Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tonight From Washington 20130404

power. on "after words", part of booktv this weekend on c-span2. the late photo journalist leonard freed documented the 1963 march on washington. hundreds of his photos have been published by his widow, brigitte freed. up next a 40 minute discussion of the book with remarks by john coal with the library of congress. >> without, gooage. wrut colt to -- good afternoon, welcome to the library of congress. i'm the director of the library of congress which is the reading and book promotion arm of the library. we're pleased to could sponsor this program with the library prints and photographs division. the center for the book was created in 1977 to help the library of congress stimulate public interest in books and reading and literacy and libraries and we are a private public partnership with the library of congress paying our five salaries but indeed we have raised private money from the beginning to help support our array of programs and projects. there are, center for the books now in every state. i know we have a broad audience today and i look, challenge you to look up and learn about the center for the book in your state which works at the state level in promoting books and reading and library i ares. here at the library of congress one of our major projects is the national book festival which i hope many of you know about. it's a library of congress project involving many parts of the library. it was in its 14th year coming up and this year will be held on the national mall, september 21st and 22nd. the center for the book also is the administrator of the first young readers center at the library of congress which is located now in the jefferson building. it's the only place that focuses on the reading interests of young readers, 16 and under as long as they're accompanied by an adult. last year we had 40,000 visitors in the young readers center. so you can tell that we are working hard not only to raise young readers but to celebrate reading in all ways. one of the ways we celebrate is through talks such as this. this is in our books and beyond author series. it's a collaborative effort with other divisions of the library, to show off books that, new books that have been published based on the resources or the projects of the library of congress and it is a special treat to be working once again with the princeton photographs -- prints and photographs division. i would like to hold up for everyone to see a book that comes from the collection of the library of congress in ways you will learn about in today's program. today our program is being filmed, not only by the library of congress for our website but also by c-span and we're very pleased to be able to share this program with the entire country, both through c-span and through the library of congress's website which now hosts more than 250 of these books and beyond programs. thus, with the filming i ask you to turn off all things electronic. we will progress from the panel discussion to, if we have time, a question and answer session, and conclude with a book signing outin the foyer of the, of this mumford room. you so you will have a chance, if you don't have a chance for a discussion and a question answer period you certainly will have that opportunity at the end. there also will be a special display in the prints and photographs division of these photos between between 1:00 and 2:00. so we have to move along so we can get to all of these post-event features. to get us started i want to introduce the mastermind of today's event, verna curtis. verna i learned today, one of four curators of photography in the prints and photographs division. i'm sure they're all here but it is my pleasure now to turn the program over to verna curtis. let's give her a hand. [applause] >> thank you very much, john. i have to say that we're all in this together. i'm not the mastermind. today we have brigitte freed, who is the widow of the photographer whose work is featured in the book, "this is the day: the march on washington" which we're celebrating. we have the distinguished dr. michael eric dyson and we have paul farber. all of them here with us for a special kind of conversation which is how we billed this. i will tell you a little bit each individual quickly because time is of the essence. and i would like to tell you that brigitte freed was formerly brigitte kl u.k. and she met leonard freed in role in 1956. they married a year later in amsterdam where they lived, deciding to leave for life in the united states in 1963, just a few months before what would eventually occur as the march on washington and i don't think they knew that it was about to happen when they came to the states at that time. bridgette developed and printed leonard's photographs for over 20 years including those in his classic photo books, black and white america and made in germany. and the internationally aclaimed exhibition concerned photographer. in addition she has hadn't careers as both a clothing designer and a real estate broker. she now lives in garrison, new york, in the hudson valley and works full time on leonard's prints and his legacy. brigitte was born in germany and after living in the united states for over 40 years she recently became an american citizen. [applause] dr. dyson is one of the nation's most influential and reknowned public intellectuals. he is an essay contributor to the book. he published over 18 works of scholarly and cultural influence including race rules, navigating the color line, from 1996. i may not get there with you, the true martin luther king, jr. in the year 2000. debating race in 2007. and april 4th, 1968, martin luther king's death and how it changed america in 2008. dyson's pioneering scholarship has had a profound effect on america ideas. dr. dyson is presently professor of sociology at georgetown university and cited as one of the 150 most powerful african-americans by "ebony" magazine. dr. dyson has been called the ideal public intellectual of our time by writer naomi wolf and, a street fighter in suit and tie by autor -- author nathan mccaul. pretty good names i should say. you may no, ma'am him by sight from his many guest appearances on msnbc as i do. it has been my pleasure to work with both brigitte and paul farber over the last several years to bring leonard freed's photographs into the library's collections. paul farber was professor dyson's student at the university of pennsylvania and later his research assistant. currently farber is a lecturer in urban studies at the university of pennsylvania and ph.d candidate having just completed his dissertation in american culture at the university of michigan. farber's work on culture has appeared in the journal, criticism, and other outlets, vibe and blander as well as on npr he was named to dell's inaugural inspire 100 list as a world changer for his use of technology in empowering social change. he is working on a biography of leonard freed. let us welcome these distinguished guests and learn how leonard freed's images of the historic march in august 1963 changed the ongoing worldwide struggle for civil rights. [applause] >> this is the day. how did this book get started? you would ask me and many people do and i say, it was president obama in his first term, he said, i am here because you all marched. not in america yet 50 years ago we did, what did i think america was? it was all things to me. my husband's home country, my new jewish family, sam freed and milton and ruth, robert and benjamin, leonard's cousins and lots of americans. we came here from amsterdam to photograph the black people. i have no photo of myself, and of leonard of our seven-month stay in america but sweet pictures of our 4-year-old daughter eric is a susana, her grandparents and cousins. leonard was very frugal. he needed all film for his project, black and white america. nothing but races he said. i wish i had a picture of myself and leonard at the march in washington. i only have my eyes. and these eyes looked and looked and looked. i would say all these faces and when leonard asked me how i liked the day, i would say, all these faces, the day of the march was america for me. and then the speech of dr. martin luther king. i have a dream. the speech was in the air. it moved like a wave over the heads of all those people. the voice was strong, a preacher's voice. it reached everyone. i had never heard anything like this and i know i never will. [applause] >> what a powerful testimony, to the multiple means by which people contribute to history. there is no picture of brigitte and leonard freed because they sacrificed every moment on film for the betterment of this nation. that is more than an anecdote. that is part and parcel, perhaps even woof and warp of the very fabric of american conscience that king we have a golden thread into. his majestic oratory that day as miss freed hasn't indicated is powerful and loom news testimony -- loom minute news testimony to the ability of word to move us, of speech to redeem us, and of rhetoric to call us the to higher purposes, deeds done, in the name of ideals for which we are willing to sacrifice. how appropriate then that brigitte freed testifies about the magnmity of spirit of her fallen husband whose shutterbug, who's eye, who's aesthetic glory has given us visual testimony to the majestic sweep of the human soul whether it seeks to be free, freed from its constraints. freed from the narrow obligation of hatred. freed to see. leonard freed, even in his name, gives us the powerful emblem of freedom that we alleek at the end of the day. i'm honored to be here with miss freed and of course my student, paul farber, who called me into this project because when he was my assistant he was my boss. [laughter] and he is one of the most thoroughly organized, young people i have ever met and i am as proud as a papa to have my jewish son [laughing] oivay. right here. and he has sprung from not only the loins of his family but from the powerful collective imagination of people whose love and dedication mark his life as well. the reverend marcia dyson, my wife, his mother, is here rhetorically and symbolicly his mother. [laughter] i don't want to get into know baby mama drama. here today. these photographs are not only the emblem of the calm dignity and the quiet beauty of black people and their allies who were in quest for the basic fundamental dignity of voting or existing without the artificial constraints of segregation. that day when we listened, when they listened to the majestic words of martin luther king, jr., echoing from that mighty mall in washington, d.c., who knew that a scant five years later he would lose his life in memphis. that on that day this soon to be martyr at the sun lit summit of hope and expectation would conjure the norms, ideals and beliefs which are the foundation of american democracy. he was reminding america of what it should be. he gave america a blueprint of what it could be. and he called into vision the sweet and powerful romance that the american people have always had with the ideals that nuture us but which we have not always perfectly obtained. and so leonard freed offers photographic testimony to these people's dignity, to their quest for decency. they were dressed in their sunday go to meeting best. at least in 1963. in a nation that frowned upon their lack of humanity, that quarreled with them as to the legitimacy of their claims to be fully human, these noble souls marched to washington, d.c. to tell the nation that despite the repudiation of their fundamental dignity, that they were indeed dignified. that they were blessed with a beauty of moral purpose that could never be exhausted by the infernal and hateful resistance of bull connor, of clark, the sheriff in alabama, those in georgia, those across the nation and indeed the south, who did not understand that what these people possessed was mightier than money, was deeper than the rivers that flowed beneath this nation at its founding, they tapped into an eternal spirit of vigilant resistance in the name of spirit and of faith, and of family and of the quiet dignity of the american dream. martin luther king colored that dream powerfully that day. his sweet cadence gave voice to a people who knew that at our best, we belonged shoulder to shoulder with the great figures in american society. that despite the refusal to acknowledge who we are and indeed then were as people, that our rhetoric would appeal to the nation, even a president, one soon dead, another rising from the heated center of the south, so become our advocate because the president was not in control of providence but there was a god who spoke from washington, d.c. now for all of the blather of our christian experience, for all of the rhetoric of our religious roots, when we rejected every bit of that evidence by our own behavior that shamed any god that we could claim to be our own, these people remind us that ultimately the cosmic sense of purpose into which they tapped would be enough to see them forward, to force political and social and economic transformation and leonard freed, both in '63 and in '83 has captured that resistance, that relentless spirit, that he had filing power that can never be, if you will, put out by the forces of men and women who fail to see the light. i'm proud to be associated with this project and i'm proud to be with brigitte freed and paul farber to remind us of leonard freed, who freed us from dismemory and who is now documented with ex-set i can glory the beautiful, calm dignity and the wise purpose of human beingings when they are in search of freedom. [applause] >> it's, as much of a challenge to be on a stage with people who you deeply respect, who have been your teachers and in one form of another and to be here is just that in of itself a great honor and also sets up a challenge, how do you follow freed and dyson? and i think about at the march in washington in '63 when rabbi prince of the american jewish congress was getting up to speak and he was following the great folksinger odeta, who sang, oh freedom, and, he starts before his written remarks, he says, quite simply, i wish i could sing. [laughter] so i summon him here and say thank you. good day and i want to share a few perspectives on leonard freed's work and a bit about the history and memory of the march as we're now in the 50th anniversary year of this great gathering. before i do i want to make sure to extend deep gratitude to a few individuals here. absolutely to verna curtis who has been such a great supporter of this project here at the library of congress as well as her colleagues at the center for the book and the curators in the prints and photographs division, thank you so much. dina berlin from getty publications is the editor of this book and had such a creative and kind hand and brilliant hand shaping this. i want to make sure to name her. though he is no longer with getty publications, greg britain, who was there, first green lit the project and set us on our way. so deep thank you, and certainly to brigitte freed. you have shared so much with me in terms of your wisdom, allowing me to try to do my part to carry forward leonard's legacy and i thank you deeply