The book festival. Im sorry. Along with robbie. Robbie, take it away from the venue in the lobby. So glad to see such a wonderful audience and its my pleasure to introduce our esteemed panelists today. I will start with dr. Eddie glaude. Eddie glaude is the James Mcdonald distinguished University Professor and chair of the department of africanamerican studies at princeton university. Hes the former president of the American Academy of religion, the largest professional organization of scholars of religion in the world. Hes the author of several important books, including his most recent work that were here to talk about today. Begin again, James Baldwins america and its urgent for our own times. He is a columnist, Time Magazine and a regular msnbc contributor, as well as he makes frequent appearances on meet the press on sunday. He hails from multiple mississippi and is a grad grad. The mississippi homeless. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in atlanta, georgia. And we are glad. Welcome you home about globe amani perry, the hughes rogers professor of africanamerican, also at princeton university. She is a prolific author. I dont know how you find the time to write the books that you write and the time they come out works, including looking for lorraine, the radiant radical life of Lorraine Hansberry barry, the letter to my sons vexing thing on gender and liberation. May we forever stand a history the black National Anthem and for our purposes today, south to america, a journey below the mason dix line to understand soul of a nation. Dr. Is a native of birmingham, alabama, lives outside philadelphia with her three signs. I got some alabama here to write. Dr. Gray i do want to note i want to you back to the mississippi book festival for, the First Time Since 2018. I will tell you, i couldnt help but notice in your book that mentioned when you were here, you were a little happy. The book festival because of our claim to Margaret Walker being a mississippian she gives she she absolutely was born in birmingham she did live in jackson for nine years. James kirchick has written about human politics and culture from around the a columnist for tablet magazine, a writer at large for air mail and, a nonresident senior fellow at the atlantic council. He is the author of several books, the end of europe dictators, demagogues and the coming dark age and secret the history, the Hidden History of gay washington. Kirchick work has appeared in the new york times, the washington post, the wall street journal, the atlantic and new york review of books. He, a graduate of yale with the marines and history of political science. He lives in washington dc today and jamie, you know, youre up here with southerners on this panel, but we will be happy to welcome you in. But ill also say we have three yalies on this panel up here. So for for myself and dr. , i also say i notice you the late great Robert Thompson on your book. I took his art history class where we took classes and lessons and capoeira and you know studied the beautiful graffiti on new york city subway trains and Everything Else but in a music man mind blowing. But thats of course were here talk about them and talk about their books. Welcome, everyone, to reshaping Public Discourse. As i mentioned, i do want to thank friends at the mississippi humanities council, the center for the study of southern culture at the university of mississippi for sponsoring this panel. You were told by your Trustee Program that quote, panelists used the written word to explore the negative impact of the First Amendment right to free speech can have on specific groups and the positive potential for civil. By way of disclaimer, i will say i did not have anything to do with writing that description. I and im not entirely sure what was intended by of the organizers, the whole read ahead of shaping discourse much less kind of whats meant by the negative impact of free speech. I do know that the good folks who organized the book festival and this panel in particular were well and knew what to avoid trying to be a little bit too didactic here per the admonition of my good friend and first lady of the city of jackson, doctor everly lumumba. I talked to her about this panel. She she warned me against. So what i really want to do is talk about your work and, what youve written in this beautiful which differ dramatically in terms of style and subject, but think carry a through line that may help us in a roundabout way get to what the organizers of this panel hoped that we would might accomplish. Most of all, im just interested in the books and i hope as we go along, each of you will feel comfortable enough to jump in at any point. But dr. Perry, i thought i would start with you and youre really amazing. But there is a real lyricism to it that resonates with me. And honestly, in a similar way. The club with your book and dr. Clarke, you talk a lot about studying the craft of writing, right . When you wrote begin again, but both begin again in south america. Feel like to me that part of a really incredible literary tradition in the american south, especially in mississippi, with writers that you pay homage to amani like jason laymon, anne moody and jesmyn ward, Margaret Walker. And im note here too, that you seem to have a special fondness on this for our capital city of jackson, but the south is, of course, the focus your book. Theres a i think a beautiful and even kind of treacherous navigation here as you explore place and language, family and labor and food and gender and and you guide us this maze as you literally and metaphorically the south. And the idea of the south, which you contextualize central to the American Experience and central to a Global Experience really. You assert that there are south spiral as much as singular, despite your deep south bias, and