Transcripts For CSPAN3 American 20240706

Witnesses. Just because my own story touches on everything these three write about, i recommend all the books. Theyre wonderful. I and ellie native, which is something that does not surprise people as much as it used to, but my family came from the louisiana, from new orleans. My father came in 1942 during the war, and this kind of to margarets book. My family did not talk a whole lot about what happened in the south. You just did not hear a lot. I put it together over the course of my life, really. As an essayist, i always tried to sort of dove right i dont know write about the history of black folk and about my own individual life, which is very hard to do. I think im still trying to put those pieces together, so all these books speak to that effort, i think, by black people to continue to do that. We are in the era of black lives matter, which is the same campaign we have been running for a very long time. I think of dr. King in 1968. His last campaign for the sanitation workers in memphis. There are pictures of protesting , picketing, trying to unionize, and their slogan was i am a man. Our current iteration of that is black lives matter, and we have been making the same argument for a long, long time. What is interesting now is just how black people are doing it, how we meet this moment with lessons of the past, which dont ever feel like lessons of the past. Because we keep failing to learn them. Im going to kind of let you guys introduce yourselves if you can, and also just to say briefly i know this is really tough to do, but briefly in terms of civil rights and the black Power Movement, i think they have always been they are connected, of course, but if you could just Say Something about where you think that is at in 2023. We will start with daniel black. Good afternoon, everyone. I am daniel black. I am professor of africanamerican studies at a grand, marvelous place called clark atlantic university. Im very happy to be here. I sat down and i saw liquid death, and i said, oh, god, you know, here we go again, right . [laughter] but im happy to be here. This is my 30th year on faculty at hbcu. I wrote this book black on black for really one reason, and that was to really help or maybe two reasons, to help young people today understand the cost of black life, like, how expensive black life has been in this country. Every generation, black life gets more and more and more expensive. I want to believe that young people just do not know the price that somebody paid for their flesh. Thats the first thing. The second thing i wrote this is i believe that those of the black Power Movement now in hindsight would make different decisions than they made, one of those being integration. I think most elders now if they could do it again, they would not vote for integration. Mm. I think mark might have something to say about that, too. Do you want to introduce yourself and give your thoughts . Im mark whitaker. Im a veteran journalist. I worked for a long time at newsweek magazine. I was an editor there for almost a decade. I was in tv news at nbc and cnn. I still do some on your reporting for cbs sunday morning, but im also for the last decade or so, ive been riding books, and writing books, and my last book was about the legacy of the black community in pittsburgh in the middle of the 20th century, and it made me realize in writing that book that as a writer and author now trying to be sort of working on history, that there are stories of black history that have been told by black writers and white writers, usually the stories that have been told also by white writers have a white element, a white savior element for white oppressor element for interest to write to white readers. Other elements either have not been told or if they have been, they have been told mostly by black writers and black historians, often because they really just focus on kind of things that were happening within the black community and not necessarily sort of, as they say these days, centering, sort of, you know, white protagonists. Not that im not interested in those stories, but i thought the area where i could sort of contribute is by writing about those stories. After that last pittsburgh story, i started thinking about the black Power Movement, which is you know, had this profound effect, changed the civilrights movement, but the number of books that have been written about the black Power Movement compared with the Civil Rights Movement of dr. King, you know, is still tiny. So i set out with that idea that i was going to write about the black Power Movement, and i spent an entire year reporting and writing. I knew that the slogan black power had become popular stokely carmichael, it was not really his slogan, but he made it popular in 1966, so i started there, and a year later, i was still in 1966 because so much happened in that one year. Thats how i ended up deciding to write a book about the birth of black power focused on that one year. Ok, great. Margaret . She won a prize in journalism and black history last night. [applause] thanks so much. It is a great joy to be here with mark and daniel and with all of you. I know it is late in the day, and folks have heard a lot of talk and participated in a lot of discussions, but we will try to make this as lively and informative as we can. My book, im thrilled to say, was recognized last night. Never too late. Never too late. Those of you who are still writing, it is never too late. [applause] never too late to write a book and never too late to be a winner, ok . [applause] my