The entire black community was burned to the ground so the only what sparked that riot . A young black man who was accused of assaulting, a sexually assaulting a white woman in an elevator. He had been acquitted. But the White Community felt justice had not been served. And that most of the white people felt all the blocks should be taught a lesson. Although he had been in jail and was being accused of this crime. The white people said they would get him out of jail and commit the kind of harm to him that would teach all the black people in the community a lesson. So the black Community Felt he would be seized and lynched. Large numbers of black people went back to the courthouse, armed. They were about to take him and give him protection when they were assured nothing would happen to him. And that they should go back to that part of town. Which they were willing to do but as they retreated from the courthouse. Someone fire the gun and the rest is history. Good afternoon and welcome to in depth. Our guest is john hope franklin. Author and coauthor of 17 books. Well known for his book, from slavery to freedom. His most recent is his autobiography. Near to america. Here is the cover of it. We will begin taking your calls in just a few minutes. You can see the number on the screen. Here is a question of your mother, molly franklin. What did she do . My mother was a graduate of and she taught literary school. In the spring in oklahoma. And then in tulsa, sorry readers will where i was born. Shortly after i was born, i suppose within three years, she took charge of me and took me to school with her every day. Put me in the back of the room. Give me a pencil and paper and told me to be quiet. I was quiet. She thought i would just be scratching on the paper. And she was teaching the children and had the alphabet on the board. So i copied those things on the board. Things like that. I thought that was more interesting than anything i could do. When she was going around one day to see what the children were doing. She came back to see what i was doing and i have the alphabet and my letters and some simple sentences. She was astounded to learn i had taken in everything she was teaching. And im not certain when i learned to read and write but i guess it was at that time that i learned to read and write. From that point on, i was a student. How real was it to be an africanamerican in 1915 and have to parents that were College Graduates . I dont know, i suppose it was fairly rare. The africanamerican colleges and universities founded in the reconstruction were scattered throughout the southern states. And the last part, the last decade of the 19th century, statesupported schools, particularly after ferguson. The law that brought an end to whatever move was made in the direction of whites and blacks being together. Uson. 32of 3334this separated races entirely and completely. States began to establish schools, colleges for africanamericans in the last decade of the 19th century. And so, by that time, youve got state schools, and schools established by their religious denominations and and they are 39scattered throughout the south. Some of them are fairly good and others were borderline i think its fair to say. And many were inferior. But you didnt have large numbers of blacks going to colleges from secondary school. And it was rather remarkable. You had a very interesting point because it bears on what happened many decades later. And that is that more young black women were going to College Young black men. Then men could fend for themselves parents believed. But young black girls could not fend for themselves in a world that was primarily a white world where they could become exploited. Become victims of white activity or exploitation or whatever. Uch more care was taken educating the young black women. This is a trend that will continue for many decades to see. There was never a time as many black men were exposed to education in terms of Higher Education as young black women. Your grandparents were slaves . My grandparents were slaves. My grandfather and grandmother on my mother side were slaves. In tennessee. And my grandmother and my grandfather and my father side were slaves in mississippi. And they were transported to indian territory where my grandfather as a young man grew up. He married my grandmother. He became, after freedom, he became a rancher. The indian territory i got hooked on orchids. When i was at the university of hawaii. I came back i was living in brooklyn. And i came back. Bought a few orchids. I was headed north. There i in brooklyn. Thats when i really got started then. I had a good friend called [indiscernible] he taught me a he had a botanical collection of orchids at the brooklyn botanical garden. He taught me a great deal about growing orchids. He went to chicago from there and had a much larger greenhouse. And i grew up about 15 years. And then i came to in 1980 and built my first really substantial hobby greenhouse. And its sort of my dream greenhouse. Although sometimes i want a larger one. Anything larger than 17 feet wide and 24 feet long, you will become a slave to the orchids. Although i do grow and i have some some ferns and so forth. Down here. And banana trees. All kinds of things. Primarily orchids. These are all orchids, not blooming now but they are orchids. They are getting ready to bloom. I have orchids blooming all the time. These have been blooming for a year, nonstop. I dont know, its really remarkable. Even i a. M. Enjoying that long. This is not in our good. It blooms all the time and i enjoy it so much. Where do you acquire these orchids . Sometimes i brought some of these in from abroad. You can get a permit from the epartment of agriculture and get some from brazil and some from the far east. Southeast asia. Some from the caribbean. You know, all over. The good thing about coming into the green house every day, you see something today that you didnt see yesterday. I got this in bombay in 1976. It blooms every year. It will be blooming in february. Been taking care of that for 30 years. Yes. As a matter of fact, ive ive got offspring out of it too. It sends out little plants, break them off and put them in a pot. Thats how they start. Yeah, so the orchid i brought from bombay, india in 1976. This is which is getting ready to send