so that website address is a place that you can download everything she described and finally, the book obviously. that's what i've given you is everywhere not everywhere but most places you can find the scripts themselves that my book is based on if you were interested enough this is where you can find it so this is literally resource, don't be distracted during the lecture. so that is bad. and finallthat.and finally i aly that i'm very grateful that you bothered to show up. i'm very proud of this work and i love to be able to share it to the fact you are here allows me to share it so i have a gift for everyone before we leave. if i somehow seem to be forgetting that during the q-and-a reminded me very i have a small gift for the fact that you bothered to show up. so thank you very much. >> southern trees bear a strange fruit blood at the root, black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from the trees. i trust that you recognize these lyrics that describe the bodies of lynch victims. billie holliday made these famous with her recording of lewis allen's ballot and since then different versions have come from the british band ub40 two domain formerly of tony tony tony. as a result, generations of americans have come to regard this as the best representation of the mob destruction. beasley or x. therefore help to explain why gruesome images of lynch victims have become so influential. in late 1999 coming nearly 100 photographs of mob victims reinterred circulation over museum exhibition and a book of photography called without sanctuary. if these lyrics made us imagine, the photographs challenged us to face it and many of us have risen to the challenge because we were already convinced that the corpse post illustrates the lynching horror. the african-american bodies depicted are often delivered in burned or both. the images have enough interest to taste defeat could take the pricing book into the ten additions since 2,002 sustained academic conferences and journal issues on racial violence, museum exhibitions around the country in a virtual exhibition on the world wide web. perhaps most remarkably the pictures led senate to issue a formal apology for having never passed the legislation. so, for the sense of what prompted those reactions, in 1908 this is a picture postcard. i share this with you because the victim is hanging from a light post which is a long railroad track. but then remembered that the countries march into modernity wasn't somehow antithetical to the barbaric practice of lynching. enjoy the technological advances but no who's supposed to enjoy the technological advances so as you enjoy the mobility through the railroad, this is one of the messages that you will receive. receive. very clearly being told that they should be happy, that things are under control and blacks being told they are not free in the same way to enjoy the increased mobility. >> i share this with you because like all american crimes was never just a fill-in phenomenon. so this is indiana in 1930. this image is famous for lots of different reasons. one is because we can see everyone in the crowd so clearly. we can see that there are women and men, we can see this guy pointing and smiling for example. the fact we can see everyone so clearly is part of the reason this has become a famous photograph. it's also the photograph that lewis allen also known as abel meyer pulled so and that inspired him to write those lyrics so that is another reason is famous but it's also famous because there would have been a third victim here, james cameron. basically they were in jail and a drug them out to lynch them and before they drug him out, they convinced him not to lynch him as well. james cameron later founded the holocaust museum in the walkie wisconsin. so there would have been a third victim. when i talk about living with lynching i'm talking about the fact that we are still lynching in many ways but i want to talk about what does it mean to be someone like james cameron who basically managed to escape this but then also have to live with the fact he would have been the third person and continue to live with the photograph itself circulating. so those are some of the things that we want to deal with. finally, with this one i wanted to be very clear about the deliberate composition of the photographs that we are not just talking about a straightforward record but because of th that id composition to the photograph. part of that i would suggest to you is that shape around the midsection. historians have a little bit of delay to about this bu about thm convinced by those that suggest whenever you see that and suggest this victim was castrated. when i talk about deliberate composition that is part of what i mean. this might be a barbaric practice that anything can be done decently and in order. and so this is how we proved that we have done it the scent and in order. we take the time to cover that up. i share this with you because it became famous in 1935 partly because the naacp used it to convince people to be part of their anti-lynching efforts. they put a caption with this basically says don't look at the victim. his trouble is over. let's focus on the damage that's being done to these children. because again we can see very clearly we almost have a nuclear family out there it seems to me. the patriarchal father, the mother is in the background and all these children. and so the naacp is worried about the damage we are doing to them as a nation. and i find that interesting as a rhetorical strategy because it suggests i'm not going to assume that black paint will motivate you to join this anti-lynching movement but maybe if i can convince you of my pain. 1920 in minnesota. again, we have three victims, two of them hanging and then one here on the ground. part of what is striking here again when we think that the composition of the images it seems to me is the