2005 by civil rights leader julian bond. It is about 90 minutes. Eleanor holmes welcome. When he heard about this decision, what did it mean to you . Dunbar high school is a stored high school were many africanamericans of no attended over the decades. It was the First Public High School for africanamericans in the United States so the race schoolusness and the which was for many the only high school for black children in the city. Consciousness civic consciousness was fairly high. It was high enough that had the todayle of still living that Charles Lawson charles was about to make one of the most in the role days. They were to the effect that the Supreme Court of the United States had just acquired schools ine the school to be violation of the constitution of the United States because the schoolis a segregated segregated by law. The Dunbar High School had many teachers with phds or other advanced degrees. Occasion when teacher teachers broke down. I know euro about teachers prior. I know you wrote about teachers prior. Public education itself and for africanamericans it is the First High School for africanamericans set up right after the turn of the century of the 19th century that is. Shearingmoment of not the kind of cheering you see awe and reverence for the teachers who seem to believe that they had an obligation to at the same time the importance of the moment. Continue talk about what it would me mean to you then as opposed to how it has turned out . The district of columbia was a city where people have been thriving for decades to into basic institutions. It was a city that was still a majority white city when i grow when thisunbar decision was announced. It was a city where everything was segregated. The public accommodations and schools. It was a southern town for all intents and purposes. Discussion of bigotry and racial segregation had been constant. I immediately believed and as it the schools and the district of columbia would become integrated. My third sister went to the nearest high school. Porsche and i had to get a bus. And then to get a streetcar to a , evenorhood that was then, a dangerous neighborhood but it was where dunbar had been located and now people who go to high schools nearest them. Although many jurisdictions do not feel the impact of brown immediately. I believed that this school segregated longer and it was not. Looking back, what do you think it has turned out to be after this initial success and washington, d. C. . What has it turned out to be . If you mean by the integration of the schools, dunbar was not even integrated by then. There were schools that were integrated because there were many white People Living in the district of columbia and the fact that schools are largely back today had nothing to do with brown versus board of education. White flight. Ith yes, School Integration was one of them, but it also occurred because of the expansion of the population and people as they got better off and move out of the city. You move you look for a place where the schools are good. Still in many ways with a greater proportion than would have been the case in 1954. So yes, the schools do not look like they did after brown versus board of education, but i think it is a big mistake to draw a Straight Line from brown to the then to liftschool segregation. We did not want the integration to take place because we thought there shouldve been schools where you have better education. The educationthat of children would be enhanced if they could be educated together rather than separated interracial groupings. What has a meant to your life personally this chain of civil rights victories that came during this. Period . And thinkto sit back about why it moved me so. It seems to me there was an understanding of young people in my generation. Time when the Supreme Court of the United States is unconstitutional, that is very significant. So, for me the seriousness of the moment the desire to take advantage of the moment in every way i could was, i think only by being at ar segregated high school when that decision was announced and having a matter put to us as it was by the principal. Ityou didnt get it, you got that day. The black middle class and the district of columbia for the black community in general and for my own parents that there in theeep sense of anger first place. People who were striving for education or striving to improve themselves. We thought this was our just do. This is a natural segue. When you look over your life, who have the people who have had the biggest impact . I would imagine it would begin with your family . Parents and my grandmother and with the people closest to me. What that illustrates to me is important it is to be surrounded by family. When you consider afroamericans had nothing but their family and isrch, you see what happening. I was the oldest. I was not the first grandchild. He was much order than i was so for all intents and purposes, i was the first grandchild and treated as such. These were oldfashioned black folks. The first child had more responsibility and perhaps had greater tension. My grandmother knew about these three children coming one after another. Parents andyour t with . D family instructed w what was the itos and the family . Ethos in the i think that if i look at what is ittry to say that they instilled in you besides the normal do unto others besides do unto others as you would have them do to you. I dont think those things resonate until later in life when you are forming a larger sense of who you are. An earlyresonate was sense of