out its new leaves. Its new shoots. This little fellow will grow up to be like these and then it will be blooming. He mayor of baltimore gave me this. When i was there a few months ago. Its not blooming now but it was full bloom then. This is the orchid named for me. Its called lily of Franklin John hope franklin. These are named for my wife. They were developed by a place in south carolina. Newberry, south carolina. They were friendly and very fond of my wife. When she passed away, they wanted to do something in her memory. And they did that. Do think its an important thing for a historian to have a hobby like this . I think its important for any person to have a hobby. Orchid growing is always challenging. You learn a lot. If a person didnt have a scientific botanical background, its always fascinating. Im enthralled by the orchids. Ive always been interested in growing things. My mother was a gardener. She likes to grow things and i follow her around when i was a little boy. So this is a continuation of that. Writer who had the greatest impact was free to kayak. Did you know him . Oh yeah, sure. Very well. I first met him in 1946 i think. I knew him until he died. Why was that book so important . It was not simply the road to it was the other books he wrote. Constitution of liberty. Law and legislation. It was because it helped me organize my thoughts about the way in which society should be organized about what was special about free society. What were the essential prerequisites of a free society. I was generally sympathetic to those ideas but was a very but hayek was a very deep thinker. If you read him, you cant read him without thinking. And you cant think without having your basic ideas honored. When did he die . Im not sure of the exact date. Must have been 1015 years ago. Something like that. He was born and i think 1986 and he lived too, i think the age of 90. Who in your lifetime have you most disagreed with when it came to economic theory and this whole subject matter you write about . Thats a hard question, obviously the marks and the socialists. But to pick out a single name, would be i should mention, the people that influenced me of the equally greater influence was arthur burns. Who was chair of the Federal Reserve system. He was my teacher when i was a graduate at rutgers university. He was my mentor through much of my life and had an enormous influence on me. And of course my teachers in chicago. Frank knight. Those people had a great influence on me. In your book, the two lucky people. Your autobiography. You mention the whole discussion for the nobel prize that you won. It took a number of years for you to get it. What impact did that have on you . It really didnt. I cant say it did. What about once you got it . The impact was not on me. But on the publicity and on the letters and talk and requests you get. I dont think you have much impact on the as a person. But it did alter my opportunities and made me much more visible and available. For the last two hours, your husband has all the. Say. He usually does. I heard it all. I never like to talk very much. He does the talking. Why is that . I dont know. Its in my genes. And i had an equal role in writing it. But i never thought id go out to speak about it and i refuse to be on the Television Program. I was very careful i did a lot of the planning. Nothing was done in advance. Then i got out of the way. Do you have any reason why you dont like to speak . No. I dont really like to compete. He speaks well. Hes done it all his life so why should i compete with him . I asked him why it has worked. Thats one of the reasons. Weve never competed with one another. What about economics in your life . I was trained fine. 28when we got married, my idea of being married, at least at the very beginning was very different than what people these days feel about getting married. What was it . I did not attempt to have a career to equal my husbands. And where did your family come from . My family came from what was russia when we were there. Its now its not russia anymore. Its the ukraine i guess. I never really kept much track of what happened because i was an infant when i left and i really have no ties to that part of the world. Where did you grow up . In portland, oregon. How did your parents get there . Under what circumstance . I guess the main reason was our relatives were there. My father came to the United States twice. The second time, he earned enough money to send for the rest of us. You went to the college for a couple years. Why did you transfer . Primarily because my brother was really responsible for my 07 complete education. He wanted me to go with him to chicago when he first went to their on a very modest fall every modest salary. My mother thought i was too young and she wouldnt let me leave. And i graduated from high school. My brother persuaded her that i was old enough and that he was going to be there. So i went to chicago. Do you remember the first time you met this man . Yes i do. University in the first graduate course. Professor you heard this story so many times probably. He arranged the class alphabetically so he could identify people. His name began with f and mine with d. So we sat next to each other. His was graduate school. In the 30s, very few women went into graduate school. You told me briefly that you completed the work for your doctorate but didnt get your phd. Thats right. Why not . Why not. I worked on it for one year after we were married but during that year i also had a job. So i didnt get a great deal done. After that we moved around from one place to another. One year in wisconsin, one year in and washington and one year in new york. I forget what the sequence was. We decided we wanted to have a family and that took a long time. How many kids . Only two but we lost the first one. You had three. First one was lost at delivery. So that took one year of my life. Then i went back to washington and went to work again and quit with the hopes that would help to produce a child. Where are your two children today . Our daughter has been in california. Both are in california at last. Ever since she went to berkeley. She decided then she was never going to leave california and she never has. Then she went to Berkeley Law School and got her degree there and started practicing in san