Always working for justice in our community here in oakland. Grew up here and has been in oakland all his life. Welcome, paul cobb. It is a pleasure to be here today. Tell us about your background. I was born in oakland. My parents come from oklahoma and mississippi, but i was born in oakland. I have attended schools in oakland, and i have had the opportunity to travel all over the country as a journalist and an activist and as a participant in the civil rights struggle and as an advocate for change. You told me earlier you had not taken a course in journalism but you are gifted in writing . I did not take any courses in journalism. I always got great grades in english and in writing and in composition. And i remember, as a youngster, i was a spelling bee champion. So ive always. Nobody could beat new scrabble, you in scrabble, right . Nobody could beat me in scrabble. When you realized you had that gift, what led you to working in the community . Well i always, my mother used to tell
Jet Fighter Pilots come to texas to train to take off their insignia for their names that indicate if they have anything to do with Taiwan Air Force because taiwan doesnt exist as an official entity. Our way of talking about taiwan we are authorities of what . So neither the chinese are right and part of the american side of the 100 year marathon or they dont involve themselves much with taiwan at all or there is little going on and they are competing for taiwan. Who is going to win that and have mcdonalds hamburgers and everybody learns english aqwex when we are telling them that you are not a country or is china going to do better because they say we are all chinese. They read the textbooks very carefully. But its pretty clear they are part of the history so who is going to win the marathon for the laws of taiwan . Washington or beijing. Thank you very much. [applause] its been a lively discussion. The book the 100 year marathon is available. I will bring him sitting here so that you
Pretom in a minute narrative of nonviolence. The other intervention, i think, is cultural in terms of who we see or think of when we think of gun owners, and also how we think about black resistance. And then finally, there is a Public Policy implication for your presentation of the black tradition of arms. So i look forward to really getting into those three areas with you. But before, i was interested in hearing from you a little bit about your background and how you got into this topic. How did you arrive at topic . Guest sure. Well, happy to be here, and i think your sense about the way the book encounters the current conversation is accurate. My background in this is, there are two influences, i suppose. So i grew up in rural gun culture which was black gun culture. So everyone that i knew, all of the, you know, the good people of the community, my grandfather and father who were both ministers both owned guns and so did everybody else in the community. Really unapologetically. An
Conversation is accurate. My background in this is, there are two influences, i suppose. So i grew up in rural gun culture which was black gun culture. So everyone that i knew, all of the, you know, the good people of the community, my grandfather and father were both ministers, both owned guns and so did everybody else in the community really unapologetically. And when i got to law school, i found that there was a quite different impression about something that i took as being sort of one of the clear, fundamental rights and importance of practical resources even before i could articulate something about fundamental rights. So there was this tension that operated in the way that i was sort of dealing with what i knew in my bones versus what i heard in law school and then the kind of cultural response to firearms issues that i got in lots of the venues that i was operating in after law school. So certainly at harvard the sense in the early 80s when i was there was, oh, well, that Secon
Was a very unique approach to a very desperate situation and he was left hanging out to dry. And he was able to hold off an army that outnumbered his probably 100 to one if not 100,000 to one. For more information on both tvs visit from china to tennessee and the many other cities visited by her content vehicles, go to cspan. Org local content. Up next on booktv, after words with the former Senior Researcher of columbia university. Nicholas johnson in his book negroes and the gun the black tradition of arms. In it, the Law School Professor discusses the tradition of African Americans using firearms to defend their families and communities. A tradition that dates back to reconstruction. He argues that the nonviolence of the civil rights help to bury this fact of black history. This program is about one hour. So this strikes me as an important intervention in three ways. One of the black Freedom Movement and over the years has been increasingly revising the way that we understand the rol