leadership that i think came from being the first child. Im father or mother were responsible for this so and their grandmother backyard was somehow on one street based our backyard. We went backandforth all the time. This psychologist thinks first children arent viewed with this anyway. The first child believes and more is expected with her. I dont know about that. I know that was the case in my case. My grandmother never said you child and this is what you are supposed to do. There are devices i remember tot now seems to me interview me with a sense. What kind of devices . One that i think is most transparent is when she sent me to the store. Back and she said eleanor, tell me about how you got him to give you these chops. Well, he asked me which did i want and i said i dont want that one i want this one and that one. Sitting this is one of many instruments. This is particularly transparent. After school, i would often sit and sit with my grandmother on the front porch. We would rock and Everybody Knows everybody. The news of the day four days running was let me to you what this child did today. Safewaysent her to the and she had never been before. This was her first time. Choosing lambo chops and you know how difficult that is to do this is what the child would say. I would be sitting there listening to her brag am a. Shouldnt she did not say what a wonderful child you are. She told all the people about it. That isthat said to me a standard i must try to meet more often. So the lamb chops listen is in effect a lecture given to others that you hear. A reflection of how you ought to behave . Instead of a notion of iss is how you do it or this wonderful that you have done. She asked me what had happened. I told her and she then told everybody. Think she has a certain kind of wisdom. I dont remember being disciplined by her. Outside family, what about teachers . Grade school, dunbar, law school . Because ifortunate you were an africanamerican in washington, d. C. Which was a. Ery highly educated city if you were an africanamerican, you would then encouraged you would have been encouraged to get higher education. One of the places to exercise it would have been teaching. I recall having very good teachers. I remember specifically who those teachers were. I can tell you that a particular teacher among them all was instrumental in anything i did. Excellence ofhe the teachers and elementary, combined forchool a purpose to make us want to do better. Mentioned frederick l and polly murray. What influences they have on you . In law school, it would be if you higginbotham think you have a sense of had democrats been empowered judge higginbotham would have been on the Supreme Court. When it got to a certain point to lead the court of appeals and i cle a scholar, who when rked for him had me not only researching what a case was a matter matter was about, but whenever he had a speech he would have me go to the library to find the certain facts. Instead of speaking in generalities, i thought i had to factual basis. This was an extraordinary woman. She understood them in a zone before anyone new any she understood feminism before any woman. I think she may have been proving something to yourself. Say was a woman that i must yale. He was at yell did you talk to her . Did you have a conversation about what propelled her into that rub off on you . Certainly about her life. This notion about role models and so forth is a very important notion. It means a great deal, particularly to young people. When i try to think did it mean a great deal to me, i believe that the reason it did not is a bluecollar girl. If you are looking for people to if he wanted to go to college and that is something i think since i came out of the womb. What wedid not did use was black history. Very much of a black ory town because we got the negro history bulletin every week. At the same time to be candid when youre reading about like dead, itany of them was hard to regard them as role models. Can you say you took from higginbotham some idea of what a scholar was . And this old woman trying to achieve beyond a water degree what women might do . There is no question. With the Civil Rights Movement starting with the opportunities , their lives did inform what i thought was possible if i would try to imitate the best and what i saw in them. It was not excellence. Were the best of the best. I remember him telling me he went he said they cannot find one penny in his tax segments and in his life that have not been accounted for. That is somebody that you need to see. I remember who was at that taught me transparent candor . Not quite sure, but i learned of just how deep. Almness he had to be i was trying to think of the notion of candor. Who taught me candor was better than hiding stuff. You have a better chance than if you try to hide it. How did you choose your career . Were their lawyers in the district and you said i could do that or want to do that . Was it early on . I think the Civil Rights Movement had everything to do with it. Im going to law school im sorry, college, it was probably my second or third year. No black almost lawyers. Lawyers and his generation could be criminal lawyers and that is about all. I was very me fortunate. Fortunate. Myself you knew there was things you could do were things you could do to advance civil rights . Most were engaged in criminal. Ractice i was not driven by those professional needs. Movement an important with much to be done. The Supreme Court declared separate but equal. Somebody was going to have to go happen. D make