I suppose we are. Good evening. Im the president for the Atlanta History Center and its my pleasure to welcome you all tonight professor, author and po et patrick phillips. Patrick phillips received ph. D from nyu. He was a fullbright scholar and a National Endowment for arts fellow and recipient from the translation prize for translation of the works of danish poet. His 2015 poetry collection was a finalist for the book award. Even though we are in the presence of a distinguished poet, tonight phillips will be discussing his first work of nonfiction, blood at the root. A racial cleansing in america. This work tells the disturbing story, by tracing the broader historical phenomena that led to similar violent around our nation, phillips tells a story thats tragically much larger than foresight county. It is a significant work in so much that begins to tell a story about a bunch of people throughout the country who can effectively erase from the historical record. Im excited to welcome a
About is blood at the root a racial cleansing in america. Please welcome patrick phillips. Thank you so much. For the southern festival of books, thank you for coming. This will con turn into a the book really began with a conversation in a taxicab about 10 years ago when my friend tosha treadway who some people think of as poet laureate of the us but at the time was not yet. We knew each other through the poetry world and 10 years ago we were at a professional conference and not tosha and i are old friends but she on this one night decided to challenge me because i grew up in Forsyth County georgia which is known all over the state as a quote, white county but this is not something i knew in new york, had any familiarity with but natosha is an africanamerican woman who happened to go to the university of Georgia College a little way down the road from bursae and this meant when she heard me offhandedly mentioned that i came from this state , she stopped and really turned to me and sai
Next 75 years. Good evening i have the president here at the center here welcoming professor and off 39 raised given Forsyth County a National Endowment for the arts and a recipient of the american scandinavian prize for the translation the poetry collection was a finalist for the National Book award. Even though were in the presence tonight discussing the book of nonfiction blood at the root a racial cleansing in america this tells a disturbing story of racial violence in the neighboring Forsyth County. Retells the story fetid is a much larger than Forsyth County to do significant work to tell people who have been erased from the historical record. Im excited to welcome a georgette native palms and after tonight the second most famous figure. [laughter] patrick phillips. [applause]. Thanks for coming everybody and for that introduction also for inviting me end ball coming me to the center. I will talk about my book called the blood at the root talks about racial cleansing of Forsyth C
Question none of what happened in the trial would happen today. It does matter that question and this is the originating moment. This is the originating thing of 100 years really of injustice. Thank you all so much for listening. [applause] anyone to read a book as prose is 25 off and he will sign it for you right now. Think so much for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] that was Patrick Phillips with blood at the root that i will tell you a little bit about how we at Publishers Weekly choose their list of best books each year. There are eight of us in the reviews department and at the end of the year a pool of freelancers who do the reviews asked them what they think are the best books and in the course via we read as many of them as we can ourselves. One that i personally have read and really enjoyed as a textbook by ed yong i contain multitudes which is about the largely unexplored world of the microbiome. [inaudible conversations] thank you all f
Night riders, torchwielding, mounted ku klux klaners. All my life id wondered if the whole thing was a racist fantasy, just something kids like to talk about in the backseat of the bus. But when i typed it into a newspaper database, up came a list of headlines that, sure enough, told of an 18yearold woman who was raped and killed near the banks of the chattahoochee river allegedly by three black men, and her name was may crow. Theres a photograph of her around 1912, and she lived near where my parents house was in a town called oscarville. A little village. This was me playing hooky. I was doing graduate work at nyu on the 17th century bubonic plague outbreaks [laughter] and it was really me, i was bored and tired of writing my dissertation, so i was playing hooky, but i realized i was sitting at this computer terminal that had a lot of information, and a lot of things were coming online. It was about 2005, and a lot of things were coming online for the first time, and archives were sc