[inaudible conversations] good morning Everyone Welcome to the fifth annual mississippi book festival and welcome everyone doing on cspan which is been a supporter of our efforts from the very first year. We appreciate them very much. Im chris with archives and history. If you have not done so please silence your cell phone. Our panel this morning is a spotlight on mississippi civil rights, we think energy for sponsoring it. Theyve also been with the book festival since beginning and we are grateful for the early support and sticking with us. We are in this room today, thanks to foreman Watkins Law Firm we pretrade their support. Our panelists are natalie, johnny, michelle and heather and you can purchase copies of their books from vendors outside and you can find the times are authors will be signing in your programs. You will hear from our panelists for about 40 minutes and open the floor to questions. Please come to the podium to answer your questions. Be careful of the ramp. Help me welcome our moderator for this panel pamela, the director of the Mississippi Museum in mississippi history and civil rights museum. [applause] good morning. This is the first time that this panel has been in the morning. So thank you so much for coming out. Im going to do a small little introduction of all of our panelists. We have natalie who is the director of new college and professor of social and Cultural Studies in education at the university of alabama. She is coauthor and American Icon and coeditor of geographics of girlhood identity in between and give her a hand please. [applause] doctor favors received his phd in North Carolina and in maine phd in history from the ohio State University. He is a sister professor of history at clayton State University. Give him a hand please Michelle Purdy is a professor of education and affiliate faculty member of the disciplinary programs in urban studies and the center on urban research and Public Policy at Washington University in st. Louis and coeditor of using contemporary perspectives on africanamerican educational history. Give her hand please. [applause] and last but truly not least. Heather watkins. In 1961 she was at the Greyhound Bus to see in jacksonville mississippi at the age of 13 where he was sent in a paddy wagon to Mississippi State penitentiary known as the penitentiary and placed on death row. Please give him a hand. [applause] i want to panelists to give a fiveminute overview of their book, give the name and talk a little bit about it. We will start with ms. Adams. Thank you. And on behalf of my husband who is who is here in my better half in the coauthor of my book, the struggle for desegregation in mississippi and i want to tell you how appreciative we are about being part of this book festival and thank you so much for inviting us. To talk about our book, i wanted to get back to october 291, 9692 Supreme Court decision that really is not that well known and it was the case that originated out of mississippi and called alexander versus home board of education. It was on this day that the Court Ordered 30 of the 33 School Districts that were named in the case to operate as fully unitary you segregated School Systems in january. They also gave a very clear call about School Implementation and all deliberate speed now meant now. On the of court enforced desegregation in his state in january 1970 governor speaks to a Radio Audience and i will read a little clip of what he said. He said i speak to you in the faithful hour of the light of our state and the moment we resisted for 15 years and we fall hopefully to avoid or at least delay is finally at hand. Let us accept the embeddable fact that we will suffer one way or another. Both white and black because of the decrease of the court. And what god help let us make the best of a bad situation. Now left to deal with hundreds of decisions that had to be made during this time. Were the teachers, principals, superintendents, the school custodian, the cafeteria workers, the coaches, other people employed by the local school system, they did not have any training in Effective School desegregation processes. They had very little help from the state department and they were often working in hostile local context and they were very ordinary folks grown into extraordinary circumstances. So how did they work through school said degradation. In the lawmakers in the legislators that the representatives moved out. That was the genesis of her research. That question is what drove that. We were very early on inspired by a quote in her novel animal dream and she has a great quote that says wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work that goes on at that. So we set out to interview local mississippi who were the boost in the field and one of the most significant social and cultural changes in this country and while we started out we were just going to interview teachers and principals and we assumed that was not going to be enough that we had to cast our net much more widely and we began focusing on interviewing teachers, students, parents, superintendents, school board members, Community Activists and leaders in over a 70. We interviewed over 100. We also spent a lot of time in libraries and newspapers coming through microfiche and reams of paper because we were interested in knowing how desegregation played out differently in the state but also how it was being chronicled differently in local newspapers. We focused on the years 1965 to 1971 because those were the years when d. O. J. Finally started enforcing desegregation. We really focused on the story of our 10 100 oral historians bt we hope to connect the macro