for this opportunity. so leonard freed's 163 march on washington photographs are among his most elegant and animated of a large body of civil rights era photography which fueled freed's 1967, 68 photo text, black and white america. this work as a whole captures the prevalence of racial division in america, the decade following the 1954 legal mandate to end segregation, leading up to and threw the landmark civil rights legislation of the mid '60s. four of the photographs from the march on washington were included in this book, including this one on the slide. but the march was just one story or specific photo shoot amongst dozens of others that included protests, parade, beauty pageants. to understand the underpinnings, the drive of this work, is to remore some of its greater context. i want to draw our attention to several anchoring images to see this march for freed and all of us as not just an isolated event. instead we go through freed, we live through freed to understand what led him to the march and in what ways it brought him forward in his work. freed was born in the 1929 in brooklyn to russian-. >> you're immigrants. by 1960, he had been living in europe, on and off for a decade and it was there he honed his craft as a documentary photographer and wrist sell with his identity as expatriate american jew. during the time freed was working on a book of photographs, on a book of photographs focused on jews living in germany and the traces and traumas of the holocaust, he ventured to berlin in august of 1961, to check out the scene where there was word that a wall was cutting through the middle of the city. with citizens of both side fearing the brink of world war iii, freed wandered close to the boundary of the divided city. neither on assignment nor with a predetermined vision, who he ended out, ended up finding and seeing the most through his camera were american gis. but here, at the wall in its nascent days freed snapped a photograph of unnamed black soldier standing at the edge of the american sector. freed's contact sheets from this trip confirm this image was powerfully a single shot. taken at a middle distance in black and white, freed stand with his subject between a set of trolley tracks that culminate into the imposed boundary of the wall behind them. this encounter haunted freed. it set him off course and beckoned his return from exile to come back to america, to confront segregation and racism. this image would end up being the first photograph in black and white america. and as an annotation in the book, freed sets this out as his point of departure. he writes, we, he and i, two americans, we meet silently and we part silently. impregnable and as deadly as the wall behind him is another wall. it's there on the trolley tracks. it crawls along the double stones across the frontiers and oceans reaching back home, back into our lives and deep into our hearts, dividing us wherever we meet. i am white and he is black. setting out from this point freed aimed to represent an encroach upon america's racial buffers because after this opening image with its multiple boundaries, freed would vary his own perspective, perspective being that measured distance between a photographer and his subject, to approach and acknowledge their humanity and their shared existence. he photographed many african-american subjects on this project and also whites too embedded within one inner connected system of race. and he does so by capturing and representing his subjects fields of vision, what they see, how they see each other, to make visible the terms and conditions of a segregated color line society. in the summer of '63 freed and his family ventured back to america. he photographed in the boroughs of new york city. when you look back at the con exact -- contact sheets of this period, the traces of the margin to emerge and you see the button with the handshaking closely in there as the march of headquarters were centered in new york. leonard and brigitte freed marked off several days for the event. on august 27th, they drove down and camped outside the city. on august 28th, they arrived in washington d.c. at dawn. freed began his day on the periphery of the national mall, capturing scenes on his handheld liken camera, he walked from the base of the wash mon monument to the boundaries outside of the white house and to the streets surrounding ford's theater. several blocks from the epicenter of the march, freed captured some of the first photographs of the day, una sign that red, house where lincoln died. freed made photographs of passers by as they crossed one another's path. he envisioned this foot traffic as a prelude to the later gathering at the lincoln memorial because on that day freed was tapping into the deeper currents of historical memory through on the spot studies interpersonal geometry and geography. freed sought images which he could bring the marchers and the layers of their social landscape and architecture into a shared frame. to see this day from panoramic perspective was also the ability to pay attention to a crowd of individuals, with faces and really to walk alongside and amongst them. the day offered freed a spectacle, not to marvel from afar or at a fixed distance but to explore the march at its ground level. freed meandered through multitudes on the mall and the resulting images attest to his thoughtful photographic eye as well as his active footwork throughout the day. but if we return to thinking about the role of lincoln and how freed invoked him, 100 years and eight months after the "the emancipation proclamation", we see one of the only full shots of the statue of the former president included in this work. it happened to be the same frame which is the only photograph of the day's keynote speaker, dr. martin luther king. much of the march on washington's icography features king up close at the podium or with the faceless crowd behind him. here, the leader and the former president from afar can both be seen in a distance atmospheric and collective shot. as king speaks, freed also pivots, capturing both front and back shots of the crowd with thousands of marchers separating freed and king with lincoln behind him. this image serves as a complex and collective portrait of the march on washington at the lincoln memorial. within a year freed crossed paths with king as he photograph the leader in a baltimore street parade on october 31st, 1964. freed had gone back to europe and then returned again and king himself had just gotten back from europe. on this trip it was announced he would resave the nobel peace prize. this is one of the first public gatherings in his honor. freed devoted a full day to photographing king in baltimore including at a parade honoring him and a speech at a local synagogue. this photograph from the parade is included in black and white america and has taken on prominent status of itself a crowd diversion of king's hand with the paradegoers nearby is the cover of taylor branches, "pillars of fire". king is definitely the centerpiece of this photograph like with the march images we to think about how freed accounts for the crowd around the man. and again, freed's potential place within this crowd. we can consider where freed was standing. was he close enough to reach out and touch the car or touch king? or as you see an arm reaching around king, touch baird ruskin in another frame is pictured to king's left. but when we consider the deliberate inclusion of a blurred face on the right-hand side of this image, we have to take a step back and really consider whether leonard was close, what his perspective was, and if we think of him as part of the scene or being in its way. this was deliberate of course. freed fully believed in printing and accounting for photographs all the way to the frame with no cropping. and unlike the black soldier in berlin this is not a single shot but shows an out of several frames and perspectives. freed is part of the scene and in the way he remind us of photograph's power to mark social distances between freed and king, between king and the collectives around him. but to represent these divisions, to challenge them, and to remind us of the persuasive power of coexistence. there's more to sigh about freed's approach to photographing king in 1965 as he follows him to alabama and especially after his assassination. we can think about king as being an ongoing subject of freed's work and this is a shot included in, this is the day, of the commemorative 20th anniversary march. here we get a sense of a call to galvanize around king's image but we also have his absence, truly mark again. as dr. dyson has brilliantly and powerfully written how april 4th, 1968 truly changed america, we get a sense of that date cascading forward and freed remind us to think about king and think about his collectives. as we close, i want to think about and put forward some of my hopes for this is the day, and to do a small part to carry forward the history and memory of the march on washington to summon a few significant names that we want present here with us while king's dream is ex-coed and envisioned and properly so, it serves as the iconic memory of the march but i also hope leonard freed's photographs remind us to revisit the full message that king put forth and to seek out more of the stories of the 250,000 plus marchers. these veterans of the civil rights movement and all those in their hometowns who they impacted and all those inspired from that point to fully understand the march on washington as the greatest gathering toward democracy on american soil and to understand it as a noble blueprint of social change that we still have with us. in other words, to see the day of the march on washington, august 28th, 1963, as a living arc curve and to see this book as one of many potential tools of thought. there are many names to name. more i hope as we approach the 50th anniversary this august but i offer a few now. i say, carol course send, my first and second grade teacher. excuse me. in philadelphia who attended the march on washington. miss cores send was a white quaker woman and she shared stories with us about her time there and what she put forth to all of us had to do with understanding what your convicts -- convictions are not just being present with them but being present with other people in sharing them. of course we say the name dr. martin luther king, our american genius and prophet whose words and action deserve ongoing illumination and critical exploration and complex consideration. julian bond, a young leader and participant in the march who has carried forward the spirit of this gathering and brought forward the mantle of the civil rights movement, along lines of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and stays as a moral compass and bellwether for us. though this day was triumphant, thereafter remained the reality of systemic forms of racial hatred and violence. so this year as we happily mark the 50th anniversary of the march, a month later we'll also mourn five decades since the brutal bombing of 16th street baptist church in birmingham where children ad did i may collins, cynthia wesley, carol robinson and denise mcnair were murdered. they too deserve our commemorative consideration this year. and our hearts are still heavy with the loss last manned of hadiya pendleton, another wrung young woman of color from chicago gunned down in another victim of the city's epidemic of violence, days after returning from marching here in d.c. for an inaugural parade for the inauguration of barack obama. we bring had diao forward because even as the national mall is a place of healing, those who go to it can only be guaranteed further with greater forms of action beyond the maps, beyond the mall's mapped boundaries. the to carry us forward through tragedy and towards transformation we say the names of dr. michael eric dyson and reverend marcia dyson, scholars and leaders like them, they have taught me and so many others so much about intellectual inquiry that flows through the head and the heart and always between peoples. to the 250,000 plus attendees of the march, whose names we do not know well enough, we hope to know more of you. we want to hear your stories and we want to be able to both record them and speak them out ourselves as they will nourish both our history as well as our pathways forward. and finally, leonard freed whose photographs from the march on washington affirm the profound beauty and historical significance of the gathering as they frame collective action and democratic transformation. in leonard's memory, and with his photographs glimpsing the past and informing our futures, we say his name, leonard freed, and express our gratitude for all of his contributions. this is the day, thank you. [applause] >> well of course, i want to express our gratitude to our three speakers. this has really been a terrific program. verna, and they have made it such, we're going to continue the gathering in the foyer with both the book selling and a reception and with the display down in prints and photographs but first you just want to say another word about this beautiful book which will be on sale and you can get it autographed in the back. it not only was produced by the getty museum and it does have, paul spoke of julian bond who produced the foreward, dr. dyson has an essay in it. taken by itself it is really a wonderful commemoration and event by itself that moves the thoughts forward as paul did at the end of his talk. it is a truly, an example of how a book can both be a catalyst, something beautiful in itself and a, if you will, a call to action in the spirit of the event and in the spirit of the best kind of collaborative publication event and just as this was as verna said, a wonderful collaborative event on the part of many people at the library of congress and in the publishing world. so before i call you out to get your book, get it signed, meet each other, and go down to the prints and photographs division just between 1:00 and 2:00 to see some photos and this wonderful gift to the library of congress, thank you so much, let's give our speakers and verna another round of applause. [applause] can >> our booktv in prime time programing continues in a few moments with barbara matusow on the life of her late husband, jack nelson, a reporter for "the atlanta constitution" and "the los angeles times". in a little more than an hour, todd anorlik, reporting the revolutionary war, before it was history, it was news. after that a discussion of media coverage of race and social mobility. >> so she was out there in a way that, as i indicated before, respectable women did not do but this is a new era. i mean, this is the time when the women's movement is underway and interestingly enough, you know, someone like julia tyler, sort of fits into a certain extent. she is very conservative in some ways but in terms of breaking through the traditional way that a woman should behave she's doing it in a way that other women are not at that time. >> a conversation with historians on julia tyler, the second wife of president john tyler, is now available on our website, c-span.org/first ladies. next, a forum on the life and career of the late pulitzer prize-winning reporter jack