i really could, like, walk into a grocery store and probably i really could like walk into a grocery store and probably finde five in a single like outing to walmart, so is very rich with students who had lived that experience and from various perspectives.at i reall the thing i realize when i i started interviewing was that there are so made different perspective there can ever thought about what life might look like for a kid who was five when the schools closed, so when i met those students i thought i should passed a wider net. it was amazing to meet someone that was not able to start their education until they were 10 years old and was pushed throug school in seven years and frustrated many teachers. that was a totally different experience from these kids who quit to school at 13 or 14 through no fault of their own, but because of school closures, so i did my best to cast a wide net and figure out what some of the main themes of the stories were and i have to say that narrowing down the stories and taking a few to focus on was one of the saddest parts of the book because i wanted to include all of the stories. i felt they were all meaningful, so that was like a great joy and great sadness in working with the book was having them share these stories that many had not even shared with their own family members. thank you for having me. i really appreciate it,. [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at books being published in this week. nobel prize-winning economist joseph stiglitz explores the shortcomings of the european union and its shared currency in : the euro. and capital offenses, duke university law professor investigates the difficulties in prosecuting white-collar crime. talk radio host market davis argues against liberal thinking in upside down. also being released this week, the rest i will kill, in which historian brian mcatee recalls william tillman's fight in 1861, to free his ship from confederate privateer speared jane hampton cook looks at the lead up and aftermath of the war of 1812, in the burning of the white house. and inborn bright, see-- nicole mason executive director for the center for research and policy and public interest recalls how she overcame poverty during her childhood to become a successful writer and scholar. look for these titles and bookstores this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on book tv. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon. my name is kendra leitner and a member of the archives staff at the franklin d roosevelt library and museum and on behalf of the library and museum i would like to welcome you to the 2016 roosevelt reading festival. is the premier research institution for that studying of the entire roosevelt area. the research room is consistently one of the busiest of all the presidential libraries in this groups of authors reflects a wide variety of research done here. if you love the roosevelt reading festival and want to support this and other great programs i encourage you to become a member of the roosevelt library and please consider joining us for our 75th anniversary programming later this month. you can learn more about membership and events at ww .-dot fdr library.org. let me go over the format for the festival concurrent session pickup at happy hour a session begins with a 30 minute author talks fall of a 10 minute question and answer time. been on the-- author will move to the table in the lobby or you can purchase your books and have the author simon. at the top of the next hour the process repeats itself. if you have a question please use the microphone and the author will call on you if you have questions. now smite pleasure to introduced marlene trestman took marlene is author of "fair labor lawyer: the remarkable life of new deal attorney and supreme court advocate bessie margolin. she's now writing the history of new orleans she enforce consumer protection laws, covering tobacco, alcohol and twice earned exceptional service awards. for her writing she has funny from the national endowment for the humanities, brandeis institute, american jewish archives and a literary award from supreme court historical society. please join me in welcoming marlene trestman. [applause]. >> thank you. it's an honor to be here at the fdr library. it was not even a twinkle in my eye when i was researching here that one day i would be back to speak about the book, so i'm grateful and honored to be here. through a life that spanned the 20th century, bessie margolin made her mark on the biggest issues of her day. she served on the brilliant legal team that descended the constitutionality of fdr's new deal tennessee valley authority. she drafted rules for the nazi war crimes trial and for more than three decades she championed the fair labor standards act, ultimately including the equal pay act. she was also a founder of the national organization for women known as now. entrusted with the labor department litigation, she presented 24 arguments at the supreme court, one of only three women in the 20th century to do so and she prevailed in 21 of them. for 20 years solicitors general assigned those arguments to her and she was the last labor department lawyer to receive that distinction. she began her legal career in 1930, when only 2% of america's lawyers for women. she served in the federal government under six presidents from