put your phones on silent or turn them off. secondly, questions afterwards, please stand up so they can get the boom mic to you. this is a great book. i wondered why i didn't read this earlier. all about a family. my mother was from georgia, a third generation graduate of american high school, she graduated in 1950. after leaving america's high school she went to sweet girl college, where she had a friend of hers, and exchange student and one day she said aren't you from america's? tell me what it is. my mother said i never heard of it. she learned about it from somebody from scotland. she was a little bit upset and ask my grandfather to take her out and my grandfather was an atlanta republican tight and actually his first cousin is quoted in the book as one of the leaders of the family bank account. he took her out and that person, that banker said she went to college in virginia but came home a pinko. so good for my mother. that is one of the many stories i have and it is a classic southern story and a great way to talk about what chuck reece is doing and we're glad to partner with him personally and professionally in support of what they do and the storytelling they do, trying to get the south right, the way it really is, not the way people think it ought to be but the way it is today. you all know about that. he is building a media conglomerate we are proud of. this is another example of a partnership that we have so with that i will hand it over to check. come on up here. >> someone asked me earlier tonight if we were long-term friends and i said no, we weren't. i am a longtime fan. we have all seen local newspapers ride the roller coasters calm all media properties do these days, no matter what happened, one of the things i had done for decades or did until a few years ago was look for jim auchmutey's by line because i knew if he wrote the story it was going to be a great story and probably going to be something that mattered and something that i cared about. so when i learned that jim was writing this book, i had never heard of quinnipiac either. one of the great things about doing this publication since we started a couple years ago was how much southern history i got to learn than i hadn't known, about. so turn it over to jim, talk about the experience of writing about. and i will ask a few questions. take it away, jim auchmutey. let's give him a hand. [applause goes bracket >> thank you for that kind introduction, thank you, sheffield and the history center. this is a very cool venue and i am very happy to be here. what i am going to do is set up a story a little bit and then we are going to do a little question and answer session and open the floor, it focuses on a teenager who grew up at a communal farm in southwest georgia that believe in racial equality at a time when that is an unthinkable idea. when he started high school he was bullied and persecuted and treated every bit as badly as a handful of black students who desegregated the school the year his senior year was treated. the school was an america high school. i love the name america's. it is so eve talkative and representatives. the name implies what we are talking about is a story particular to the south, to america, is an american story. here is the twist. many years later, some of those who stood by as he was tormented in high school tracked him down in west virginia where he had lived and wrote him letters of apology asking for his forgiveness. they wanted him to return to georgia for their 40th class reunion. it was a remarkable gesture but i wanted to know how sincere it was, whether it was remorse and guilt of people going into their retirement years or something deeper. i didn't want to just write about bad things in the south half a century ago. a capacity for change and growth about the promise of redemption and reconciliation. let me back up and tell you a little bit about the city you had never heard of until this book came out and there are a lot of people who had never heard of it. is a communal farm of few miles south of america in southwest georgia near jimmy carter's home town, nowadays it is known as the place where habitat humanity was born in the late 1960s but there was a time before that, it was one of the most controversial religious enclaves in america. it was founded in 1942 by a white southern baptist minister from middle joy joy was unlike other baptist ministers in the south, wanted to start a commune in the rural south where residents could live like early christians which is why they came up with that name which means community or fellowship. they believe in communal sharing and pacifism and a color blind and brotherhood, making them communist and raise mixers. the first cute years the locals generated tolerated and even if they didn't approve of its beliefs but that changed shortly after greg and his family moved to the farm in summer of 1953. the catalyst was the supreme court ruling against segregated public schools. not long after that clarence was asked to endorse two black students who wanted to enter the business college in atlanta. by the time clarence returned to america the local front page story about a sumter county clergyman who wanted to desegregate the state's beloved university system, evangelism started that very week. unknown parties operating under cover of darkness chopped down fruit trees, dumped sugar and gas tanks, then things really escalated. koinonia's produce stand was bombed and destroyed twice presumably by the ku klux klan. nightriders shot into the buildings. when i first visited koinonia as a reporter with the atlanta constitution in 1980 you could still see bullet holes in deciding. the children at