to the micro. National to the local, and by telling the story of ordinary folks who were involved in the Civil Rights Movement, some willingly and some not. We hope to demonstrate how the daily minutia matters. Local politics matter, local Leadership Matters and the decisions that individuals make matter and individual and community strategizing matters during this time. In determining how School Districts transition into the unitary school system. We in the book by coming back to the present. And we talk about the Lessons Learned by studying history because we believe theres valuable lessons and we revisit some of the communities that we feature historically earlier in the book to see how it is bearing today and we also connect the educational history to current educational debate and we hear a lot about choice today and we hear about Charter School legislation and tuition vouchers, tuition tax credit, public funding for private schools and all of these have an origin in School Desegregation so we should understand while there are so many communities that are rightly suspicious of those measures today because of the way in which they were reviewed during School Desegregation. Thank you. [applause] good morning again my name is doctor giuliani favors a professor of history. Black colleges i want to think the organizers of mississippi book festival and the panelists and a special thanks to mrs. Watkins. It toys great to be in true patriots and heroes of this moment. Thank you for your sacrifice. [applause] black colleges are one of the most important cornerstones of the black Freedom Movement. And for too long those gaps have not been filled in terms of understanding of their contributions so that Freedom Movement as was mentioned i went to graduate school at the ohio State University, they require us to say that by the way. [laughter] i was being introduced to all these fascinating books on Civil Rights Movement and research was outstanding. It discussed all the student activists that were merging throughout the movement but it was very little attention given to the origins. There was never a true origin story. In my research i came across she talked about the struggles that she was encountering in the state of mississippi and she said as a teacher in mississippi that she was simply trying to fill in the small cracks. I think that is so crucial and important to understand of what black alumni from black colleges were tempted to do. We try to fill in the small cracks and one of the things i knew that i wanted to do. Again the name of my book is sheltered in a storm in leadership and activism. I took about seven different institutions and i engaged in a study of historically black colleges and i start off with the institutes of color youth which is now changed in 1837 outside of philadelphia. After that i talked about my chapter entitled academic in 1869 to 1900. I talk about Bennett College in greensboro North Carolina, one of two single institutions dedicating to teaching from american women and i also talk about alic Alabama State univery in montgomery and Jackson State University in jackson mississippi. I took about Southern University located in baton rouge, and i talk about North Carolina in the midst of the black Power Movement. Then i talk about the current struggles confronting historical black colleges. But these are seen beds of the movement in one of the theories advanced in this research is discussing something i refer to as a second curriculum. Outside of math, science, history and all these other topics black teachers administrators engaged as knowing as a second curriculum and that was complain of three basic components. Waste consciousness, idealism, and cultural nationalism. Race conscience was so important for black youth who are being bombarded with messages of White Supremacy. Very much trying to teach them that they had no culture, no heritage. Black college provide the shelter where there was a powerful counter message provided and of course i discussed the notion of idealism, two of the major concepts that were causally being driven for the students time and time again in democracy and citizenship, democracy and citizenship, they talk to them about these concepts which seemed odd because those are the two most in porton thinks the black people are basically rid of during the period they were not allowed democracy and citizenship. Black students were being taught the importance of black institutions and black businesses and in fact one of the alumni of the college in the 1890s came back to speak and told him we need three things, power, education and own black property. This is long before the black Power Movement. Those were the messages circulating throughout back colleges. These provided a go space for black to thrive during this time. And ultimately it gave a modest Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Im very happy to talk more about that and fill in the gaps of the importance of black colleges. ,. It is an honor and a humbling experience to be in the state capital of my home state. I was born and raised in jackson mississippi and i attended Saint Andrews growing up and i think those in the crowd from Saint Andrews. I see faces and i think those who are turning in and i think mississippi book festival for inviting me too be a part of this and i think the great panel to be a part of today. My first book is entitled transforming the elite. There are pieces of mississippi civil rights history that are important to understanding how and why elite private schools such as the andrews here in jackson, why they decided to desegregate in the mid1960s when they were not legally