Which no one in either party, establishment of Neither Party responded to. And donald trump reached out to them. Whether they were wise to look to him as their trip and thats another can we can debate that. I have debated my relatives and friends in west virginia, but he noticed that those people were forgotten, or left behind, or look down on, were held in contempt, war was waged on their economy and he benefited. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Welcome to lynchburg, virginia, on booktv. Located in the foothills of the blue Ridge Mountains along the james river and has a population of about 80,000 people. Founded in 1757 lynchburg was named for its founder john lynch. The city itself to poplar forest, Thomas Jefferson and private retreat, and Jerry Falwells Liberty University. With the help of our Comcast Cable partners come for the next and humans will feature the cities local authors and its Literary History beginning with poet anne spencer. Anne spencer was a poet, an american poet closely associated with the harlem renaissance. In 19241945. How she becomes part of the harlem renaissance is how harlem comes to lynchburg. Unfortunately, there is a whole group of people who associate with that time, like anne spencer, people dont know about. Anne spencer was born in 1882 in henry county, virginia, whichs southwestern virginia. Her interest in writing began as a child. Our first piece of poetry she said that she wrote at age 11, she said that she would pretend like she was writing, even though she did know how to spell. You know, she would just pretend, and she would do that e same thing as reading. Before she really learn how to read she puts see sears and roebuck catalogs and she would go out to the hothouse in west virginia, and she would just pretend like she was reading, you know, and eventually she taught herself how to read and taught herself three languages. Edward in and come up they meet as tutors for each other. They become sweethearts and then they become married in 1901. May 15, 1901. Then in 19, somewhere around 1901 and 1903 they start they Start Construction on this house, 1313 peer street because say anne spencer never lived in harlem but harlem came to anne spencer. For example, web the boy comes or as a lecturer at the virginia seminary of the college. Thats how he gets to know anne spencer. And then she just meets people and that often i think many of the people that shes associated with work from the south, most of them were from the south. They now have migrated up north, and so as they are traveling from the south to the north, then they would have to stop over somewhere. They couldnt stay in a hotel. And so the spencer home was not on the directory but it was open to people that they were associated with. Thats how she meets Langston Hughes. Shes working on her anthology project, Langston Hughes is working on another project, and he took the train. Sora drove her car and she says im going to go back up north, why do we just tried together . And driving home picky says i need to stop over in lynchburg. So we stops to get a handle and she meets anne spencer, and anne spencer meets doornail hurston. They go on up to philadelphia. So there was so much during this time. It really was a movement, a really new movement, so that was i think it was a fun time to come, relax, think, right, whatever was going on here. So you are now in the living room or the part at the anne spencer museum, and we had several things here in the parlor that are of interest. We have a letter here from wcb doughboy dated w. E. B. Du bois, dated 1934. The interesting the interesting thing about this letter was theres a story that my grandmother would tell and she would say he would always say that hes going to bring some smart woman, shes usually a doctor or a lawyer. So i came across this letter in her papers at uva. It says ps, if i, i will bring an interesting guest, and parentheses female, m. D. , to worship at the shrine. W. E. B. Du bois. They will come her to the center picked this room was added on e 1920s, and he was added on i think in the time, well, this was the real heyday of the house. This is when that old are the spencers family going but they are having more and more visitors that are coming through and staying over visiting, and so my grandmothers chair is here and my grandfathers chair is the red chair off to the other side. Once my grandfather got grandmother got up up and ageny was able to sometimes get down into a garden which you can see out there rear window, she would do her writing here. One of the differences about this room and even the whole house museum with the collection being 98 original, all of the furnishings are pretty much in the same place in the same place as they were when i come in here to visit. One of the differences was that its a little neater. As a writer she had a lot of papers, a lot of books and over 1000 books in her collection. I remember that she had a little half that she would walk, she would walk to a chair and she had a tray and checkbooks and shed a little spot for her coffee which she enjoyed, but it was just papers and books everywhere. When she was talking she would be able to just kind of reach over and grab whatever it was that she wanted to refer to or she wanted to show you. Now were going to go upstairs to the second floor. This is the back staircase. This house has two staircases. This staircase was my grandmothers filing cabinet. All the way from the top to the bottom this site of the staircase workpapers. This is what everything would be filed. You had this little narrow stairway to work your way up and down. And then here we have what i call the bathroom. Fun story about this bathroom, this facility, is that w. E. B. Du bois comes to lecture at the virginia seminary and the virginia seminary did not have indoor plumbing or electricity. So he is from massachusetts or new england and he was a very prominent and did know anything about outdoor plumbing. The virginia seminary, women are ready to prepare his evening and they start filling out this copper tub in the middle and he comes and he is very kind and he says im sorry, he says, but i dont think i can fade out or in the field. So they said oh, so they called over to the spencers and pop pop answers the phone and says send him on over. So du bois comes and it washes up in base here in the du bois bathroom. So now we are entering the bedroom. If you look over here to the wall which is nearest to her bed, you have this wonderful piece of artwork and its an oil and campus and its titled the Cocktail Party and its done by dolly allen mason. She was mary rice hayes allens daughter after president Gregory Hayes died, she married and alan. But this oil and candace came about on this wall because before it was here anne spencer would wake up in middle of the night and she would write on the wall. She would write poetry. She would write anything that came to her mind. Things that she may want to plant in the garden, things that she may want to get from the grocery store. So edward thought that the wall was getting a little bit out of hand, and so he was trying to discourage his wife from writing on the wall. My grandmother says okay, thats fine, ill take care of it. Somehow she gets a dolly allen and he do this remarkable piece. My grandmother always said it was about having to go to a party and put on a phony smile with all the smiles there. But the more that i look at this piece through the years that ive been working here in the museum, im beginning to identify people that are pictured in this piece. Need to look down here on the right hand corner, that looks like James William johnson to be and his wife grace now. And next to her, these two women that are smiling at this handsome man, maybe thats du bois with this doctor or lawyer female visitor. On the back, the man there with a glass in his hand, with the glasses could be sterling a brown and his wife daisy. So its one of the things about artwork that we can look and we can imagine and we get Different Things out of pieces. Anne spencer said she never wrote to become a published poet virtue but because she enjoyed writing. She never felt like she needed to do that in order to sustain herself or her income, like many of the other writers were doing that as their profession. She had her husband, edward, who built a a marvelous home for h, provided for her, and she always considered the money that she made as a librarian as her mad money. So she would spend that on anything that she wanted for herself. These are her original roses. The garden was restored by the garden club in 1983. This garden hatching from a full sun garden to a shade garden. You can see this tree does have leaves on it now but wonderful shade leaves in the summer. They had to bring the roses add to the sun so it created a rose garden here but all of these roses she planted inside the garden. Inside the garden we will see a sign which says [inaudible] but really the whole garden is even crawl and its a madeup word. Its their name combined together and part of the garden of eden. What youre looking at the front is her writing studio that edward built for her around the 1920s. This is the writing studio and just like the house, all original to the way that she had it set up in the same place. So anne spencer uses this cottage as her place to have papers and her books and things that are just hers. Coming to this cottage was a place for her to escape all of those things that were going on in the world, and for her to come and just clear her head and b2 herself and to write and sometimes take a break from writing and to go out to her garden. The front wall with all these photographs can sometimes anne spencer would sleep on this caught but in these photographs are photographs of family and friends. Its how anne spencer like keeping her photographs. She didnt like a lot of photographs inside the house. I remember as a child every year we would, and bring our new School Photograph and we get a thumbtack and we would, and we would push them into the wall and add the new photograph for the year. This is photographs of my grandmother. I certainly remember her hair, and my aunt, my grandparents had three children, bethel and elroy here in front of the fireplace, and my