book focuses on the jim crow era. The book is called by hands now known jim crows legal executioners. The book title comes from an expression used by coroners and others during the jim crow period when they were describing lynchings and other executions of africanamericans. There would have been hundreds of witnesses to these events, and yet, the reports, death certificates, and otherwise often would carry the words by hands not known. The premise of the book is we now know a lot more than we did about what transpired, who was involved, and perhaps most important, what his legacy is for us today. This book really addresses the jim crow era, jim crow era violence and resistance and law, looking at violence and resistance through the lens of law, looking at an era of our country, really the Confederate States of the south which were in effect lawless. I described these as an authoritarian regime with a purportedly within a purportedly democratic state. It looks at these three things and unearths new stories, new information to paint a picture not just of what lives look like then, so it is history for its own sake. History that helps us understand what it meant to be alive in that moment. Obviously as well, it is also history that informs us about the moment that we live in today, so that is the gist of the work. Let me just say one other thing. The book really began as i began to meet families who had experienced these events and who were carrying these stories as their own personal history, their own Family History. We traveled across the country to meet with folks who experienced these horrific atrocities, and our effort was to provide to them the material that the government had produced in these cases and to partner with the families to create a fuller, broader, deeper, and more meaningful picture of these events. What has been occurring to me the last several years are actually maybe last decade, that those folks who lived deep in the jim crow era, that generation, is leaving us. My father lived half his life in that era and then pack out, and he lived in los angeles. It did not have official jim crow but by custom had segregation. I was born in the early 1960s. We are losing firsthand accounts of that. I dont know, it is something so i was so glad to read your book. Lets talk first about theres Something Else i have been thinking about a long time. Integration, which is something we dont define that well. In reading daniels book and certainly reading marcs book, i thought i knew what it was. Theres always this tension around the idea that integration was sort of strategically the only thing we could do because separate and unequal was separate and unequal, right . The fight seemed to be for integration into White Society, but that was not really it, was it . There was always reticence about that, and many black folk were actually not in favor of brown versus board of ed, not that they thought that black people were unequal, but they could see where that was going to go nowhere. Or that was not going to turn out well. Mark, maybe you could talk about the year 1966, when i was four years old. Both at the time and now, even in some of the reviews of my book, people have said, why were people calling for black power . At a time when things were getting better, right . A lot of white folks out in 1966, you had the 1964 civil rights act, you had this Voting Rights act. It had been a decade since brown versus board of education, so from the kind of white liberal perspective, things seemed to be getting better, so why were blacks unhappy . Why were they talking about black power . Why were they unsatisfied . The fact is from the black perspective, you had a couple of things. You mention your family coming from the south to the north to the great migration through the great migration. Arent had played out in the south, but meanwhile, and for decades, there had been these families that had uprooted themselves, moved to the north, and found out that things were not that much better in the north than they were in the south, and as far as integration goes, in 1966, you have stokely carmichael, who takes over as the student nonviolent coordinating committee, ousting john lewis the great, you know, ally dr. King and civil rights icon. You had the formation of the black panthers in oakland. You had dr. King trying to take the movement from the south to chicago with pretty disastrous, violent results. And you had a young generation that was behind all of this, and they were saying a number of things. They were talking about black pride and lack consciousness, afros, keyes, all of that afros, all of that. When dr. King talked about a society where his children could live, that by a large was a project that had been advocated for five well educated, middleclass blacks by well educated, middleclass blacks directed by small segment of the situation which we would now call progressive, welleducated, middleclass whites, but most whites had no interest in living sidebyside or integrated with the sharecroppers organizers were working with in the deep south over the descendants of the migrants who lived in innercity oakland defendants of the migrants who live in innercity oakland or who lived in america by the 1960s, and they were right. They are still right, you know . One of the things black power stands for is politically and culturally, how do black folks continue to have a place in American Society as citizens, as voters, and in the workplace, but still living a life where fundamentally they are going to have to rely on themselves as a community and