obligated to do so. The 1954 brown decision did not apply to private schools and in fact those of us who know something about School Desegregation history we know that often times private segregation is the cabins were established especially by the White Citizens Council in mississippi so white students would not have to go to desegregate his schools although desegregation moved at a snails pace as we know. That is part of the setting as to why the elite private schools decided to desegregate. I focused my work on the schools in atlanta, georgia within the context of the Civil Rights Movement but also it was happening nationally with Independent Schools whether they be in the south or in the north as they contended for the race. There were a few schools outside of the north that admitted black students prior to the mid1950s and 60s but there was an awakening because of the Civil Rights Movement. And of the elite private schools. It gives you a sense of what i mean, westminster which was founded in 1951 and it was 208 million in making it the 14th most wealthiest Independent School in the nation and it hovers between 25,030,000 to date for days time. If you were to go to an elite boarding school youre looking at probably about 60 to 75000 in tuition and room and board. About 1 of her children in the nation go to the schools that also belong to the National Association of Independent Schools. So they were contending just as School Desegregation was an issue, the Civil Rights Movement was more broadly galvanizing in the 50s and 60s, the schools were trying to think where we are going to position ourselves in this debate. What would be like the Segregation Academy that were established after the brown decision and there are schools that were established after the brown decision as a result of not wanting to be under desegregate schools. How will we stand on the side of those institutions that are starting to desegregate. I make an argument in the book the White Private School leaders blurred notion of public and private. They have three incentives that pulled on them. One of the moral incentives of the Civil Rights Movement. You cannot go anywhere in the United States and not know something about the Civil Rights Movement because of television in the 1960s. It made the Civil Rights Movement come alive. Secondly there was a Public Relation incentive do we want to be like the segregation academies. Will our students be accepted as the most elite colleges and universities if we remain segregated. Third there is a financial incentive and thats where mississippi comes into play. After alexander versus home decision and 69 black mississippians are continuing to fight, they are continuing to resist and they are resisting the fact that private schools here in mississippi that have discriminatory admission policies are still allowed to have Tax Exemption from the irs. So its in the 1970 in a case called greene versus kennedy that if schools had discriminatory admission policy they could no longer receive Tax Exemption status. Again that is part of the larger context of the book. In the second argument is a courageous navigation. Thats how the black students courageously navigated a contradictory and complex School Culture where on one hand you had option fundraisers and celebrations of the south and the other hand and white students even before black students asking questions about how will westminster handle School Desegregation. Just to close. Seven black students entered westminster in 1967. I focused on the first five years of School Desegregation in westminster in 1972 on the founding principal doctor William Presley retired. There were mixed experiences. This research was done through archival work at westminster and various archives in atlanta and throughout the south as well as oral history interviews. Just to give you a glimpse of what day one was like for one of my most reluctant interviewees, michael, they took his younger brother to convince him to talk to me. This was michaels description of his first day at westminster. During the first year no one could prepare me for the hypo logical story i was about to receive. The very first day of class eighth grade i walked in and the dominant white males about eight of them, many on the Football Team immediately surrounded me and how naively i thought, their welcoming me too class. Then they proceeded to humiliate, hit, push, shove, and hes me into hysteric so iran to the bathroom to hide and cried. So we know what happened in Public Schools but this also let you know that things are not a whole lot different for some black students, also for some of our most elite private schools. Im happy to talk more about the book and want to give a shout out to North Carolina press enter mutual editor brandon for supporting our work. [applause] good morning. I am mr. Watkins and it is an honor to be sitting here on this panelist with these great individuals. Im somewhat lost for words because they have been here much longer than i. And they have done books, but i am thrilled to be here and it is an honor. I would like to start by praising my wife for putting up with me all these years. And just to get in and said in on me. Things that have happened to me over the years, just to get into it, she is still with me and she endured my pain, my happiness and everything that goes with that. I would also like to think my cowriter, ms. Andrea will you stand please. [applause] there is a story behind that but we will not get into that because were short on time. But i would like to tell you how i got started as a freedom writer. Jackson and my high school my middle School Principal