father, chauncey. From those three children there were 11 grandchildren. Then my dad decided to do some cutouts of some of the last four, and so this is my sister kyle and joel and chauncey pictured there, and me. I didnt know my grandmother was a poet. I just knew her as granny. We wrote to her. I grew up in california, so we were come here to visit her usually in the summers around the fourth of july and that was always a fun time because we got to see our cousins who also visiting here in the neighborhood, other family members. But we would write to her and we would write to her weekly, and she would write to us weekly and we would share our homework with her and she would write back to us. So we would write to her in our letter, and the same letter would come back corrected with red marker correcting our spelling or whatever. And so whenever we would also talk on the phone every sunday, my dad would call her and it would catch up and if we were around we got to speak to her on the telephone. But it wasnt until i was in the eighth grade that i realized that my grandmother was a poet. And really didnt quite understand even what that meant. We were living in michigan at the time, and my teacher approached me and said, i would like for you to read one of your grandmothers poems at the eighth grade graduation. I said, my grandmother . Okay. And i went home and i asked my father. I said, dad, is granny a poet . And he says yes. Anne spencer passed away in july of 1975. She was 95 years old, living here all of her adult life. Many people never knew of her accomplishments. They knew her as a librarian. They knew her as a garden. Some people would call her a recluse because she enjoyed her privacy, but her legacy is more important to me and should be important nationally because its not known, and its not just her legacy or her part of history. This whole segment of africanAmerican History is not even in our history books. And so its important for us to know the whole history of our American History. And is in lynchburg, virginia, to feature its literary community. Up next we speak with former astronaut and lynchburg native Leland Melvin on his book chasing space. Water pressure system activated. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five liftoff of the Space Shuttle atlantis. Resupply and do research on the International Space station. Three, two, one, liftoff commune out in space and the things that you dropped and a floating, the dust particle things bigger still strapped in and when the engines cut off because youre accelerating and then you stop, you feel like you are tumbling forward. Whats going on, you know . Pushed oftener floated to the window, videotape the external tank falling back to the planet. Im doing my task, this thing is falling and were trying to see if theres any marks on a can anything it, all of it to be a witness play for something that hit our vehicle, like what happened to the columbia accident. I do this thing unlike okay, i see the caribbean. And the colors of the ocean are so dramatic and blue, almost new definitions of flu to discover what im looking at. And then were going around the planet every 90 minutes. You see the sunrise and sunset every 45 minutes. And unlike wow, this is space, you know. Under the deepest and darkest and practices they should look back at the plant and you see the sun and this incredible, it changes you. It changed me. Fundamentally it made me happy, a cognitive shift in the way that i think about humanity and how i think about the planet and saving it and working with people that dont eat the same food or have the same hairdresser, or whatever venue, but you want to come together and hugged everybody and say hey, we are one race, the human race. I was born and raised in lynchburg, virginia, and when i grew up i remember my dad always telling me about how incredible arthur ashe was as a person, as an athlete, as just a great character and all these things. So i thought i want to be arthur ashe wendy and i started taking tennis lessons. The city of lynchburg recreational tennis lessons, and start applying and getting better. And so arthur ashe trained five blocks in the street from where i was growing up. So i kept playing tennis. I played in high school at heritage high school. I was the first seat at heritage, but then football got in a way so i played basketball, tennis and football. Football was the thing that paid the bills. I got a scholarship to play at university of richmond. When they said you can come for free and play, my parents like that a little bit more. So im a wide receiver at university of richmond. My freshman year we went zero and ten, three and eight but we got better, eight and five and we went to the playoffs. The professional scouts started looking because im really good stats and we were transforming, you know, this team into a winning team for a change. And so i got drafted to play with the detroit lions, 11th round in the 1986 college draft. I am this kid who never imagined playing football in college because i was a wide receiver on a running team in high school. So i never really got many balls thrown to me. So that no was something i aspire to, you know, the nfl football player. Im always up for a challenge and got drafted come went to Training Camp, hold i hamstringing Training Camp the second week of Training Camp. And i thought that would be the end of my football career but the Dallas Cowboys pick me up for the next season, and so went to the cowboys but before going there i started crying to school at the university of virginia which is only an hour from lynchburg. Im thinking how am i going to go to graduate school and play football . But the professor said well, well take care of that. So the videotape the courses and mail them to me in dallas. So by day and catching football for americas team. At night im watching the tape courses. The hardest thing ive ever done in my life. One day i go out with danny white and of stretching. He wants to throw. I said lets run at half speed after jesus okay. Tom landry walks on the field. I see this whole thing starting to go awry because danny is trying to keep his job so we do, he doesnt audible from half speed ten yards out to run ss and far as you can and injured my leg for the second time. That was the end of my football career but it went back grad school at uva, finish my masters and we do work for nasa in the research center. When i was at uva, nasa was looking to recruit a lot more women and minorities to make the numbers, get the numbers up. I was recruited by a woman named rosa webster was a physicist who went to norfolk state. I remember at a career fair at nasa, i look at the nasa booth and unlike im not working. Im going to get paid. The government job will not pay that much money. She saw me she said, what United States . I said Leland Melvin. She said ive been looking for you. Youre going to work at nasa. Unlike no. We had this conversation. She shutting the booth down. She says come help you take my pamphlets to my car. Unlike who is this woman, you know . We go to her car and she says i want you to think about it. So i go down. I do an interview. I look around and get a job offer from nasa by the time i get home. I said to myself, theyve got some really cool stuff. I can get my phd there, all these Different Things. It was like a campus environment. My interview with joel heyman was incredible. He was a physicist picky said you can come in and just think and create and do what you feel will help civilization. Really . So that was a good, just a good positive interview. I i felt i could do some good things. My experience at nasa was pretty phenomenal. I remember the first time i realized that people didnt appreciate the education that i had from uva was when a technician, i was going to get a model, get some stuff made by this one technician and he said to me, when did you go to . I said university of virginia. He said, no, you went to virginia state, right . I said no. Charlottesville, uva . He says no, you went to the black school in petersburg, virginia state. As though i couldnt go to that school. And im like whats with this guy . Thats why i sensed this form of racism a little bit. Some were not expecting you to have achieved certain things. I befriended Catherine Johnson when i was a bear from hidden figures. Catherine was always positive and always, no matter what the situation, she would talk about how theres always a solution. You just have to work hard, you figure it out. It was just his work ethic that she had. She had retired when i got there. She retired in 86. 86. I got there in 89. That was the turning point for me because i joined this group of African American scientists and engineers call the National Technical association. I became the treasurer and worked with catherine and some of the other people that really showed me, mary jackson was one of the members at the time. I didnt know their stories at that time. It wasnt until the movie came out that i really understood truly the advances they make can ask at the time. But i knew they were great people and smart and hardworking, and that help me also have a trajectory of the excellent and working hard. Even though i didnt know what they had done. I worked in the nondestructive Evaluation Sciences branch, which means you take light or heat or some types of energy to make assessments on aerospace vehicle vehicles if they are damaged or not. So if a wink of an airplane is damaged, how do you nondestructively or any noncontacting way may be deterministic the damage so you dont have to break it apart to figure it out . I i did some work on the Space Shuttle making optical fiber sensors looking for detection of leaks in hydrogen for the tanks. The tank that would eventually, in the videotape the tank that is falling back to the earth. The ways to speed up the process of certifying a vehicle to fly again after its come home. I did that for a little while, and a friend of mine said youd be a great astronaut. I looked at him like, really, me . The right stuff guy, you know . He said nasa is taking applications for astronauts. And i just threw the application away, and that same year a friend of mine, come he apply o the Astronaut Corps and he got in. I said to myself, if that knucklehead can get in, i