francisco. As a matter of fact. We were not here yet. And she stayed here. Your son david, weve had on book notes. He was in the chicago for about 56 years. We are going to the phones shortly and our guests here on booktv are doctor Milton Friedman and rose friedman. Also here on the cover of free to choose which i guess is your most successful. Yes. What do you remember about working together on this book . It was very easy. As milton has a very said. We had the Television Program notes. And the book was written from that. So we each started with one chapter and added for the next person to the chapter. So we went back and forth that way. So in the end, we really dont know who wrote which words. Which is true about all the books weve written. That was probably finished in the shortest time because we had a deadline for it. We wanted out to be available for the Television Program, when it was shown. And so we started in march 1979 and we got it to the publisher by labor day. And they got us published by january which is when the tv program started. When youre working on these projects, what does she do that you dont what does key do that you dont . We both type. We both use the computer now. We talked about aging. Both of you 80 years old. Are you surprised how well you do. For those that cant see these two people, they move a well move around like nobody else. Many say we are bouncing around. I dont think we bounce around. I dont have the energy i used to have. Getting old is no fun. Is there any advice for people if they knew they would live to 88. If you knew you would live this long, would you have done anything differently . I think live more extravagantly. We were always saving up pennies. My brother used to say we were always saving pennies for a rainy day that never came. He would say youre saving your pennies for a rainy day and living in a perpetual drizzle. Did you agree in the beginning . We learned from the same teachers. Our home, he grew up very much in the same kind of home. And there was no reason, one should go one way and the other should go the other way. Go ahead please. New orleans, you are next. Hello. Hello doctor friedman. Which doctor friedman . Either of them. Ive a question ive been wanting to ask someone knowledgeable about this situation for a long time. It seems to me with all this push for a minimum wage that thats going to automatically lead to galloping inflation. I havent heard anyone comment on this. Its just my own idea. What do you think . Lets ask rose friedman. The question is whether or not the minimum wage will lead to galloping inflation if you raise it. I dont think it will lead to inflation but a lot of unemployment. Why . Because people for hiring these people dont feel they can pay them more. Therefore, they would reduce their employees. At this time in washington, there is a sense that theyre a sense that they are going to pass an increase. Why are the republicans going to go along with this . Theyre going along with everything these days. Because its superficially politically profitable. The problem with these things, is that on the surface things look very good. After all, whats wrong with raising minimum wage. Its nice for people to have a higher minimum wage. The problem is the indirect effects which are unseen. The unseen more than counterbalance the good. If you raise the price, you will buy less of it. Whether its sugar, automobiles, whatever. The higher the price, the less people will buy. If wages are higher, people will buy less wages. Now how will that lead to inflation . There is truth to what this gentleman is saying. An element of truth. If you raise in which to much and cause massive unemployment, heyll be great pressure to do something about that unemployment. What would that pressure lead to . It would lead to inflation as a way of really reducing the real value of that minimum wage. Prices have been going up. You havent had much inflation but youve had 35 percent over the last few years. So, 6. 15, two years from now is probably about the same level of real minimum wage of 5. 15. This week in place, in place of a live callin program, weve opened up archives to present highlights from our monthly program, in depth. Next, heres a look at studs terkel that appeared in april 2001 to discuss his work and take calls from viewers. Your books are about people. How many have you interviewed over the years . Oh god. Thousands. 45 years, five days a week. And it was eclectic. All sorts of peoples. Writers, actors, authors. Neighborhood activists. There are tapes and ive given them to the Chicago Historical society. They call me, god forgive me, a distinguished fellow. Id say 900010,000 tapes, including people in books aside from radio broadcasts. And tony parkers book about you, you are quoted as saying [indiscernible]. Einstein is celebrated, thats true. Theres no meaning to the word, celebrity. No point in interviewing them. O the ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things i found out. Whether you question world war ii or their daily work, matter of race, aging. In a sense, voice to the voiceless. My motto was a contemporary charles dickens. And henry was a prototype of mccarver. Mayhew a guy like me. This guy tapped into the voices of people who were the the chimney sweep, the seamstress, the chambermaid. He was astonished at what he found out. Hes a sort of my guide in a way. When alex wrote roots, the first thing he wants to do was visit the land of his forbearers in west africa and speak to all of the historians. God help us, the computer. So, what ive been doing is ancient except that i have a tape recorder. One guy with a tape recorder was richard dixon. I described nixon myself as hat is, i take, therefore i am. In any event, thats what i do. I give voice i suppose, to the voiceless. Where do you write . I write and i dont write. I improvise. At my house with a typewriter. Electric typewriter which is a tremendous advance for me. Most of my letters are written long hand. You mentioned computer to me, thats what you said . Im sort of a i believe in the refrigerator because where else can i freeze my martini glass. I was saved by technology. I had a quadruple bypass about four years ago. Were it not for that, id be dead and here i a. M. Condemning technology. I have a hearing aid. This is stat