fdr to nixon and nine labor secretaries starting with frances perkins. she received every award the labor department offered and by 1963 was promoted to associate solicitor, the labor department's top nonpolitical legal position. in short, before there was a notorious are bg as a justice ginsburg has been effectually called, there was an audacious best c margolin. after retiring in 1972, however, she faded from the public record. it's not hard to understand why she deserves to be rescued from obscurity, but i would like to explain how i came to the task. in the fall of 1974, i was a freshman in baltimore, far from my home in new orleans. my high school guidance counselor had written margolin, a deceiver's alumna and from of 1925, the letter of introduction shown here. through college, law school and into my legal career, i got to know bessie margolin. she was the first female lawyer ever met and we were connected by common childhood experiences. bessy and i were words of the same southern jewish children's welfare agency, which educated as at its newman school, a half-century par. bessie margolin personified excellence in the law and in public service at a time when women attorneys were discouraged if not outright presented from pursuing opportunities available to men. while protecting the rights of millions of american workers, she also advanced the careers about-- calais government lawyers and employees, many of whom sought out her prestigious and demanding tutelage. the late simon cellblock who was chief judge of both maryland court of appeals and the federal court circus and the former solicitor general offered only to suggestions for lawyers seeking a career in federal appellate practice. they should work in either the office of the solicitor general, naturally, or the office of bessie margolin. i would like to share her journey from beneficiary of social justice to its powerful advocate and along the way i will offer just a few examples of the wonderful resources here at the fdr library that enabled me to understand bessie margolin journey. these were resources that preserve the needles of her remarkable life amid the archival hair step-- haystacks of more celebrated individuals. bessy was born in 1909, in brooklyn new york, the first american-born daughter of russian jewish immigrants. from there to escape new york's top and credit conditions her family made its way to memphis tennessee. about a year after giving birth to a third child, bessy's mother died leaving bessy's father alone to care for his three very young children. apply a check to the attention of a memphis rabbi who petitioned the jewish orphans home in new orleans to accept the children as half orphans. in 1913, the orphanage admitted bessy at age four and her siblings. proclaimed a magnificent monument to hebrew benevolence, the home, as it was known, that prominently on st. charles avenue near the stately mansions of new orleans most prosperous citizens. it was both a stunning contrast to the humble origins of its young residence and uninspiring similar to each of them could and many of them did achieve. in the home bessy grew up with more than 150 other orphans-- orphans from drought the deep south. its trustees were not content to provide them with mere subsistence. instead, the home groomed bessy is an all-american girl to shed honor of the local jewish community and reflected the values and culture of her prosperous benefactors. in addition to a religious education in reform judaism, which preached and modeled social justice, the home provided bessy a robust secular education at the isidore newman manual training school for the cutting edge curriculum emphasized manual skills like home economics and work-- woodworking as well as rigorous academics care. the home built this unique school to educate its wars, but also admitted new orleans children of all religion whose parents paid tuition. newman quickly became what it remains today, one of the south's finest college prep schools and their bessie excelled in every subject. she graduated from newman in 1925, as a 16-year old leader who is comfortable in a coed setting competing, succeeding and when you respect decides leading the debate club and girls a student council bessie was valedictorian and when the scholarship to attend new come college, tulane university college for women. bessie spent two years at new come ranking among the top 10 in her class, but the audacious bessie wanted more. bessie decided to attend law school, something no other girl from the orphanage have ever done. as tulane law school's only woman at the time, bessie felt isolated and self-conscious, but she and her male classmates soon adjusted to each other. when a professor assigned a case involving an accident in a man's bathroom, no one wanted to recite the backs of the case because they were embarrassed to use the word toilet in mixed company. when one poor fellow finally blurted out the word washroom they all sighed with relief. in june, 1930, at age 21 bessie completed her liberal arts and law studies with honors in only five years. she graduated second in her law school class and was editor of the bar review. tulane law school dean, rufus harris, urged gail law school deans charles clark to higher bessie or award her a fellowship for graduate studies. clark found bessie worthy of a job, but refused to consider her