can get in. The next selection i applied and i got in. For an astronaut they want to make sure that you can do a certain set of skills. One of the things that were doing is were building the International Space station, getting people to do spacewalks. They are really space crawls because you pulling yourself along the station. To do that training you have to be in an environment which we call the neutral buoyancy laboratory. Its a 5,000,000 gallon pool pool. You get in this white tube and you go down in the pool and just simple things underwater. When the space station supports, a Space Shuttle submerge and we can simulate your floating in space in the pool. In this suit theres a little styrofoam block the cost about two dollars that you get kind of person that needs to squeeze your nose to clear your ears, that is your lifeline, that allows you to do that. They forgot to put my name. We went down about 20 feet and i told the test director that my little pad wasnt in there. I said ill try to keep going, but i didnt have an effective way to clear my ears. So at about 25 feet i told him to turn the volume up and headset and i heard nothing but static. It took me out of the pool. They took my helmet off. The Flight Surgeon who was on call that they started walking towards me, and when they got my helmet off he came in the attached my right ear. There was blood streaming down the side of my face. I had gone completely deaf from this accident, and they rush me to the hospital, emergency surgery. The doctors didnt know what happened, and they told me that i would never fly in space. If you back up for days before the accident, i was here in lynchburg. My parents were having their 35th wedding anniversary. I was sitting in a car in front of housing in downtown waiting to go in a holiday inn. My cousin and a friend of hers by the name of jeanette was in the car and i did know jeanette, but jeanette said i had something to share with you. She said something is going to happen to you. No one is going to know why this happened. You will be healed of this. You will fly in space. This will be your testimony to the world. Im like, okay. And four days later im completely deaf. And i remember when i was in hospital another friend of mine, mary gordon, who was at my parents wedding Anniversary Service remember what jeanette said, and she wrote a note to me saying, remember what jeanette said. It gave me hope to get through this. I was depressed, sad, and the doctors are telling me im not going to fly. Im completely deaf. My hearing slowly comes back in about three weeks. Im trying to figure out what to do with my life asked an astronaut because theyre not going to fly me. I ended up going to washington, d. C. To work in education because they needed someone to be astronaut for the educator astronaut program. So i fly to d. C. , moved to d. C. With my dog jake. We were up there and we start this program off, and then the columbia accident happens with the Space Shuttle columbia. And im there to console the parents, david brown, who was one of the mission specialist, his parents lived out in washington, virginia, which is about an hour and half outside of d. C. Pics of the night of the accident february 1, 2003, i go to their home to console them and trying to figure out what im going to say to his mother and father just lost her son. His father said to me, my son is gone. There is nothing you can do to bring him back. The biggest tragedy will be if we dont continue to fly in space to honor their legacy. Im not flying. Im not medically qualified to fly, and so im having all these emotions. My friends are gone. Im not flying. I cant honor the legacy what am i going to do . We go to the different Memorial Services around the country, where landing, taking off the flying and including my ears like im used to do before the accident. The chief of all the Flight Surgeons is watching a clear my ears and taking notes. When is high for me to transition back from d. C. To houston to get what my next step is going to be, he calls me in his office and he says, i believe in you. Heres your waiver to fly in space. So i go back to houston with the waiver and i think a year and half or so later i get assigned to a flight, and yeah. Atlantis, go with throttle up. Copy. Go with throttle up. The throttle call up acknowledged. Kicking off the work week with the monday commute to orbit. The dog photo. I was told that you could bring your family in when you get assigned to admission, you can bring your family and to take a picture in your orange pumpkin soup with your family around you. And i was thinking, well, my family is, they are a fourlegged family but they are family. So i drove my dogs in the nas in a van with my neighbor holding them back in the back. I didnt the vehicle past the guard after i showed my badge and i get to the photo lab and i go out the back stairs and get them in there. We had like 100 milk bones. You put the orange suit on. I sit down and they start running towards me. I tell the photographer start shooting. They both run up and just, one, jake is licking my ear and scout is looking like hey, you know. That became my iphoto. Thats how it happened. This is my new addition to the family. This is zorro. Use the black mask. Picked him up recently from boston. Use rescue dog. Hes a rhodesian ridge back. Hes very active. He wants kibbles and bits and things. But hes going to honor the legacy of jake and scout, my other two dogs who passed away about four years ago. They were road warriors. They went on trips with me. I remember stein backs travels with charley. Hes already made a long trip with me from boston, and hes ready for some more adventures. I think we can do more to help inspire more kids to see themselves as scientists and engineers, especially underserved and underrepresented kids. Because if you think about the numbers of scientists and engineers that are being matriculating in china and india, we are like probably fifth or sixth on the list. When you think about economic development, you think about the future of your society, it comes to innovation and creativity. A lot of that is and i call it steam, science, science, techny engineering, the arts and mathematics because you really need to tell the story of those things. You have two, so the a a is rey important and i think we as a country need to make sure that everyone has a table in helping create that technology and that brain trust or where going to falter, like john hughes said. For those that are reading chasing space i would like for you to know that this kid get a small town who never aspired to be an astronaut who never aspired to do the things that he has done, nfl, science, talkshow host on a show, child genius, you know . Who does that stop . Its to let you know that with grid, persistence and determination you can really do anything. Point of honor is a a federl style mansion built in 1806 by dr. George capel, a friend of Thomas Jefferson and a physician of patrick henry. It was here that we spoke with kelly about her book. I start write the book about enslaved in virginia because i a lot of question mark the whenever you go to plantation museums i would visit the kitchen because it was usually the most interesting part of the landscape and also i was a professional chef for ten years. I found myself drawn to the spaces where these men and women and children had to cook and do realize there were no answers to the questions i have about their lives and their contributions to american cuisine. My work in the book is focused mostly on 18th and 19th century Plantation Homes and the larger ones. So not the ones with the cook mightve been a long tryst with a nanny, but the ones that had a separate kitchen and hat and a type staff that was run like a business. Answer those particular plantations typically had a master and slave, the mistress, the wife, several children. So the cook would have to cook for all of them and then of course its virginia, for all of the culture of hospitality is baked into the labor of these cooks. They would have to be cooking for friends that visited, neighbors would come by to eat. There was no social world outside of these plantation sums or most of the women that were living in these homes. So all of their social life revolved around planning balls and parties and measuring their children off to the next wealthiest person down the road. And the cook had a significant role in cooking all the food for this and making sure it was run perfectly, every dish on the table at the right time, executed with perfection. Enslaved cooks were typically the second most valuable enslaved person on a plantation. But were typically valued at a higher monetary value than enslaved cooks and sometimes use on a plantation the cook was a most only person on the plantation but they would switch back and forth. From what i can tell butlers who had a little tiny bit of a head on that. A lot of that had to do as will with the butlers being men and its late cooks being predominant women, although thats also a bit of an this because there were plenty of enslavement of her cooking in these kitchens about the entire slavery. There was a lot of pride that insulators took in their cooks coming to see this in the latest backandforth from the mr. Sires talk about how grand the dinner is going to be and how amazing the food was on a certain night. Even a few references of the mistresses talking about how theres enslaved cooks might not well enough to cook sonic will reschedule a dinner. Little things like that also showed the cooks role was significant. Id have to argue what other enslaved person had the kind of power to influence the rescheduling of an event put on by white people . Enslaved cooks at a were 24 hours a day. They were always on call and if you think about the culture of hospitality in the south averaging in particular for my work, you think about people who traveled sometimes weeks to get to some was plantation home to visit the family or friends, and when any of these people, free people would arrive they would be expected to have food. Hospitality tradition in the south is tethered completely to southern culture. If you think about where all of hospitality comes from, comes from feeding and making sure whomever comes to your front door as