York city was hurtful and helpful to the union you during the civil war, and the positive and negative aspects of studying abroad. Now, thats just a few of the programs youll see on booktv this weekend. For a complete television schedule, go to booktv. Org. Booktv, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. Its television for serious readers. And now we kick off this weekend with a panel on history of civil rights. This is from last months mississippi book festival. [inaudible conversations] welcome, everyone. Im Chris Goodwin with the Mississippi Department of archives and history. F if youve not already, please silence your cell phones. Welcome to the civil rights History Panel number two. Sponsored by the mississippi humanities council. We thank them, we also thank the Mississippi Legislature who lets us hold this book festival in this beautiful state capitol. We could not ask for a grander setting for it. Thank you to the authors, theth panelists. They are all authors. Their books are for sale downstairs. If you have not bought them, i advise you to check them out. Theres a schedule for when theyll be signing in the brochure, and they should all be available downstairs later, if not already. But thank you for doing this with us. Our moderator today is pamela junior, the distinguished director of the fantastic Smith Robertson museum and Cultural Center here in jackson. Pamela . D afternoon. I am pamela junior, the director of Smith Robertson museum and Cultural Center. Let me just say how much of an honor it is to be here, especially in this room and the things that happened here, but mostly because we have these phenomenal authors. Lets just give them a hand already, please. [applause] im such a big fan. Ive been back there talking to them about the book, and i was asked you really read the book . Yes, i did. [laughter] i read the book. But we have with us, to my left, martha wyatt rossignol, shes written the book my triumph over prejudice a memoir. Coming of age during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights Movement. Wyattrossignol has two daughters, three grandchildren and one greatgrandson. Our next book, Delta Rainbow the irrepressible Betty Bobo Pearson by sally palmer thompson. Sally was raised and born and educated in california but has lived in memphis, tennessee, for over 50 years, so youre a tennessean. Oh, my goodness. [laughter] she retired as dean of continuing and corporate education at rose college, and she has authored three books. Next is Patricia Michelle boye, t who is the director of the Womens Resource Center at loyola university, new orleans, where she also teaches courses on race and gender and on comparative studies of oppression and resistance. And she authored the book right to revolt. And our next panelist is [inaudible] but with the introduction a new edition by trent brown. Thank you so much, guys, for coming and being part of this. You know, i was in the back talking, and i think when i was thinking about civil rights and mississippi and all the power players that were such a large part of where we are today, our legacies, those soldiers, those marchers who made it possible, and to have these authors to be able to write about these wonderful people or to do a memoir about her life in fayette, mississippi, is absolutely phenomenal. And with that, im going to allow the authors to talk for about five minutes about their books starting here. Good afternoon. My name is martha wyattrossignol. My book followed me from a child up until 1990. I didnt play, i dont think, a major part in civil rights, but it played a major part of my life. I wrote about being, growing up and my whole world was black. I never came in contact with white people until 1967 when i was integrated in school. And that was an eyeopener for me because my first day of school you see all these white faces, almost like im looking at today. And, you know, you begin to wonder when people say, well, i feel black, i felt black that day. But i no longer feel black, i just feel like a person, and i try not to look at i dont meet color, i meet people. And i dont forget where i come from, but i dont want to continue to live in the past. I want to remember where i am today. And i hope that when you read my story, you will understand where im coming from. I think that to say that my life has been easy, it hasnt, and i dont take anything for granted. But i just feel its time for me to live for who i want to be today x. At 66 years old and at 66 years old, im going to live my life, and im not going to let anyone dictate to me how to live that life. And i hope you as a reader or will find your truth and live your dream. Very good, very good. Beautiful. Good afternoon, im sally thomasson, and i want to, first of all, thank everyone who organized this festival. This is one of the most remarkable events ive been to in a long time. And the depth and wisdom that you all have gathered together has just been such a fabulous day, and i just want to thank you so much. What martha says is, i think, so important because she is recognizing her own individuality and living her own life. And the story that i have told in Delta Rainbow the irrepressible Betty Bobo Pearson, is another remarkable story. And one of the things, as pamela said i grew up in california, and i moved to memphis. But i didnt know mississippi. I had wonderful mississippi relatives, but i just really, you know, and friends from mississippi, but i never got to know mississippi until another friend of mine said i had just finished a second book, and she said, what are you going to write about . I said, i dont know. She said, well, you should write a book about Betty Bobo Pearson, and i said who is Betty Bobo Pearson . And she said she is the most remarkable woman i have ever known. And i said, hmm, okay. Well, lets do a little investigation. And so we started going down to sumner and to tutweiler and to clarksdale, and we started talking to people who knew betty. Betty now is living in california. They had one child, and she is live anything a retirement home living in a retirement home at 94 years old. And still i defy anyone to write a better email or articulate anything than she does. I mean, its just she is an amazing woman. But shes been an amazing woman from the start. She is a seventh generation mississippian whose parentage had come into mississippi, into the delta, established their plantations and had gone through and so she was of that class of plantation owners who grew up knowing that there was something. She had incredible loyalty to her family, but she had a sense of purpose that was different from a lot of people. And, for instance, ill tell you one brief story. When she was in, at ole miss in 1942 now, she was a senior in her philosophy class and had to write an essay about anything she wanted to write about. And she wrote about why the schools of mississippi should be integrated. Well, the professor was really very, very taken with essay, and he said can i submit it to the rosenthal competition which would give you a full scholarship to a fouryear graduate school up in new york at columbia . And she said, okay, fine, thats okay. And so she went on about her business. And about six weeks later, he called her into his office and said, betty, youve won the scholarship. And she was ecstatic. She borrowed a car and rode home to clarksdale where she and she said, ran into her daddys office and said ive got a scholarship to go to columbia for graduate school, and he looked at her and he said, no daughter of mine is going to yankee land. Well, she was, you know, she was just what do you say . And she said, so she screamed, she hollered, and for about six weeks they argued back and forth. But she was so loyal to her family, she decided that she could not accept and defy her father. She was a good mississippian, good southern girl, and so she wasnt going to defy her father. And so she turned down the scholarship. But it was starting to eat at her, and she was graduating, and so he thought ive got to show she thought ive got to show my power that i am a grown woman now. So she borrowed her mothers car, drove up to memphis and went to the Marine Recruiting Office which had just owned. The marines had just decided a month before that they would have a womans reserve, and she joined the marines. [laughter] and then she drove home and said, daddy, i have joined the marines, and he was delighted. You know, patriotic man. [laughter] and so she didnt show him anything. But anyway, so then she served her time in the marines. And the next really remarkable part, she came home, married another mississippi planter, which was just, the plantation is delta plantation which was right outside of sumner. And she attended the emmitt till trial. And she was sitting in that and watched it and realized what was going on, and it really changed her life. And she became convinced that she had to do something to the try to show the world that all mississippians didnt believe many segregation or in segregation or didnt believe, all White Mississippians believed they were superior people x. So she went up to the reporters from New York Times and look magazine and life magazine and london times and said, listen, we have a place outside of sumner where all of her friends were ignoring, just they were denying that the trial was even going on. And they were just kind of turning their backs on the whole thing. And she was just astounded. So she asked these people, she wanted to show that all, everyone in mississippi wasnt this way, so they came out, and she entertained and got to know these people from the times and such. So that became a cause for her to continue. She became on the civil rights commission, she worked with her her home was open to all the freedom riders were coming down, and it is a remarkable story. And she has gone on and just one incident to tell you that she just oh, i have to say this. Part of what the problem was is she didnt believe in trying to convince people through the word, she just knew she could only do it through her action, and she thought she so she joined the naacp and did, and worked that way. But she lost many, many of her dell a that friends delta friends. And most importantly, it created this incredible schism in her family. And to the point where she wanted her daughter to know her grandparents, she wanted to keep close to her family, and so they just didnt talk about it. I mean, it was just one of those things that nearly broke her heart, and it even got worse. But that you have to read the book to find out about that. [laughter] so, but she, she, as i say even today, she moved to california in her 80s because thats where her daughter and her family were living into a retirement home, and so i think at about the age of 88 she became the president after three years of that retirement home and then the next two years after that she was nominated for the most outstanding resident for the state of california in a retirement home. So anyway, she is one of those daughters, mississippi daughters that you all should be very, very proud of. Very good, very good. Hi, im patricia boyett, and i wanted to thank everybody, first, that organized