at the school got on the telecom and told the kids the freedom riders are coming. And once they get here it is best that you dont get involved. You can hear things and you move on. Then my minister said, you know the freedom writers are going to be coming to jackson and want to get here is going to be bad frustrated so you need to stay away. I heard that but it was not until my mother told me, and i asked her why. And she said well baby, if you got involved i could lose my life. Your brothers could lose their life. The house could be burned, all kinds of things could happen. Now that stayed with me. Because my mom said she could lose her life. No one wants that to happen. So i said yes, maam. But i was very curious of what was happening in alabama. We would get the evening news at 530 and it was showing the public what was going on in alabama, how freedom writers was being beaten, kicked, bitten by dogs, all kinds of things was happening to them. And the more i saw the more i became more curious. So we heard about the freedom writers going to be at the Greyhound Bus station. Which was not far from a house because they lived on the march straight from here. Which was walking distance to the Greyhound Bus station. So we had grow gone to a rally e or less, my close friend at the time and i but when we arrived the leader was about over basking individuals, locals is there anyone here that wants to draw on the freedom writers and if so meet at the Greyhound Bus station. We did not have a but we had bicycles. So we rode the bicycles from the temple to the Greyhound Bus station. When we arrived at the Greyhound Bus station the freedom writer was taken away. So we sat on so where the high school was, we were in the area out of sight. We were out of sight because we did not want to be seen and arrested. But we wanted to see a freedom writer. I wanted to see what a freedom writer look like. [laughter] maybe even the way they sit. And if i got the opportunity i might be able to reach out and touch one. And if i could touch a freedom writer, i could go back to my community and say i touched a freedom writer, i dont know how big, that wouldve been huge. But the freedom writer is arrested and taken away and what we should have done, we shouldve went back home. But then in 1961, it was a privilege for blacks to be on the sidewalk downtown jacksonville. There was also on the sidewalk so my friend and i we decided to play around. And playing around we decided to do a little skipping. So we skipped and we skipped and we skipped and for some reason my friend pushed me inside and the first thing that i saw was a sign that read whites only. The name and my birthplace. I was born in milwaukee wisconsin. And just by being born in milwaukee wisconsin led me to parchman prison. They thought i was a freedom rider based on my birthplace. At the age of 13 i was taken to person in prison and put on death row. I have to tell you that i was 13, very nacve, from the ab had not been exposed to anything, didnt know anything, didnt know anything about death row is going to happen. But i was put in a cell with two other convicts and you probably have heard this old saying that you are educated in prison. Thats true. But the type of education you get in prison you cant use it out here. It was a horrible feeling. It was a horrible of these things that i had to endure i will share with you was just one and that was by food being taken and three eat before i was able to because my food was brought and i told the guy that my food was taken he said what do you want me to do . If they took your food then you take it from them. So we have a governor here in the state of mississippiab probably the most racist person that ever lived forgot his name was governor barnett and you may or may not remember him well. He hated all blacks. And he hated all poor whites. But he chose to set me free when i was under incarceration. And i was grateful based on his leadership here in the state of mississippi. All of the things he might not have done but was accused of fodoing and the reason i forgive him is the reason i can be here today. If not for the governor i would have lost my life in prison. Thank you. [applause] just a couple of questions before we go to the audience. Natalie i remember in 187011 years old talk about the climate of the faculty members talk to the audience about the climate. So when mississippi and the rest of the south was trying to resist desegregation, with faculty integration and those with the federal funding so School Systems use all kinds of creative ways to assign teachers often one of the most often used option is to take the most experienced africanamericans teachers to put them in the white schools and the least effective white teacher or a newly hired teacher and put them in the segregated african school. So you cannot do that that is not the intent of brown that jackson had a really interesting way to use a lottery system in order to assign teachers literally a bingolo machine and thats how you were assigned. And we talk about in the book the teachers were the ones that had theo biggest charge to try to navigate through this yotime and you have to remember africanamericans and whites live totally separate lives than there were many many teachers who were doing a very poor job. Then there were seven who did a wonderful job and we try to wedocument both stories. A lot of people know this but it is worth mentioning for many africanamerican students and teachers and communities, it was a huge coss because of the second curriculum, that was not in place in d segregated schools. But ine particular at the high school level, this pattern