nelson with his widow barbara matusow, editor of "scoop: the evolution of a southern reporter. she is joined by former president, jimmy carter, former atlanta mayor, andrew young and former department of justice spokesman, terry adamson. from atlanta, this is an hour. >> well, good evening, everyone. it's good to have everyone here. my name is hank klibanoff, and i will be moved rating this wonderful panel tonight. i'm the head of journalism program at emory. first of all, i want to thank the carter library and museum for hosting this and, for cosponsoring it. and also the emory university woodruff libraries, particularly the manuscript archives and rare books library which houses the papers and the wisdom of a great number of southern journalists white, african-american, of all sorts and we're so pleased five of those are pulitzer prize wheners and the latest among them is jack nelson. barbara was so generous and has made jack's papers our possession now and there's some rich, rich history in them and i encourage everyone to go to marble and take a look at them. we're here to celebrate the life, the memoir, the papers of jack nelson with some people who knew him extremely well. jack was a man of enormous influence and consequence in the nation. the story of jack nelson, for those who don't know, is a story of news reporting in the latter half of the 20th century. if you look at his career, starting off, he was born in talladega, alabama, just across the state line. moves as a child to biloxi where he starts pedaling newspapers. he was a newspaper boy. an honorable way to begin. that is how i got my start. [laughter] he gets his first job at the daily herald, an afternoon newspaper in biloxi gulfport. purely serendipitously where i got my start, okay? [laughter] he portrays himself quite openly as a very gullable reporter and i certainly hope when you have bought the book and you have had a chance to look at it you will be as entertained as we were by some of his early stories of falling for ruses and having great faith that everyone was telling him the truth as you find out later, they weren't always telling the truth. of course he then begins to develop a reputation as very tough, hard-nosed investigative reporting, reporter, which gets him beat up a couple of times and sends fleeing to "the atlanta constitution" where he continued to get beat up. he did some breakthrough investigative reporting that we'll hear about tonight. but beyond that he was just a terrific gumshoe. he was just a great reporter. it is easy to overemphasize just that it was investigative. his career was also about standing for the first amendment and he worked were with a number of organization, helped create a number about organizations that to this day are still quite prominent. the reporters committee for freedom of the press, the student press law center. all of which have jack imprint on them. i want to say one last thing here and then we're going to start talking, just tell a little story. as many of you know atlanta and the world lost a great editor this week when jean patterson passed away down in st. pete. gene had been the editor of "the atlanta constitution" when jack was here. gene once told the story about jack being a reporter and a celebrated reporter when gene got a call from the publisher of "the los angeles times", otis chandler and mr. chandler said, dpeen, i'm thinking that "the los angeles times" wants to set up shop in atlanta. you've got a big story brewing there in the south. civil rights story and the emerging south and i need a reporter to staff that bureau in at tant for "the los angeles times". you got any good reporters? gene says, you know, mr. chandler, we've got tons of great reporters. and started listing all these great reporters and he purposely left off the name of jack nelson. he wasn't about to give him up. and a week later otis chandler hired jack nelson. [laughter] that is how jack got to "the los angeles times". did great work here in atlanta. continued, he brought investigative reporting to the civil rights story, which was elevated to an all new level. moves to washington. is head of the washington bureau. now, "l.a. times" did not have a great imprint in washington until jack got there. i'm not saying it had none. it didn't have anything like what it would have afterwards. when it got there it had 17 reporters. when he retired they had 57. so i called the washington bureau of "the los angeles times" the house that jack built. [laughter] okay. i'm going to turn now to our wonderful guests. we have barbara matusow, jack's wife, who took on completion of "scoop". it was 80% done, the atlanta parts, the southern parts were pretty much done. she finished it, polished it and turned it, it is a spectacular read. everyone here knows jimmy carter, former state senator. [laughter] all day, am i really going to try this one? [laughter] president carter knew jack throughout his career and certainly if he didn't know him directly he knew his work. and if, i might just take a moment and point out that we've been joined, i hope i don't embarass you, by mrs. carter i notice. good to have you here tonight. so -- [applause] and ambassador andrew young, who certainly is part of the movement that jack covered. was the subject of stories that jack would have written as ambassador to the u.n. jack would have covered him and certainly as mayor of atlanta jack got to know him. it is a real honor to have you here as well, ambassador young. [applause] and terry adamson who worked at "the atlanta constitution", not at the same time as jack, got to know him later and got to know him extremely well. and terry is an emory graduate. he was the editor of the emory wheel which we at emory are very proud of. and went onto a number of different jobs including working in the justice department of the carter administration as a special assistant to attorney general griffin bell. then as his spokesman. he is now executive editor of "national geographic" and it is a real pleasure to have you back here, terry. [applause] so i'm going to start with barbara and just because i think i want her to tell us what is it like, what is it like when, and you know, this is a moment that maybe others, we know have faced, when, when jack died and you're faced with all of his papers and you're starting to go through them, what kind of an emotional experience is that and, and well, i'll end it there? tell us about the experience of going through jack's papers. >> okay. first i must say what a pleasure and privilege its to be on the same stage with president carter, ambassador young and my old friend terry. and by the way, another pulitzer prize winner which he didn't mention. [applause] and also to say how pleased i am that jack's papers are here at emory. this is really where they belong because you may not know it emory has, well it has an astounding collection but miranda burke, the curator here, pursued jack with a special zeal because they made a subspecialty out of southern journalists and they have quite a distinguished roster, starting with ralph mcgill, the great claude siton, john herbert, i knew i would do this. reese clyburn. marshall frady. sell lease sibley. many of you know her. i'm very proud jack's papers are here as i said, where they belong. now to return to hank's question, actually initially i had a very negative approach towards jack's papers and, that the experience didn't start out very well. when jack retired he came back from, he brought home with him about 20 boxes of the biggest mess you ever saw. jack wasn't just disorganized, he was opposed to disorganization. anyway, i started out to help him sort the papers, and so, i had bought all these file boxes and i bought folders and everything. and i pick up a paper, where do you think this one goes with "the atlanta constitution" or the marvin griffin administration? he said give me that. he would start reading it. he would read, read every piece of paper, he couldn't part with a single one. so after two days i just gave up. i said, okay, it is always yours. i can't do anymore. the second reason i had a negative impression because they brought silver fish into the house. [laughter] so after he died, and i decided that, that you know, miss mom war needed to be completed, it was a wonderful read and an important book. but i knew that meant that attacking his papers. i couldn't do it any other way. so with a very heavy heart i got started going through them. and to my as ton meshment i found -- as tonishment, i found these pearls, gems, articles he had written, articles about him, oral histories, speeches that he gave which were really a mother lode of information. and i began to see it was really going to be possible to fill in the holes that he left and not only possible but pleasurable. it became like a treasure hunt. i sort of compared it to like a jigsaw puzzle when you're just down to the last pieces and you see that they're going to fit, and so it really was actually, a very enjoyable experience, far from, what i had expected. but you know, the deeper i got into his papers, the more i learned about him and i didn't think that was possible, you know, like most wives i thought i knew everything about my husband but, i really didn't know him in the days when he was covering the south, in the days when he was tearing up georgia and making a legend of himself on the civil rights trail. he was married to somebody else at that time. as i say i learned a lot by reading all these things. one of the things i heard learned was the to his brilliant career took on his family. his kid and grandkids are all sitting out there. in fact one great grandchild is here and, i think they could tell you better than i, karen, his daughter, told me one time that he had been gone so long they put a big sign up on the lawn and that said, welcome home, daddy. there were constant telephone threats. constant interruptions. no dinner practically went on without the telephone ringing. sometimes with tips that sent him out into the night again. there was a serious episode after he broke the story of a police protected lottery ring and the, the fire engines would come screaming up to the house in the middle of the night. one time policemen with drawn guns started to approach the house, saying they heard a report that he murdered his wife. so, there were, there were lots of things that must have been very, very difficult to live through. another thing that surprised me, that shocked me really, was the patience he displayed as a investigative reporter. he was the world's most impress -- impatient person. from my point of view he was. [laughter] and, his granddaughter, who was supposed to be driving up from, from florida today. i guess she is stuck in traffic somewhere, said to me one time, barbar, they called me that, i don't know how you stay married to papa. he is totally impatient. it was totally different on the job. investigative reporting requires an enormous amount of patience. and jack, one time took two years to track down a lottery ring. when he finally found, he was looking physically for the operation, and when he finally found the neighborhood he went door-to-door, knocking on doors until a woman told him that there was an auto repair shop next door without too much auto repair going on and a lot of cops coming back and forth. >> i recall that is on howell mill road. >> is that right? >> i think it is in the book. >> i think it is. then he proceeded to spend 11 days, woman let him sit in her kitchen, not very far, looking down over this supposedly auto repair shop and he spent 11 days up there documenting the whole thing. watching the cops come and go, take money. brought a photographer up with him. so when jack finished reporting a story it was reported. and as i say, it took patience that, kind of stunned me. i knew that he was tough and tenacious but i actually didn't really understand the scope of his reporting, particularly in his, in his days as a corruption buster you might say at "the atlanta constitution". just wanted to read you a little list of some of the scandals that he broke. expose's on illegal gambling parlors in savannah. police protected whore houses in athens. elections fraud in telfair county. truck stop brothels in rome. marriage mills in south georgia. state payroll padding. embezzlement of tax fund. use of convicts for private work. nepotism. purchasing schemes such as time the state bought a bum boats with no bottoms for lakes with no water [laughing] i could go on. many of these, many of these expose's took place during the griffin administration which president carter can well attest was notoriously corrupt. i think it was readers digest never had so many stolen so much. but, marvin griffin was kind of a forgiving sort of a crook. he, quite a few years later he and jack and some other reporters were sitting around drinking and marvin griffin said to jack, you know, when i used it think every time when i see you walking into a press conference with a notebook? and jack said, well, what? and he said, i used to think i wonder what that beady eyed son of a -- has on me today? [laughter] jack left the constitution in 1965 to, pursue the civil rights story for "the l.a. times.". . . [applause] so, president carter, given their reputation were you ever afraid of him? [laughter] tell us about your experiences if you would, please. >> the events i described in the book how many of you have read the book? how many of you are going to read it? i knew jack when i was a peanut farmer and i had no interest in politics at all. when it came to the atlanta constitution but my first was the editor of the atlanta journal and they were kind of in competition with each other but everybody in georgia began to note jack nelson as one of the most incisive and aggressive and aggravating composers that ever lived here and all of the epithets that i've described the most was pissant and that has a connotation that always buried in where they ought not to be in things that are exposed to decent people so jack would do that and he would do it with sometimes unbelievable danger for himself. the first time he ever came to georgia. he went into the national guard and that's the first time he came to georgia and if you find out he never learned how to shoot a rifle. it was for any of the other people that came from him to the army and he did that because he was a reporter and an expert and publicizing his commanding officers great experts. all of the newspapers are up and down the coast from savannah down to florida. finally he went back over to mississippi that at the time he was asked to work for the atlanta constitution and got back to mississippi. that's how she first got here and he was given a crash course in how to load and shoot a rifle. the last week just so they could get rid of it as a matter of fact. but he would get involved in the most in the exciting and dangerous event in a community and at that time there was no legitimacy in the georgia political system. every county had plentiful liquor supplies. jack would find out about these ongoing crimes as well as prostitution was already mentioned and other things like bribery and a few people would give him information and would certify the information was