that the Civil Rights Movement broke up because brown was not enlisting segregation from the country. For example, employing employment and housing everything was the same. Even in so the. Eed to break through that earlier on, you saw mary turow here at the district of columbia and you described it as a caucus raising moment. What did you take away from seeing her do that . Did you know she was a noted figure . No the notion of somebody picketing at all when there was no social event that left a lasting impression and then you join that with what we have always learned, which was to live in a society where would be we would be treated as equal, then of course her act seemed to me nothing short of revolutionary. The 1950s. Rare in it was such a wonderful example to see somebody of her age picketing about something we felt deeply about. That is why when the Civil Rights Movement broke out, somebody like me was ready for. Not onlyly ready for, are you academically successful, your academically you are can you say that as a beginning of your leadership . I believe if you want to trace back where your sense of leadership comes from, it is true i trace it back to my grandmother who gives you leadership. Arent talking about the exercise of leadership. She gave me more than exercise of leadership. She expected me to do it. Remember, im supposed to be the leader of these three girls. Good luck is all i can sound that. Expectationclear in fact, if not be a leader, do things at a level of excellence. Some of this came from my being the first child the leadership child. All of that is wrapped up in the same set of ideas and yes, expectations she gave me. By the time you go to Elementary School and junior high and the becomess leadership more natural. You look for ways to lead and theres no question i did that. There was a sense of modesty. The kinds of things that would have been considered brave today. I wanted to lead, but i did not want to look like i was greedy for leadership. The point was to somehow deal with your desire to lead within a context that made it acceptable to yourself and everyone. I must say. I think it is very important to there are most people. People who may be looking at us may not have had the kind of leadership head start is somebody like me had. That is to say almost from the leade being expected to reaching out to lead at a very young age. The reason i am reluctant to think i think many people, and especiallyn girls may not have found themselves in an environment for leadership was expected or possible and so the question for them maybe how do i make this when school i was not a natural leader and yet i felt i could lead and that is why i think leadership is very individual. You can feel it at any moment. Fore are many women example. By the time feminism came the notion of women in leadership positions was Second Nature to me. I recognize that was not the case for the average woman. Harriet to oven was not the kind of role model that made everyone want to go be a leader. Fact becomean in based on yourou own individual instincts and experiences. It would be a mistake to think you were born to leadership. Can you remember a time where you said in your mind i am a leader. Electedmean you got president of a club and said im a leader now. Was there a time you realize no. You have been a leader throughout your life . Yes. I think the part of our problem is the hubris of leadership. So, there is no magic moment. Family in out of your the image you have of something needed to be done . And the expectations that i think people had some are quite accidental. I must say to my second sister, porsche, had the very same traits i do. What matters is tailoring your circumstances. There are studies you mentioned about birth order and one of the fact what effect it has on people. The second one has the vantage of being in the middle and therefore has absorbed what the firstborn has absorbed and learned lessons. Firstborns have very positive and negative traits. His portion more balanced venue . Is porsche more balanced an you . Then no, she is like me. Race was discussed at home. Constant. It was discussed in this way. It was kind of characterized. Seelook all around and you black people in a segregated city. You see them going fulltime in howard. School. Dunbar high people go to all the best andols in the United States they left that high school to go everywhere. Talk is about living in a society surrounded by mediocre white people who have the power to segregate and even at age seven . Because it is not talking to you. It is the way in which conversation around you occurred and here i have to give credit to my family. There was this sense. Fromother people were maryland, virginia. They brought those attitudes with them. They were quite segregated. We did not the regard the white take aim from those states as people who exemplified the best traits in society and yet they had, as it were, power over us. Think it came particularly to young people was that whatever segregation was about it was not about being inferior. People who did not seem to be striving for as much education or had gone to a High School Like dunbar or had away to their children the best schools on scholarship so what is this about inferiority question mark i never remember feeling that segregation had anything to do with inferiority. It may had to do with the fact thatot have humiliated four was designed to simulate people. Humiliate people. To what extent does a sevenyearold girl half of this larger white world . Your parents have a broad experience