for a fellowship because he did not want to encourage her to pursue a career teaching law that to simple he did not exist for a woman. harris assured to clark that bessie was in his words quote and levelheaded girl who knew some things in this world must be taken as they are, or so he thought. with her fate determined by the two deans, bessie accepted a research position with gail law professor ernest lorenz and, an expert in comparative law and complex. while in new haven, bessy and press both lorenz and and a wildly popular young faculty member, william o douglas, the future supreme court justice. with their help, bessie overcame dean clark's earlier opposition and she became the first woman awarded yale sterling fellowship for graduate study. with her jailed doctorate bessy moved to washington for a new opportunity. she applied for a job at the tennessee valley authority, which congress had just created to realize fdr's new deal vision of supplying electricity to the valley's most impoverished residents. among her letters of recommendation, professor lorenz and won't what apparently convinced them to fire-- pirates first woman lawyer or bessie was intent on a legal career as a primary objective from which she would not be deflected by considerations of marriage. bessie thus began her federal government career with a pledge that she would be married to her job instead of a man. fearing competition, public utility companies hurled charges of socialism that quickly turned into lawsuits. to defend this new deal cornerstone, tva hired james lawrence fly, a harvard law graduate and experienced trial lawyer from the justice department. fly made bessie a key member of tva brilliant legal team. to landmark supreme court cases that established the legality of tva's power program and later the tennessee electric power company overshadowed tva's legal work in those early years and bessie researched, prepared witnesses and materially shaped the brief in both cases. in her another tva work, she negotiated contracts and got courtroom experience in condemnation cases despite fierce resistance for a woman lawyer from local attorneys, judges and even witnesses. bessie won the respect of her tva colleagues including herbert f marx, pictured in the top left of the group photo who would go on to serve as general counsel to the atomic energy commission and whose papers researched here at the library. how did bessie feel about her chosen profession? in 1938, she shared her thoughts and her sorority magazine. law is still too greatly restricted for women with considerable prejudice against them, she wrote. she offered this no-nonsense advice: a woman attorney must manage to be accepted and treated as another man and it must be willing to take responsibility, criticism and hard work in the same spirit as do the men attorneys. she must aim to become one of the men, without however, becoming masculine or overly aggressive in her approach. bessie practiced which she preached throughout her career. in march, 1939, bessie joined the labor department where another great new deal program awaited enforcement. there, the fairly standards act of 1938 invoked federal commerce powers to prohibit child labor and to guarantee minimum wages in overtime. bessie was there as every new aspect of the law was tested. her first week she traveled home to new orleans, where she won a motion to squash a subpoena. by years end she returned to new orleans several more times on flsa manners including a supreme court bound lawsuit that challenged the minimum wage for textile workers, then 32 and half cents an hour. the new orleans press loved bessie's local orphan girl makes good story. one full-length photo shown here captures bessie in a pose more cheesecake than lawyerly. why wasn't she married the press wanted to know. the reporter recounted bessie's quick response this way. i haven't had time for love. and then she smiled, but i'm not immune. i'm just uncontaminated. doctor margolin brushed back a lock of soft black fair, so far she added. bessy's remark merit several notes. first, it was sweet tea like a line from a katherine hepburn movie, revealing bessie's passion for wordsmith three. second, she seemed neither defensive nor self-conscious about being single and third, it just wasn't true. i'm going to digress to discuss a topic i am often asked about about the personal life that it doesn't fit neatly within the confines of her career history precisely illustrates the challenges she faced as an ambitious professional woman of her time. during law school, bessie was engaged to her classmate, the dashing bob butler. she broke it off it relates 1933, surprising no one who knew her except perhaps poor bob. little did bob realize that his dream of marrying bessie was it doomed from the start. when he gave her a book inscribed, to my sweetheart bess, she inscribed the margins and blank pages of the very same book as you can see here with extensive passages from the genie awards recent feminist essay, a room of one's own extolling the importance of women having faith, literally be figuratively. then, there was larry fly, bessy's tva boss who is married with two children. there a fair was a secret. that's what colleagues, flies wife and even bessie told fly's daughter who is writing her fathers never finished biography remarkably, the romance did not appear flies a