throughout the south that the africanamerican segregated schools those are converted to a junior high and all africanamerican students were transferred to the white school and expected to accommodate and assimilate we have a whole chapter on sports and Extracurricular Activities a because we try to capture their stories of those who did a great job but they were also thrown into this tumultuous time with very little training. Looking at alexander on the 29th they cannot imagine and then they had six weeks to open under a completely different system. I am fascinated by the title at the time to have that biblical connotation talk about africanamericans and the 20th century compared to how it is in the 21st century. With that old preachers kid searching forse language to describe the enclaves for the black folks to hide from or that supremacy in the violence. Es and those racial programs going on throughout the state so much so it is coined as the lowliest one lowest point for the black folks to find that they could send their children are used to do educate them and train them and then become in bed with them. And with that cult of nationalism and idealism. So look at what back one black youth are exposed to in the 19th and 20th centuries but they were very much in a deliberate fashion to be told of the role of what is to come that you are thinking of the larger race to constantly be instructed and then have that discussion with the freedom writers. That second wave and then those students have been exposed to that curriculum for years over the 20th century and those messages that were deliberately stirred up and that critical question is how do we help perform democracy and then to be exposed to that message with higher generation in general is a corporate breeding ground with the importance of science and technology and engineering and math. But liberal arts training to provide a Critical Role to shape b of there will should be in society. And to transform society to the betterment of all human beings that is the central message that blacks were being drilled for years. Drilled in from the administrators, by the faculty and also with that message to be generated by those primary sources that i go to time and time again. Those in the earlier mid 20th century is a gold mine in terms of illustratingcone those that were politicized their surroundings, generating the urge to speak out to the challenge of White Supremacy and then you fastforward to the segregated society and i think a lot of the culture has transformed over what has happened over the College Campuses those that attended the institutions. And john dittmer who is a professor i ran across the interview for them and they talked about we couldnt get the best in the rightist for the black educators to come anymore. Going to these open doors but those predominantly white institutions. So that severed and corrupted some of the relationship of the environment and the culture of these institutions. So look at the 21st century now. They still play a critical and vital role to train and educate youth but its important to raise the question but also for colleges in general how do we continue to make sure they are exposed to messages of power and justice and to make sure that you are fully engaged in society cracks not just themselves but for all people its one of those historical roles h c bu has played for a long time. I am curious to know where they are now. You also have to understand from where they came so they are part of the first d segregated generation. The parents are even educators themselves. So they are coming out of a community of educators in atlanta and family that with unsurmountable odds. Soin they bring that with them to wins westminster if they are conscious of that are not. Malcolms father was instrumental to develop at norvalol State University so it is interesting that connectionshe and then obviously eney are aware of what is happening as young people in the Civil Rights Movement. Where are they today cracks the first black woman to graduate in 1972 was one of the first black women. To attend princeton is now a special assistant to the chancellor at the university of illinois. She had a long career in dc forgot malcolm is in the San Francisco area in oakland doing it work. He was also at princeton. Michael mcveigh is a medical doctor living in Los Angeles Ron is younger brother, whom i met in person for the first time this spring he did not want to be interviewed by phone or innt person but one of my most informative via email. I so he also worked in technology in the atlanta area. Just retired so they are all over the country a couple one is the insurance salesman and one of his daughters also attended westminster and then thats it. And then president of Concessions International and her father was one of the founding, one of the first black minority contractors to own his own business in the atlanta area so she is still there. For the most part they are all throughout the United States. Mister watkins we honor you truly for the work you are still doing now. But when you were just pushed into the Greyhound Bus statio station, when did you realize it was bigger than you . That you were now part of the Civil Rights Movement in mississippi . It really did not dawn on to me. But the other two inmates a reason for why i was not there. They kept giving me a statement. You could get that you killed a whites man they are not going to put you on to death row but what im thinking and they told me about death row, i am thinking i am going to die just because i went to the bus station. That was probably my most pitiful time. I was arrested they