of that. What do what people mean to you . Youre right. I was living in a completely black role. I remember when we moved back to washington. We came back for the first time. I remember huge parts of washington that i had never been in and i remember my mother and driving my father to see parts of washington where white people lived where i had never ventured into. We lived in a very black and segregated world whether you were going to movies or school, but we lived in a world of great civil rights consciousness. A striving africanamerican community. Between ourselves and the people who segregated ourselves, something was wrong with them. Hatrednforce us not by but a real sense of brotherly and thatn obligation is why i think going to buy schools matter. , lift up black history and saying by heart. You also learned and this is something i told myself recently peopleserotypes of black were not totally unfounded. What was trying to be communicated when the teachers took us on trip and when we went on trips. When you get on the streets you know what the white people expect you to do and you have to be on your best behavior. I remember than linking that to the expectations of how they thought black people acted and we should not reinforce that stereotype. There was a dont think a sense of selfhatred, but some of it they were quite blunt about it. Let me ask you a question. Think about yourself. What you see as the difference between your mission, philosophy, and your style . Vision, philosophy, and your style . My vision was formed really and actualtual experiences. To train myself for it im a more conceptual person. Perhaps is more sophisticated than when i grew up as a colored girl in washington. My style is not much different. How you can change your personality. A colorede myself as woman. A more sophisticated color woman colored woman if i did not have education, but essentially my style comes out in my experience. Talker it is in the way i and the colloquialisms and how i relate to other people. I think my style comes out from my experience growing up. What about philosophy . Philosophy my goodness. My philosophy is such it is political. Operates it is ethical. Hate very hard i would give a statement on what their philosophy is. You believe you live in larger structures that influence how they think and live and they can educate themselves and others to become accountable for changing the larger patterns in which they live. I would say yes. Have you come to the criticism. If youre living in a social cultural structure all about you . Have you become a critic of it . Me, for example, i regard a turning point in my life going not to the schools that had not been the most inclined. It seems that is a departure for many dunbar graduates. I imagine many of them go to historically black colleges. The ivkly, they went to b. Ivy antioch is off the beaten path . Yes. I went to antioch because i believed there was a larger world. And it really electrified me. You dobar in not have to take a test to go to dunbar. People came from a very large section. We knew exactly what 786 and 785. There was no shame to it. As is always the case where aptitude follows class, these many of thosead from the africanamerican communities. Had said it was in the first grade. Mother had to go back to school to become a teacher. In the same class, it wouldve n the children of that age this world, because it was a world unto itself, was and should have been subject to great what i found amazing was the criticism from inside of this. Schoolion of going to a where the atmosphere was intensely intellectual and intensely social and it allowed you to go into the world and i believe the world and and a sense of materialism was the beall of endall. The good things i took from it rights from an very early age. You go into the cafeteria and you are the only black person, you are conscious of that notion. Still, antioch must have given you experiences not just the education to go to yale after that, but experiences of a different that you were growing up that were positive for you. Wonderfully so. A car full of antioch students went to the march on washington which most people dont even know about. There were a lot of people there. That sense of social consciousness to not come from antioch. It came from washington. This was during the mccarthy. Period. When there was no social action. And here was this action of criticism of a larger society. Yaleld say i gave money to and antioch. It help me get outside of the society in which i had grown up. Choose what to accept instead of accepting it because it was handed to me. Frasersou read critique of middleclass black life and then find yourself at antioch, even here in washington, you have to know not every middleclass by person is behaving the way fraser describes trade describes. Your classmates, people who are not caught up with this materialism, but who do have a larger social vision. Not only about race and other concerns. That must have been reinforcing. The black people . No, the white schoolmates. If you start as i did. With a society based on race. It is not hard to generalize to a critique of the society itself. Go to an institution that encourages that kind of analysis, then you are not only looking at race, youre looking at the way society does not provide equal opportunity. You are looking at capitalism versus other forms of government. Youre looking at Civil Liberties versus a more closed and authoritarian society. You form your own sense of how society should be ordered. Guessing antioch gives