the mississippi book festival, its phenomenal. And im very honored to be among this panel, and i thank you for including me. I open my book, right to revolt, on january 10, 1966, its 2 30 a. M. In the morning, and two carloads of eight klansmen are across the county line into Forest County, mississippi. They are on a mission from the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the ku klux klan, sam i but aers, to bowers, to murder vernon day minnesota daymer who owned a ranch home, several businesses like a store and a gas station, gristmills and so forth, and he was also a very powerful Civil Rights Activist. He had been a former president of the Forest County branch of the naacp. He had been one of the lead plaintiffs in one of the most important voting right cases that led to the Voting Rights act, and he had a also just started a Voting Rights campaign. And all those things, of course, entour rated infuriated sam bowers, and that made him want him dead. When these two carloads arrived on his property, one stopped front of the store and the other stopped outside his ranch home. He had eight children, several of them at the time were actually away. Many of his children served in the military. One was living in germany waiting to hear if he was going to go to vietnam. But three of his children were living at home at the time. And when the klansmen arrived on his property, they blew out the windows, threw molotov cocktails inside and continued shooting, and their goal was to kill all the occupants inside with fire and bullets. When the special agent in charge of mississippi, roy moore, he was headquartered in jackson, heard of the crime, he immediately dispatched an army of fbi agents into what i call the central piney woods. The war on the klan had really started at the end of the summer of 64 when they found the bodies of three Civil Rights Activists, but it hadnt really reached, you know, all across the state. And, actually, there was very little federal intervention in piney woods, it kind of had come and gone because it was, particularly Forest County had been very adept at making its county look like it was a moderate county. Once the Civil Rights Movement really got going many this part of the area which wasnt really until i mean, there was earlier efforts, but it wasnt really until 62 when it really exploded, the powers that be there, some of them were moderate9, and moderates always a difficult word to fully define what that means because it meant Different Things for different people. Somewhat moderate in the sense they were segregationist, but they opposed violence for moral reasons. But some of them to opposed violence for practical reasons because violence always brings in the media. If its sensational, the media stays. That forces the federal government to intervene, and they wanted to prevent that from happening, so they actually orchestrated a plan to resist the Civil Rights Movement with nonviolent mass resistance as much as they could. So instead like when you see a hot and this is why i think the area got ignored for a long time. You were used to seeing things in the delta where, you know, police would attack the protesters right in front of the media, or they would allow mobs to attack. They tried not too far that be done in hattiesburg, particularly, which is the seat of Forest County. What they did is they policed freedom of movement. The police would arrest people that stepped out of a certain line. They relied on citizens to council to do economic intimidation. This is not to say there wasnt violence, because there was a lot of violence, but it was after they were arrested and put in jail. And also what really frustrated a lot of the leaders in Forest County was sam bowers had headquartered his klan right next door in jones county, but they had a pretty active klan in Forest County, and actually the person who asked to have vernon murdered came from Forest County. Does it have modern elements . Yes. Does it have progressive elements . Yes, it did, but it does have some really radical elements too. When i first came to this case, i think if you look at this case and only go forward, you would think of Forest County as a more moderate place. But sam bowers was quite sure he wasnt even worried about it when this army of fbi agents came into forest and jones counties. He said to his klansmen, even if we are arrested and indicted, no jury in mississippi will convict a white man for killing a black man. And he had reason to to believe that. I mean, this is two years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 64, its a year after the passage of the Voting Rights act of 65, its long after brown v. Board of 54, but you only had nominal desegregation. Theres so many cases the fbi has not investigated. He had reason to believe he could continue to do this. In fact, he had been indicted and many klansmen had been indicted, but they let them out to go plan the murder of daymer. He also underestimated some changes that were going on, and he underestimated how devoted many of these Forest County officials were to keeping the federal government out. And now that theyre in, mitigating what they would do. How can we hold onto segregation and then prosecute this case. But i should also mention people are complicated, right . So theres so many nuances that go on here. You know, ive interviewed a lot of the local leaders, and many of them talked about vernon daymer, that they admired him very much even though they themselves were segregationists. There were progressives in the area that were heartbroken about his death. He lived in a