accurate and provable in court and he would bring it to the attention of the public so vividly. when he got to atlanta and he had the whole state as the target and the individual places to shoot and he would go in there and find out it was the most horrible thing going on that hurt the people of georgia and he was exposed to those embarrassing things that were not embarrassing until jack told about it because the same thing happened that indicates the fraud. one of the occasions that happened was the home of machine and his son who became very famous and he went into that county and spoke about how the fraud was and i think about 15 people were indicted. the names were never revealed that they were indicted by the grand jury. another thing that happened is at that time in 1962 when he had been at the atlanta constitution i decided to run for the state senate. that's how i became famous and on to distinguish the nobel prize winners right like jack has a state senator but the election was stolen from me and i didn't know him personally than but he said jack's competitor and he was the other investigative reporter from the atlantic journal down to help me and i eventually became a state senator because of it and jack always resented that i didn't call on him to help me. but i knew him pretty well. at the time i knew jack he was not in the forefront of reporting on the civil rights issue. he was basically finding out crooks in georgia even at the top level of government and exposing them in such a way that the debt provisions and people of georgia were corrected and that is what he did. he concentrated on those individual things and so the people in georgia would know that if they had experienced in their own community of someone that was cheating the principles of human right, they could call jack nelson all they could and the sheriff and county for he could take care of it from the top level of we wanted the county commission level. the second year i was in the state senate's to team up for my time in the state senate and from there he went on to become the employee of the l.a. times because they offered a 50% increase in salary and if you had a wife and three kids to take care of five experienced those myself. but that was why i wasn't particularly afraid of jack nelson. [laughter] [applause] i haven't had as much opportunity to be a crook as some people had. i didn't have anything to consider from jack nelson. but i recognized him for his true words and i said one before she passed away that the newspaper reporters i've known and i've probably known as many as anybody in georgia he had the most integrity and the most human personal courage and ability to expose the truth when it was difficult than human being that i have ever known and i am proud to have had jack nelson as my friend. [applause] >> take it away, ambassador. >> talking about another jack nelson i really didn't know this jack nelson. [laughter] our problem in the civil rights movement was that people who were writing about us for making us the problem and jack never did that. i was just down in albany just before christmas because it had occurred to me that it was exactly 50 years ago that i was down there and i started driving around and remembering things and what was sitting in "the new york times" and wrote us out. he read the obituary of martin luther king that non-violence was dead. it was rejected. martin luther king couldn't defeat laurie project. and the story really was that the kennedy administration wanted carl sanders to win in 1962 and there was a federal injunction that was placed on martin luther king. so we weren't up against lowry pritchett in georgia. we've really had to take on the federal government and we chose not to do that. jack always seemed to understand that we were not the problem. i used to with "the new york times" quite a bit because i think they were being polluted by information they were getting distorted information they were getting from hoover. they would come to talk to us like we were the ones that created all these problems in the south. jack never did that. he understood where the problem was. i always saw him as a friend and anything he ever asked me i knew i could answer him candidly and truthfully and there would be no downside to it and there were quite a few. of those days were rough on reporters in 1964 in mississippi the abc reporter who was the first one to suggest that the story was that these three civil-rights workers were in hiding and the students were doing this just to get publicity and the abc reporter paul could whom i associate with jack nelson there were some good guys that new the south, that new the dirt and knew we were not the problem so we love them and we felt through them we could get our story told. i think that is still a problem that we spend all the time analyzing the democrats and the republicans and nobody's talking about the issues for. jack was not one of those that was trying to find the popularity. who was winning the popularity contest? was black power going to defeat martin luther king? he wouldn't write a story like that. he knew what the problems were in the south and he bore in on them. i guess i met him with carolyn, who were on my staff later on in congress, but even in washington he would always invite me to come talk to the -- well, he had a breakfast where all the staff of the "los angeles times" and anybody else that wanted to come would come in and we just talked very candidly and openly about anything and everything that was going on in washington that we knew about and it was that kind of trust and integrity that i remember. >> very good. [applause] >> he was a close friend of yours and terry was the emcee at the giant memorial service that he had for jack where a lot of the stories got told there is a blog site for scoop nelson@word press.com. >> if you want to read additional stories, go to this site. >> i have to observe that with this story. i did have the privilege to know jack from several different perspectives. first, as hank said, i started as even more green than the front row can tell you the atlanta constitution when i was 21-years-old in 1969. jack -- and i just got out of the army -- jack started when he was 23-years-old in 1952. the dates are kind of interesting because the book is called evolution of the southern reporter and the word evolution is an important part of it. he won the pulitzer prize in 1970 to begin 71 to washington, young man, 6565, 70. so a young man during those periods of time and he accomplished all of those wonderful stories. he was always a place where the movement was at the time. both stories were not racially based. they were not their race story or the movement stories. the last story that jack covered in the constitution. as jean patterson said the service jack was never the same after that. the common theme running through the streets with a description and government and state officials, the movement and then what we really like to do in washington is he battled injustice and when he found in justice, whatever it was he exposed. he started when he was 22 and went through the time he died and that's why i believe so much in the first amendment. you know there is an old myth that is shattered by this book. when i arrived in the constitution i think that bill wrote about this recently. we all believed it that jack did not stay at the atlanta constitution because the management wouldn't give him a 5-dollar is. that was still being stated as true and as carter pointed out he got a 50% raise and he got $15,000 in the "los angeles times" said it wasn't so bad as all of that. and the other was. i won't say anything more about that. [laughter] >> i met jack a couple of periods during that time but i remember him and in fact one of them, you will appreciate this and we don't need to go into it, but there was a certain candidate for governor in 1966 that i was giving some attention to and we had a youth leadership retreat and brought a lot of people from all over the state in the american hotel and a downtown alley and the worked out of the plaza. jack came and spoke to that group and i have a picture somewhere that my sister is trying to find of jack speaking at that event. but my first encounter wasn't the most pleasant but after president was elected the attorney general for whom i was working directly was at a local content just caring for confirmation. no press can ask any questions turned confirmation hearings. jack is climbing over some shares trying to get to the judging by standing in his way to making it difficult for him and of course he and the judge are old friends but they didn't know all of this was going on but i successfully brought this former golden globe fighter from getting in the room but he had the last one. he was counsel to the president and i will wait for the call to come from the president. when we look at that particular perspective of the carter years it is that jack was a great bureau chief and build a great bureau. i just want to emphasize that because the one thing that always came across to me and all of our dealings with jack during that period he was promoting that bureau and reporters of the year away and he did have those breakfast sessions. they would say i'm not coming over to have breakfast, mr. general. [laughter] but she'd never been to a breakfast and said they come and participate in the jack nelson "los angeles times" c-span much got invited at one time which a elevated the whole process even more. copper >> they were there at every section. islamic that no longer exists, the bureaus. >> the longer people can have an honest discussion over breakfast and c-span can show. [applause] i want to close with one last story which is a carter nelson story. in 1973, president carter just to conclude the second year as the governor of georgia he made a decision and communicated it to his family with a very few friends that were his supporters that were going to run for office and connected for christmas in february he's accepted an invitation to go to the national press club and make a speech. congressman young was in the audience among other people and jack nelson was asked to introduce the governor of georgia and then the president brought his first speech on the big national stage trying to strike some of the themes from the minow from his own riding of the books. they were trying to stress what cannot of the closet on this presidential campaign. ambassador young is to the audience roared on the place card. this son of a gun is going to run for president. [laughter] there is nixon come anti-corruption, zero base budget, all of the things that you would hear about, and he closed with the sole duty of politics to establish justice, and a chinese philosopher you get a man a fish he has one meal and you teach him how to fish he can feed himself forever. she's deutsch on this after he told the rest of the washington press corps, and he apparently sent them to call jack in about three days and probably told him he was going to run for president as jack to get serious he never wrote a story about that, and once said that the governor was concerned that it may be a little pretentious for the first term georgia governor to be quoting a the end of his first speech jack said don't worry about it. nobody gives a damn anyhow. [laughter] [applause] the most generic thing about judd nelson's career is that to some degree he followed the pattern except he was always as terrie pointed out trying to find out where corruption was and people were being cheated and then correcting it but he didn't really get involved as i mentioned earlier in the civil rights movement until he went to little rock and saw them standing together and these little children who were being abused and jack salles then the expression on the faces of those little kids and i think that's when he decided that he needed to move into the arena of racial relations because that is the pending story that he had really not addressed before then and at the end of the time i was right before the civil rights started. he had to move through bigger l.a. times to do that. they were able to expand the paper to be competitive in "the new york times." >> that's right, she did. exactly. to your point this isn't in the book but it's in 1958 he will remember this down there was a front-page story in "the washington post" by robert e. lee baker but he later changed because robert e. lee baker didn't sound quite appropriate discussing how law enforcement killed a couple african-american men and wounded quite a few others and how it was a place of great fear and they couldn't go out on the streets at night and it portrayed a very frightful situation in the front page of the washington post. well, jack got sent down to the county to do a story that defended the south and defended the integrity of the county and of the establishment. i'm not saying that is what he's told to do that that is the story that he rode as a reporter walks in the street and sees a number of african-americans out and no one is expressing to this reporter any fear. but he later expressed great regret that he had not really seen that story and it had sort of become the homer, the home town trying to portray the situation in a more positive light and that is about the same time undergoing this transformation. >> but he made that point. schenectady everything what does integrity mean? what does it mean to be a journalist with integrity? as particularly in that era we have gone through a period of time that journalists so disassociate themselves from people in politics and a sort of lose touch with the political talks and they understand reasons you don't want to be coopted. there are various reasons. and when you look at how jack -- i want to talk about the question he asked you, president carter, during your debate with president ford. he was moderating it. and jack, a southerner, probably predispose to the likes of southern governors to feel a little southern loyalty. maybe, maybe not. the opening question must despite the fact you've been running for president a long time now, many americans still seem to be uneasy about you. they don't feel like they know you were the people around you when the problem seems to be that you haven't brought people with a background or national experience in to your campaign and many of the people around you, people use known in georgia, inexperienced, and then he went on and on and on. [laughter] >> having said that, i want you to flash forward to the camp david story a few more familiar you have journalists over to dinner after the camp david accord and there was one person you trusted more than anyone despite this. >> i wanted to have a meeting with a couple of reporters like basically trusted and tell them exactly what did happen between me and anwar sadat and to take some time to do it in detail and invited jack over to the white house to have supper with me and i spent a couple of hours explaining to them what had actually happened and how i had maximum almost two to much trust from mrfs about and how he was a generous and i told the truth about the whole situation and jack was taken i found out later meticulous notes that were supposed to be off the record. [laughter] if