say 109 times throughout the state of mississippi as a freedom writer burke i was beaten several times and a lot of other things has happened to me so things that you can forget things that you cant my mother thought i was dead. The Police Department here called her to come to the jail to pick me up she thought she was going to identify my remains and what a shock it was to her to walk in and see me. And i must say that we were both glad to see each other after i arrived at home she beat the hell out of me. [laughter] i spoke earlier i believe the beating that was given to m me, whatever was there, my mother beat it out of me. Seriously. And now 58 years later all those things that should have happened to me during that time, did. But now it comes back on me falling out of the bed, im hearing things, and these things are happening as we speak. And im an oldsp man but im doing the best i can to live with it. Im not sure if i answered your question. [applause] any questions from the audience . I have a comment first. In 1964 as a freshman i was invited to go to tupelo to see john by us and then when i was there it had an interview with an asian south indian professor i am in mississippi teaching american democracy to kids who have never experienced it right here in mississippi. So in wondered if that is in your book the rule that to invite people like that because it was a time that was borrowed with the youth being exposed to the dedicated space. Going back to 1837 even now is there is a dedicated space that wasnt justto the educators and administrators but innovators and scholars and those who visited campus to idchallenge students conception of themselves. The idea to stay and w eb to avoid the famous story of mine when he does the black Power Movement with one of the students that i interviewed was the smoke resistance but it was not a bubble. We and then to stay on to say that are critical to shape and mold the young folks they agree in. With freedom and democracy and justice, educators. Just after that event my uncle told me you better be careful because you are on the listis. Most of my life in mississippi but a great deal of memphis. While at Mississippi State theca first africanamerican was enrolled there and from Clemson University worked in Race Relations division with memphis tennessee and then created the office to address and a subject that has always been near and dear to me but i can see what ought not to be there. But i personally supervise at the museum to say i saw this andsa that see a plaque on the wall the two men that were lynched and i found the connection to from back in the twenties. But i kept saying to myself as i came back the second time i sat down in so many ways. That is history. I did miss some of them. Sure. But it is history. I cant have a say i dont want to get political but this is a very troublesome time in the state of mississippi with the election of the next governor so i pray there are enough openminded white people who can join hands and nott look back but to look to today because they brought the opportunity to vote. Now is the time to see if we will float. Because we can change this by changing one person at a time. But there are key positions that are here now that if we can make a definite impact on these positions it would change the state and if you change mississippi you can change. Thank you for this opportunity i thank you foror your book and for what you have done in your writing, and i will continue to get into the minds of many people but i hope it will be that spur that many need in order to vote to make their difference. [applause] to have the pleasure to have you as an educator when i was in seventh grade and eighth grade and now you areh here so can you explain the journey from a School Administrator in the Independent School here in mississippi to a book writer . In one minute. Working at the mississippi Civil Rights Movement im very proud of him and the work he is doing. Thank you for the question. As a mentioned i grew up the schoolol and graduated there went there from kindergarten through 12th grade and then after college i was associate head of the middle school and then trying to figure out whether or not and wanted to do a phd in education or history of my questions are largely about education and access to opportunity and under what conditions and i wanted to focus combine black education with desegregation and everything i read talks about desegregation at the academy and i wanted to see what black students were in the story who in the 21st atcentury is the and westminster became the perfect case study and a national Independent School leader this is the basic significance of my dissertation. Soof now tenure and associate professor. [applause] so most of us in history draw on our experiences as a first book. To transform the elite black students into private schools and to push forward. Thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] obviously enjoy having us around i really believe despite his constant comments about fake news in the media i really feel he enjoys having us around because it helps drive his message and the news of the day which he does every day. He constantly drives t message and having us around allows him to do that. The deep state 15 surprising dangers you should know. How do you define the deep state . It is not just what most people consider to be the government or government bureaucrats its far greater than that many people say there is no deep state but i believe that there is an historically we find from the beginning of government there has been a deep state and in my book i go to where the word came from