that the Southern Region of the United States has both shaped the world and filled by it. Can you talk about this and the south . Well, thank you for such a lovely introduction introduction. Ill start. You know, heres an event that that is really its its not the heart speaks to what i was trying do. So every time some theres some sort political bad news, right. That appears to come out of the south and you go on social media, you see a litany of people saying, cant they just have states seceded . Cant we throw away south . Lets just forget about them. Right. And it is a repetition, this account of the south, that the south is a place that is backwards, that its other than its shameful. And i think that and and so, yeah, theres a part of me that is began the book as a refusal of that obviously but also to understand what people are doing in that moment. Right. Because the south is expected to character really to carry to tote the nations dirty water. Right. Because it was the site right is the site of the creation of the country as such. And so we tell National Mythology if you want to tell the romanticized National Mythology, then you cant tell the story of the beginning. And i went to school in massachusetts. Right . I Plymouth Rock was the beginning. Right. And thats not a not just not not 1619 but not rolling hills. And we with florida were going back even a hundred years earlier than 16, 19 or 16. Okay. Right. Were about european encounter this imagination that were going to come to this place and get, you know, find the fountain of youth work extraordinary. Well right. And were going to encounter abundance and do something with it. Right. And so and be to destroy communities and lives and to crime peoples lives down into near almost nothing in this of accumulation right. And so this desire, the imagination and to the greed right that thats thats an origin story. Right. And so and so part of so the book is an effort to correct a miscasting of the origin story and the desire to push the south out of the National Narrative because it actually requires you to tell the origin story. Right. Which also in which it emanate, which includes in violent encounters with the indigenous, of course includes slavery, although that was a national institution, etc. , etc. Right so for two way to tell that story accurately in, a way that is not just to make people think but also to allow it to resonate, not simply, okay, were going to go to the Historic Sites and, the events, and were going to tell a linear story. I wanted to i wanted readers to feel it with their feet right as i walked through right. And in encounters the resonance between human beings idiosyncrasies the desire for sugar sweet things to soften the blows right of life was. You know thats thats what motivates. So the structure is actually about rather patient intimacy and the way that every where you stand in the south there are layers and layers of stories underneath you. And more than that, history underneath. Yeah, right. And dont blow too many ways in your book explores this this narrative this need to kind of reconnect your lives. Our historic narrative. I read a quote you where i read an interview with you where you quoted baldwins the white mans guilt. And you said as he said it, is the history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities and our aspirations and. Its with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this in great pain and terror, one begins to assess the history is placed. One where one is in form, ones point of view. And you tell us in your own book that the american idea is indeed in trouble. It should be. Weve told ourselves a story, secures our virtue and protects from our biases. We have to look back, tell a different story without the crutch. Myths and legends about. How we have arrived at this moment of more reckoning in the countrys history. Whats the story we should be telling . How do we reimagine this history . First of all, thank you for that wonderful introduction, and its a delight be on this panel, you guys to be home. Even though jacksons is a far. I remember i was telling professor is my first time coming to jackson was Walking Around like this its so big for in some ways its an of what professor perry just said and that is that stories should involve kind of serious encounter with what weve done that is that has in fact shaped who we are. And so the story of the nation is one not just simply of, you know, articulating grand principles of of democracy, but its a story of violence, um, of cruelty. Its a story in which, um, a certain idea whiteness has threatened choke the life out of those very that have been so that are so precious. Its a part, you know, americas not unique. And as a nation in telling itself an idealized story thats what nations do thats what nationalism. But i think part of what baldwin saw at as i read him is that you the potential uniqueness of this place is that we offer an opportunity. Imagine the country, you know, in a way that isnt beholden to the myths of other nation state formations. Right. That we could actually be different. And so part of what tried to do is that we have to confront who we are. We have to do our first work. So far. We have to confront the choices weve made that have set us upon this particular path as opposed to another. And it makes sense that in those moments where were grappling with who we are, with grappling our history, moments where it seems as if we are on the cusp of being differently, that the question of the stories we tell ourselves about who we are suddenly come to the. So theres a reason i. See a connection, a relationship. The january six insurrection and the critique. Critical race theory. I see a connection between the rise of trumpism, right and the the wholesale resistance to attempts to take down confederate