eagerness with which people try to make sure they are in the frame of the photograph. it also feels to me like there is a certain priority given to the younger teens, younger men that they can be a little closer and the older people are toward the back. so that eagerness with which we make sure we are in the frame of the photograph seems to be something we need to take seriously. when we understand the composition of these images. so i couldn't resist seeing the similarity. and this is something we can talk about during the q-and-a. i'm still thinking through the composition but the argument of course is that these dummies are always a dark brown and so this isn't about black people. this is just teems. kind of thing. i'm interested in again that eagerness with which they are getting in the frame command can be interesting having the heads-up and that kind of thing. so we can talk about this. but i was struck by the echo and i think that we are living with lynching. i wanted to be sure to show you one of the front and back and so this says this is the bbq we had last night. my picture is to the left, your son joe. so it seems to me this is the faded cross now. but this victim is burned beyond recognition. and if we have the pristine white sheet. almost finished. so, again, i'm thinking about the delivered at composition here. you have to be in a particular place to take this photograph. you have to get a certain vantage point so that we could capture the dozens of people that made sure they were present for the lynching of these figures. it seems like they might be in a boat. there is a deliberate composition but let's take a close-up of nelson. so the situation here is that her son was accused of stealing livestock when they came to get him at the house she tried to stop them so they decided they would lynch her as well. but crystal come of the historian who has done the most work in terms of tracing was and the relationship of both black and white women, she seems to have found that she was raped before she was lynched. so i would suggest to you that her work is practical garment there is a modesty to the dress because this is how she dresses. i would suggest that once it becomes a part of the deliberate composition of the lynching photographs, it serves a very similar purpose to that. undeniably powerful images. but let's consider how they fall short. the fact that without sanctuary could inspire the sentence of the apology and exemplifies americans problematic tendencies to allow the photograph to a close other representations of the history. decades of anti-lynching activism and testimony from the victimized black communities did not move the nations leaders that the last turn-of-the-century and more recently, they were not the inspiration for the historic gesture or even for the majority of the lynching scholarship. instead, the photographs have become the evidence that just can't be ignored. grandly this is out o out of leg the murderers condemn themselves. as the art historian argues, the lost of the historical understanding incurred by refusing to see these pictures would only serve to whitewash the kind of white supremacy. obviously, i take her point. otherwise i wouldn't have just shown you a few of those pictures. however, i am equally convinced that when we treat images of mutilated bodies as the ultimate evidence of lynching destruction, we reaffirm the authority of the mob. after all, it's because they come from white perpetrators themselves that we continue to allow the images to trump the testimony from the victimized communities. and at the way we treat the pictures, we forget that photography was a key component of the ritual which helped them accomplish the goal both during and long after the victim's murder. the photographs dating simply document violence. they very much performed it. make no mistake without sanctuary collection exists because the mob inc. photography into their violent rituals especially between 1890 to 1930 they were frequently theatrical productions to the newspapers announced the time and locations of the crowds could gather. spectators knew they would see familiar characters from the so-called rapists and avengers and that the characters would perform a predictable script of forced confession and mutilati mutilation. the hunting would complete the drama with audience participation but because the most coveted keepsake of the victims bones and burnt flesh were in limited supply pictures became souvenirs. these pictures now survive to verify the theatrical qualities and the variety of stages that they claimed. for they dangled a month just from trees but also posts, telephone poles and bridges. when we elevate the photograph of other artifacts of the same time period, our focus on strange fruit amounts to an acceptance of a very specific representation of the violence. after all the gruesome images were created and preserved because they fell in line with the discourse that supported racial violence. it is surrounded by a mob of righteous whites with no grieving loved ones inside. the mainstream lynching photography depicted the victims with no connection to family or community or to institutions like marriage. to the similar effect, the images today and encourage an acknowledgment of the bodies and even bodily pain that the interest in them has not naturally led to an appreciation of the communities more enduring losses including psychological, emotional and financial suffering. too often historians have interpreted the photograph according to the perspective that produced them. sure the scholars were to expose the orientation, but we have been slow to undermine it by placing the perspective of the victimized communities on par with the photograph. today i do just that. african americans that lived at the height of the violence and its photographic representation left artifacts including the the plays that offer