the farm were not immune to the violence. greg was in the third grady when it started, one of 18 children living in koinonia. i would like to read a short passage about one night some of the were playing volleyball in 1957. great and some of the children were playing volleyball in a lighted courts when they saw two cars going down the highway leading to the farm. the vehicles for so close to was like the first was telling the second one. the children stop to watch. maybe one of them was having mechanical trouble. then they heard several shots in rapid succession and the sound of something pelting the branches like the blowing sleet storm. greg caught a glimpse of the gun being discharged from car windows, the fire flicking from their muzzles like tongues from snakes. hit the dirt, someone screamed as a kid dope and scattered. inside the house was a road where the brown family of koinonia lived. laura had coming from ali baba and her brothers to bed, removing john's shoes when a bullet pierced the walls inches above her head. the students they get the farm had been sitting with them, get down, the house is going to explode. laura corral her brothers and a three of them crawled into the back room shower where she thought they might be safe from gunfire. actors the volleyball shooting gregg said years later, we thought they were going to take us out and hang us on crosses. by the early 1960s koinonia moved into the public schools. the battleground was america's high school. three koinonia kids wanted to be enrolled but the school refused because the presence of any of those students would disrupt classes and so on rest. koinonia had to make a federal case out of it to get the teenagers admitted on grounds of religious discrimination. the irony was the school board had been right. the kids from koinonia were treated horribly. they were harassed, tripped, spit on. when greg started at the high school in the fall of 1961 he chaired no better. eventually he fed far worse. one by one the other students from koinonia left america's as families moved away or transferred to schools outside the south where they would not be subject to the same level of persecution. by the fall of 1964 greg was the only koinonia kid left in america's high school. that is where our story gets even more interesting. i would like to talk with chuck about where the story goes from there. in the fall of 64, greg's senior year, the crux of the book and there is something else happening at southwest georgia that is very important to all of this which is the civil rights movement, it explains the animosity they are facing in this high school. i guess i should shut up and let you ask the question. >> go ahead and talk about it. one of the things that strikes me, the bitter southerner asked jim if he would write a piece for us, what the characters have gone through in the substance of the court, and it was the idea that kept hitting me in the face, here is the situation where we have very strange for the time triangle, we had this one kid who because of his deeply held religious beliefs believe he should stand with the four students at america's high school. those kids, you have the kids in school tormented, but what is interesting is a lot of people want to hear a story like that, they are satisfied with the single thing showing up on morning. those african-american students' first came to school. one thing that is interesting to me is how you talk about greg's activities going on through the civil rights movement at the very same thing. i want you to talk a little bit about it if you would. >> at the beginning of the senior year in 1964, let me back a bit. the civil rights movement mobilized in a big way in southwest georgia at the same time at high school and the animosity wasn't simply because of earlier things, in an enemy camp. the civil rights organizations shopping in albany in america, and protests against segregation in mass arrests, koinonia was known as an ally to the mass meetings in albany, activists, civil rights activists would come to the farm for rest and relaxation, they held orientation sessions about how to be arrested in a non-violent way. classmates at america's high school, aiding and abetting, their animosity, at the beginning of that school year, school board in america had decided they were going to try to defuse racial tension by allowing a token level of desegregation at the school. right before the school year began they invited a handful of students to come to a former of the all white school. gregg knew them all because he had been involved in what was going on in america and with the most natural thing in the world for him to offer the important solidarity, at the beginning of that year, the biggest funeral home down there, to ride to school. to keep some away from the mob and everything and greg volunteered to ride with them as a show of support. that day of classes, a funeral home showed up in america's high and another saying there. saying ugly words and doing all the things we know so well, the funeral limousine shows up and it jerks up in the door, one of the black students, white kid from koinonia, in that senior year. >> there is an episode in the book, the chapter of the book. keep going? of day. we are on tv. >> we seem to be having a remodeling project year. i knew the manuscript could use some work but i didn't know it would be this bad. >> thank you. >> you could walk around. >> i am sure -- it would be c-span's environment to hear us. >> the sad thing is that is that tennis office. >> i was thinking night riders and jackhammers. silence. may we willroll ? it wasn't that one action of this guy was rooted in his beliefs, it was in