i remember correctly jack called me a day or two later and asked if he could report what i said. i said if you don't screw me in the story. [laughter] i think when i was president used better language. [laughter] >> i don't know the record set but anyway the fact is he did write in the most meticulous detail what he wanted to report from my conversation but i did trust jack and he was an honest person and i'm not knocking other reporters. i don't know every reporter in the world but he was one of the reporters i would have trusted with my life. i knew he would tell the truth and that he was courageous enough to stand up for the truth even under the most tremendous pressures. and he did that in every instance of his life and i read the book and remember there were two or three times jack did back down on a story and regretted it until the end of his life, but those events were extremely rare and sometimes he would defy even his top bosses in danger of his own john to say i believe in this and this is what writing. he was just a courageous man. >> before we make a scene out of jack -- [laughter] indeed he was a man of great integrity that he was also a reporter which sometimes meant pushing the envelope. a story that i always liked was -- i don't know how many of you remember the orangeburg massacre when state troopers cut down on the unarmed students and wounded over two dozen and killed three of them, four of them, sorry. jack was dispatched to the story and when he got there he went immediately to the hospital and he said to the hospital or administrator and jack nelson from the bureau of and i am here to look at the medical records of the students. [laughter] the administrator thought he meant the fbi which jack knew perfectly well that's the impression he was giving. he used to wear a trench coat that the reporters dressed like fbi men because it afforded them a certain amount of protection sometimes in the field. anyway, she was given access to those medical records and he showed most of the students were wounded running away in the back or on the soles of their feet, and it was an important break in the story to disprove what the troopers had been saying that the students had opened fire on them so that's what i mean by pushing the envelope a little bit. >> in the years after that he would tell that story on himself. >> sounds like a saint to me. [laughter] i think leader when it became considered inappropriate to do such things he was reluctant to go back and acknowledge he had done that but now he's done it again and i'm glad to see that. ambassador yanna, the orangeburg massacre is one example of him bringing investigative reporting to the civil rights. the other is the fbi involvement in the killing and the meridian bombing or i mean the attempted set up by the fbi that led to the rest of tommy clams them. tommy come if you would come investor, the impact that having that kind of news coverage on the movement had on a national understanding of what was going on. >> we really understood the press as educational media and educational tv. everything that had been going on that we were involved in had been going on for a hundred years and was very hard to get it out. it now because this is 1963, i was reminded that fred came to get martin luther king on the 17th of december to promise that he would come to birmingham this year from but that's because on the 14th or the 15th, the church had been bombed for the third time in 1962. the terrapins 60 bombings in homes that had received no publicity. fred shells worth had come over there to get into the injustice. one of my never been friends that had been in the movement was quite blunt with me about it saying look, you are going to have to cut me some slack because i have to keep the camera on dr. king because if they kill them, if i don't get a picture of it i lose my job. it was almost that cold of an analysis where martin luther king knew that he was being used to focus on this injustice and he did it willingly. at the same time, the guys like jack nelson understood that, and that camera man was lawrence pierce who had been with a friend of him since montgomery. and so it was -- they could not have ben changed had it not been for the press. the birmingham harold put their arrest on page 34 of the reasons we had a demonstrations early in the morning so they could fly the film to new york and they could make the 6:00 news. there was a deliberate need for us to share with the press to get the story out. >> a strategy behind it. >> it was part of the message, and what we didn't have for the television more than three minutes. but dr. king used to say you have three minutes on three networks. at that time that was worth a million dollars of publicity everyday. and so it was a deliberate offering more -- deferring a risk because we felt like we had to trust. there was nobody that could get the story out. we couldn't even get mass meetings announced on black radio stations. the south was nailed down real tight except for. i volunteered to testify at the hearing because i knew he was the one that got both sides of the school desegregation in the courtroom and said look, you know all about atlanta schools more than anyone else. you'll work that out and when you get through, call me and i will make it a court order. there was a trust and a realization that this was a real problem that had to be faced regardless of the risk that we were taking. now, compare that with right now people are writing about stories in such a way that well, they do better reporters on the falcons and there is more in-depth reporting on the football game. >> we all like the falcons. >> to that point earlier and those that read the book i would point you to the chapter while no one ever would say that the press than the people and the government themselves. okay you could, good. but read that chapter and you will see jack and you will see that famous thinkers that he used when clansmen more threatening jack and jean roberts and several others with their life they had invited them out to the klan rally. we have to pay for eight wedge to get people out in the only happened because gene was in the chest of the guy saying if you don't get us out of your life, you are not going to like what you read in the "los angeles times" tomorrow. >> anything else here? >> it's an important development out of the civil rights movement and the famous case in "new york times" which involved the ad in "the new york times" and the libel suit was brought by public officials in alabama and redefined the constitutional law and the first amendment and was released by these guys like jackie. they have the committee for the free press that he helped create and depend so much on that. [applause] when going to take the last two minutes here. in 1959 he went down to the state hospital and found horrible conditions. he thought people misrepresenting their skills and their licenses and other medical know-how people that were not qualified to do surgery, it was just a litany of problems he got beat up and thrown over he won a pulitzer prize and he said this was very important to you in the development of mental health as your primary issue as first lady and even now so i think that connects a really important couple bucks but in the career of jack nelson and the carter center today stands for. >> he gave the first lecture of the fellows on mental health that spoke to the journalists they bring journalists in and it teaches them how to do better stories. it's a great program, great program and great success and if jack knew the first or the second, the speech. we are going out into the lobby and we are going to have some readings from the but, for short ratings. the editor of will be reading. cynthia tucker, a pulitzer prize winner. i shared that with her. we will be reading rosemary pooler and jack call lady we also have under display examples of the nelson papers that are now what marble. [applause] >> nevertheless a combination of fiscal pressures and a grid lock moretical process has led to far more abrupt and deeper that we reductions in the plan expected. now that dod is grappling with a serious immediate challenge of q sequester whichue is forcing uso take as much as the take as muc 41 billion-dollar cut on the current fiscal year. they've reduced the spending by ojected $500 billion over the nextto decade to read the sequester cut because it fallsre ne heavily on operations in aecaust modernization is already having a disruptive and potentially damaging impact on the readiness of the force. the department has already made many cuts including cuts to official traveling and facilities maintenance. th we've imposed hiring freezes ano told many important but nonessential activities. however, we will have to do more across-the-board reductions on the size we are looking at willu demand we furlough the civiliani personnel which could affect moe morale and productivity it will be a maintenance and training which further erodes the readiness of the force and will be costly to regain in the t future as the service chiefsefse have said we are consuming our readiness.tments meanwhile the investment accounts and the defense industry industrial base are not spare damage as we also takee ao indiscriminate cuts across these areas ofdi the budget. these are the challenges that face us right now. a i'm dndetermined to help the department get ahead of them. the general said that we need to lead true this crisis. i i've told our senior leadershipr leadership, the joint chiefs, the service secretaries and undersecretary of defense, we are all in this together, and we will come out of it together. the task ahead for the department is to prepare for the future, but not in a way that the collects, or is oblivious to the realities of the present. we are therefore undertaking a process to develop choices, options, and priorities to deal with further reductions in the defense budget that could result from a comprehensive deficit- reduction deal, or the persistence of sequestered. all anchored by the president defends strategic guidance. my goal in directing the strategic choices in management review, which is now being led by deputy secretary carter, who is working with general dempsey, is to ensure that we are realistic the confronting both our strategic and fiscal challenges. it is not to assume or tacitly except deep cuts, such as those imposed by sequester, will endure, or that these cuts can be accommodated without a significant reduction in military capabilities. at the same time, we cannot simply wish or hope our way to carrying out irresponsible national security strategy for its implementation. the department must understand the challenges and uncertainties plan for the risks, and yes, recognize the opportunities inherent in budget constraints in more efficient restructuring. this exercise is also about matching missions with resources, looking at ends, ways, and means. this effort, by necessity, will consider big choices which could lead to fundamental change and a further prioritization of the use of our resources to retain that involve not just tweaking or chipping away at existing structures and necessary,but where fashioning entirely new ones that are better suited to 21st century realities and challenges. all this with the goal of insuring that we can better execute the strategic guidance as set out by the president. in order for this effort to proceed with the to be steely- eyed and clear headed in our analysis and explore the full range of options for implementing our national security strategy. we need to challenge all past assumptions and we need to put everything on the table. for example, is already clear to me that any serious effort to reform or reshape our defense enterprise must confront the principal drivers of growth in the department's budget, namely acquisitions untenuous threatened military action against south korea >> it's significant that this has been preserved for all these years. at one point there were probably 30 to 40 of these around the salt river valley and only a couple of them have survived. most of them are small or about a third to a quarter of the size and it survived also. so a lot of those were destroyed and these great mounds did survive and it offers an opportunity to study and learn about their lifestyle and about how all their organization was. with archaeology one of the great things that we have about archaeology when we look to the past and see what people did like building the canal systems here i think it gives you hope for the future because if they could do this in the desert with digging sticks, what is it that we can't do? reporting the revolutionary war before it was history it was news. this is one hour and 15 minutes. ppaca for coming. and to booktv c-span for joining us here. about three weeks into the design of the reporting revolutionary war we realized we were on pace to produce an 800 page 2-inch thick volume. we quickly cut the corners and retrace the steps in deciding to kill back what is a 400 page book for you. i prepared a five hour presentation for you this evening and decided to scale that back into a more manageable 45 minute. of. without newspapers there would have been no american revolution they are what stand on the rebellion and they maintain loyalty to the cause and provide a critical correspondence during the war command the ultimately aided in the outcome. and they know this very well for 200 plus years, historians have referenced in newspapers in the footnotes of their own analysis and interpretation. what this book does is it inverts the traditional history books, taking those newspapers that have been in the footnotes and placing them at the forefront for generals like you to enjoy to full-color newspapers from the period so you feel like you are reading over the shoulder of george washington for paul revere. now, the process for putting this book together is quite a journey for me. i started out as an enthusiast, then became a collector and then became an educator through a website on and ultimately through this book. the story is how i first discovered the historic newspapers about five years ago. my wife and i took our first family vacation to go into illinois to the mississippi river town where on the main strip they discovered a bookshop and in that rear bookshop the of the container of old newspapers pick one up and started reading it and was the april 21st, 1865 "new york times" and was rewarded for the capture of his conspirators. that moment triggered an intense passion and enthusiasm for history that it previously never had. so, for the next five years it became a journey of meticulous collecting of newspapers because i'm talked away in the midwest. i don't have convenient access to a lot of the wonderful archives on the east coast or a lot of the originals that are found in the library of the institution across the country. and so, i made a point to try to collect these because much like any of our historical collectable they are available if you have seen american peckers on the history channel it is much like that. i would equate myself to american pickers but more on the lines of the historic documents. i'm traversing of your trying to find and locate newspapers