food, has water, shelter, vetting, anything they needed. So the enslaved cooks were responsible for feeding anybody who walked in that front door whatever they walked in the front door and making meals for not only as one in that household but any other guests as well. Enslaved cooks were trained in multiple ways. Some of you already knew how to cook. They might even cooks in the field and knew that from their own training. You had been learning from their mothers, their grandmothers. You have been learning vacation as well from the cookbooks. Some of them were literate because it makes sense to teach or slave cookout or read otherwise you will be the there reading recipes over and over again. Some of them create their own recipes and some of them like James Hennings sent to paris to learn french cuisine by the best of the best. Youve got this cross polarization in training in cooking style, and cooking flavors that happened during this time that he can look at the ways in which we eat now as americans, although that everything and thats the essence of our cuisine now. So enslaved cooks had access to mobility in ways that other enslaved people didnt. They were allowed to go to market sometimes. For instance, in lynchburg if you were and his late cook at one of these plantations you might get mad to go down to market to get some food for the meal. If youre in williamsburg you be allowed to go down to market and get food for annual and come back. They had the ability to leave the plantation on occasion to get ingredients and just talk to other people and mingle in ways you could if you were a field slave or if you work for somebody in the house. George washingtons chef hercules and, of course, this was in philadelphia, he was living in a city that had a vibrant free black community. He was able to walk up and down the streets, parade around. Theres this wonderful description of him walking down main street in philadelphia and is cut silk stockings on and develop coat and they watch chain, and hes got a cane and is walking and is got his hat cocked and people are bowing to them because they respected him so much. This was some who was an enslaved cook for of course the president of the United States in a a city that was both mixed with free people and insulate people but he was able to walk around, meet people and i would argue that those travels he made through town and the things that happened between his trips back and forth to mount vernon, because George Washington found out that that was the gradual emancipation act in pennsylvania shortly after moving there which meant if you had insulate people, if you own insulate people in pennsylvania, they would have to be free within six months. So every five months and some change George Washington would send his enslaved domestic staff including chef hercules down to touch Virginia Soil and then back up again to get around the law. You got someone like hercules and others that work in that house meeting people every time theyre going back and forth from a slave state to a free state, every time theyre walking down main street to get their collards or there their y from the market, they are meeting people that think eventually helped them become free. So enslaved cooks, with all of the quote soft power that they had within the plantation complex, they were still insulate. They still have the threat of being burned by the mistress, horrible accounts of torture happening. Theres horrible accounts of some of the mistresses mistreating their enslaved cooks because they burned the biscuits or because then it wasnt put on the exact way he wanted it to. The threat of violence was always looming over them. The difference between that role and somebody who is working as a butler or in the field is better able to push back. They were able to poison if they needed to. So there was this threat that was constantly looming over there enslavers that betsy might kill us tonight. Maybe we should pull back a little bit. You see this hysteria especially after the nat turner rebellion or youve got 1831 can you get 55 white folks come slave owners killed by an insurrection by nat turner and southampton county. When that happened shockwaves are sent across the south and the people and the women in virginia that owned these enslaved people and that own these plantations were terrified that they were going to be poisoned and killed by their cooks and their enslaved laborers. Another interesting thing about the research that it found is that the president ial home, the homes of the very wealthy that would be doing entertaining and heads of state or people from other nations, you see Different Things happening. You have a landscape that then started to reflect sort of the and comfort of owning slaves. You see places like mount vernon, you see this at and you see this phenomenon at montpelier and Berkeley Plantation on the james river. You see the development and the creation of architectural masks. Thomas jefferson has his dumbwaiter built into his fireplace in the dining room. You have literal dumbwaiters, tables being put up in place of, if you think about, what is a dumbwaiter . Its not some is going it so it is not going to be able to communicate. You have these passageways which allow the flexibility to either hide enslaved bodies or present enslaved bodies, depending on who is coming to visit your plantation that day. Its not as if someone from france thought the summa Thomas Jefferson didnt own any insulate people but its the fact that you are not going to show it off in a way and also get people out of the room, waiters out of the room for them to not listen to conversations about the immorality of slavery and the loss of her being past and the fact that were free nations all over the world and at the United States of america is taking a little bit long to get around to abolishment. Theres a sort of comfort in servitude. There always will be. On the other side of the coin we have an absence of enslaved cooks as true, you know, contributors to american cuisine. Which is it . You cant have it both ways. My work is trying to blend those things together. To make people realize they were real people and contributed immense amounts of things to the culture and 200 years of enslavement. Cspan is in lynchburg. Up next, we tour the city with lunch burg native, dubois miller. I was born in lynchburg. Born the forgotten hill and i lived on the forgotten street on the forgotten hill. This is mckinley street. There were six houses on the street. This is house its been changed a lot. Only four rooms and no Running Water and we had a fawcett on the outside. There was a white couple who lives here now and they allowed me to come into the house and i was writing the book and wanted to see what it looked like on the inside. And they said best of all possible worlds. I said the same thing when we lived here. My brother said that this was the best life at 10 mckin will i street. We knew that we were poor. I grew up in poverty. I knew i was poor, no doubt about that, but i lived on polk street. We had Running Water inside, but we didnt have electricity and i would stand or sit on the front porch and look across the street to the patrick house, they had electricity because they had a light, a porch light and we didnt have a porch light. We had electricity, but we cant afford that yet and my mother would tell me the story how she and her and my father got married they only had 10 to their name and use to that fix the roof and i knew we were poor, there was no doubt about it, but i didnt want to be the poorest of the poor, but we were down there. This is all part of my neighborhood, there were some of these houses have been built since ive moved away. And i think that maybury lives here. This house, i dont remember, but i know kent and mike, they were two children about my brothers age, six years old than i was. Once they were 12 years old, they werent allowed to play with the black children anymore and thats the way. A little girl that lived up the street, she was told not to play with me. It was segregated for the most part. But it was segregated in some parts because of the white folks. White lived on the street, they lived on this side of Federal Street and this side. And mr. Hays. He was an evil man. He depended on us for his business. He was a White Grocery store owner. He depended us for his business, but he treated us with a lot of disrespect. And he gave me a can of beans and she told them to put it in the bag and ask for a bag and he wouldnt put it in the bag and took the can you dont need a bag, you dont want to take the bag, and threw the bag down and take this. I mean, threw the can down and said take this bag take this can and go home. And my mother, and i told my mother what happened and she said i told you to come back with a bag and she went there and got it straight and the next time i didnt have any problems with him. About a mile from here. Walking distance, you had doctors, teachers, and a recognized poet. And we didnt have those kinds of people. We had a few teachers in the area, but pierce street was more prominent because you did have people of note in the city who were more, i guess, community active. Through here, more active in the community and that neighborhood was known mostly for negative things, like the black bottom. The black bottom is where a lot of Illicit Activity happened. Now picked dandelions and sell them to the bootleggers. And we walked over to these areas and usually we stayed kind of confined to our neighborhood. And i didnt know anybody on pierce street and i didnt have a reason to go over there. Wed walk all over the street, and we would go on pierce street. I didnt know about ann spencer or i knew about dr. Johnson because he had a business up on the street. And this is where some of the prominent whites lived in this area. And you can see there the difference on harrison and madison streets. And this was called garland hill. So this is garland hill. Im going to go down here and circle around. And how far are we from pierce street . From mckinley street . Mckinley street, not that far. In fact, if you walked down this street, if you let me go down here. And show you where mckinley. Its where these houses, these are where the white folks live. I think that nancy