insight into the causes and consequences of the violence that are not available through those photographs. it emerged in the 19 teams and they are increasingly recognized as a unique genre angst of the pioneer work of the scholars. in 1998 asi bush in their anthology of the representative works that the lynching drama is a play in which the threat or the occurrence past or present has a major impact on the dramatic action. american writers have always addressed racial violence but the mode developed when the playwrights moved beyond the brief references and focused on a specific lynching incident. so by definition, it engages mob violence but unlike the mainstream photographers,, african americans who lived and wrote in the midst of the lynching often refused to feature physical violence. instead of a spot light the home and the impact it has on the families. and he'd come it is most commonly with the mainstream discourse denied existed, loving black homes. according to the dominant assumption, the mobs targeted african-americans because they represented an evil that was based by society. blackman were supposedly rapists who cared nothing and black women were said to be incapable of creating that domesticity. meanwhile, they offered the community scripts that preserved the truth that they disregarded. allison dunbar nelson's whingeing played and exemplifies the genre focus on the black home. this script appeared in the crisis magazine for the official order of the naacp. and the father of the characters was lynched years earlier. by focusing on his children as survivors, dunbar nelson's script offers access to the conversations that african-americans they have had at the turn-of-the-century. the characters contend that black success attracts the mob. in the following excerpt which is how the play begins, they remember the home they had in the south and at the moment of the current living conditions in the nort north where they livedn the tenement apartment. lucy coming down with a dishcloth in her hand wasn't it better in the old days when we were back home in the little house with a garden and you and father coming home and mother getting supper and studying lessons in the dining room at the table we didn't have to eat and live in the kitchen then come into the notice is posted because they have no business having such a decent home come and chris and i reading the wonderful books and laying out our plans to see them go up and everyone petting me because i hurt my foot when i was little and father shuts down like a dog for daring to defend his home calling me little brown the princess and telling dad with an ammonia in this climate that when you name for life in a factory broken. lucy coming out of the trend throws aside to dishcloth and running out she lays her cheek against his and strokes his hair. poor danny for disney i'm selfish. not selfish, merely natural. >> dunbar nelson has the characters highlight the fact that they made a display of their inpatients and prosperity. he recalls that there were notices posted on the fence before the house was set on fire. the father went outdoors where he was shot down like a dog. chris, the other brother later wonders and for what, because we were living like christians? dunbar nelson's character suggests that when blacks affirm themselves obtaining higher success by mining their own business, whites respond. the vengeance with which some perform their supposedly superior status is quite revealing of the cultural theorists have contended that the hegemony is never complete and it must continually reassert itself. thus if the white supremacists unite the black humanity and the ties and achievement, african-americans must have been convincingly establishing it. dunbar nelson suggests exactly that and she does so in the text that is a way of establishing the achievement that some thought to the race. her play reminds them that they are not hunted because they are a racist criminal. indeed the text and the periodical that it appears certified the existing kind of people that belong to these communities, editors and readers to name a few. in other words dunbar nelson produces the kind of cultural self-affirmation that may very well back in the mob. the drama certainly acknowledges that racial violence is a threat, but it insists that the threat is to the successes that the race has already established and actively continues to augment. if bob violence was a response to the already existing black achievement and beauty, lucy remembers th the garden they usd to have fo have for instant, thr nelson's text is another example of those accomplishments and aesthetic contributions. so, quite deliberately vague chose to preserve very different sorts of evidence. the photographs emphasized the body while lynching spotlighted the household from which it was taken. in my eyes to his destroyed home is a member does the place where butter madbrother made dinner, s and lucy studied and where had and dan returned after a hard days of work. the survivors now inhabit a home that is one that they've established despite devastating circumstances and i that is whee they encourage and comfort each other. lucy prepares dinner and offers her brother affection laying her cheek against his hand stroking his hair. not something you see on the mainstream stage then or now. given these points of emphasis it also sheds light on the photographs. if we take the place help us to read those images critically. in order for the logic to work, it needed to be interpreted in ways that denoted anything that humanity and citizenship. this is why lynching photographs portray isolation surrounded by the righteous mob no grieving loved ones inside. but it certified that the victims were not isolated groups. they did care about the domesticity and their loved ones are grieving. in short, it suggests that the mob violence can only be justified by the erasure