out of the bookshops for and people who discovered them in the attics and behind walls of all the homes. so it is an exciting discovery process and these newspapers eventually grew and accumulated to where they became a collection one of the most private collections of the american revolutionary newspapers. so the story they told us fascinating. one that deserves to be shared with the general readership which this book hopefully accomplishes. so tonight, what i want to do is walk you through what i would consider to be the for buckets of discovery that i've made along this journey and i categorize those as one being the old media versus the new, the journalism discoveries, the history discoveries come and then what i would call the paper and preservation discoveries. quantity. we're looking at limitless source of news, television, radio, internet, social media, sweater, you name it, you have access to a seemingly unlimited quantity of new sources. newspapers were the only mass media of the day. the first newspaper printed on american soil successfully is the boston newsletter in 1704. it wasn't until 15 years later that we had the second american newspaper printed also in boston coincidentally the next day the third newspaper started in philadelphia. the top 100 newspapers in america of which circulation is approximately 200,000 the time of the american revolution the average circulation was approximately 600. that sounds awfully low but keep in mind that these newspapers were also read in private homes and have the discretion and the circulation might not be low and it's quite significant. distribution, we have internet, tv and radio today back then the distribution of newspapers was done primarily through horseback and ships commonly called packet boats. today's news is instantaneous, it's on demand. they can flip open the phone and have almost real time news 200 plus years ago the news came weekly. i'm sorry, the news came weekly and in a time lag even open up the newspaper and find it from a deal to several months old. .. what we think today as kind of -- one second, backtracked. front page and the first page which typically typeset earlier. whereas the interior pages, two and three were typeset later in the week. so closer to the actual publication date. so what we would associates as being a front page cover story with typically found on page to retreat, not on page one and four where you would have more of the other type, as is the advertisements and such. the frequency, today we have the daily news. back then you had weekly. today we have left and right wing in media. back then you had patriot and loyalists newspapers. it was important to me that this book include both perspectives from patriots and loyalists as well as american and british is papers. let's take this to the journalism discoveries. today newspapers have paid professional staff of reporters and editors. back then it did not have professional paid staff. the number one new source was private correspondence. here we have an early 1774 pennsylvania newspaper that has an article that starts off with letters from boston. it should digest a humorous face on the boston tea party. when you will find most commonly is the expected meeting in to the articles of the day. there were not headlines. headlines are not very common. and so most of the articles back then would lead with excerpts of a letter from or dateline. another primary new service was the exchange system or other newspapers. so once upon a time the printer would print a weekly edition and send issues up and down the consonant to the other who would then reprint extract from that edition in their own, often under a deadline. so here is new york. this is boston gazette from 1766. so here the new york did line tells me that this news came from new york and quite likely the new york is paper. after action reports are also a primary source of news was the wars began. so after action reports are when the commanding officer who would write a summary of the events of the military invasions. there would sum that up. often that would be the president of congress. he would then share that after action report with a local newspaper printer. then that is their printer with send their addition up and down the kind. you would see the after action report appear in most of the newspapers up and down the content. here we have the january 23rd 1777 issue of the captains will journal which includes george washington's own account of the battle of trenton and his crossing of the delaware, so you can see there the top, baltimore, that is where congress was a meeting of the time. i said earlier that you saw a lot of headlines and 18th-century newspapers, mostly the deadlines and extract. here is the april 21st 1775 issue of the new hampshire gazette. extraordinary for its content in that it records the breaking news of the battle of lexington and concord, but also is start a significant first journalism, the fact that the less -- the left column is dedicated to that continent, lexington and concord more and partly, it is the center deadline. two words to the headlines, levied news which surely caught the attention of the people reading this particular newspaper. more so, the fact that i made earlier about breaking or domestic news was typically found on pages two and three. this is domestic breaking news on page one. so another significant journalism peace to touch the reader's attention. also something you don't see very frequently in newspapers. were you do see them is in that nameplate or hear we have your honor, the name plate with the serpent and the dragon. you also see them in advertisements. so the advertisement on the left the advertisement on the ride. there was, however, one depicted under current events, only one. that is the battle of bunker hill. the virginia gazette of august august 261775 printed in the middle column an eyewitness account of the battle of bunker hill. the air with his account contained such vivid details of the actual battlefield where the entrenchments, the publishers of the gazette put together a rudimentary illustration using just a common type tool that they have in the print shop. this is what it looks like. now, periodicals coming from great britain like the london magazine the montero's magazine, even monthly periodicals to you tend to see maps and some illustrations in there, but not in newspapers. you would think that after this edition that other colonial newspapers and see this and, perhaps, take a similar process these for developing some types of illustrations. we don't. my guess is that logistically time working on their side, they could not do this repeatedly. so this is the only known illustration to depict a current event in in his bearing the entire revolutionary war. you can also do it the age of enlightenment. journalism as entertainment and education. in the left, the new jersey gazette from 1778. the right to columns are dedicated to the reestablishment of the continental army to the details, the specs of the of entry, the dutch hillary, the cavalry. alleges a contact to have dedicated. and the right, add journal printed philadelphia where the entire front page is dedicated to news about the surrender of cornwallis in poetry. advertising is also something that struck me. in the sense that there are a lot of advertisements for runaway slaves, indentured servants, deserted soldiers. an advocate for primary sources in the journal public and students' reading press resources. what he says is that these deserted soldiers advertisements in newspapers are where we get a lot of the information about what the uniforms like because they're describing the soldiers that have deserted. other interesting advertisement that struck me was the january january 20th, 1776 issue of the pennsylvania leisure. here we have ten days after the first publication of thomas paine's common-sense, of the first advertisements for common-sense. there it is. what was interesting to me about this particular edition was that in this same newspaper there is another advertisements for a new edition of common sense which suggests just how quickly this pamphlet was moving. which brings me to the history discovery. no taxation without representation. that arguments bristol-newspapers, and particular make 101764 issue of the pennsylvania gazette. on page number two is one paragraph that details the forthcoming sugar act. in that article it says a scheme of taxation that has been previously debated from the parliament, whether they have the power to make such attacks in the colonies which had no representatives in parliament was determined in the affirmative. also interesting to note that this is where you get a firsthand, the teaser for the forthcoming standout that we know so well. besides this, and internal tax is cut off. you cannot see that. besides this an internal taxes were covering. violence and mobs and riots are also something because of the sheer magnitude of the violence that is reported in the newspapers of the day. in particular this is a supplement to the boston newsletter from september 5th 1765. extraordinary for multiple reasons. on the front page of this two pages you there are details of the destruction of the ted governor thomas hutchinson some, the lieutenant governor of boston. but on page number two from newport ryland similar home distraction of masters. so year for a three day right, a to do list. day one, a symbol. make effigies and the hated loyalists. hoist effigies by night. make a fire and burned effigies to ashes. she's a deputies of the town committees a committee to inspect the deputies. they never to come in the evening, gathered crowd and marks to the house have a loyal is number one. saturn is when does a bride is doors to pieces. damage petitions and run furniture. marched to the home of hated loyalists number two. tear his house to pieces. demolishes furniture and ravages don't. drink some wind. marched to the home. pheasant is some he does not resign. receive the promise of resignation, returned to the first two loans to continue the destruction. then the following morning, day three, listen to the public resignation and wafer loyalists to sail to england and selling real estate. so we have such violence reported in the newspapers. this is an a boston newspaper. surely the most audience were probably pleased to see that what they had done previously was catching on in the other colonies. and this had the desired effect that the very much wanted. what you see in the newspapers after this is all up and down the colonies, the other rounds -- colonies taking similar courses to prevent the enforcement of the stamp act. along similar lines was the fact that benjamin franklin was one of those targeted, hated columnists whose home came this close to being destroyed by a mob of patriots because ben franklin showed sentiments of moderation and compliance with the stamp act. he appointed a friend of is to be a stamp master. and those sentiments of compliance in moderation come through in the newspapers. so, for instance, benjamin franklin printed the pennsylvania gazette. 17291748. 1748, for the next 16 years until 1768, he remained a business partner were on the back of every pennsylvania gazette is still listed his name , printed by b. franklin. so while he did not -- was not active in the daily printing business, is to carry his name. and that his that was one of the first texts of the stamp act. that type of pennsylvania gazette, just a few weeks later was also advertising for franklin's poor richard's almanac which from the 1766 edition there were promoting as having the stamp act which all colonists should become familiar with because it will affect wall and so there in those newspapers you start to see sentiments of moderation in compliance. also, the boston tea party, december 21st 1770. president of seven massachusetts. here we have one of the most popular eyewitness accounts of the boston tea party. it was written by impartial observers. pseudonym which was very common. but in this account your read about a padlock being destroyed aboard one of the ships and other colonists, rivals put the replace that so as to remain blame us for anything but distraction of the tea. we also learn in the same account of one of the rebel colonists pocketing some of that the and greatly being seized by the other participants. we also learn that the boston tea party was not universally celebrated. in the february 81774 issue of the gazette we read the mets of a meeting where they label the boston tea party illegal, and just common dangerous. the shot heard around the world, well, that came very close to happening on much more occasions, weeks and months prior to april 19th 1775. one case in particular was covered in the book, how close it came to happening four months prior in portsmouth and the new hampshire. also, along the paul reveres lines he went on much of the privilege share rides. one case in particular was his right to philadelphia and back to ensure the suffolk results, suffolk counties response which was a part of it. another interesting, the printing of the declaration of independence to the arrival of the declaration of independence, august 101776. three days later the london chronicle prince what is an 18th-century equivalent of a tweet in that we have advice received that the congress resolved upon independence before the july and has put declared war against great britain. two issues later, the declaration. a january 203rd 1777 issue of the continental army. this was printed in boston. this was a front-page of george washington's crossing the delaware. bruce chadwick contributed the essay on the battle of trenton and princeton called out a phrase that washington used that they surrendered because they knew there were about to be cut to pieces. being harsh language to come from the future president. he also reimburses newspapers about john paul jones, the first american naval hero. welcome he was also an american private to the british. during the accounts of this you read what is a fashion report this is a black beard. john paul jones, his immortal words, it turns out he let the did not say at. so i may think, but i will be damned. saratoga, i was struck by the pennsylvania ledger, 1778. the objections that congress raised to the terms of surrender , we're going to surrender. suraya 1778 the pennsylvania ledger is printed in british occupied philadelphia which happens to be under a headline the you don't see here. but here we have congress, continental congress asking where some of the surrender of atoms are. so the number of muskets is less than that of the prisoners and that of the muskets run for service. how come the number of bayonets is greatly inferior to that of muskets? was also struck me was that an economist and history help revitalize the war. the conrad -- comrade who wrote the contextual s.a. for that section of the book points to the nathaniel greene papers in which he edited. and in all the nathaniel greene correspondence that the research really found one instance when nathaniel greene pointed to guide intervening in the revolutionary war, and it was during their retrieval and a recovery of benedict arnold. a thing of green as suggested even in this report