you that much more so than yale did . Much more so yell was not trying to form people. Let me set back. It assumed it had bright young people that wanted to go into law. For the great law schools. They had great legal scholars who believed in legal realism, who had thought about law beyond what we call the black letter law. So that itl enough is not one of these huge, legal factories that might have alienated someone like me. Schoolmates are bill clinton and Hillary Clinton . They are a few years after me. Note thatrtant to another reason i chose yale was to get at allowed me master degree and law degree at the same time. Why was that important . It was actually not. The notion about converting what you believe into action was there. Intellectual, most went on to get a phd. I would say almost the average gets a phd. Basically, people going on for Greater Knowledge and as much as i wanted to be a civil right lawyer, i really did believe it was a trade a craft. It did not necessarily take the mind and expand it to understand the world. I would say without a doubt the greatest historians of their. Period were both teaching there. Somehow i thought i could have both worlds. I would study American History and i would study law so i went to for years. Ive never used the masters oneee and have never had day of regret that it took me another year to get out of law school. If you have not used it in the formal sense, you have certainly used it in the informal sense . Absolutely. The notion of being able to sit there and listen and say. Hat in my hearing we never know how those things settle into the brain and make andart of who you become the cumulative effect of how you run your life. Uncertain that was important to do. It is important that only to. Evelop myself professionally any full can pass the bar fool can pass the bar. You are reading all the time to try to expand your discipline. We do that. Legal scholars do that as well. Towards narrow parts of what people would consider the life of a human being. Let me go back to your vision. Has your vision changed over time . Necessarily mean radical shifts, but the vision you had of life and how it would work. Ut i think it changes all along. Sure there is a continual there. I have been able to work in the field. If you look at going to law aclu. And working at the i have been very fortunate and think i am far more ly always keep from being caught in your moment in time. Generationple in our have to watch out. Your moment in time is very special. If you are young person who came to consciousness with the city and movement, the only Mass Movement in the street in our history in this country, that moment in time is special for you and its easy to get locked into it. Everything byudge what you thought been. Time has moved on and i have a and imque of how always thinking of how black people should be approaching her lives in this country. Its a lot different from what i thought when i was in the streets. One of the things we watch we marched for was a fair and important practice. Uld we still be focused im not suggesting that we are, on the issues that animated us 30 or 40 years ago . By, for example, and focused on an issue that never occurred to me to be focus on when i was in the Civil Rights Movement, but i know the moment in time that it began in the early 70s. Was on the huge deterioration of the black. Amily there were catastrophic effect on back children and i find that extremely disturbing. The only way i think black wasle made it at all through family, extended family, and the church. How did that become part of your vision . The issue was out there and issue,y it becomes an the family. The family, the deterioration of the family. How does that come to you . I remember exactly how that came to me. Vernon jordan i go back to preparing speeches and this comes with higginbotham, always looking for fax people dont know. As opposed to simply going at speeches rhetorically. I remember just being dumbfounded by the fact that the early 70s. A third of children were being raised by single mothers. Haveny of these mothers been married. Im talking about never married women. Me. Was astounding to i had never thought about it. About 1974,as Vernon Jordan invited me to give the keynote speech at the urban league final dinner. They had this large crowd of people. I was human rights commissioner of new york city. It might have been one of those u. N. Years, but thats not how he said it. I could speak on anything, so i said what do i do if i have all of these like people in the room, what do i speak about . I dont think i should give them a lesson in feminism. Black women were making the point about how we were black and female and you should come to understand it. This was kept in my brain, about this one third. It may also go to the questions you asked earlier about leadership. After the0 years morning and report. What had silenced the issue was the messenger. It seemed to meeting messenger must have had the message right and probably the reason that it silenced it was we were in the Civil Rights Movement. We were trying to get them enforced and here comes somebody better talk about whether you want to get rid of that. I didnt want to hear it, particularly from a white man. Me as i had to think about what to speak about at the livestion that the fault lies with people like you. If you dont think he should have said it, it he had a nerve to say it and i did not want to go have people put me out. Speeched to write this in the form of a love letter in the form of a black woman to a