lived here, she was one of my editors. , book publisher, you might say. And this is the area where a lot of the prominent whites lived and we used to come trickortreat and when they didnt give us any candy wed pull the chairs off the porches. And mckinley street was only within about two blocks from here. The whites lived over here, the Smiley Block Company lived here. And im going to stop right here. Here you could walk to mckinley streetment you see the house over there . The first house you see white through the trees, thats the mcdaniel house, on the other side of it, thats mckinley street. So for people who are watching this, what do you want them to be sure to know about . As i said in the book, remembering this oral history, it does have a history and it has a history and theres a lot of unwritten history because nobody documented it and i wanted to have some documentation of the history of our community. Im standing on the campus of Liberty University where up next, we speak with professor ron miller on his book sellout. Ron miller, when you and i initially spoke on the phone to book this interview, you said to me that since moving to lynchburg, the perspective that you had in the book had changed. Could you explain that . Well, i think it was a matter of location when i wrote the book i was on the outskirts of washington d. C. And i found that because of the proximity to the center of power that that has an influence on your perspective, your view of things and i was politically active at the time, so, all of those things sort of made the book not on a memoir and explanation of how someone could grow up in a family, as i did, a family with very conservative values, the very liberal political interests and that becoming politically conservative, and it also became a perspective how i viewed issues through the political lens. Coming to our Current Situation in lynchburg at Liberty University. Number one, an academic perspective and since its a private christian institution, the theological perspective came into play as well. And i think a lot of issues that i talked about in the book, what i had Political Solutions, i think i now look to more spiritual solutions. Particularly since the community that ive tilt with here, not just at Liberty University, but at lynchburg has really given me a different perspective, maybe even a little more empathy about issues and channels that people are facing and what they need to do to overcome them. Can we talk about initially in the book, what were some of the topics that you were tackling and why did you name the book the title that you gave it . Well, this title is probably the one very provocative thing that makes the book stand out. I called it sellout musings were uncle toms porch, there tends to be a reaction on the part of some people as a black man when you say you are conservative or a black woman for that matter and some people react poorly to it and those kinds of names come out and i used to joke when you say youre a conservative you inherit names that your mother didnt give you. I decided to use that to start a conversation. The phrase uncle tom which has come to mean one thing in modern discourse, but if you read the novel it means something totally different. The author intended for uncle tom to be a noble christlike architect. So i found it fascinating that its evolved into what it has and im going to reclaim it. The purpose to get a few eyeballs on the cover and maybe go more than that. You mentioned, what were some of the issues that you were talking about in the book and what was your perspective on the wellbeing in d. C. And then how did they change moving here . Okay. Well, like i said the book is largely a memoir. Its talking about how i arrived personally at the temperament, the physicians, the ideas that i did and i kind of give you stories and things that will kind of lead into each of the areas. But i really talk about the areas that seem to be really troublesome when we talk about the black experience in america. I talk about education. I talk about the economic wellbeing of the black community. I talk about the Family Structure and all of those things and what my view was and what i thought were the solutions were from a political perspective. What has changed mainly is that i acknowledge that because of my upbringing, a lot of the things that i experience are not the experiences of a lot of black people in these communities. I was raised in a military family, twoparent family. My parents are still married and celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary. Always was an integrated neighborhood, integrated schools, gated communities for all intents of purpose, from an air base, theres a gate you have to get through and so, always safety and security, and so, i grew up in a very perspectiv protective environment. I think as my focus is less political and more spiritual i thought what would my life have been like if i had been born in west baltimore maryland to a single mother or in ferguson, missouri or any one of the flash points that weve seen in the news. What if the only thing i ever saw every day was risk and threat . What if the only father figures i had were the teenagers down the street who gathered together as a gang . What if my time in school was spent just trying to survive, much less learn anything . So i started to say, i cant discount experiences that are not my own, experiences are very personal thing. In fact, even in the book i say, you may disagree with what i say, but these are my experiences and i think that applies both ways. So, from my perspective, i started saying, okay, while i still believe in the power of these solutions, and i still believe in our moral agency, our ability to take charge and overcome the circumstances in which we find ourselves. I understand that thats not as easy to do when you start off at a deficit. And i also understand, too, that all of the laws and all of the Political Solutions in the world dont mean anything if theres not heart change, if theres not life change, and i even mentioned that in the book. It kind of conclude with that idea, but i feel like i didnt go far enough with it and there are some things in writing ive done since then, ive really emphasized the idea of taking it out of the realm of the political because particularly in todays era where politics has become so fractious and were so polarized. I dont think its a place where solutions could be found, particularly when youre talking about something as longstanding as the relationship between blacks and whites in america. Were approaching almost 500 years since the first slaves were brought to the shores of what is now the United States of america. People think jamestown, but in fact, there were slaves that landed from a spanish galleon in the carolinas in the 1500. They escaped and blended into the surrounding area. Thats the first time they were on the american continent. So weve been dealing with this for a very long time and we have the laws on the book, ever since the emancipation, proclamation, weve had laws, weve had amendments to the constitution. Weve had guidelines, executive orders, you name it yet, were still struggling with this all these years later and i really believe its going to take a spiritual solution and from my perspective, its going to take a spiritual community, the Christian Community leading by example. I believe the church can do it, but they have done a poor job of it up to this point and i think that thats why i put all of my emphasize a lot less than the state house or the white house and a lot more on the church house. If politics has done one thing to harm discourse, its created this concept of the other. And whenever theres an other, that other becomes the enemy. Its easy to demean them, dehumanize them, to set them apart. Unless we start relating to the fact that there is an ingodlikeness in all of us, and he didnt distinguish when he put the image of god in us, it breaks down our ability to put people on the other side and to demonize them. Ill tell you an interesting story and its one of the stories that kind of lended itself to this change that ive had about things. There was an article about the gun laws in the state of illinois and the city of chicago and this was in the wake of the Supreme Court decision that the ban on handguns in chicago was unconstitutional. Well, the state and the city decided, well, were going to make it as challenging as possible for anyone to get one. And so they instituted all of these rules and restrictions, and the outcome of these rules and restrictions was that people who lived in the suburb could more easily get concealed carry permits than people who lived in the south side of chicago who were looking for them to protect themselves from crime in their neighborhood. And so im thinking to myself, oh, this is a Second Amendment issue. Im going to publish the article about this and all of my conservative friends are going to be up in arms about all of these people who are trying to protect themselves and cant get access to what they need. But what i got was a lot of very disappointing commentary from conservative friends about black people with criminal records not being able to get concealed carry permits, or if they didnt spend their money on iphones and sneakers, maybe theyd have the money for the permits. And im not saying everyone commented that way, but enough did to where it looked like it slapped me in the face and i said to myself, wow, i have defended this Political Community or whatever you want to call it and i never expected that. And i dont want anyone to read into that that i think all conservatives are racists, i dont. But that response surprised me because if it had been a White Working Class community, i wondered if they would have responded the same way with those kinds of comments and stereotypes. So, that made me step back and start to think, okay, maybe i need to reflect on where we are in america right now as a nation, where these attitudes are because clearly, there are some things out there that still havent changed. And so the colleagues that responded to way, did you bring up to them how they responded that way and what did you say. The ones that responded, there wasnt the majority, the ones that concerned me, they