feels that got it intervened in the revolutionary war and hope that the americans uncovered the treasonous plot. we also see all of the ubiquitous. after he became that hated benedict arnold during the revenue london the colonists start to point fingers and say we saw over your during this mischief and every year during this. and cities to see him everywhere in this case he was having dinner at the close friend and then started a fire at the house after dinner. and national public service veteran comitia contrary the essay. and then there we learn that there was a celebrity intervention. the british commander who was delayed in sending the enforcement's down to cornwallis' yorktown partially due to the fact that clinton was entertaining a celebrity. the celebrity, king george the third son, prince william henry. dan also comments on a bit of irony. active and maintained, the day of the surrender, the day that greece and clinton cell from the art to yorktown to provide reinforcements. it's just so happens that one of the ships in the fleet is commanded by cornwall sissonne. some things made to last bucket of discovery, so what i would call paper and preservation discoveries. prior to 87 the, for the transition, newspapers are printed on stock. paper made of linen rag -- linen rags. off the backs of the colonist of people or as close. also ship sails. these rags were billed and pulp and ultimately sifted into the sheets of paper. and the durability of that paper plate is significant role in the preservation and that today we can find 250 year-old newspaper's better and better condition than last week's boston globe which is probably already yelling. so thanks to the ragged men and paper on which the printed and thanks to the institutions that bound them into volumes for long-term storage we have these wonderful printed accounts of what transpired during the american revolution. what i tend to do is i also look for newspapers that others might consider trash. where they are extremely be up. they have holes. they have lived a long life. fire and flood and war. and so they're torn and tattered a little that. i have partnered with some of the top paper concentrators, the head of conservation at a major museum to restore these newspapers as close to there original position as possible. you can do some amazing things. so, for instance, of the bottom there, completely filled. stain's reduced. scotch tape has been used in newspapers to be removed and they can be preserved once again so at the beginning of the book i . out that there are no photographs of the american revolution. we have photographs of the civil war in every major war thereafter, but not of the american revolution command at think that plays a large part in making the american revolution unreeled to some people. we have beautiful era paintings. we have caricaturist and sometimes cartoonish engravings' depicting the events of the american revolution, with their often created years after warranted command said tend to be unrealistic. newspapers were very timely. they printed descriptions drop the whole coast -- course of the war. they helped make the american revolution real to me, and my goal was that the newspapers helped make the american revolution real frost. thank you very much. [applause] >> excuse me. >> a couple of things. i want to share of you and the test before ranchers the panel. again, the east side, on that balcony, and boston, just a few weeks after was passed on july july 4th. so it took a little while to get up to boston from philadelphia, but it does here and was read. abigail adams was in the crowd just outside the balcony in the intersection and wrote to her husband john and said it was crazy. everything british was written down and burned in the middle of the intersection immediately after the reading, including the unicorn that no reflag the east facade that was put up in 1881 when the bostonian society came back, but one of the first things that was ripped up as a symbol of british authority and burned in the middle of the intersection, in boston, but for that in 1770, march 5th, just outside that intersection as well, something you're all very all familiar with, something that bob allison contributed to the book, another rambunctious think from the city of boston just ran outside this building itself. but now we're going to turn to a panel discussion which is going to be in the question and answer session. this is in the middle of the aisle here. it is for you said step up to cremaster questions to the panel and right now i will and should use it to the panelists. so beginning with bob allison. he is in a chair of the history department of suffolk university just down the street and teaches at the harvard extension school and is also the author of several books on boston and the american revolution, as recently in 2011, the american revolution , a concise history. he is the vice-president of the society of massachusetts digest the of the u.s.s. constitution museum and a consultant fred museum in boston. he also serves the boston society as a member of our board of visored committee. with that, robert allison. >> thank you. [applause] >> next we will move test the curator from 1775. a site dedicated to a history, analysis, and the best con quest adelle started the american revolution. he recently completed a large study on general washington during the siege of boston from the national arts service. he has also written about the revolution, a town watchmen of the boston massacre, the wave of bankruptcies in 1765 and the town's celebration. that was a crazy night. anyway. he has lectured in many historical societies in greater boston, including this one perry of sorry. [applause] and in he is among the nation's leading authorities on 18th-century newspapers as you cannot tell, one of the most significant collections of american revolutionary newspapers containing the earliest printed reports on practically every major event and battle from 17631783. secured a publisher, an online museum and educational archive, historical significance is bigger dating back to the 16th century. todd andrlik. [applause] so we will open up the question and answer with our panel. >> let me just say that talk has done something extraordinary with this book. i did not know anything -- i got a, couple of years ago from a guy a collection of papers. he wanted to do a book. i said, well, that's great. and what he has done in this book is take these newspapers, his primary sources and publish them. that in itself is not unique. those of us are fortunate enough to live in boston of the places that have research libraries now we can go to the boston public library and get a lot of these papers or the american antiquarian society. to take and put them in a book, with a needed something more fantastic which is to assemble just about every scholar on the american revolution, people have a great detail knowledge of a particular event replace. that is, the folks who are the park service curator's or interpreters a different side to really know the site or people who know boston in 1775. no one knows boston before the revolution better. and -- >> or in the country. >> and that think it is his passion, enthusiasm, and his seemingly midwestern and a sense that it tells us into saying, okay, and contributing. you can take this book if you're a teacher, a college professor, teaching the american revolution and here you have probably the best account of the battle of utah's brings you will never find or any other event in the revolution. so this is the resource for teaching the american revolution i congratulate tougher putting it together. >> now, i am not a degrees historian. i play one on tv. but it was important to me that the newspapers the historical supported by the experts, the authorities on subject matter. and so i drafted 37 top historians to bridge the centuries and that of all the hands of the general reader so that when they are trying to consume 18th-century media which is not always the easiest thing for us today, they have the experts who can kind of point out certain things that they should be noticing. keep in mind, these are also the number one propaganda tools of the era. they do come with the indicate -- the occasional errors and omissions in inaccuracies that the contrary is to the buck consolidated is a service reveries. there were calling fouls on the errors and omissions and pointing that out for the moderator. city's documents alone can be dangerous. >> the newspapers of the time were in some ways and it tends to bring order to the event by showing the view of the side newspaper supported. todd mentioned the riots in boston before the war. the newspapers occasionally report on those, but it would also try to downplay the destructive always set the riots had been done by sailors and boys, people were now respectable citizens of the town , but, you know, as newspapers are still very important because they say what the other people in massachusetts learned about those events. >> questions? [inaudible question] >> so you are describing the media was patriot-leaning or loyalist leaning the same way today we have left the best winning or right-leaning media. i am wondering if you found in any of your research anything that resembles opinion pieces or columns the way we know today. >> testily. usually page one of the newspapers contained serialized essays that would go on sometimes for multiple issues where there would provide one perspective of a certain argument and then sometimes you would also receive a counter argument immediately following, often still under pseudonyms. >> i was said the fact that everything, a lot of the times there was not really the hands of an impartial journalism at. so that when you read about an event it was usually being prevented from the point of view of a one size -- the size afforded by the newspaper. the boston tea party count that was written by an impartial observer? well, he was i really impartial. it was very much presenting the people who just destroyed hundreds of thousands of modern dollars or the property as being respectful of private property and putting back that lock and making sure that no tea was stolen for selfish reasons. so the value of impartiality was there, but it was seized by will sides for their own side because they viewed themselves as being the ones who had a fair, complete view of defense and the other side as bending all of the facts. >> ms nbc and fox news to their models of impartiality compared to the revolutionary time. >> she still had an occasional newspaper that attempted to remain neutral. >> sure. >> the boston evening post. >> it tried. a boston cargo, when it came to boston, and arrogant to me try to be impartial. he tried to publish those articles on both sides. it did not work and he eventually became the strongest supporter of the roh government and mr. panetta town because of that. >> on the other side of that, now we have so many different sources of media weekend kind of facts check. often or newspapers, drastic exaggerations' are outright lies in order to gain support or to turn people directly to one side or the other? >> well, i mean, you're definitely finding exaggerations , whether it was just cannot. what i was interested in finding was that a lot of newspaper accounts came with disclaimers. the publishers of these newspapers and other printers still very much valued reliable sources. and if the source was questionable there would frequently print that with the article, some sort of disclaimer >> i remember there was a letter published after the battle of lexington and concord that talks about the brave soldiers coming to the lexington and rampaging through and killing the barnyard animals. that never happened. there is a letter about the battle of bunker hill that says that general, as soon as the soldiers reached charlestown, some of them tried to desert and run away and he had two of them strong up immediately. well, that did not happen either. there were definitely propaganda pieces. but he is right. the printers trying to provide their readers with what they felt was accurate information, it was just as accurate as they enter stood. now, to be on the fireside, at one. solo letters from john adams and benjamin harrison, to continental congress delegates were sent up to boston from philadelphia, brought by a young lawyer. a british cut all of these documents and they publish them. in that john adams and others gorgeous over to the editor about the continental congress delegates that they did not have to change anything. the harrison letter, the changes to make it look as if george was new was having an affair with the native. so there were both sides using propaganda with in the newspapers. >> interestingly, in the middle of the war i stumbled upon a few london chronicles the report to george washington and died in battle. and normally these were also kind of the rumor hearsay diane the way of adding a the steroids to print a more gossipy news from a less credible sources also at the back of the newspaper. so the london chronicle was in a page newspaper, and that news was most commonly found on page eight. >> these publishers are also in competition with each other, so there will correctly and challenge with each other say. they knew each other personally. so you find out that the biggest villain in the york is james river in ten or in boston as john maynard. each side is going to attack the other one personally, which i guess is the fact checking. i was just reminded of what thomas jefferson said, you can divide it is separate the four sections. truth, half truths, partial truths, and lies. he thought the fourth section would be the longest. [laughter] >> there was a moment in the late 17th fifties, the scottish printer was so upset that something had been published in the boston gazette that he came to the office and loved one of the printers of ahead. so it got personal. >> keep in mind, a lot of these news accounts are coming from private correspondence and eyewitnesses. and the after action reports, commanding officers. and so what i was also interested in learning from the contextual essays was just out shockingly accurate a lot of these were. but for one of the more kind of common war propaganda tactics was to inflate the number of the enemy in the fall your own size to kind of magnify any victory or nominee loss. >> i have a question kind of along the same lines, an organized effort a propaganda leading up to a war. it occurred to me that in several occasions we read about certain individuals meeting at crenshaw ops. so i wonder how prevalent was organized efforts to propagandize in the newspapers? and on on the other side of that , who is financing? we had things like broadside. analysts curious about who was funding. was a somewhat like hancock? who is paying the piper and all that? >> okay. i will start with the question of meeting and newspaper offices. this was, you mentioned 1775, a quarter a little bit of john adams in 1769 in his diary where he spends a sunday evening at the office of the print shop where they are creating the boston gazette. samuel adams was there in a man named million to -- william davis. and they were cooking up things for the next day's