black man. It had all the statistics in it, all of the forlorn rhetoric about how together, whether with slavery, peoples , it was not until 1866 marriageress said between black people is now merit badges now recognized, so even if you had a legal marriage, that is recognized. Deep was this in the blackt it hads trials and yet somehow brought us through. Essentially, that was the theme of the speech. Brought usally through was black man, black woman. I could tell you is at the if of this speech, it was as they were carrying me on their shoulders. It was a real lesson in leadership. Thank god somebody who said it who is one of us. One point handset it, it might be true but i didnt like the way he said it. Now all of a sudden, someone is coming along and just say its ok to talk about these things, these are serious problems, that is a real exercise in leadership. And it really taught me something in leadership by not know. It taught me something. That wey did teach me weronize black people when believe they do not want to hear selfevident truths and the burden is on us to find a way to say it so that they want to hear from us but not to assume it should not be set at all. I find the same thing about like verboten subjects what do you do if you are in a room and somebody said something thats antisemitic . I know what you would say white people sit there and say usedng if some language is that is derogatory of blacks, they would criticize it and it does seem to me that you find a way. Happens, tohat that find that kind of comment. You will find it in black groups about jews or hispanics or summit is not in the room. You have to find a way to say you dont mean jews do you . Person will the say what i mean is , but you dont let it go by and dont assume nobody wants to hear it find a way to say because you are in the room, we are in the room together and they feel free to say those things, it means you are free to say why . Perhaps thats not the same today not the thing to say. If you are in the room and having this conversation and there are things that ought to be challenged and typically people just let them go, pass them by, or skip to another subject. It takes some degree of leadership to just say no. I learned that from resenting the fact that white people sit around talking about black people in all kinds of ways when we are not in the room, reinforcing over the centuries, reinforce racism because no one would say come on. Critique,d been our it does not i dont expect the average black person to say they have to get up and do this but it does say ever so gently that it is a burden. You look at black America Today and there is a tremendous crisis in what is called the underclass. Fatherless families, the numbers going up, women with children never married, not just divorced or widowed. Of some kind of corrective structures that say we need to do better than this. How do we deal with this . This is a difficult issue and is an overriding issue today. Overridingo, the issues were sheer opportunities and basics. Now that you have this opportunity, many black children cant take advantage of it because they dont have the nurturing of families, families of any configuration. We havent had Nuclear Families as the only families until the until the 70s, Nuclear Families were the rule but they do not thrive nearly as much in urban settings. Getting into this issue is very different from getting into the education with the rest of it. It all depends on whether we get into this issue, at least with proxies for those families. I have worked with this issue now in a proactive way since the urban League Speech in the early 80s. I wrote the first piece in a magazine that discussed the black family. It appeared in the New York Times magazine. All the major Civil Rights Organization finds ways to deal with family in one sense or the other. Found that is most satisfying to me may be ironic because if i analyze what has happened, what we have is a generation of girls who have profited from the attention feminists gave to opportunity, have profited from Birth Control from the availability of and we have fewer and fewer teenage pregnancy, at least it is going down. That is where i see progress for girls and women. I see the opposite for boys and and that for both whites blacks, there are more women that graduate from college. Less thanmen may find a College Education giving them quite a good income. High technology and the rest. Happening toat is black men. What has happened to black men rootlessination of lawenforcement strategies ruthless lawenforcement anategies that have sent us entire generation of drug peddling, nonviolent black men. O jail whats happening to black men is the street culture which is now amplified through television and siphons off young man at a very early age. Indeed with children into the and theynd economy have created their own economy a drugrunning economy. This trulyg difference between the numbers of marriageable young women, women of every class and marriageable young whether we to know can bring boys and men at least to the point where the girls are andhey can form families want to form families. Preparing an action plan. Men withts of. Redibility we have had hearings but they are not like the hearings we have on the health. About someaight out stuff here. I will give you an example. Familyst one was on the and we have a judge, a federal judge talking about how he got away from that thug life. Witnesses, a family, a woman raising two sons, a man raising two sons and a third lack family raising two sons and a