were not and probably never will fully be integrated with White Society . I think that is a very live issue today. The truth is for me and i think you are very kind [laughter] because i dont its that whites were not interested in living next to black people. I think most whites were absolutely opposed to it, and i think there is a difference, right . I really think that integration never happened. No. See, you cant force you cant force one people you cannot bus one set of kids to somebody elses School Without busing those kids to the school. Right . If you are going to call it integration. White kids would never bust black schools. So what in the hell integration are we talking about here . That did not happen. What we really mean is trying to change the focal reference of black people to believe the closer you become like white men, the more excellent you are. That is really what integration was ultimately seeking to do, and it did it in so many ways, but what black people really discovered, quite frankly, is that black children did not do better in white schools. Black children actually did better in dilapidated black schools because a teacher who loves you is worth more than a shiny building. [applause] and black people discovered that, but the problem has been that part of our liberation or too much of our liberation as black people, we keep using white models of institutions, right . Trying to get the black equivalent of that, as if that then will be black liberation. So that we try to find a black harvard, right . When there were schools far more excellent than harvard already. Thats how you get a boy who goes to harvard and gets a phd. People think its because he went to harvard, but its because he went to fisk, right . We have to know and understand this because if not, we will keep using the language folks have been talking about the notion of privilege, and ive been thinking about this. It is not a privilege to be overly it is not a privilege to have access. Excess. Whats a premise he is not a privilege. That is not something someone should aspire to White Supremacy is not a privilege. Its like people saying they are straight. What the hell does that mean . Straight just suggest that Everything Else is crooked. We have to revolutionize the way we understand these things, and black people have to be bold enough to say liberation cannot simply be the measure of what you have gifted blacks. Well said. [applause] i think thats very true, and i have to insert a little story. When i was younger, i was a kid, 1972, i was bus to a mainly white school. We were gifted black childrento. One of my good friends, who happened to be a white kid who sat next to me, she overheard her parents talk about what was going on in school, and were saying, those black kids are going to degrade us. My friend, he was nine, had to Say Something. He said, erin is the smartest kid in the school. This discussion of integration, we always talk about blacks breaking the ceiling, being the first in the setting, the first to do this, the first to do that, as if just appeared and we were not the first. We were the first they saw. The first they saw, right. I have a couple things to say here. [laughter] first of all first of all, in 1935, a lawyer named Charles Hamilton houston travel all across South Carolina and North Carolina, taking an old camera with him, and he took video not video, film of the schools in South Carolina and North Carolina to see what the Educational Opportunities were for africanamericans living in those states. Both films are still available, and i urge everyone who thinks that it is ok to go to a allblack school you are going half the time, getting second handbooks. You are not getting any microscopes. None of that is happening, and you are all in one room. I urge everyone to take a look at those films. Now, history is not linear. It is not linear, and its not dichotomous. It is not this or that, and it is not one line. It is a complicated thing, and you can only live in the moment that you are living in. After Charles Hamilton houston and the naacp and Thurgood Marshall took a look at the failure, the intentional failure to deprive africanamericans of education, they decided something needed to be done about that. We can sit here today in 2022 and say they put all their eggs in one basket and that was the wrong basket. They should have put them in a different basket. You can only live in the moment youre living in. You can only make decisions for the moment you are in and at that time in that place, they thought the only way to get the opportunities that africanamericans needed to live full lives full, flourishing lives, to get the Jobs Available to everyone else living under this flag, that the only way to prep them to do that was to press for integration. We can see we can say to them today that it was wrong. Derek bell, a famous legal scholar, wrote an article some time ago called serving two masters, and serving two masters, and in that article, he presented a theory about the engine which the engine of progress for black folk. He called that the interest convergence theory and dereks view, a professor bells view was that the only way africanamericans can progress is when what they identify as being in their interest is also in the interest of white people. He used that to talk about the difficult, challenging and perhaps in hindsight, limited and perhaps incorrect decision made by the leaders of the movement to integrate schools first. When we talk about integration, black folk and white folk, perhaps not in pittsburgh and not in detroit