supervision of tva's lawyers who prays fly already one of the best a lot of apartments insider out of government, nor did any colleagues ever claim that fly favored bessie@tva with assignments or promotions she didn't merit. the romance, however had other consequences for marble in and fly who was appointed chair of the medications commission. in 1943, a georgia congressman, eugene cox, commandeered a congressional committee to investigate the fcc, accusing fly an agency of quote gestapo tactics to control the media and other un-american activities. cox's next to gators scrutinized bessy and flies tva travel vouchers shown here to uncover so-called honeymoon trips they took together at government expense and interrogated bessie's housekeepers, landlord, neighbors and coworkers. but, before cox ever questioned flight publicly about the affair congressman sam rayburn and lyndon johnson interceded. rayburn reportedly told cox and a quote there and going to be note sex in this investigation there's too damn many of us that are vulnerable on that score. [laughter] >> although cox obliged bessie romance with flycatcher servicing. in 1947, bessie membership in the national lawyers guild and other liberal groups raised a red flag so to speak for the government loyalty board, which referred the matter to the fbi. although, they uncovered no evidence of disloyalty fbi agents learned that bessie had been flies mistress, which they reported in her file. when bessie loyalty was again question in the 1950s, the charges were again dismissed, but only after the fbi revisited her file and her illicit love affair. the affair resurfaced one more time in the 1960s when president johnson considered bessie for a federal judge ship, responding to a name check request the fbi sent a memo to the white house summarizing its prior investigations including bessie illicit love affair from two decades earlier. there are at least three lessons, bessie should've learned from her romance with fly, don't get involved with the direct report, be very discreet and don't get involved with a married man. bessie heeded the first to two of these three lessons when she fell in love with bob janine, the well-respected general counsel to the interstate commerce commission. he was not her direct report. although, he was a professional colleague who argued a dozen more times at the supreme court then cheated and she was very discreet. friends and family were stunned when bessie announced in 1981, after bob's wife died that they planned to marry. stunned, not only because bessie and bob were both in their 70s and everyone figured bessie would never marry, but mostly because no one knew anything about the relationship, which had started two decades earlier. sadly, bob died in 1984 before he and bessy realized their plans for marriage. the drama of bessie personal life never impeded her work. in her early years at the labor department she paid her dues traveling-- reviewing timesheets in damp warehouses and traveling backroads to interview vegetable packers and log cutters. she organized the labor department's regional offices and trained to the regional attorneys. she began arguing and winning appeals in the circuit court and started working with the solicitor general office on cases headed for the supreme court. bessie high-quality work earned her recognition. solicitor general charles fahey, the future federal appellate judge whose papers are preserved here at the library was delighted with the supreme court brief she principally wrote in her help preparing him for his successful supreme court argument. when he learned that bessie had already argued in every federal circuit across the country he promised she could argue the next fair labor standards act case to go to the supreme court. in march, 1945, as only the 25th woman ever to argue at the supreme court, she argued phillips the william seeking to ensure that the act protected the warehouse employees of an interstate grocery store chain. after what must've been a lively argument justice robert jackson marked that location with a thoughtful note, the first of several he wrote to bessie over the years. i hope you are satisfied with the way the court argued your first case. in any event, you have every reason to feel satisfied with the way you to care of yourself under fire. i'm sure there would be no dissent from the opinion that you should argue here often. bessie when the case, establishing fair labor standards act exemptions must be narrowly construed. in 1945, alone bessy argued for more times at the supreme court and prevailed in three. these and the rest of the cases she argued followed-- in the rest of the cases she argued advanced the asked for military purposes i.e. extending coverage and restricting exemption to protect wage earners to the fullest that congress extended-- intended. when bessy presented her fourth and fifth supreme court argument justice jackson was not on the bench. he was in nuremberg at the us chief prosecutor for nazi war crimes, appointed by president truman just two weeks after fdr's death. of this new and exciting legal pursuit attracted bessie, who in may 1946, and to nuremberg to up organize the american military tribunal. for her six-month tour of duty the army's commanding officer acknowledged bessie's primary role in crafting the rules that govern the remainder of the nazi war crime