shrugged their shoulders. It seems if you show empathy towards the other, whoever they consider the other to be, you become one of them. And so, i cant tell you how many times i will put something out there and somebody will push back and if you if you dont yield or you dont acknowledge that their point of view is the one thats correct, all of a sudden your credentials get taken away, you know, you lose your card and so ive kind of learned to brush that off. Im learning that social media is a little bit of a wasteland when it comes to intellectual dialog or any kind of civilized dialog and so, again, i talked about communication being there to inform, inspire and inflame. I try not to inflame, but sometimes its going to happen and i just accept it and i never respond in kind and i just move on. So, if you could say anything to the Current Congress going on right now and in washington d. C. , what would your message be to them . Examine your heart and determine why you went there in the first place. And if your purpose was to serve, then serve and become other centered. If your purpose was otherwise, then consider whether or not you need to be there. Book tv is in lynchburg, virginia to feature its literary community. Up next, we learn about the world war ii program, operation paper clip, from Lynchburg College professor brian crem. Operation paper clip sometimes called project paper clip was an intelligence scenario that was evolving at the end of world war ii where the allies realized that the germans had made major break throughs in Weapons Technology, jet engines, submarines and of course, most infamously Rocket Technology so theres an understanding that as allied armies swarmed the third reich, you wanted retain the scientists and more importantly, get the equipment and rocketry in particular to study it and keep it out of the hands p maybe potential enemies of the future like soviet union. It was first based on fear the idea that we needed to understand how far theyd gone and what theyve done with this weaponry and later became, what can we do with these scientists and this material . So, intelligence operatives conceived of ways to bring them back to the United States or possibly deal with them in country during an occupation. Paper clip was first an idea among intelligence professionals and also the american scientific community. That was aware of how germany had progressed in Weapons Technology during the war, and there was an understanding that with the atom bomb and with the invention of these long range rockets, that weve entered a new era in warfare. It wasnt quite yet the cold war where you were looking at the soviet union as this intense enemy in 1945, but no matter who is out there, this technology has changed the way warfare could be conducted and you needed to find an advantage against whatever potential enemy there would be and that involved finding the best scientists and matching it with, you know, Americas Industrial might. So if you could achieve a breakthrough by using technology thats already available in germany, then, this is deemed military necessity. And that seems to be the key word for project paper clip is whatever falls under the umbrella of military necessity and later the Term National security is born in 1945, then, anything else is justified, including bringing over 1500 exnazis to the United States. The reason it was called paper clip, interestingly, is because whenever there was a file of a scientist that the americans in particular were interested in, theyd put a paper clip on one corner of the dossier and that would signal to whoever was looking at it that this person was important, most important thing, is this person is worthwhile, and secondly, they told them dont look too deep into this persons record if theyre a nazi or had some other, you know, criminal element to them because we need them. This is essentially saying dont investigate this person too much. Which i think is the heart of why paper clip is controversial. Some he have those will be brought over with those backgrounds. The u. S. Government obviously had made tremendous breakthroughs in atomic energy, but we were not as advanced in aeronautics as the germans seemed to be. The germans invented a fuelbased longrange rocket which did little to help them win the war. In fact, it was simply a terror weapon, but that technology was identified as something if mass produced could be the future of warfare. The germans had a reputation during the war of making what we might call boutique weapons. Things that were intricate, but not able to be mass produced in a way that would affect the outcome of the war whereas the United States, britain, the soviet union focused on mass production of things that were needed for the war, airplanes, ships, in huge numbers, which ultimately defeated nazi germany. So the idea of Something Like paper clip, how can we take this Boutique Technology that was technological revolution, and match it with the industrial might of the United States . And this is why these german scientists were attractive to american intel against professionals who thought theres a possibility to skip years of research and development, simply by harnessing what is already available in germany. Project paper clip began as a military intelligence operation because it was the military services that wanted to hire or use the knowledge of the germans, but when the idea of using immigration as an incentive to bring the germans over and have them happily work for us, once immigration became a topic, the state department had to get involved and the Justice Department and thats where the problems arise. Its the state department and Justice Department that would decline many parts of paper clip. If youre head of the fbi at the time its j. Edgar hoover and you spent most of the war fighting nazi spies, arresting them and conducting very successful operations against nazi espionage inside the United States, how would you react if youre suddenly told were going to bring 1500s nazis into the United States and give them Carte Blanche working on military bases. He was appalled initially and as was the fbi field offices and the state department who is in charge of immigration. They it took president trumans executive order authorizing paper clip to require the entire bureaucracy to support this effort, but even within the state department and Justice Department there will be voices that are opposed to paper clip and my voice gets into many that oppose this operation for morality, for moral reasons and also because of the danger of the United States to have the exenemy combatants running around the country with higher security clearances than most of their american counterparts had. So project paper clip brought in approximately 700, 800 scientists, but also their dependents. And over the years, its kind of hard to nail down the exact number because in some ways, paper clip, even though it wasnt called paper clip, was still an operation until 1973. Were still bringing over, you know, germans and west german scientists, but also their dependents. Where they would go, they initially went to places like new mexico, texas, Wright Patterson air force base in ohio had a huge number of them, all over virginia, boston, long island, i mean, wherever there were either existing military bases or secret, quieter facilities that were involved in experimental technology, you would have a community of germans popping up. Eventually, you know, the rocket team, the most famous group of germans you brought over, the brown team, would wind up creating a whole community of germans in huntsville, alabama where they would remain indefinitely. So its a very interesting phenomena to have within four or five years after the end of the war, communities of germans living in military towns and influencing the culture of wherever they happened to be, which is all over the midwest, the south, primarily. And project paper clip did not remain much of a secret, given those coming into the country and its hard to miss germanspeaking scientists on military bases, so, the military realized that by early 1946 they would have to tell the public and so they had a very carefully crafted press release that didnt go over too well because it basically compared these nazi scientists to Albert Einstein and for one, Albert Einstein was infuriated that he was compared to them and he wrote an oped to the New York Times saying that these are, as he called them, the source carriers of naziism in our country and he was a proud american at this point in 1946. So, the attempt to try to normallize this policy did not you can is seis did not succeed, but the military guests right will most were uncomfortable with the idea, but yes, americans were against it, but how long would that resonate with the public and it didnt seem to be very long. With project paper clip. With the number of germans brought over, the ones that americans tend to remember the most because how theyre portrayed in pop culture and a larger than life personality, it was the rocket team. Remember, there are hundreds of others that are brought over, and simply became living in the United States and also had quite a few whose backgrounds caught up with them. So there will be a number of high profile paper clippers that had of were involved in war crimes during the war and are discovered and sent back to germany mostly because of the embarrassment and the public attention, but you also had people who quite simply had lied about their capabilities and knowledge and were deemed not useful and this happened a lot more than i think people tend to think because were so used to focusing on this glorious Rocket Program and the people who worked for nasa, but in reality there were people who knew if they could get a contract in the United States and get citizenship, thats going to be the best offer they can possibly have. So they would funnel their records. Not only their nazi party membership, but how much do they really know about whatever specified field it was. So, a number of people were simply let go. The more controversial ones, such as herbert achter really nothing more than a corporate lawyer a friend of vaughan brown. Turns out he was a hard core nazi and his wife more in the nazi party and they were an