of exactly what they put forward, the black family seemed. all the plays that i examined were set in the black home and this is no coincidence. while mainstream discourse has been practiced and constantly asserted african americans had no interest in or capacity for the stable domesticity, they preserved evidence of familial ties. the lynching, survived in the archive to point towards a repertoire of embodied practices through which african-americans affirmed themselves. against the worst odds they successfully build homes come it reestablished when necessary. they sustained each other with food and affection. they mourned each other's death. this could not go without saying. after all the powerful message was that the victim deserved to die and shouldn't be warned. to highlight the grief was therefore to make a bold statement. unfortunately the scholars can easily overlook the statement because we typically approach the mass protests most critics focus on identifying whether an artist altered perceptions if not their actions. especially when lynching is referenced, some scholars and implicitly ask what good was it if it didn't convince them to stop the violence but the african-american community is didn't just need those that would work to gain. they also needed individual neeo could provide the tools for surviving a. in other words it is important to consider the strategies used in the fight to end the violence, but we should also add how did they help each other cope while lynching remained a reality? yes, they hoped there would be greater bay at what they plan to do in the meantime? my work offers a case study of the genre that deserves to be read as much more than protest. if challenges americans to view the art less as a reaction to violence and more as a continuation of affirming discourse and practices in african america. thus the affirmation that the mob felt compelled to answer. so what i'm presenting a space on the foundation which is their end on your handout. it emerged when the poet and fiction writer circulated the play mode and as rachel. the script ha has been written y 1914 because her acquaintances at the naacp were reading the draft as early as january 1915. later that year w. e. b. du boise created eight committee and in march of 1916, that committee sponsored a semi-professional production of rachel making it the first black offered nonmusical drama executed by black actors for an audience and this is the playbill from the staging two days in washington, d.c.. rachel went to the naacp goal of reaching the integrated audiences. it is a full-length sentimental play whose emotional appeal hinges on the similarity between blacks and whites. in fact, she later explained she had writte written that way to e them especially white women that lynching was wrong as illustrated by the fact that even outstanding citizens were vulnerable. the initial production ran for two days but it sparked intense discussion about african-american identity, racial violence and about what the black drama should accomplish. rachel impacted the writers and thinkers at the time, but the significance of an underestimated by theater history that locates the origin in the mid-1920s. because richardson fortune became the first black offered a plate to be produced on broadway in 1923 and links than hughes began an unprecedented two-year run on broadway in 1935, these men are often hailed as the fathers of black drama coming yet richardson admitted that rachel prompted him to become a playwright. but just as important, the work inspired conversations that led to an increasing investment by some of the most influential leaders. she circulated the manuscript before the committee so her work was not a response to the call for the black author of the plays but likely an inspiration for it. then once the committee decided to sponsor the debut committee helped others identify their artistic mission. a lame walk often called the movement and to be howard university colleague montgomery gregory objected to the naacp propaganda platform, which they believed was exemplified by the organization's presentation of rachel. therefore they vowed to create a space in which the purely artistic concerns ranged. the more that they publicized their approach, the more he refined his articulation of the need for political art. so without question, she deeply impacted the founders of the naacp committee and howard university drama department organizations that would encourage and train the playwrights throughout the 1920s so by 1916 and without reaching broadway, the work rejuvenated black drama. they often took their disagreement to the pages of periodicals and then he joined them including the authors that entered the debate by simply executing their own vision of what it should accomplish. some, like willis richardson became playwrights because they were convinced they could do a better job than he had. others simply seem to believe that the perspective on lynching and black family life was too important to leave unaddressed. when dunbar nelson published the crisis in 1918 just two years after the dramatic debut, she seemed to have wanted to address the investment and appealing to whites and she did so by using the one format. a serious one act play about african-americans was conducive to publication in periodicals, but it wouldn't appeal to the practitioners of it reached a broad audience. the commercia commercial speecht welcome the depictions of black characters and he was less receptive of the one touch material. if a writer didn't have three complementary acts that could serve as an evening of entertainment, the work needed to provide comic relief so they could be asserted between the other components. us tailoring one's script for periodical publication also meant writing with a mature performance in mind. so it is significant that the others that wrote the plays in the 19 teens