ifferentoday t cspan do you feel that you areta different today than when i no started . T way guest i dont think you canyo go through this and not change in some way. Bok when you write a book about your and hink a life, it forces you to sit down and think about your life in ways that perhaps youve never thought about the war. The whole process of writing ak hires you to think things through and so i had to put myina life together in a story in a o way that would make sense to theeadrs readers in a way that would help readers understand the journey that i have taken from the street to the mainstream and why i took that journey. T and so in the process of thinking through all of that i an thinkge it changes. Publ cspan this is what the book looks like nathan mccall, the book is makes me wanna holler a young black man in america. Thank you. Every weekend, booktv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction all authors and books on cspan2. Keep watching for more serious readers to. This is booktv on cspan2, here is a primetime lineup tonight. Coming up next, kens and Geoffrey Ward look at lives of the or and eleanor roosevelt. And that is David Horowitz outlines his plans to defeat the left and Marianne Cooper talked with Sheryl Sandberg on American Families and economic insecurities at 9 00 oclock. And on after words, looking at the significance of life on earth. A primetime programming continues at 11 00 p. M. Eastern with a debate on war and the constitution. Its all coming up next on cspan2 booktv. Ken burns and Geoffrey Ward, considered the personal and political lives of theodore eleanor, and Franklin Roosevelt in their book the roosevelt, a companion book to the seven part pbs series. They also took phone calls and emails and tweets on washington journal. Just program is about 45 minutes. Filmmaker ken burns joins us wrer jeffr now with Geoffrey Ward. To fourteen hour documentary morehe rooseve a n than 100 years of history. Yrs did you think there wouldnt be enough material . It is the most extraordinary an incdi story of an incredible family and an amazingin country