embarrassment to the United States because they would harbor the idea and promote them among theirs friends and it became too much. They were asked to go back to germany. So there tended to be a lot of scientists and engineers and family members who were either not what they had advertised themselves to be or there are a number of scientists whose pasts caught up with them and they were too embarrassing to keep in the United States because they had these very extensive nazi parties records or had been involved in war crimes that were verifiable. Arthur rudolph was known as the father of the saturn rocket. Hes extremely controversial because hes someone who did have a very sketchy background. He was an ardent nazi and his own file said that. They couldnt erase that part of his record, but he was personally responsible for ordering the hangings of slave laborers in the factory where it was produced in germany and yet, that was largely concealed or deemed not provable until the 1980s, when the office of special investigation looked as part of the Justice Department, opened an investigation based on some Historical Research that was done into his case. And had progressed to the point where in 1980 in the mid 1980s, he was given the option here of either facing a possible trial and having, you know, being deported off voluntarily returning to germany. And he voluntarily left. But he also got to keep all of his federal benefits. But this was the closest that a paper clip acquisition had come to being prosecuted for their crimes and that was not until the mid 1980s. Program called paper clip would be 1945 to 1947, but it would exist under additional names. One thats called the National Interest program where the idea was maybe the department of commerce could now get involved and bring over civilian speci specialists and find them work in corporations or academia. And then around 1950, there was a program called project 63, which was based on the fear, after the invasion of korea, that there was going to be a full scale war in europe. So the military thought we needed to get the remaining best and brightest out of germany, out of harms way so they would not be rolled out in some sort of soviet invasion. So there was a red scare mentality affected this program and the idea that it could continue. This thus germany was not happy with the notion that they could take whoever he wanted. It didnt go very far because of diplomatic region journals have shown and others show that this program dependent die until the 1970. Theres a notion of trying to lure german scientists over to work for us instead of their own country. Project paper clip is a topic i think a lot of americans think they know a lot about already because we tend to know that german scientists were very involved in our research and development, theyre involved in nasa, one of the things i focus on in the book are people that oppose paper clip and i want to show how contested a policy this was and that it was the birth of a new National Security ideology between 1945 and 1947 in particular that revolved around military necessity as directing our national policy. And thats a this is a microcosm for the early years of the cold war, and how bureaucracy responds to a new environment and its not very pretty a lot of times. I focus on personalities that i think are given short shrift. We know about von braun and officers who helped the program get off the ground, but we dont know the people who had a moral objection to it or a practical objection to it and how they reconciled themselves to this new National Security environment. Twice a month. Cpan city tours take book tv and American History on the road to explore the literary life with certain cities. We visit with Historic Sites and interview historians, you can watch past interviews online going to book tv. Org and select the cspan cities tour by the dropdown at the top of the page or cspan. Org citiestour. You can follow on twitter, behind the scenes images and video from our visit. The handle is cspancities. Book tv tapes hundreds of author programs throughout the country all year long. Here is a look at some of the events well be covering this week. Monday will be at politics and pose bookstore to hear lanny davis, former special counsel for president clinton. Hear his takes on the outcome of the election. The roosevelt house where a former white house official and cabinet secretary joseph cal fanno will examine our democracy and show how to bring back trustworthy systems of government. Later that night at New York University for the presentation of the pen American Literary awards, given annually since 1963 which recognizes books in categories, from biography and science writing to essays and poetry. At the green light, vegas journalist reports on White Nationalism in america. Thursday, Syracuse University professor Daniel Thomas will be at st. Anselm college in new hampshire, why moderates might be less likely to run for congress. The free library at philadelphia where rutgers poefr Brittany Cooper examines the power of what she called eloquent rage and how it can be handwrittened as a resource to bring about change. On friday, former Clinton Administration labor secretary Robert Wright at the First Parish Church in cambridge, massachusetts to talk about the economic and social cycles societies experience and their effect on common good. Thats a look at some of the events book tv will be covering this week. Many of these events are open to the public. Look for them to air in the near future. On book tv on cspan2. Im sad today because friday i had to ask a United States sitting president when he signed a proclamation about dr. King, if he was a racist. Again, im sad today about that. But with the patterns that have been going on and all the other issues that have been happening global globally this is the Perfect Place to be and for the conversation to be had. Not only is this the 50th anniversary year of the assassination of the dreamer, dr. Martin luther king, jr. , there are two more anniversaries, theres an anniversary of the poor peoples campaign, 50 years. And theres another anniversary, 50 years after the Kerner Commission report. This is a big year, but i think back to a couple of years ago when i was in selma with president barack obama celebrating the 50th anniversary of bloody sunday, if he took an sepiatone or a black and white picture of that day and put it against today, it would look the exact same. The economics hasnt changed. The black boys and black girls can go to school with white people, but selma still looks the same. But what the irony is a few weeks ago in december that to include selma, alabama. My friend john king likes to say the black belt is about the richness of the soil. And i say its the richness of the spirit the black people, thats what mary francis slavery, yes. I look to the fact that selma puts it over the top in alabama. 50 years later, the spirit wants change, but what does that change look like in 2018 . And what are the lesson to be learned from the past as we move forward, as we are sitting in the now moment . And i want to go start with dr. Mary Francis Berry who i love sitting at the knee and listening to her wisdom and the stories that she tells. She told me a story just this week and i want you to regail it and give it to the crowd, when Coretta Scott king, the widow of dr. Martin luther king, jr. Was alive they used to talk on mlk day, and the question was what was the question, dr. Berry. What would martin do . Use your microphone. Use your microphone. Your microphone. Turn it on. It would be what we would talk about two things, one, wed talk about what would martin do about whatever was going on, you know . What would martin do . And we would talk about it. And then we would say, she would say, well, what would martin say and we would talk about what martin would have said about whatever was going on. And this was for years. And in between Martin Luther king day, depending what was happening around the world so i always ask myself. I just came back from speaking down in tampa for their Martin Luther king celebration and what i talked about with as what martin would say and what he would do about all of this going on and one of the stories you want me to tell the story . Tell the story. One of the stories one time was the lbgt groups had been wanting her to come out and Say Something in favor of the rights of people without regard to sexual orientation. And she told me, she said, you know, the men who were with martin and whatever she said she meant the guys who were there with martin. We didnt know which men, we have we know which, and they said dont do it. Thats not my issue, coretta, do ent dont do it. And she said what would martin do . He was not only a race man, a class man, but he was a human rights man and he believed in the rights of all people. And thats how we have to think about it. She said, yeah, so martin would do it. I dont care what they said, but she side, i tell you what, if you come down here to atlanta and stand with me, ill come out and do it. And she said, now, what would martin say . And we talked about that. But that was the story. There were other things over time, but i think one of the lone stars and i often think about it myself whenever im in crisis over some issue of social justice, you know, Free South Africa Movement and we were going to jail every five minutes. And we would say what would martin do, think, say, i think thats an appropriate load star to try to think about on a day like this. But you also said something there were components of what dr. King would do though. Yes. One would be to organize. And what would be one of the things that he always would do about issues is to and he learned over time. Thats the other thing. I mean, he wasnt just born with so much wisdom that he didnt need to learn anything. And when he was chosen to be the leader by the people in montgomery in that church, cause he wasnt born as a leader with a little thing on his belly saying youre the leader, he learned when they made mistakes. Like the albany was a terrible failure. Were some failures throughout this and he would learn. He learned how to straegize, how to organize, how to con sell actu conceptualize and how to pick targets and figure out