Hair dirty and matted, homeless and struggling. He was a big dude. He came up to me and i was instantly on my guard. And he said where are you going and he said i am going to california and he said how much food do you have. I thought he wanted to rob me. He wanted me to open up my bag and i didnt know what was going to happen but i was jumpy about it. I said i have a little cheese. He was carrying a lunch box and said i lib in a broken down car and he said i walk out to the coal mine to see if anyone is sick and they can hire me. Most days they dont need to hire he and today they dont need me so i will not need my lunch. He had a baloney sandwich, apple and bag of potato chips and he said i want you to have my food because you will need all you can to get to california. You can imagine how bad i felt. It was my first lesson not in generosity but taking responsibility for another person you dont know. He looked at me on the highway and saw a brother. He saw someone on foot, homeless in
Host you hitchhiked. Guest yeah. And guys were throwing beer bottles at me from pickup trucks, and id hitchhiked from twin cities and here i am in gillette and id never seen the west before. I was awestruck by it but gillette was a tough town, and i saw someone walking towards me from town that looked like bad news. And im a young kid out in the great land and kind of jumpy. This guy is walking towards me and i remember he was in a carhartt canvas union suit that was filthy dirty and his hair was matted and he clearly was homeless and struggling. He was big dude. He came up to me, and i was instantly on my guard. And he said, hey, man, where are you going . I said, im going california. And he said, how much food you got . Now, i would give food to anyone who was hungry, but i didnt think thats what was going on. Thought he wanted to rob me. Wanted me to get me to open up my bag. I didnt know what was going to happen but i was definitely jumpy. So, i said, i just got a little cheese. An
You can watch them every weekend on cspan2 or on the web site. Booktv. Org. Hi. Want to give you a few quick reminders. First first one is turn awe your cell phone, and tonight we have cspan here, so please when it comes time for q a, theres a microphone set up right there by the pillar so please line up at the mic to ask your questions. Finally, when were doing, please stack your chairs against any bookshelf. That will make our lives much easier so thank you. Now, more importantly, Lawrence Leamer is the author of 12 New York Times best shelling books from the kennedys to Johnny Carson to cocaine trafficking in peru. He was a magazine writer for many years wrote a play about rose kennedy. Were here tonight to talk about his most recent book the lynching the epic courtroom bat that brought down the klan and the ininvestigates the lives of three men, George Wallace you can boo kkk leader Robert Shelton and legendary civil rights lawyer and the cofounder of the southern law poverty cente
And i anticipated that they would be, that the component of combat which is sort of adrenalized and thrilling, that they would respond to that and maybe miss it. What i was not prepared for was the effect, the really profound effect of Human Connection on those guys and on me. And i started to realize afterwards what they really missed was each other and being necessary to each other and being part of that group. The sort of video game component of the combat, yeah, i got it. But i felt like that was quite a shallow, surface part of the reaction and the much more profound reaction had to do with, frankly, with love actually. I mean, this really intense connection between each other that i w actually to some degree part of as well and experienced the loss of later. Host in tribe, its easy for people in modern society to row romanticize indian life, and it might well have been easy for men like george as well. That impulse should be guarded against as well. Virtually all of the Indian Tr