and 20s often used this format because it allowed them to perform community centered culture over. in other words, by increasing the format, the successors were not striving to have their test come to life before the integrated audiences. they didn't aim to reach with the hope of convincing them that it was wrong. instead of a targeted to the readers by publishing in magazines like the urban league opportunities and the naacp crisis. obviously other people read those magazines but the targeting of the audience is relevant to cause they can then stage the plays and community spaces such as black churches and schools and even in their own homes. as literary historian elizabeth mchenry demonstrates into forgotten readers, african-americans have long exercised what she calls to me about literacy by advocating the memorization as a kind of literacy and by reading the text aloud to each other and encouraging dramatic reading. given the legacy that they trace surely we can imagine families in which each member read or memorized part in the play. the ritual of reading these value of periodicals now prompted the informal performances and dramatic readings about lynching. so, while the telephone poles and bridges became stages upon which the lynching occurred the african-americans claim to equal latitude and redefining spaces including their own living rooms to accomplish the act debate with theatrical work. in light of these internet venues, the content of the play becomes even more suggestive. though the one act rejects many of the literary choices, they follow her lead in refusing to betray the crime perpetrated on the trees. by focusing on stable, nurturing successful black homes, the plays incest the home can be mutilated just as a body candy when an honorable father, son or brother is taken, the household is castrated and its head is removed. booted in the black domestic sphere they offer the perspective that the photography does not. as they feature characters that testified to the victims on a double life they help memorialize the communities and assured survivors that they are not alone in their grief and they communicate that in the flesh and blood of the communities and they have not been accepted. while conveying this message, three important trends emerge. physical violence is issued because the action is sent in the home and the definitions are conspicuously interrogated and the generation is removed or neutralized in the process i call the generations and in the interest of time i'm going to talk about number three. as much as it pleases both light and the home, they argue for the importance of the manhood. the playwrights seems to suggest ain fact that the domestic success requires they'll present by portraying families that deteriorate after losing. though black women are sometimes missing is the man's essence of the stories these homes. through the literary trend come and let's be clear i'm not saying that they are the be-all and end-all of domestic success and i'm not even saying that the playwright is and we can talk about that during q-and-a for sure, but it is a trend. so it is giving us information that we should pay attention to. so, through the literary trend, the playwrights exposed the generation meaning generation removal and prevention. with its particular vengeance, the mob alters the structure of the family eliminating the generation that would otherwise guarantee community survival. they usually feature a grandmother and grandchildren. but no matter and father pairing in the middle. it accomplishes the degeneration and one of two ways. either the mother and father are missing altogether or they keep the husband-wife unit from functioning. in mine eyes have seen aftermath a sunday morning in the south and for unborn children. that's four of the seven earliest plays. there is no middle generation at all. however, grandmothers replace mothers for the household consumption. but those grandmothers are always widows themselves. so there is a substitute for that missing father. when the generation is not represented, the father's absence feels more generational because there is no substitute. there are plays in which the generation is depicted, but the mother is often it's only representative come and rachel but only to the marriages that had been the stride. for instance after they finally share the truth about her husband's murder her daughter rachel rejects her loving suitor's proposal because she refuses to have children while the nation allows lynching. with her mother testifying to the power, she would rather remain childless then produced praise. in the wedding ceremony is only moments away into the future is a promise that as their mothers work in the kitchen, she reveals the name of the father and of the women to realize that years earlier they were great by the same white man. having exchanged stories the mother west call off the wedding because they are actually brother and sister. but most interesting we see the generation at work even when both the husband and wife live through only one of the foundational scripts fazed by george douglas johnson depicts such a family. they have a loving marriage but when the spouse needs him the most, john is hiding. he leaves to check on a friend whose life has been threatened and while he's away, they drag him past the house. she hears the victim called out shocked and distraught she goes into labor before john returns. so, having killed one man and restrained another, the mob takes the leaders from both families come about she confirms that racial violence jeopardizes future generations when her child is born a boy she strangles him to death. at the end she insists her baby is safe from the winters. her disturbing declaration illustrates the most important distinction between the generation and the generation. while the latter would indicate pathology in the black family that degeneration points to the generous seat of the mob. they had already proven their ability so if african-american characters do not reproduce or if they resist by terminating young lives it's not because they don't value family they simply give a voice to the despair that african-americans must have felt as they lived in the nation that left the barbarism unchecked. as depressing as it is it is a trend i believe reinforces the commitment to fighting for the right to full citizenship they affirmed that the discounted fee is valid because the situation is undeserved there's any question that it might not have been warranted only one can give a level to this despair both of the character in the play into the playwright demonstrate absolute certainty about the end in justice. if my reasoning seems counterintuitive, perhaps speaking as someone living in the midst of the violence and it's for the graphic presentation can help. now known as the foremost anti-lynching crusader in the history, wells admitted in the 1892 diary until her close friends were killed she thought that it might be justified. she confessed, and i quote at length like many another person who had read in the south, i had accepted the idea is to be conveyed that although it was irregular and contrary to the law and order, the unreasoning anger of the terrible crime led to the lynching. that's perhaps they deserved to die anyhow and the mob was justified in taking his life. but my friends have been lynched with just as much brutality as other victims of the mob and they committed no crime. this is what opened my eyes to what it really was come and excuse to get rid of negroe negs acquiring wealth and property and keep it terrorized. without question, if they accepted the portrayal offered by the mainstream discourse and by those theatrical productions, there would be no room for the racial pride they wouldn't demand the anti-lynching legislation. they refused to be shamed into tolerating the rights and they targeted to black audiences to equip them into doing the same. because virtually all public discourse has been creating a different portrait required intimate knowledge and intimate settings. it's not surprising that it plays domestic and a foreground of the home as much as lynching. more precisely, when they depict the home as they knew them to be, they inherently contradicted excuses that were invented to the story those homes. still, as the confession demonstrates, they needed to share with each other their intimate knowledge only the sharing could keep them from accepting the idea have to be conveyed and if they couldn't reject that idea privately, they could not have agitated for the right to full citizenship publicly. thank you. [applause] >> i am happy to take questions that i remember your gifts, so i'm going to grab those while you ask a question. >> i also would say that i'm very aware other groups were targeted. >> we thank you. [applause] >> we are very much aware of the time and so she is willing to take perhaps two questions after which we will have a book signing from one until 1:30 and we can continue the discussion there. we also would ask you to please take a copy of the list we have prepared and you will see how she has influenced the image that we used on the cover of the family with water white following the lynching of her husband. >> any questions? >> [inaudible] what did they present is the reason? >> the question if you didn't hear is basically since there was no -- the question was since there was never an anti-lynching legislation passed, but for some owhat weresome of the reasons te given for not doing so? there've been entire books written on this. very often it was things like filibusters from southern senators and so on those kind of things were basically the structural ways that this happened. but, you know, in terms of justification i think at the end of the day people who believe that lynching really was about black men raping white women or those that were simply invested in making sure that's what it was about, you know, they kind of one in that way. but structurally it have to do with filibusters and those kind of things. >> i won't go into the -- i won't go into all of that. but there were people that just didn't believe that it shouldn't happen. >> i saw another hand. yes. >> [inaudible] >> okay. so, she's asking about exact numbers of black women and men who were lynched. i have to admit the exact numbers, that isn't something i focus on mainly because i'm interested in the cultural impact of these images, for example. but the playwrights that write about this, the women that i studied were very familiar with the fact that women got lynched and so there was an added that they did where it basically said something like 23 women were lynched this year how can you say that it's about rape. so even they are aware that women are being lynched as well but they don't focus on that for various reasons. i think the main reason is because they want to go to that hardest sale. if you are going to insist it is about rape, then let's actuallyy presents what really happened. it was because he was successful and you wanted to take his land. it's because he was successful at protecting his wife from being assaulted by a man that felt all women are available in the south you lynched him for that. so they were interested in going after the hardest sale. i would say that the book is absolutely the best book on the topic. she looks at women's roles in the lynching, both women black-and-white, and also that were anti-lynching crusader's as well as white. so she is the best source on that. when it comes to numbers there is always disagreement partly because of -- and this is worth going into. part of the reason there's always disagreement about exactly how many people were lynched is because throughout the years there were different reasons for changing the definition of what