trials of nearly 200 tier nazis including the judges, the doctors and the industrialists. in may, 194-- in december, 1946, bessie returned to the labor department to resume her work as a cystic solicitor. she epitomized a new post for ideal of a glamorous career girl , succeeding in a man's world of law. as depicted here in the january, 1948, issue glamour. been known as the magazine for the girl with a job. the glamour did not interfere with grit. by the time she retired in 1972, bessie had directed the preparation and review of approximately 600 supreme court and appellate briefs on the merit with an additional 150 or so petitions for review. most impressively, she principally briefed and personally argued 177 cases in both the supreme court and the circuit courts. of the 150 circuit court cases she argued, she obtain favorable ruling in 114. 114 out of 150. only one of which at the supreme court later reversed and it was argued by someone other than margot and. of the 36 cases she lost the supreme court later reversed seven in the government's favor, six of which she argued. bessie margolin was no great order, but she engaged the justices who respected her meticulous preparation and her encyclopedic knowledge of the fair labor standards act. and she was able to employ humor , something not often done with success at the supreme court. in this 1955, audio clip you will hear bessie spar with justice felix frankfurter in steiner the mitchell in which she successfully argued that battery plant workers whose job involves contact with toxic chemicals had a right to wages for the time they spent showering and changing clothes. although, you may not be able to hear everything he is saying, you will hear justice frankfurter's annoyance with congress for imposing on the court what he considered to be undue burdens of interpreting the act. @annoyance he frequently redirected at bessie. [inaudible] >> well, many times the courtship leaves the question for congress, not the court. congress is for 500 people had to get it to agreement on language and the court has just nine, which is enough. [laughter] [inaudible] >> well, i'm sure mr. justice frankford i don't need to tell you that language is not something that is easy to make clear. >> in this 1960 clip-- sorry. you will hear how comfortable bessie was with the justices, probing her questions, probing her positions and dissected her arguments. here you will hear her just plain having with the weight justice charles whitaker boarded one of his questions. >> an opportunity to straighten out the cord and i would like to want to show the other clear asic areas. [inaudible] >> pass this question, do you stand on your answer to the chief justice clement would you mean do i stand? i don't fall on either. [laughter] >> bessie when that case eight-one with justice whittaker providing the lone dissent and as per justice frankfurter, despite the ban are you hurt in the prior clip, bessie and he enjoyed a cordial relationship outside the courtroom. frank birder inscribed a copy of his book to her this way: four bessie margolin who pleases me more often than i threw no fault of mine, please her. in the early 1960s, bessie decided to pursue a federal judgeship. as a particularly audacious pursuit given the fact that there were only two women federal judges in the country. but, with enthusiastic support from congress, the supreme court in the labor department bessie's name was considered by lbj himself. is not clear what if any role bessie's affair with fly played into the decision, but she faced other hurdles. one male white house staffer criticized her fashion forward appearance as flamboyant and another opined that her age, 58, would tend to preclude her from consideration. by 1968, bessie had been passed over for 15 federal judicial vacancies are filled by men, seven older than she was. silver lining for bessie not getting the judgeship is that she remained at the labor department, promoted in 1963, to assist-- associate solicitor for trial but occasion, betsy developed a strategy and personally argued the first appeal under the equal pay act and the age discrimination in employment act. by the time she retired in 1972, bessie oversaw the filing of 300 equal pay act lawsuits in 40 states, ultimately recovery nearly $4 million for nearly 18000 employees and earning the title of the nation's number one fighter for equal pay for women. this is harder than a powerpoint. when such battle was scholz versus glass company, perhaps try ninth most important victory which one commentator like into a second brown versus board of education. margolin was able to convince the third circuit court of appeals to overrule a trial court and to establish a precedent that remained in existence till today that worked it only be substantially equal and not identical to warrant equal pay and are the act. the company, however, sought review from the supreme court or q will hear next at her retirement dinner in 1972, judge laurence silberman describing what happened next. >> as i told you the third circuit after argument was terrorized into decision, which to say the least sweeping in scope, i distinctly saw a footnote between the lines saying, we will give you anything you want please don't send her down again. [laughter] >> counsel for the other side petition and bessie and i discussed it. you could see the light