what you were going to get out of a situation when you lead people. He would say an effective leader is not somebody who tries to sit around the trying to look at what youre going to be. You ought to organize. Its not enough to even be courageous and to be willing to sacrifice. You have to be smart and strategic about what youre doing. And so that, i think, is something we should all learn about what he did and how we go about this resistance that were engaged in at this hour. Leverage and resistance. Leverage thats another winning, leverage. I sometimes think and i said this to the folks in tampa to see what they thought. I said, you know, if i were dick durbin and i was in the white house and the president said whatever he said, i dont know, youve got two guys who like him who said he didnt. One guy who hates him who said he did and then other people running around in circles. But, whatever he said, however he said it or whatever, i have been in the white house and had people say stuff that they wouldnt want me to say outside, that they did. And im not going to tell that story about but i used it, leverage. I always think about, what martin said about using for the people for the cause youre concerned with. You know, and i would say do you want me to tell people you did soandso, and said soandso and so. Now this issue that im trying to deal with, that im trying to get you to take care. If i can get you to take care of that i might forget about what you just said or what you just did, if youll do daca for me and shut up, you know . I might go on home. So thats the kind of leverage that i mean. So, thats interesting. Bishop td jakes is here in the house. [applaus [applause] i used to watch when he was get ready, get ready, get ready. You know, bishop jakes, dr. Berry brought in what happened this week. The week started out with the president saying, you know, i want a bill of love, and then it turned to it go drastically different. Is this about love . Is this about heart . This whole situation, be it immigration, be it any kind of policy thats on the table, is it about love or is it just about the numbers and what the economics look like . Well, to me, its, first of all, thank you for allowing me to be on this platform, im way out of my league, but as long as im here i better Say Something. No youre not. It occurs to me that it is in fact about love. The love is hard to legislate. You cant pass an amendment that causes peoples to love. You can monitor, you can get a person not to say things, but you cant get them not to think them and not to mean them and i think thats a futile pursuit for us as American People to try to manage the hearts of people, only god can do that. Sometimes i wonder if we can even manage our own feelings and emotions. I think that at the end of the day, we will not rise and fall on the backs of what one or two people think or say, whether it is appropriate or inappropriate. We will rise or fall because we have connected failed systems that eat the underbelly of our society and when you look at those systems like the criminal justice system, like the immigration system. Like the education system, it causes underprivileged people and underserved people not to have fair opportunities, while this story is titillating and aggravating and other adjectives that i wont use, i think its a distraction from the deeper issue we must get to. Its not about personalities, its about policies. Its about getting policies in place that will bring about the kinds of change that will cause people to live a better life that will really affect people who are underserved and dont have the proper opportunities. You can watch this and other programs online at book tv. Org. Here is a look at some books being published this week. Yale Law School Professor amy che chewa examines how parties impact our political system in political tribes, in the common good, best selling author ar clinton labor secretary robert reisch, argues the idea to restore a common good in our economics and politics. Facebook cofounder, chris hughes, shares his upbringing and argues that the 1 has had a responsibility toward the economically impoverished in fair shot. Major Scott Huesing describes how they survived a deadly attack in iraq. And Greg Easterbrook explores the Environmental Issues impacting our globe. And the role of africanamerican women in eloquent rage. In the watergate political consultant recounts the history of the hotel, including the notorious scandal connected to its name. And shares stories of many of its notable residents. Educated is tara westovers upbringing isolated and a ph. D. And best selling author meec meechy acaku, and then the growth on the White Nationalist movement in America Everything you love will burn look for these in coming week and authors in the near future on book tv on cspan2. So now we understand how it is that you were able to get waved into the white house to basically become a potted plant in the west wing lobby. So most of your your meetings at the white house were with steve bannon or at least you were scheduled to meet with steve bannon and then what happened. No, i was scheduled youre right i had a lot of meetings with steve and steve was one of the pillars of this book, but i basically met with everybody and everybody was under the impression that they were supposed to meet with me. [laughter] where did they get this impression from . Did that impression come from the president or did it, because you were talking to steve bannon, they figured, well, we should probably well, it came from, i mean i mean, i was introduced around by by various people, by hope hicks, who was the you know, i mean, the president s kind of personal pr person. You know, kellyanne conway, sean spicer. I mean, this was a this was not a it was not a mystery here. Now, i think on one level, nobody quite knew how this came about, and everybody looked a little puzzled by things, but it was there was no friction here. There was no friction. No friction. Nobody was saying what are you doing here . Everybody was saying, oh, okay, yeah, yeah. They would see you they would see you sitting in the west wing lobby who youre waiting to see and you would sabanen and they would chuckle and say, thats not going to happen or that will be for a while, why dont you come back and talk to me. I became a familiar presence around the white house and i think, also, very much a nonthreatening presence. I mean, i was not i mean, you know, the press corps is was over there, not far away, but i was always careful not to come in as a member of the press and not to not to act like a member you know, the press is a sort of, they want something. I didnt want anything. I literally was just i didnt even have. Wait, come on, michael. I didnt want anything. Im just sitting in the west wing lobby hoping to talk to all of these, come on, man, real . I just wanted someone to talk to me. [laughter] i was like and this is an important thing because you go in there, and so, it would be in, and get, i dont know, a 10 00 appointment youd go in and and then youd sit there and you would sit there sometimes for hours and sometimes hours and hours, and it was kind of humiliating, actually. And you had the feeling that people took, you know, regarded me as a kind of a pitiable creature, you know . Im not im not important enough for anyone to keep their appointment with me. Everybody else is there and theyre having appointments and there are people come out and im still just waiting there in and the hours are passing. And i did feel humiliated. I was really and , but it became this kind of thing that people it began to work. People would stop and they would try to take care of me. Like youre one of the neediest cases, come on come back and talk to me. And the other thing, and this is an important thing, i basically didnt ask questions. So all reporters, what do we do . We ask questions, ask questions. I dont ask questions, i go in there and i sit there and people just start to talk. Okay. So, one of the reasons why perhaps people start to talk from what youre saying, and the key in that is what you said in terms of the initial part of your answer, where you said you mentioned hope hicks, who is the president s personal pr person. Now, when you read fire and fury you find out that everybody in this book has his or her own pr person. Jared and ivanka has their own pr person and and the president who has a press secretary. A whole Communications Shop of 40 people, but hes conducting his own freelance operation. So, maybe one of the reasons why people took pity on you as you sat there as you say humiliated in the west wing lobby, they knew you were talking to bannon. Is it that they realized oh, my god,s talking about bannon and i have to talk to him to counter act that. This happened later on when they realized that bannon was kind of monopolizing me. In the beginning everybody was talking and confused as to why they were talking, but they were talking. It has come on high from nobody, nobody actually knew from where it came, it seemed, but there was a general feeling that you were supposed to talk to me, i think. Were people unburdening themselves. Yes. Did you feel like a therapist . Eventually you did and thats the i mean, what i saw and the i mean, this book is really, about, theres a plat plot line, the transformation that took place. The people in the beginning donald trump, rah, rah, youve got the donald trump line and then that began to degrade. They began to give you the trump line, but why they were while they were giving it to you, they would go and it became clear they wanted others to know while they have to give this line they doesnt believe it and moving further on it fell apart entirely and they would tell you this is, this is you know, this is really a mess here. You can watch this and other programs online at book tv. Org. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979 cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court, and Public Policy events in washington d. C. And around the country. Cspan is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. Next on book tvs after words. Black lives matter patrisse khancullors is interviewed by an author and journalist. After words is weekly Interview Program with relevant guest hosts works