daughter. They each testified. You decide. Testimony from the people who come so they can testify because they are a small number of witnesses and they get up and testify. Like the moment in the urban league and people told me, where is the leadership . With them aseal they are and a generation that may be different. You have to find your way into it. I thought feminism was a way into a whole set of problem for women. Cardcarrying feminists has not managed my interest in what has happened to black boys. Frightening statistic in the New York Times the other day he talked about class integration in public schools. When you take girls from the lower class and put them in a middleclass school, they thrive. When you take boys, they do worse. And you just wonder whats going on here and how can you grab it and correct it . Why are these girls doing so well . Why do these the ways do so poorly . Someone needs to study that. You can learn what the differences if you are willing to probe deeply enough. I place it specifically to decent paying manufacturing jobs from the cities and other places. You see a steep decline in the black family with people getting time yound at the same see black males falling out of the jobs force because are going. College education and get a job. Black women tended to get jobs and need a College Education because they are teachers or nurses. More than their collegeeducated wives as laborers. Now, you have to retrain these men or reorient these men so that it is seen and many are being reoriented. For a boy living in the innercity, hes born up no the merit rom from the way men have been brought up in America Forever and that is to equate manhood with money. Havefore, if you do not money, you do not do what men do. One of the things men do with money or resources is marry and have children. Its frightening because they often have many children without a knowledge and those children. About lack anything children, if you think they ought to have the same fair chance in life you and i have, you have to do more than say lets deal with this when they get in school. Lets make sure we get plenty of programs from congress. You have to deal with the fact people are not forming families. These families are what brought you through. It used all its power. , at least thetime government said that handouts are available to blacks also. You can get Social Security if , ifare black or white, yes there was a death of the male partner or he left, you would not be left to carry and you would not starve. My own sense of what you have to even those institutions need changes because those institutions were created for people who were once married and our community got to the point where it was depended on Something Like welfare. Asyou think of yourself changemakers, then you cant just go out and make a change because you made them change when you were 22. , himu are a change maker to be self critical of the change you made. How can we create or foster effective leaders for the future . People are in different positions to do that. If you are in congress, have a special obligation because you have internships and the rest. People who have had a fair chance at life have to understand something occurs today that i do not remember being particularly important when i was growing up. Young people really do want to talk to role models. They want to learn from people they regard as successful. Devolves into something i dont like, which is a sense of celebrity. Leaving that aside, it does seem to me that whether you are living on the street with some kids who are being bad, you are simply living on that street or whether you are a member of congress, you have to ask yourself do i have a role to play with these young people . In so many different ways and have some a different roles in society, but if you feel as i do that many young people today have lost their way, it is certainly not enough to say you got your way. Theres got to be away to say whatever role i comply, we have to come to grips with that. That childreno me crave the kind of nurse men and attention that was far more automatic when i was a child. Are you going to write another article like the one you wrote for the New York Times years ago to lay this problem out so that more people see this tape and read about it and can learn about it and pass it around . Feel i really should write a book about it and im trying to think about how to write a book about it and i may indeed do that, but i just supported a bill here with conservative brownback is on the committee that receives our appropriations. Ive known him for a long time. But hes also a guy that i like and on some issues, we agree. Hes come forward with the notion of Marriage Development fundeds, which is a 100 voluntary account where a couple orld save for a house further education or stuff like that and the federal government would match it three to one. I like the idea because you and i are operating on the same theory. , the reason for the decline in the black family started with economic factors. In the testimony, i lay out why i thought some people would regard with some suspicion a conservative republican wanting. O talk about marriage then i lay out more of why i think this is appropriate. Aboutt so much write Marriage Development accounts, i wrote about black men and the black family. Issue i about this regard as the overriding issue. Let this be the beginning of it. Thank you. Announcer you are watching American History tv, all weekend him every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook