Night we add cspan here with some of new ground rules please put your phones on silent or turn them off for questions afterwards please stand up so they can get the microphone to you i am thrilled tonight to have jim here because this is a great book yet i read it i finished it last night and i thought why did i not read this earlier this is all about my family. My mother was a Third Generation graduate from his High School Graduating in a 1950 but she went to Sweetbrier College and had a friend of hers that was an Exchange Student from st. Andrews is in scotland and one day she said are you from their . She said i have never heard of it. Said she had to learn about it from somebody from scotland so whether she came, she was a little bit upset but my a grandfather was a republican type and his first cousin is quoted in the book as he had to leave town in 1957 but the person who cater tried to ask them to leave said she was bright as she went off to Sweetbrier College and good for my mother that is the stories i have rand it is of a classic story tonight so we are so proud to partner with them professionally and the storytelling the way it really is not the way people think it is today. But were all very proud and this is another example of a partnership so i will hand it over to you chalk. Someone asked me earlier as we were longtime friends i said no. But i am a longtime fan. We have all seen on local and though it one dash newspapers that all Media Properties do, no matter what happens from what i had done for decades because i knew if he wrote the story it would be about something that mattered your watch i cared about. With so when i learned that jim was writing the books i hadnt heard of it either. One of the great things about this complicate publication is restarted but also learning about southern history. So now i will turn over to your june and let him talk then i will ask him a few questions. Taken away jim auchmutey. [applause] thanks for that kind introduction. This is a very cool then you to do that put defense but what i will do is set up the story a little bent then we will let us go question and answer session. I feel i should introduce a topic the class of 65 is a true story set in the civilrights area at one dash era focusing on a teenager who grew up in a communal farm in southwestern georgia at the time of the unthinkable idea. And nobody was palladium persecuted treated every bit as badly during his senior i love the name americus it is the american story. But heres the twist many years later many classmates who had stood by tracked him down in West Virginia where he had lived for decades and throw him a letter of apology asking for his forgiveness. And wanted him to return to you georgia for their reunion and it was set up a remarkable gesture by wanted to know houses year it was was it just remorse and guilt of people headed into their retirement years or something deeper . I didnt just want to write about bad things in the south but the capacity to change with the promise of redemption so i will back up first review never heard of day and i have come to find out there a lot of people who have never heard of it. It is a communal farm in southwest georgia and your jimmy carters hometown now is best known as a place for habitat for humanity was born in the late 60s but before that one of the most controversial religious enclaves in america. Founded in 1942 and a white Southern Baptist minister who was not like others who wanted to start to a commune to live life the early christians that Means Community or fellowship but they believe that will make them communist so that she is surely after they moved to the farm summer of 1953. From linkedin segregated Public Schools not long after that asking too endorsed to black students you wanted to enter the georgette Business College in atlanta up. By the time parents would return though local paper had a frontpage story about the clergyman who wanted to do desegregate of unknown parties from the farm but the produce steel and was bombed twice presumably by the kkk and then they shot into the building. Said in the fall of 1980 the children were not immune but one of 18 children living our show and i with their playing volleyball in 1957. There were playing on now like to court coming down the highway the vehicles were so close the children stopped their game to watch. The everyone was having mechanical trouble. Something was pelting the of branches in then caught a of a glimpse of the gun first coming from the muscles like bettongs of snakes. And incited the house inside that house she cave aside from volleyball then theyre cracked sounded and the bullet she would go inches above her head. A colleague was sitting and yelled get down the house will explode. The three of them crawled into the bathroom shower where she thought they might be safer from gunfire after the shooting he thought they would take us out. Bytes the early 1960s moving into the Public Schools. The battleground was Americas High School. The school refused because they thought any shootings could disrupt classs with civil unrest. To get the teenagers admitted on grounds of religion. The irony but they were treated horrible they were harassed. When starting a at the highschool he fare no better one by one the others pointed that theyve moved away or they transferred with there wouldnt be subject to the same level of persecution by the fall of 64 he was the only one left and that is where the story gets more interesting. So i would like to talk about where the story goes from there. The fall of 64, his senior year the crux of the book and Something Else is happening in southwest georgia which is the Civilrights Movement is intertwined and explains the animosity. One of the things that struck me after the book was published looking at the experience in the year or so and to the idea that kept hitting me in the face that here is the situation of very strange triangle going on. This one kid that is the deeply held religious beliefs for those students so we had him and the four kids and those that prevented them. Tormented them. But those sarah story like that and are satisfied with the single. Well make an act heroic act with the students first came to school. There are all these mass protests against segregation that ended up in mass arrests, koinonia was known as an ally. Activists of all right taxes would come out to the farm for rest and relaxation induced to hang out. Actually held orientation sessions about how to be arrested in a nonviolent way. They knew very well that koinonia was debating aiding and abetting what they thought was the enemies of their animosity was very pointed in very specific. At the beginning of this school year, the school board in america have decided they were going to try to defuse some of the racial tension in that area by allowing a very token level of desegregation. Right before the School Year Began they invited a handful of students to come to america and the formerly allwhite school and there were four black students who volunteered to greg megamall because he had been involved in the Civil Rights ActCivil Rights Act of a set have been going on at americans of the most natural thing in the world for him to offer to make a show of support and solidarity with them, the beginning of that year the funeral home, the biggest funeral home, blackowned funeral home, the barnum funeral home volunteered to let the students write to school in their limousines and try to keep them away from the mobs and everything. Greg volunteered, he asked if he could ride with them as a show of support. On the second day of lasses this funeral home limousine shows up at american high and theres a little rock scene there. Theyre 75 townspeople there throwing things and saying ugly words and doing all the things that we know so well from the south and the funeral home pulls up to the the belligerent sheriff pops open the door and who shows up first, this little white kid from quinnipiac. It had the effect of making greg a more marked person that senior year. There is an episode in the book, the tenth chapter the book called [laughter] keep going. We are on tv. We seem to be having a remodeling project here. I knew the manuscript could use some work that i didnt know it would be this bad. Thank you. Im sure you all couldnt hear. [inaudible] they wont cspans audience to hear us so i dont know about you but i was thinking screwdrivers and jackhammers. It wasnt just that one action of this guy was deeplyrooted in its beliefs. It was deeplyrooted in reform of these people as you mentioned. Would you write that passage on page 144 . If you could just read that. The one about the concrete incident. That is not about right area thats about one of the last me two later reached out to greg. I need to do a quick bit of setting up. In the summer of 1965 after greg and the class of 65 wrightwood date town of american blew up. There was a woman, black woman who is running for justice of the peace in a special election in july and she showed up to vote. This was a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had passed and supposedly outlawed public segregation in a public venue. She was dragged into the black voting lab which should have been illegal. She protested and she ended up getting arrested. It kicked off about three weeks of demonstrations, mass demonstrations in america and in many ways it was the closing chapter of the Voting Rights struggle because this was the Voting Rights act in congress while this was going on. All the civil rights organizations in atlanta and elsewhere sent emissaries to america to organize protests because they needed one more example of people in the south eating badly to clinch the deal and american divided it and there were mass demonstrations and mass protests. There was a killing. Again white man was shot to death in the last week of july and the sequence, to the people who are important as the play part in the demonstrations. Brad who just graduated was going to the demonstration marching with the black protesters with his he didnt throw things and when he saw them doing it he cringed and found himself wondering whether anyone was getting heard reagan hung around after this march. Twilight fell his failed him and he did something he would regret for the rest of his life. A black man was walking up the street by himself. Here comes one shouted a white fellow in cutoff jeans and a shirt tied at the waist like the comic comic book character lil abner. Lets get him. Some of the them picked up wherever they could find. Joseph had no good reason to join the group but in the thank you of the moment and the ambiguity of the dying light he grabbed a jagged chunk of concrete and followed their lead as they confronted the black man. He looked to be about 403 he seemed more weary than frightened. Look guys i dont have anything to do with these protests. I just got off work and im walking home. Before the man could say anything else, someone threw a rock and stuck them under the eyes. He covered his face with his hand and let out a woeful cry. Blood went onto his cheek as the pack scattered joseph dropped his chunk of concrete impact away in revulsion. He ran several blocks to the courthouse to his car like he could reverse the last few minutes with his feet and he drove straight home. Joseph didnt tell anyone, not even his mother about what happened that night in july but he couldnt forget that the full moon that pained face that patch of blood. Even though he had not struck the man himself he had watched it happen. He felt like the driver and a getaway car in a robbery. He was ashamed. Joseph later came to realize his attitudes about black people started to change them moment. That is powerful writing and a powerful story. I want to ask you one more question before we start opening it up to anybody else who wants to ask a question. One of the interesting things that you brought up when you are in the process of writing your piece for us related to the story was the fact that as a Washington Post critic put it, what does one do with a civil rights story in which the hero is white . And one of the things that i really loved about the story that jim wrote for us and i dont know if youve had a chance to read that along with the book that we would appreciate it if you did and i think jim would too, jim and greg went back down to americas foray reading down there together and the four students who segregated, im so sorry, it he segregated Americas High School came out for that reading and even i think its important in discussions like this for us to give those people names. Dobbs begins, robertina freeman fletcher, david l. And joel wives. Those were people came out and prepare for this reading that night. I just can imagine what it would be like for people who have been through that kind of thing in the hometown where they stayed for most of their lives to come back around to something that actually does feel like reconciliation. The fact is a lot of these black students that went to americas high have not had the same process of forgiveness and reconciliation that greg did and thats very sad. All four of the students who disaggregated the high school, only one of them stuck it out through the School Graduation and it was robertina who is a very accomplished woman who ran the pharmacy at the Medical Center and just recently retired. She said she was going to write about and i hope she does. One of my problems is i wanted to write more about robertina and the editor kept telling me greg and his classmates are the focus of your story but i understand why. I manage him a woman earlier went to Americas High School later on in the 60s and went through all sorts of arrests meant. If a nonfor a lot of years. We all know this and these high schools added to formally been all play. A lot of people went through this sort of thing that greg went through. Greg story particularly was exotic and different to me was the fact that the motivation versus being mistreated was that he came from this unique religious community. Also the fact that these classmates had reached out to him so many years later and they gave me a vehicle to write about how much we really have changed and how much in some ways things havent changed. Its really interesting to me how sometimes we go through periods and sadly recently it feels like they are provoked by ask of violence. We go through these periods where the south is sort of forced to look harder at its past but sometimes down at that local level at the Community Level all those changes happen so slowly and so incrementally. When i read that section by joseph hitting the guy with a chunk of concrete i have to tell you when i first heard about the shootings in the church in charleston that made me thing about that concrete is even though there is a great degree of difference between the two someone who assaulted individual is somebody who hold bloodedly murders by people theres a great deal of difference but the underlying image, that violence shocks so many people that it made people think about things in a different light. Joseph almost hitting batman made him think about things. It took him many years to come to grips with that i was really really he thought that was where he started to change and thats where he looked into the abyss and pull back. He later became a professor at a Community College and enterprise alabama. A professor in what . Business administration and he was teaching at a Community College and naturally a lot of the students would be black. He started to change his thinking about race when he started to have a proprietary interest in the wellbeing of the students who might happen to be black. When you go home and talk with us that other who is a very prejudiced man of his generation and he would ask how many. Ed words were you teaching there. He would get very upset with them. I need to make them improve their lives. It was the president of the barnum funeral home one of the oldest and largest black on businesses in town. Ive spoken with her several years before and although shes not mention the name in the book she is close to its events. Her family provided the limousines that said greg and they black students to school but they were they were met by a mob in 1964. She started school and endure the same daily harassment that greg and the others have put up with. She stuck it out in 1969. Greg told me that she had a halfdozen copies of the book and given them to her children. Other family members i thanked her and ask whatever any graduates had apologized to her for the way she was abuse. A woman came up on time and she said they couldnt believe it, its a shame because we might have been friends under other circumstances. Did she apologize i asked . Not really. I remember her telling me shes doing to people around town who mistreated her in high school and wondered if that still occurred. Not a month goes by and in fact i sighed when he returned the bookstore. They usually act like nothing ever happened. I wish i could report the black students who were badgered like greg but i cannot. But the fuse a precious few exceptions one which plays a crucial role in the book. Quote i dont want to get the impression i think about this is trail the time. I dont pay if i love this town. And im never going to get that her but we still have a long way to go. To me that quote carries so much weight because thats the thing that often has forgotten in these discussions. At least as we have had them in the past. We can hope to have them differently in the future i think but you know we have these discussions and we forget that we share the same hometowns. We all live in these places and we have to learn to live together and its hard sometimes but that showed me a lot about how much further we still have got to go. It makes it difficult with the same time which makes it kind of weird. A work in progress. We get reminded of about how far we have to go all the time. C who has a question in the audience that they would like to ask jim .