and not new york, all over the south, black folk and white folk live neighbor to neighbor across history. We are talking about where the doors were closed, the doors to the court were closed, the doors to the schools were closed sunday was the most sacred gated day the week. Lets talk about exactly what we mean when we talk about integration and the reason why those who are in a position to make decisions about how to advance black interests made the decisions that they do. Also i am thinking malcolm x. Malcolm x knew the fallacy of integration. That is what resonated, even back in the early 60s. Even civil rights advocates said its not one thing or this thing or that but everyone understood what he meant when, one of the things he said in his speech he said you can go out and integrate, you can go to those neighborhoods and integrate but pretty soon they are going to leave and take all the stuff and you will be all by yourself. And people would laugh but he was making a point, he sought is a waste of time. Everybody black knew what he meant. For that he was called militant and he was called antiwhatever. Antiamerican which i find really ironic. Can you speak to 66, i read this with great interest this was a turning point. Malcolm x talked about how this had to be a Freedom Movement not just civil rights it was bigger than that. Other younger people understood this was about human rights. Personhood. It was not just about the right to vote etc. Really black power to me means black empowerment. And i decided that i was going to focus on 1966 i told people what i was doing, people who were fuzzy on the dates and didnt know the history that well would say it malcolm x right . And i would say no he was assassinated in early 1965 so he wasnt around and yet what i discovered in reporting and researching and writing the book he was still very much around. He was in everybodys heads. All of these pioneers of black power healy newton, bobby seale, ron karen goa, out here in l. A. The us movement, they all looked up to him and they all thought they were carrying on his work. Malcolm did three very powerful things. First of all he had this critique, it evolved over time particularly after he left the nation of islam. But he was really the person at the time who is really puncturing this myth about where we were headed in terms of integration. He was also talking way ahead of his time about black consciousness, black pride, connecting with black history. The cultural aspect of black power. In that work was carried on by a mere baraka and Sonia Sanchez and it eventually led to hiphop culture and also the international conversation, that black folks are being by the 60s black folks were still suffering from voter discrimination, economic discrimination, educational discrimination, at a time when black folks in africa who we had thought we were far more involved in those countries were actually winning their rights and taking control of their destiny. There was a connection both politically but also in terms of consciousness between the fate of black americans and people of color around the world. All of those ideas, we now look at that and say of course, yes, black consciousness, yes Pan Africanism level consciousness, that was all new. And malcolm was the first person to really be talking about it. Actually, the Anticolonial Movement starts way before the 1960s. The Anticolonial Movement starts in the 1930s. In the 1940s, you have a push towards it culminates in the 1960s. Its also true that the engagement of africanamericans with africa predates, far predates the 1960s and really goes back to the 19th century when folks began to figure out ways to associate with the then Liberation Movement and the fights against colonialism in africa. This has been an ongoing thread and a continual in the africanamerican experience. Its connection, its deep connection with africa and the efforts to colonize d colonize the broader african community. This goes back a long ways to the Harlem Renaissance Movement which was a movement to d colonize peoples minds. Who are we . The question wasnt just what are our rights, those we had to fight for a long time but a deeper question of what do we deserve. Who are we as people those are two separate questions. Yeah sure. One is can you get the colonial powers off your back and create an independent nation and the other, in a different question from who are we as a people. Who are we as an african people. I dont think there it is a very complicated question. Youre in your own country but there wasnt any evolution and so to agree that by the 1960s people were talking about black power like the latest manifestation of black nationalism and there had been, it absolutely was not entirely new. I think it became more broad and more widespread. I think in terms of the way all these ideas were embraced throughout the black community in america. In previous cycles black nationalism, Marcus Garvey and others had said things are so bad for us here in black folks that we have to go someplace else. We have to find our homeland. One of the things that malcolm was saying and was picked up by the black Power Generation was we dont have to leave, we just have to form our own nation within a nation. And baraka writes about this, we carry our nation with us. It was kind of like an internal black nationalism politically but also again culturally. That was really an issue of survival, and community and psychological survival for black folks. And has remained so. It is. It is survival but there are always higher things you are trying to aspire