it was. so you might have a perimeter put in place to see it's got to be at least three people, and they said that or the other. part of the reason why having those definitions was so important is because these often were anti-lynching crusader's coming up with a definition so they wanted to be able to show that they were making progress and, you know, reducing the number. so that's one of the dynamics i would bring that as the reason why the numbers for me we will never have those numbers and be confident that they are right. i think they are always underestimated and so that is why it's important to me is what is the cultural legacy in a moment and later in having the photographs circulate? you didn't have to be there for the impact to get to you because it was in the newspaper. it wasn't a postcard. but thank you for that. >> i'm curious where they are performing in the country and also to the urban and rural performance and then with crowds are coming as it is somebody ist already involved in the movement or is it more as an educational sort of thing where we are spreading that message? >> so, his question is who is the audience to show up to the performances of these kind of tests. we know that it was in washington, d.c. and there were enough in the audience for them to say that they had achieved their goal of reaching an integrated audience not nearly as many as he would have liked. beyond that i'm focusing on the way that they are shifting away from drawing a traditional audience. so, i believe what is going on is the texts are in crisis. you're in the barbershop, crisis magazine shows umagazine shows a sudden everyone is reading it out loud. part of what i'm interested in when i talk about performance in this book, it i talk about embodied practices of belonging because that gives us a more capacious way to think about the fiasco -- theatricality. we don't get far before the debate breaks out and we don't get far before someone starts sharing the story of the lynching that happened in their town that's what i'm trying to get out when i talk about the te extra cavity that it is a broad category of all of those embodied practices. so i can't actually prove to you that these were staged in these places. i can do that in the aftermath and we can talk about that. but in most instances i cannot prove that to you. this is why this is a crucial question. so, w. e. b. du boise publishes in crisis magazine just a little block of text that he calls pain for plays and what he says is the crisis has been publishing these plays that are meant for amateur performance and we are going to continue to publish those but people have stayed in these places and are not sending us our royalty check. [laughter] so i'm like yeah? so you know i had a joyous day in the archives when what did i find that a letter from willis richardson writing saying i loved what you have to say because you know i noticed that of the new york group that you are a part of staged by plate and didn't send me a check. [laughter] i am more than happy to send you the check for the play that we put on here in dc. let me know how you want me to forward that. she writes back and says there is no need. because -- this is where it gets tricky. let's see there is a playwriting contest even first place, i went second and you have third. so first and second t get published but then third they have a notice in today's a. you can get the script by writing to us and she will also get money as a prize but it won't be published. such he says unless we publish it in crisis there is no royalty needed. so he thinks that only if the magazine is going to get a cut. so what i want to suggest from that is to say that number one, clearly there were enough amateur performance is going on but he's missing his money, but number two, there is more than one reason why these plays would be sort of below the radar. it's not simply that it's dangerous, literally dangerous, but it's also that these are amateur performance is that you don't necessarily want on other peoples radar either so it seems to me those are some of the reasons why we aren't going to have the kind of documents that we want to have any theater history, box office receipts and all that kind of stuff. i can't give you that. that's why all these other things are so important. thank you. >> thank you so much for this amazing talk. i want to ask you what we know about the translation. were any of the plays that are translated? [inaudible] we ask about how do you compare them so tony -- i am curious about the forces what you might know it but you came across. >> i haven't come across the plays themselves being translated, that there was but s certainly plenty of exchange of support and extreme job stories but that is a great question that we have to think about more. i'm not aware of any of them being translated and sent over in different periodicals. it makes sense that they would be because they've could have reproduced them. thank you for that. >> one last question. >> are there any efforts to stage these claims? [inaudible] [laughter] >> why are you trying to give me a heart attack? [laughter] okay so more recent staging can actually n. 2010, the international festiva festival w york city a woman was able to get hurt proposal accepted and so she ran what she called him unknown. i went to new york to see it of course, which ended up being these acts connected by dramatic readings of poetry and music and it was beautifully done. i was shocked to read at first i was excited like i can actually see the stage and then the close of the day came for me to see but if this doesn't translate for an audience today. it definitely works and part of what they did that was powerful is that they ended it with screening the moment when the legislature was passing to give this formal apology. they used towards the end so i've written about that production on my blog so there