place called the kelly settlement which a lot of white people lived there too, and he would lend them a cotton picker. One biology teacher broke down the next day after the killing in his class when he was and he told his students, this was a friend of mine. And so that really mobilized Forest County against the klan. It was also, you know, a lot of times could be xenophobic, and its like how dare jones county come into our county and do this. So this case does lead to some great change, the marginalization of the klan, it leads to the first state conviction of a klansman for killing a Civil Rights Activist. But in a way that also kind of buried this history of Forest County and jones county because of a lot of locals tried to distance themselves from jones county because the newspaper articles and the press releases and all the political speeches were, you know, this came from jones county. Jones countys radical, and were not lining that, were not like that, right . But i found the counties were linked in a real brutal racial history. In fact, i find traces back all the a way to settlement days. They had slavely are there slavely there too d slavery there too. There were interracial relationships, and that often brings people together and families together. So you have all these nuances there. But during reconstruction and then during the turn of the century where forest and jones counties became really industrialized and then heavily populated and then commercialized hub of mississippi, you had really all these forces kind of coming together. On one hand they needed labor, they needed black labor, right . So they were trying to get sharecroppers to come, and theyre going to pay them five times as much, so a lot of people are going to come to mississippi. And then you have a bigger population. Then you need commercial outlets because this is segregation, right . So a lot of africanamericans cant get services that they need because white doctors refuse to see them or white pharmacists, and the schools are segregated. Actually you have moderate, progressive whites that will help bring in some of those industries. Even segregationists are going to help x. Africanamericans are going to capitalize on that and create black capitalism in the area. You have this progressive thing going on in the sense that you have a really sturdy black working class coming in the area, a very powerful black bure joy emerging, but when they try to protest, its almost suicidal in this area, right . There were so many lynchings in hattiesburg because you have a lot of africanamericans that actually did have some Economic Opportunities here, and you had black middle class and some even black upper class, it was harder to control them economically. Theres still many ways they do that, and i can go into nuances of that later, but violence, violence, violence is what theyre going to use. In fact, one newspaper called hattiesburg the hub of black lynchings, and laurel, the seat of jones county, as a up to of hangings as a town of hangings. One time a mob reformed and said they would lynch everyone in the crowd unless they dispersed. It was almost suicidal to [inaudible] so what they focused on was black uplift. By the time of world war ii when you have a shift that starts to happen all over, you have some early ones in world war ii, but for central piney woods, the governments talking about were fighting for the freedoms abroad, right . But youre oppressing africanamericans deeply at home. A lynching occurs in 1942 in jones county in the middle of this war, and thats the first two lynchings, actually. And the roosevelt ordered the fbi in there to investigate, and thats the first time that happened in mississippi since reconstruction. So you have a moment, a turning point there. So and you already have this great foundation, this Africanamerican Community thats ready to revolt when they get a chance, right . So they start to build that up and build that up. And they keep trying to do direct action but its really difficult until 62. I trace a case in jones county, some of you might be familiar with the willie mcgee case. He was an africanamerican that was charged with interracial rape of a white woman, and it led to global protests. And then i traced the clyde canard case, some are probably familiar with James Meredith who desegregated ole miss, but lots of people tried at universities earlier, the university of southern mississippi. And a lot of these cases end very tragically, unfortunately. But even when things end tragically doesnt mean that youre not pushing forward. These are the civil rights soldiers, as she mentioned, and theyre constantly pushing this forward. And then 62 all these forces sort of gather together, and they really they start bringing in sncc and other forces, and finally in 64 they do freedom days, and that gets massive publicity, and freedom summer was one of the strongest places in central piney woods. It does have a brutal racial history of unjustice but also this incredible, inspiring history of racial crusades for justice, and they culminate really in the daymer case. I start with the case in my prologue and trace the roots through all these Different Cases and struggles and how the daymer case changed. And a lot of people, we think of it ending in different times and places, and here it really goes to 74, and then it doesnt end. Its not like so we got some begs legislation, i mean, were still fighting for civil rights today, right in so i look at the third part. The first part or the third part moves into the boardrooms a lot into the political battles, but it does go back on the streets in the 80s and 90s, so i look there. They started protesting Police Brutality long before the black lives Matter Movement in the 90s. So i take it up to 2010. Sometimes i still wish i was with writing because so much is still going on right now. Basically, the story traces people i consider heroes, and so in many ways it was sometimes really hard to write book, and im not going to cry. Its always so hard to talk about it. I cried last type i was speaking of it last time i was speaking of it. Theres so much sacrifice, and it is, in many ways, a tragic story of brutal racial injustices, but its also a really inspiring story of these people that stand up, that are really brave and that really fight for every right and are still fighting for those rights today. And i see this central piney woods as one of the most tortured but one of the most transformative landscapes in america. And, you know, certainly racial equality continued to elude the central piney woods, it continues to elude the nation, but my feeling is lets just keep fighting, right . Well get there eventually. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] speaking of violence [laughter] we have next a book on mccomb, mississippi, in the summer of 1964. This is a book up like the other panelists unlike the other panelists, im here to talk about a book that i did not write [laughter] its a book that i wrote about. This book is by hying carter ii who many of you will remember as a very distinguished mississippi newspaperman. He edited the Greenville Delta democrat times for years, and i think that one can judge a newspaper by the enemies that it makes. It is a function almost as a branch of government. So i will start by saying this is not in carters so and so i want to start by saying this is carters book. One of my intentions in taking on this project was to bring it back into print and to help a new generation of mississippians to appreciate the work that carter did. This book is part of a series the University Press of mississippi is launching called civil rights in mississippi. We will reprint a number of titles from the 1960s with new scholarly introductions. We hope readers will appreciate the mend students, i want to say a word about what a good job the University Press of mississippi does, fantastic resource, fantastic resource for scholarship and deserves your support. [applause] the story of the hefners, albert hefner, melva, respectable, mc home citizens, he won awards, civic awards locally for his work in the community, activism in the community and in summer of 1964 mc home was the place, one of the places in mississippi with substantial number of civil rights workers. That is the catalyst that summer. Like many respectable people in mc comb who worry about potential violence in their community. And bad for the community. And understand what happens. And invited two civil rights workers both of whom were white, for conversation, outreach and immediately, that evening in the hour or two they began receiving threatening telephone calls, harassing telephone calls that escalated, and in six weeks the hefners left the community, carters book published in 1965 is the story of how so quickly a very respected white couple could be driven from a community for simply asking questions about what was going on. They found people they believed they knew, people they had known for years turned on them, ostracized them socially, struck at them economically, what hefner had on his building was canceled, their dog poisoned, they received something on the order of 300 telephone calls over a period of five weeks, warning them to leave town and eventually they did so the story carter published in 65, take the hefner family through the summer of 64 into their exile from mississippi. Many thousands of mississippians were exiled in those years for actions that were more transgressive you might say than the hefners. What makes their story worthy of telling by carter and republishing . Carter, for those of you who are listening and dont know mississippi geography, mc comb is not in the delta. However, carter and the hefners were episcopalians, members of the episcopal church, faith was a connection. Also, you read hefner like carter, was a man who enjoyed asking questions about the way things work, was a brave man, and there were personal elements in the hefner story that appealed to carter as well. As i said, we brought this book out, serious civil rights in mississippi. My role as a historian of the Civil Rights Movement was to say a few words about the story in its broader context. What struck me about the broader context of the story, the owners were exiles, many thousands of mississippians were exiles, they did not set out to make a stand on civil rights issues, they simply wanted to find out more information about what was going on in their hometown, and have a conduit of information between the civil rights workers and respectable elements in the town, they had been in the home they built, the new subdivision for ten years, thought that people in their church, the community, business, knew them, knew what they stood for but in an instant practically, a matter of weeks literally, they found those friends turning on them, people simply shunning them for the work that they did. The story says something about the bonds of community in small southern towns that saw the Civil Rights Movement. The bonds of community hold people together but could also serve to expel people who were perceived to have broken the code that governed the bonds of those terms so the hefnerss story is one in which ostracism and economic pressure and threats of violence could silence people who would have been considered moderate or progressive, but were not aware, often, of the dangers asking questions would present in those years. I was born in mchome. One of the things i dont remember growing up is very much discussion of the hefner story in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the things that struck me about the importance of the book, one of the functions of repression and retaliation is silencing. When the hefners left their story was largely lost. There are no memorials, no signs, no apologies other than obituaries in jackson newspapers. They were not covered and they get treatment in histories of the Civil Rights Movement in mississippi but nothing very expensive. I would say thousands of mississippians exiled in those years, with the hefner story, larger and my answer would be so many thousands of stories just like the hefners have been lost through the silencing that occurred because of the pressures in those years. One of the tasks we have as a community and Civil Rights Historians or readers of the Civil Rights Movement is to recover and remember these stories because they speak to the same limits that are definitions of Community Still present to us, definitions of we and they still have roots that were formed in the jim crow period, we have not done a sufficient job redefining as we moved in other ways beyond those years. Thank you. I have a couple questions before i turn it over to the audience. Talk a little bit about i remember reading about you being chosen with regard to desegregation. 1966 is when it got integrated. My last year of high school, had no idea what i was going into, thought i was just going to school. What i didnt understand at the time was why no one prepared us for what we are going into, they wanted to send some kids, and be segregated because of white kids on the other side, they didnt talk to us, they talked at us. I dont think at that time, integrated school until later in life, we didnt integrate schools. Kids were still separated but later in life i learned the only way to integrate is for us to come together as people to have someone dictate what we should do and how we should do it but as people we should be the ones to come together and that is what i have strived for in my life, integrating i dont think i integrate anymore but as i said before i dont think color, i mean people, and looking at people as blackandwhite or any other race, we would be integrated. We would have the need to integrate, we would be integrated. Is that clear . Very. [applause] in reading from this wonderful book, talk to the audience about finding her purpose in the train wreck that happened. One of the things that shows how people influence other people and you dont even realize what the consequences could be. When she was 18 months old, she, with her mother, was driving a car. Her grandfather was on the front seat, her grandmother was on the back seat with daddy and it was one of those oldfashioned touring cars where it is all open, they stopped for a train, they were coming back from business in florida and they stopped at a train stop, the train was coming along and there was a fellow on the caboose of the train, waiting for her mother to go on top and bettys mother started to cross and there was another train from the other direction, and it smashed into the car bettys mother was driving, instantly killed her grandfather, betty was thrown out of the car onto the cow catcher on the front of the engine of the train that was coming along and she went for 100 yards and rolled off and a little boy that saw the rack ran and talk betty back to her mother who was stunned and shocked. It was a horrible situation. That he doesnt remember that incident but after her grandmother whose pelvis was broken was taken to campbells clinic in memphis, stayed there for three months, came back, the family several generations of family were living, the grandmother realized her husband had been killed and she begged for the little girl, betty, to come down and live with her in her bedroom so betty moved downstairs to be in her grandmothers bedroom and every night, she stayed until she was 5 or 6, every night her grandmother would tell her a story, talk her in, listen to her prayers and say you know god saved you from the train wreck because you have a purpose in life. Betty had a question that is a very lovely childhood on the transplantation, she had many black friends playing together. It was a good life but until the emma tilt trial, witnessing what the situation was, it was then that she realized what her purpose in life was and that was the thing about betty, she lives that purpose and really felt as other people she found what she was supposed to do with her life like we are all supposed to do, but this was an important thing that shows what an individual can do, what it is what her grandmother did for betty. How was your life affected . I came across a couple lines in the book about him when i was an undergrad, ask the professor about him, and something about a couple lines, the man that sacrificed his life, the more i learned about him it changed my life because i was subletting and went back there, i wanted to live in the town where it happened. Everything i read about him seemed one of the most unselfish people i ever could read about and idolized somebody. He sacrificed himself for everybody. His kids worked on the farm, to serve in the United States military, and he shared it with someone else. He was the first person there. He didnt have to make the sacrifice. A lot of people would in that situation. Again and again, ultimately was murdered for that. Hard to say that judge curiosity. Talk a little bit about that. In regards to the Civil Rights Movement. Without retelling the story of freedoms summer no one in mississippi in 1964 who read the newspapers, could miss the idea that something significant was happening. He read the jackson newspapers, there was an invasion coming to the state. People in mchome knew that the rights workers were coming to the town and some of them were prepared for violence against those civil rights workers. There had been Civil Rights Activism for years. Black business men, and other people in the community who had been working for black political and economic advancement. More recently in 1961 robert moses attempted civil rights work, was rebuffed violently. That was a leg a legacy some in mchome remembered, some residents believe that they can be driven away once they could be driven away again, this was a history, material, people in the community would have known. As a businessman, a person who was invested in the success of the community, wanted him to work, wanted mccomb to be a place not torn apart to the deck of economic dysfunction, from Civil Rights Activism. He wanted to find out from people on the ground what was going to happen. He spoke with the chief of police before he had civil rights workers in his home, told a man he considered his friend what he was going to do. Afterwards the police chief denied enough of the conversation to make him believe that conversation had not happened. The family simply wanted, they did not see themselves as progressive. They did not see themselves as getting involved with that work but asking questions and appearing to dissent was in that context enough to destroy relationships, friendships and economic livelihood. Do we have any questions, come to the podium. Just a reminder after a couple things, make sure i have a question. For Patricia Michelle boyett, i thank you for writing this book where i grew up. It was influential in my thinking about civil rights. I was a teenager when it happened. Most people who have written about it, i saw my daughter betty, they are both doing very well. My question is this, where i live, the story is if sam bauer had known, he might not have ordered that murder. In jones county, he knew the District Attorney in jones county never prosecuted. Is that something you came across . s data credible story . I am not sure because a man named hamilton asked originally only sam bauer could order a killing so he requested sam bauer to order the killing and i think a lot of that developed out of this idea, myths that came out of the story, shove everything over, jones county was going through a lot of its own shifts, maybe more likely they have been able to get off jones county, prosecutors coming up, and against the clan, i am not sure that is a story but he knew about that, requests from the imperial wizard to do something had to be from the county you were from, they kept trying to say this is jones county, wouldnt have happened in boris county. To me, it is so fascinating, hard to describe it in five minutes but there are a lot of nuances, there were moderates and one thing i didnt mention, the county prosecutor, james duke, far more cooperation, and the heavy involvement of Law Enforcement in shows county. And interviewed, james duke said it and he told me that killing devastated him, and he was very much a segregationist at the time which it was for segregation. And the killing changed a lot of people. After that, prosecute and get the conviction for raping africanamerican teenager those were hard convictions to get. A lot of complex people, not all radical, and just one more question. The panelists will talk to any of you afterwards. My question, i wanted to hear a little more about Life Experiences after you met your true soulmate and began a new life. In 1973 i went to work at a store at new deal supermarket. He came to mississippi to work in a voter registration, his name is james chaney, a worker that got killed. I met this man in 1973, they built a new deal, i didnt know this man was my boss, he wasnt there at the gas station and he had long red hair. They help us out. He walked up to me, hi, my name is joe. Never had much conversation with white people. It sounds stupid but couldnt do anything about it which he continued to try to talk to me and always had something nice. I didnt understand why he was being so nice to me. Finally he asked me one day can i take you to lunch . I said no, i am married. He said i didnt ask you to marry me, i asked you to go to lunch but i was separated from previous husband and we just kind of struck up a friendship and it didnt take long for me to know this man was my soulmate. I have been married to him 42 years. [applause] how wonderful is that . This is a phenomenal panel. Lets give the panelists another hand. [applause] we end saying it takes mighty courage to be in this place, takes mighty courage living in mississippi, takes mighty courage 2016. We thank you so much. [applause] you are watching booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Here is a look at what is on our primetime schedule tonight. We kick off at 6 45 eastern time. That all happens tonight on cspan2s booktv. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television company that brought you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. Now on booktv from Hillsdale College in michigan, our monthly in depth program. Arthur Dennis Prager talks about