to at the same time. Black power, where is that now . It seems to be such a threatening idea to a lot of americans. Now in this era of craziness, its not craziness its exactly how this country has been a long time with the backlash, i would say backlash to black lives matter in those movements except a friend of mine says it is a front lash. Its not a reaction its an ongoing initiative. Where are we with black power for black people now . Where is that, is it in media, where are we finding frontiers . The truth of the matter for me, what i love about the black Power Movement when i think of and i read Sonia Sanchez andnaraka others, i think what they added to the Civil Rights Movement was they were talking about a transformation in who we are culturally. Not trying to make our way in order that we can sit next to those who always despised us. Which is a different goal. Its a different thing to say listen, i dont seek to have the house that you live in. I dont need my child to go to your school, my god doesnt have to look like your god in order for me to believe that this is god. Thats a different thing than having a black jesus. Maybe i dont need a jesus. That doesnt mean i am not spiritual. What i think was beautiful about the black Power Movement is that these young people, they were young at the time, dared to believe that we could actually live. And actually be happy and thrive without it being done in the measures of the ways in which others at the time lived and measured their own sense of success. People say the criminal Justice System in america is broken, it is not broken it works beautifully. It just does not work for brown and black bodies, it was not made for that. Once we understand that, we will say oh, now its important that people try to revolutionize the criminal Justice System. You are trying to revise the thing the reason other folks dont vote to change it is because it works. It works the way its meant to work. Daniel exactly but that means you have to understand yourself differently. Versus i am going to force this thing to change. I am going to make this thing be Something Else. And the truth of the matter is we are five generations enforcing and begging and thats not been the most fruitful thing. The most fruitful thing it seems to me is for black people to get clear, and there are white people who are revolutionary in the sense to, but in this sense i am in black power and children in the black Power Movement, is to understand that the goal is not to get yourself to the place where you can partake of the privilege of america. If you participate in the privilege of america you are in oppressor. It is oppressive by design. Is the black middle class oppressive . In so many ways and i am in it. But one of the things i want us to do, and again i am absolutely in it and i am fighting my way through this. Because what im trying to get to the place, is that i am not eating up with the dream of american materialism. Because if we have that dream there are other things im going to participate in to get it and i dont want to oppress somebody. I dont want my turn as the master. I want to get rid of the plantation mentality completely. But in order to do that there are some material goods i also have to forgo. For me i think the beauty of what we might mean today by power is a revolutionary people of all colors and genders and sexualities etc. A revolutionary people deciding we despise oppression, we despise oppression of any kind of anybody and if that means having less materially, because it is not true that people are happy who have more material. Thats not true. It is true that people are wealthier, the crime in america is that we keep associating wealth with quality of life. We do. As i have been going around talking about my book, people want to know what is the lesson for today, what are the lessons for the black lives matter movement. I think there are some lessons about messaging and so forth but one of the things ive been thinking about a lot is leadership. Its controversial. There are people i interviewed alicia garza and she wrote in her book that came out in 2020, we dont want leaders, we dont believe in leadership. When you look at the sort of patriarchal nature of leadership throughout American History you can understand why they might feel that way, but i am a believer that you do need grassroots. Activism. But you also need leadership. Part of the problem we have today and i am not singling anybody out specifically, the kind of people who have some of the qualities in the tools that dr. King had or that malcolm x had or some of the great leaders in our history, the temptations for them now economically, in my business the media, being on tv, writing books, getting big advances, that sounds good ill take that. And that actually, the great leaders of truly transformational social and political movements their history have had this quality of selflessness. Of sacrifice and, of understanding that if this was going to be their mission there were certain things they couldnt do, they had to live among the people and with the people. Mandela, dr. King, who succumbed to some temptations but never to the material ones. Malcolm x. I want to make that observation but margaret of all of us up. She was living this history in the 60s. She representing angela davis. Im curious about your thoughts on that. Margaret let me pick up on Daniels Point first about what it means to live in late stage capitalism in a world where materialism seems to be the center of all of our lives. I would say two things here. One is that each one of us has to draw our own line in the sand and thats going to be different for each one of us. Each one of us has to have our own moral compass about the ways in which we will accommodate in the ways in which we will reject. I would say that is true about the overwhelming and oppressive and never ending racism that we all face. I would also say it is true about Something Like the climate crisis. Each one of us has to decide are we going to go on an airplane . Are we going to use an electric cart . It is the same thing. Each one of us has to make our own decision about that. I would also say this. It is not enough. Given where we stand as a country today, given the risk that face us as a country today, given the shadow of fascism that is just a few yards away, it is not enough for each one of us to make our own decision. Our own personal moral decision. Parties, we dont have parties anymore. We dont have a Democratic Party or a republican party. We dont have the kinds of formations, we dont have a black panther party. The ways in which people were disciplined and participated at all levels, the ground level, leadership all of it. In movements that had certain standards, goals, ideals, visions, that were inspiring. In that people dedicated their lives too. Those dont exist anymore. There have to be other ways, its got to be ways beyond the voting booth, in which we can express our concerns, our solidarity, and our commitment to a world that looks very different from the world we live in today. I agree with daniel, rejection yes. Its got to be not just rejection, its got to be moving towards something. Its got to be moving toward something that is positive, that is global in nature, so global capitalism . Not only is capitalism global, everything in our lives is now global. Our resistance movements as well, have to have a global and International Dimension and dynamic. I really think black and brown people should get together, it seems to me that the people of color just politically in terms of interests. There is so much shared interests. Did anybody see thewakanda movie to . When i was in there watching the movie and thewakandans were at odds with the brown people under the sea i was like this is dumb. [laughter] did anyone have that response too . I was like they should have gotten together. Because also there are ways that we conceptualize america as whiteness conceptually. And because of that, native americans, black votes, brown folks etc. We keep baking entry into a place as if it does not already belong to us. It is already mine. I dont have to ask you for anything, it already belongs to me. As long as we conceptualize it in that way we are always politically undermined, and we are always politically challenged. I think that people who really truly love freedom which includes people of every race, really should understand that the freest thing i think on the planet right now potentially is for people who really truly love freedom to put Everything Else down and put on our armor and understand we have to fight this together. What we are looking at right now in america is so dangerous. What is potentially on the horizon, everybody here knows what im talking about, if that comes again shame on us. Shame on us. But what i am also saying is if we are not careful some of the reason we allow it is because we want parts of the spoils of it. And so its like patriarchy, you cant have a little bit of it. If you invited its coming. Mark another lesson though and i think its very important to look at this crowd, i love the diversity of this crowd. I have been in a lot of sessions today where i have not seen that. This is not a black versus white thing. Or it does not have to be, it is not a black and brown versus white thing. I think for everything we are talking about, having white allies is essential. Which is not to say that we cant talk about White Supremacy because White Supremacy is a larger systemic thing that has existed over time and still existed in many ways. But one of the things i saw, there was a lot of argument within the black Power Movement as it rose up in the 60s, margaret knows this. About what the role of white people should be and should we have anything to do with them and if so on what terms and so forth. I write about that in my book. But i think then and now, movements that say there is no role for sympathetic white allies, i think that is a mistake. I think thats a mistake in terms of the support and the talent in the energy that we can provide they can provide but also because even if whites are in a numerical minority by the second part of the century, there still going to be half of the country and for this country to move forward in a positive way there has to be alliances between rightthinking people of all colors. We had an outburst of white empathy after the George Floyd Murder in 2020, i was thinking about this reading margarets book. People were moved by the event, the atrocious notice of it and broke through the consciousness. But the real thing is they were moved by at the story. The bigger story and first of all the individual story of george floyd. Just the deeper things and many people said that that interest has waned, the progress is too dependent on people paying attention and yet im still thinking about how do we live in a nation within a nation. What is the right way forward, my father who was an activist who died in 2020 said we have to hold different values. We cant just aspire to that privilege. And yet how do we do that. The good thing about the point we are at now is nobody should be accumulating stuff. It is not good for the planet is not a good way forward. But for most black people i know they are still trying to get there. But like daniel says we are already there. Its a huge mind shift. I want to stop here i think this is a good place to stop and ask if there are any audience questions, not comments, but questions for any of the authors appear. They are coming around with a mic so hold on a about guns. You mentioned guns but where does guns fit in all this . I am a professor here at usc i have nothing else to say about guns because i dont think there is anything to say so i wondered what you all would say. Margaret erin let me just start with i recommend a book by this guy you see he watched it become a moneymaking machine after the gop saw gun rights as a real cultural issue but they also tied it to black crime and it made a lot of money. When obama came along, the gun sales, bullet sales went through the roof. Ryan busey says this was the biggest gift to the gun industry to say nothing of Mass Shootings it was all about profits. You cannot forget that. Thats all i wanted to say one to lay that out. In fear of the other, you can mine that forever in this country. Mark i want to hear from margaret. Daniel in a sense i think guns maintain racism. Thats why think people want them. Erin i see a hand or at comes your mic. This has been wonderful. I am in my 70s. To some of us margaret is a legend, a hero, and has one of the most Brilliant Minds that she could ever want to sit at her feet and learn. In fact i learned big words from seeing her on tv back in the day. [applause] i would like to hear more of her introduction as an activist, more of her history as an activist. I know she has had to pay some prices but look at her now. I am so thankful the l. A. Times honored you with that award. I would like to hear more of your experiences please. Margaret thank you so much it was very generous and kind of you. I will say that this book comes out of Family History in part, the book focuses on the period of 1930 to 1955. 1950 looks at the jim crow south and looks at not just the violence that was prevalent every day, ordinary, and shape the lives of africanamericans in the south but also looks at the forms of resistance that they nurtured and developed and grew and supported. Seven days a week in their churches and in their homes and workplaces and schools. I try to think about not just the resistance on those generated by leadership, but the picket lines etc. As well as the under the Ground Resistance in which mostly women and children participated and to integrate that and get that into our understanding of the ways in which that period of time has essentially shaped their resistance during a period that mark talked about in his book. The 1960s and on through the 20th century and on into our own century. I think its important both to understand the ways in which these are different but also the continuity. This book that starts with my own family, i moved from harlem to birmingham alabama to participate in the Southern Negro League Youth Conference in 1939 in the Left Movement in the south. And were there until they were kicked out of birmingham by connor in 1948 when they move back home. That moment, the life, the culture, the blues, the spirit of black folk in the south was so much a part of what we grew up with. As i think mark mentioned, angela was a friend of mine and we were kids together, babies together and live close together, and live close over a long. Of time this was a revisiting of that and looking at it through new material, new documents, remind the archives at the National Archives in college park and the library of congress in order to really put flesh and blood on what we all know. Which is that it was a dangerous time, but who were these people . Why were these names not better known. Booker spice lee in 1942 was killed in durham North Carolina because he refused to ride jim crow. He got on a bus with his uniform on on a saturday and was asked by the bus driver to give up his seat for a white man who also had a uniform on and he had the audacity to say we are both fighting the same war and we are fighting the same war why must i give up my seat . For that the bus driver pushed him off the bus and shot him to death. That is a book story i presume you dont know my book is filled with stories like that. No matter how deep those stories are we have to understand the weft of this thing i will say as aaron said, the folks we talk to and as we drive around the country, they are in their 70s. And 80s. These are the folks who carry these memories pressed in their bibles, they have the old yellow newspapers, they have carried this history with them. Are anxious to share it and have not yet gone out there and done the full job and are so happy that mark and daniel, mark working in the 1960s, that is great. This is earlier period that we cant capture, the last panel was about slavery. That has gone. What we have is what we have. But these decades, these deeply significant decades in the 20th century, we have not yet mined them and we have to get, this is a plea to all of those historians, professional and others who are out there. That this work has really got to be done if we are ever to understand the full scope and beauty of africanamerican and American History. Erin well said, thank you. That is a good place to end, i want to thank this wonderful panel, daniel black, mark, margaret. They will be signing books in area one, so please get books. They will sign and thank you for coming. Or watch online on cspan. Org history