newspaper. essays, what adams -- what he called occurrences. and i think that might be a reference to an actual concerted effort that the boston patriots, wigs at the time as they call themselves, had done to tell other newspapers and other towns was like to be living in boston under the occupation of the british army from 1768 to seven in 70. so there was and what they called the journal of occurrences where journal of transactions every week. and this horrible thing happened this week. the soldier was very bad this week. here is what is happening with the soldiers on trial for this. those are not actually published in the boston papers because, of course everyone in boston was supposed to know about that. those were sent to new york and then from new york there were sent all up and down the coast. eventually there were reprinted in boston. so that was an example of a very definite effort by one side of the political divide to use the power of the press to bring the entire thing before boston. you also talked about his finance that. well, it looks like william cooper, the boston town clerk was involved in writing some of those reports. samuel adams was being paid by the massachusetts busy with the clerk of the house. he was earning a salary as a politician. rather rare at that time. so in a way the government for supporting the time the went into writing as reports. there is an article by a historian paul oliver dickerson. number of decades ago about the control on the boston press during the pre revolutionary time. and he found in british government archives a letter from the printers of the boston post. and there were basically saying, look, you were sending all of your money. a letter to the customs office. sending all your money to the boston chronicle. we will support your side of the dispute. it was another arm of the government supporting this is paper. i believe there were also, when the ezekiel russell put out a magazine called the boston sensor which was presented from a loyalists point of view, but he was being supported by some of the rich loyalists in town through either subsidies or everybody agreed to yes, we will buy subscriptions for this magazine, and that will allow somebody to show our side of the dispute. i hope that answers the question. [applause] >> and all of the discussion about the new sources, we get the impression, we think of a newspaper today in terms of not only the publication house, but also this big network of professional syndicates and reporters in things like that. i get the impression from what you say that we are talking during the timeframe of just printers who are relying strictly on one of resources that they can, their be official government acura is that the men of letters or someone who shows up and says, hey, i was there. is that the correct sense? >> a lot of the first colonial his neighbors were also printed by postmaster's because they had access to the number one new source of the day, the private correspondence. so you do see that a lot. >> that's pretty much the case. franklin was one of the most successful printers in the country. massachusetts was very resistant to the constitution. as supporters of it happened to control the male. one of the most influential documents with the opposition of the pennsylvania minority to the pennsylvania ratification which circulated throughout the country. the post office here held that because they did not want this to be entering into the political discourse before massachusetts had voted. control in the post office, controlling the flow of news is one of the essential things here this book really helps us to see the connections between this, the free flow of information which is somewhat different from the free flow of information today. >> i think the you're right in the estimate that there were not -- besides the printers or of the people employed at these newspapers. the mib gentlemen like the adams cousins coming once or twice per week, but there were no reporters, there were no editors . there is one moment and september 77551774, as a thomas was outside the print shop, something called the power alarm. reno that now because he came back and filed an eyewitness report of what happened. we know that only because a customs official who was chased by this crowd in cambridge said it was mr. thomas who got them upset me. and so that is -- the all notion of journalism was evolving at the time. really, i think, the early republic is the first time i've seen people running newspapers who are not -- who have not been trained as printers. i guess maybe just as cleanly, a magistrate of the justice of the piece from rural massachusetts. the comes into boston shortly before the revolution and in a partnership with isiah thomas and in a magazine. until that point the magazines, the newspaper, everything was really the enterprise of somebody, printer, a man who had gotten or in some cases, women who again their fingers dirty putting tight and lines and actually working as prices. it was not until the next generation that we got this other -- these other professions of the reporter with a newspaper publisher who does not get his hands dirty, but it's all money. >> and also, just thinking what the differences and similarities between newspapers then and now. today at think we have this idea of impartiality. professional journalists. but remember, the fundamental purpose of a newspaper in 1775 and today is very much the same. is a money-making enterprise. no one is going to pay for the church bulletin, what you want someone to buy a newspaper. one way to do that, if that requires hiring a staff, you do that. if it is a one-man operation provide you are turning out that is how you do it. so i think we may have an illusion about the press serving some higher purpose other than to mothers nothing wrong with the purpose of making money, as i was livid and remind you by bucks. [laughter] >> now, also, when i say it is the printer, the printer would probably have the advantage of the labor of the printers wife, the printers children, apprentices, maybe a couple of journeymen, so i was not a 1-person operation, it was the family, house of operation. >> you will see several women printing during the american revolution command a lot of times they become printers because husband our brother passes away and they fear losing the operation. >> yes. the printer of the boston newsletter, which is the only newspaper that keeps going inside boston during the siege, so the patriot army rains. the food shortages. that was being kept afloat by margaret draper who was the widow of the previous printer. >> and benjamin franklin and number of the printers to train their widows and to cover the press. in factional women remained fairly dominant into the late 19th and early 20th centuries, one of the fields of was still open to women, throughout the 19th century. >> one of the things i was assessing, we really read history prior to our lives of we always do so with knowledge of what occurred. the war took place in may cetera. and if you talk to someone who was alive during world war ii before pearl harbor we did not know that the united states would enter not. so you can come by speaking with an older person get a perspective that you would not have one around. maybe from what you were saying about the newspapers, these these papers would not have that sort of perspective, but i was curious from the articles about the battles, but the ancillary articles, manuel was happening in a town, a town meeting events, have vows might eliminate your understanding of events that we read in and is treated day. >> this is actually one of my favorite assignments, have students find a newspaper from any time and realtor to see the news. and it is usually not a front-page article, but the smaller stories. i always find it reassuring because there was just so once depravity and may have. even some times more. horrible crimes and other things you're absolutely right. we get a sense of this world in the everyday world of people from these newspapers. the other great thing for anyone studying history is to read something in none of the have come. a person writing this newspaper does not know that there's going to be a war for independence or that the united states is going to win the war that george washington is going to become president. sir you drop your knowledge of what happened. you suspend that. you just immerse yourself in this world and makes a terrific tool for teaching in understanding history. you do get this different perspective of not knowing everything that does happen cents. >> you don't even know what is going to happen next week. you concede that some people don't care. it is want to sell you whenever it is. it gets -- it is a wonderful way, reading a full newspaper, immersing herself in the life of a particular moment. consumption and production very much goes on throughout the course of the war. the advertisements to help provide much context with the regard. one of the as that struck me was as 1766 pennsylvania gazette where the middle column you have under and an apple a state line news of the very first sons of liberty meeting taking place in the maryland capitol. directly adjacent to that is an advertisement for the sale of an indentured servant. and so you have this unique juxtaposition with news of the sons of liberty, the organization established to fight the tyranny into its last lead of the colonists alongside an advertisement for the sale of an indentured servant. you get a lot of that in the book because these newspapers are presented in a fashion where you are allowed to kind of wonder and discover and become your own historian or you can find other interesting tidbits along separate lines of featured news of the day. >> and because there were so short you would have everything compressed on the same page. you would have a runaway slave advertisement next to an advertisement for the latest import in china next to some as say about the political thing next to -- they could get really personal and some of these newspaper ads. back-and-forth. we cannot care about this. >> we don't care about nasty gossip. >> eye care. >> talk to me afterwards. >> very reminiscent of on-line exchanges where you have two people, not less. sniping at each other for weeks on end. one newspaper and in the opposing newspaper. so it always strikes me. it is so similar. okay. these days we think it is the anonymity that allows this, the people who dispute back these answers so quickly because they aren't thinking. back then they had three days said they can knew exactly who the other guy was because it was the town of 15,000 is still decided i'd like is politics. i will talk about his illegitimate child. [inaudible question] >> what would be the most prized possession in your collection regardless of any fee the made? where are you hoping to acquire? what is the treasure that you don't have in your collection at this time? >> well, newspapers range in value based on a number of factors and conditions, timeliness to milestones being covered in that particular issue, whether it is an american issue or british issue. so a variety of factors. they range anywhere from, you know, tens of dollars to tens of thousand dollars depending on all those criteria. the kind of most of its newspaper i would think to many, although that is objective, the very first american printing in the newspaper of the declaration of independence which is the july 61776 issue of the pennsylvania evening post. so that is obviously very desirable. the american revolution center which is going to be building the first national museum for the american revolution, one of their prized artifacts. >> you talk a lot about the different sources, and i just want to know when they get a lot of the sources, being sent to end, just rifling through people's mail? how did they get these documents? >> i get the sense of we talk about an extract from a letter from a gentleman, these were private letters, but the gentleman had then gone to the newspaper or to a tavern to share the news from his cousin or whenever with the other business people in the town. and so in a way it was -- it was not that there were rifling through. there were capturing the mail. it was more -- and there are other examples of that and more time, but it was more that a gentleman was sharing the news that he had which, of course, made him more important with the printer. that leads to an interesting results. we have more details about the battle of lexington and concord in the pennsylvania press the necessarily the massachusetts press because gentlemen were sending off details that they knew about command there was no pressure to keep some of these details secret because there was a war on. so pennsylvania pressed talks about paul revere and the massachusetts breast is not. >> i had their virginity to interview on video several of the contributors to the book. i asked one of them that same question. dennis conrad. he pointed to the amazement letter that he had come across were in the margin and said, print this, apprentice, print this has to suggest exactly what the author of that letter wanted to be printed in the newspaper. >> i was just wondering, since the topic of your question cannot, how your collection of silence do good letters is coming? to you have of the original silence today? >> no. those would be very desirable, but those are earlier and outside of my specialty or out of my focus. >> i thought they said as early -- >> it does. but those are not as in-depth or not in the quantity that is the american revolution. >> sure. >> is everyone know the silence to good? you want to reveal a secret? >> benjamin franklin, when he was an apprentice and his brothers print shop here in boston, apparently camino, the relationship between the brothers was not strong. the older brother did not want benjamin to really have a role beyond the apprenticeships. benjamin was an up-and-coming writer and wanted to contribute some pieces that he wrote. he slid under the door to the print shop that night under this pseudonym silence to good. when his brother discovered those very much fell in love with the ready and printed them under the pen name. >> this was during the smallpox epidemic -- epidemic in boston. the foremost advocate was cotton mather. and the franklin said started this newspaper, james franklin had started the current as a way of attacking no idea of inoculation. they pointed out, there were the same people who wanted us to execute quakers. and they wanted us to hang which is, another wanted to inject ourselves as smallpox. the testimony of negros, turks, madman. and so that newspaper is attacking, calling him a baboon and other things you would not find in a newspaper today. [laughter] and in the this torrent of abuse, one of his daughters died he wrote a sermon about his daughter. he preached it at her funeral on the dignity of silence. so this was before his most recent publication. his most famous publication was essays to do good. everyone reading his newspaper new silence to good mend cotton mather. in fact, in the first of the letters silence to good describes herself as middle-aged widow of a clergyman, being a

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