monuments. The south right. There is a sense in this moment that the stories tell ourselves must confront are innocence. And so part of what i was trying to do at the beginning, again, is to grapple with through this an ongoing with baldwin, who was a resource queer man who dared to say what he said in the time that he said it was. What does it what will it require of us to finally grow the up and make it you know, and so i use this quick analogy, right. Quick. You know, you have that you have that uncle, the family that refuses to dress like hes hes age. You im a date myself. Come to the picnic gauchos. Even though garcia is related that i just dated myself. Those shorts that come right the waist right below the knee right. And you know, they refuse grow up and and part of what happens with perpetual perpetual adolescence is you actually become monstrous because you refuse to deal with the reality the hard reality of life. And so i think the country close to adolescence because it thinks thats the only way it can maintain its innocence. So begin again with my attempt to kind of get at the heart of that because i was dealing with the fact that my dad is daddy and my mothers mother had to go through this. And now my son will have to go through this. And white folks thinks its okay and folks think its all right. And i wanted to just speak directly to it, if that makes sense. It does and i would say this was like what i use the word white folk im talking at a certain level of generality to invoke James Baldwin. He makes a distinction. I happen to love a lot of people who happen to be white. And then theres white folks with their advertisements. No, you know that. And you talk about whiteness as a choice. Right. And the repercussions of whiteness a choice and what that means. I will say you mentioned Critical Race Theory that theres a friend and audience, mr. Bob gordon, who i told was going to get a shout out while i was here. I know that hes here. In fact, over there he works for an Organization Called the alluvial collective hard to give a talk about Critical Race Theory. And he said something that really moved me about our children and about this narrative. And he said, maybe its okay if our children are uncomfortable with the past because that might indicate they have a moral compass. And so doing their work is powerful, but mr. Kirchick, of all the works your book is most specifically rooted an argument about the First Amendment and the right to free speech. I read another article you wrote that entitled the First Amendment created gay america. And in some ways, i think might argue that some of the most leaning elements of the Lgbtq Movement has at times taken the right to free speech too far, and maybe even betrayed some of what brought about the greatest advancements in movements. Can you just kind of explore that where the First Amendment kind of runs through your book and that those for some of those sort. My book is about a people who were among the most despised groups in this country gay and lesbian people who in my book begins in the roosevelt administra nation are illegal. Homosexuality illegal in every state in the country. It is deemed a medical disorder by the medical establishment. Gay people gay men in particular would be institutionalized chemically castrated, lobotomized, subjected to all sorts of medical torture and homosexuality. Deemed immoral from the pulpits of all of our major religions. You couldnt even really utter the word homosexual duality. It was a sort of unspoken sin. It was so awful. And in fact, i write about the first outing in american politics, which happened in 1942, and the majority leader of the senate referred to crime. The senator was accused of being an offense, an offense to loathsome to mention in the presence of ladies and gentlemen thats how homosexuality was treated. And politically, because my book is about washington dc and federal power and the white house and the executive branch and congress and this was the worst secret that you could have in the city that ran on secrets were secrets were a form of currency and still are in many ways to be gay. The worst thing you could possibly be it was worse even being a communist, even at the height of the cold war and era america, the communists could repent. The communists could become ex communist. If in fact. Some of the most important leaders of the american conservative were ex communists. A homosexual was barred forever from participating in public life. And so my book tracks we got from that period in American History when gay people had to live in a closet, you could not even identify yourself as being a part of this to now where we are today, where a majority of americans support gay marriage, including a majority of republicans. That was the first time last year poll found with an openly gay man serving in the cabinet for the first time. Something i would have thought unimaginable not so long ago. And i think Free Expression so central to this story because none of this progress would have been possible without it demonstrating outside white house in 1965, the gay rights demonstration in america it happened four years before stonewall were all familiar with the stonewall uprising. Less, less. People know that there was a picket modeled on the africanamerican Civil Rights Movement marches, a peaceful picket outside the white house in 1965. None. This would have been possible in the very act of coming out is one of expression. It is. It is saying to your loved ones and your your friends and family and to the world that, you know, i have been living a lie and im not going to live this lie anymore. Im going to tell you the truth about myself. And so i find Free Expression. So so fundamental to the to gay experience and really for all groups, its hard to imagine any progress possible