in bessie's eyes. she had a sweeping decision in the third circuit, but he was opportunity in the equal pay case in the supreme court. bessie suggested maybe we should not oppose search because it was inappropriate to the supreme court see this issue. i didn't think it was anywhere in the world we would get a decision better than the third circuit decision. i did not think the third-- supreme court would be as terrorizing as the third circuit although, there is another speaker this evening who can address that point. [laughter] >> but, i figured to do with the problem i lean back in my chair and said bessie, i have never argued a case in the supreme court. >> bessie did not want anyone else to argue that the supreme court if she couldn't and that the retirement dinner chief justice earl warren was the guest speaker and credited bessie with having put the flesh on the bare-bones of the fair labor standards act, bare bones that would been wholly inadequate without the implementation that margolin forged in the courtroom of our land. it's hard to top what the chief justice said about margolin, so i will offer this concluding comment before taking questions. their labor lawyer, the title of margolies biography refers to the new deal legislation that she shepherded through the court , but it also refers to the fairness of her career, the obstacles she faced as a woman, the opportunities that influential supporters afforded her, her use of her feminine charm and nonconformist personal life. for me the title also represents the challenge that i have impose on myself to restore margolin's place in history in to do justice and telling her remarkable story. i hope i succeeded and thank you for your attention. [applause]. >> in the timely mean i would be happy to answer a few questions if you will step up to the microphone. >> could you say a little more about the orphan home and was sustained it for so many years and still sustains it, apparently. >> the orphanage did close in 1946, which was actually a byproduct of new deal legislation. the social security act made it possible for parents, surviving parents to have some form of welfare income and keep kids at home. also, coupled with new notions, developing notions that children should be at all costs kept in families as opposed to institutions. the orphanage transformed as i said into a social service agency. it's just celebrated its 160th anniversary and continues to serve children from throughout the deep south. the orphanage was founded in 1856, at the impetus of a yellow fever epidemic, the worst in the nation's history. so, it's been sustained throughout all those years and supported by jews throughout the deep south, much like as it was when bessie lived there from 1913 to 1925. her siblings also did well. in fact, in the book i am writing now i going to talk about how many overachievers were remarkably produced by this institution that was run much more like an elite religious boarding school than any sort of notion of an orphanage. one sibling, her older sister dora, came back to the orphanage after she was-- received her nursing degree and was employed as a nurse in the home and many people i'm interviewing today in the home remember her as the nurse who cared for them. her brother also went to tulane, got a degree in business and in the early 1930s attended dartmouth and went into a career in retail that took him to florida and atlanta. bessie died in 1996 at the age of 87 and after she retired she got to fulfill at least in part two of her dreams, which were to teach law and also to be a judge she taught a course in labor law at george washington university and she also for about 10 years served as an arbitrator and labor cases, so she came close to those two aspirations. is that ed, kendra? are we could on time? thank you so much for your attention. [applause]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> book tv recently visited capitol hill trust members of congress with their reading this summer. >> have a great reading list for the summer when of the things i'm starting with is the constitution and so many of my constituents are reading through the constitution and the declaration. they are doing that with their kids this summer and is so we are going to have some fun with that, do some things, working towards constitution day in the fall and i think that's exciting that so many families are going back and looking at those first principles in founding documents, so in tennessee seven, that is the top of the list. other things also, there is a daniels book i want to read bringing out the best in people and i think every once in a while it's like, you know today we get a new perspective on how to lead a team. i always say you lead people any manage assets and i have always been a big fan of the books with the leadership risible and so i read a review or two of this package that will be a good one to read, kind of motivation. there's an interesting book also called-- "flute" and looks at the mathematics and science behind occurrences and so i'm going to i went to read food. i think it's so interesting how sometimes something just seems to happen. >> book tv must know what you are reading this summer appeared to be dish or answer a book tv or you can post it on her facebook page, facebook.com. /book tv. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> okay