is an entry about watching that staging and i also did a review of that on the theater journal. as much as i can capture the moments when that's happening i do. and of course there are contemporary plays about lynching. the gospel of james were according to james -- i'm so glad i got that right. it is a wonderful more recent plate. i went to see that in indiana. they commissioned him to write it because james cameron was in indiana and so that is a contemporary play. and also the anthology of the play actually has an index that includes all of the plays that they know about that have been published so through the '90s you are going to see that in the back. that question made me think of something else though. sometimes when people invite me to give a lecture they will do a dramatic reading and that happened when i was at texas tech a couple weeks ago. that is another way that it's being staged. the main things you say is that it's shocking how well the tests work and that's partly because this turn-of-the-century is turning out to look like the last turn-of-the-century. if i lie in? so the voter suppression we are not somehow divorced from these issues and so that is probably the reason it still designates so well. [applause] up next on booktv after words with guest host joshua ofl of international studies. this week middle east expert walid phares. he analyzes the events of the arab spring and a search washington entered the conflict too late and allied with the wrong side. he predicted a major breakdown in the middle east policymaking and explains what policy changes he believes should be made. the program is about one hour. >> post code you've written this book we are going to discuss today but before we get into the book i would like to start by asking you who you are. we've met in conferences and on some talk of programs, but i don't know dutch about your background and i'd guess others don't as well. how did you come to the subject? >> thank you for the opportunity and for being my companion today on c-span. born and raised in lebanon as you may know i integrated 24 years ago this year. i was a professor of political science and i was a public politics in lebanon and published books in arabic and french, but my american journey in academia started in 1991 as a professor at florida atlantic university and was in charge of middle eastern studies. in the '90s i published articles because we need to publish to get the tenure and one book on the ethnic conflict of lebanon it was only after 9/11 that i moved to washington and i became an analyst with msnbc on terrorism. i published a number of books the most red book was the future jihad strategies against america and then the confrontation and then the one that preceded this book that actually this book is volume number two, the title was very telling in the coming revolution. i published it in 2010. and that the predicted or projected that there would be a rise in the civil society and that eventually there would be sort of a civil war or race between the islamist on the one hand and secular on the other. and now i published this book to try to analyze the evolution of the upheaval in the middle east and projection and let me also add that i advise members of the congress and members of the parliament who formed a joint caucus called u about trans-atlantic parliamentary group on the counterterrorism. >> that is a very busy and distinguished professional resume. what we try to get a little bit more inside your mind. what led you to leave lebanon and to elevate the united states? >> actually i didn't want to leave lebanon. i was teaching. i was in politics and i was a publisher of a magazine called the international, which was focusing on precisely what became the arab spring tha but t was 25, 26 years ago. we focused on the future of the minorities over the execution of minorities, they were also running into the democratic movement. in 1990 there was a major event that convinced me that i couldn't continue that work in beirut. they were headed to the area that we could publish very relative. in the army invadethen the armyf lebanon and the choice was simple. stay in beirut and have a freedom or lead to the united states but had other reasons to come here and pursue a phd and i was offered a job in florida and that is how i became american. >> of the armthat the army had d lebanon in 1975. so what happened to that made you feel that you really needed to leave? .. >> saying the outcome of u.s. policy since the 11 has been the inverse of the policies of what they intended or proclaim to to do that al qaeda has grown immeasurably. and that we are witnessing of bias not only is on this but the most extreme form forces of the regime but that is a powerful statement. do want to elaborate or explain? >> guest: un -- one of the cornerstones of the book many rebels that the changes is happening but then the entire arab spring that nothing could be done already. i'd make the case it is one or the other. is both. you are right. from 9/11, at that decade had gigantic efforts in the region we removed saddam hussein. and for those societies that of those democracies many who forgets those peaceful non-violent revolutions were there that the afghanistan women were in the parliament it was of mediocre democracy but that is hamid begins. i make the case that the era spring was influenced liz 1.54 1.8 million people. but not entirely successful because hezbollah remains and then in june 2009 against the ayatollah. the arab spring had his own experiment into ian's your question the jihadist fed has been removed has recreated have stalled over the region in somalia also were they have expanded into lebanon. suggest that 1.we may have taken them out but talking about the third generation. >> apart from al qaeda is it your sense that the islamists are winning in the

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