a friendship already formed with these people. would you read that passage on page 144? i would rather you just read that. the one down about the concrete incident. >> that is not about greg but one of the classmate to reach out to greg. i need to do a quick bit of setting up. in summer of 1965 after greg and the class of '65 graduated the town of america, there was the woman, black woman running for justice of the peace in a special election in july and she showed up to vote and this was a year after the civil rights act in 1964 had passed and supposedly outlawed public segregation, she was directed to the black voting lane which should have been illegal. she protested and end ed up getting arrested and it kicked off three weeks of demonstrations, mass demonstrations in america and in many ways it was the closing chapter of the voting rights struggle because it was the voting rights act, all the civil rights organizations and atlanta and elsewhere, to organize protests because they needed one more example of white people in the south behaving badly to clinch the deal and america provided. it was a killing, a young white man was shot to death, the sequence, two of the people on opposite sides, greg who just graduated was going to the demonstration marching with the black protesters, a close friend of his who lived at koinonia and was an activist, civil rights organizer. a fellow named joseph logan was cocaptain of the football team and probably was one of the people was most opposed to the changing racial order in america. it was a real traditionalists, part of the football vanguard trying to stand up for the traditional southern way of life. here was part of the demonstration. and said things. basically was a hostile presence protesters were going on. this section check was talking about was joseph goes to america one night during the demonstrations, on several occasions drove to america to watch protest marches, the white man who stood on the sidewalks heckling. one afternoon, demonstrators passed by, some of the onlookers peppered them with rocks and bottles. joseph didn't like the protests any more than the hecklers did but he didn't throw things and when he saw who was doing it he found himself wondering whether anyone was getting hurt. he hung around after this march. as twilight fell, he did something he would regret for the rest of his life. a black man was walking up the street by himself. here comes one, shouted a white fellow in a shirt tied like a comic strip character. let's get him. and young men form, picking up whatever bottles they could find. joseph didn't recognize any of them had no reason to join the group but in the tangle of the moment, in the ambiguity of dying light he grabbed a jagged chunk of concrete and followed their beat as they confronted the black man. she looked to be about 40, weary and frightened. look, i don't have anything to do with these protests, i just got off work and am walking home. before the man could say anything someone threw a rock and struck him under the eye. he covered his face with his hand and let out a mournful moan,. wasn't his cheek. as the pact scattered joseph dropped his joy of concrete and backed away in revulsion. he ran several blocks to the court house to his car as if he could reverse the last few minutes and drove straight home. joseph didn't tell anyone, not even his mother about what had happened but he couldn't forget that moan, the pain, that patch of blood. even though he had not struck the man himself he had watched it happen and felt like the driver of a getaway car at a robbery. he was ashamed to. joseph later came to realize his attitudes about black people started to change the moment he almost as osaulted one. >> i want to -- one of these is related to this story is the fact that as a washington post critic put it, what does one do with a civil rights story in which the hero is white? one of the things i really love about the story jim roach for us, i don't know if you had a chance to read that along with the book but we would appreciate it if you did and jim would too. jim and greg went back down to america's for a reading and the students who segregated -- desegregated, came out for the meeting, and it is important to give their names, josh wiggins, roberttina fletcher, david bell, joel wise and i can't imagine what it would be like for people who have been in that kind of thing in the home town they had stayed for most of their lives to come back around to something that does feel like reconciliation. >> the fact is a lot of the black students who went to america's high have not had the same problems with reconciliation and forgiveness that greg did. that is very sad. all four of those students who desegregated the high school ran at our signing, only one of the stuck it out through graduation and was roberttina who is a very accomplished woman who ran the pharmacy in warner, and recently retired. she went through so much she says she is going to write a book and i hope she does. one of my problems writing my book is wanting to write more about roberttina and the editor kept saying focus the story -- understand why you keep wanting to go to her. i met a gentleman earlier tonight who went to america's high school later in the 60s and went through harassment. it went on for all lots of years. these high school had formerly been all white. a lot of people went through the sort of thing greg went through, what is different was the motivation for his being mistreated came from this unique religious community. these classmate had reached out so many years later and gave me a vehicle to write about how much we changed and how much things haven't changed. >> it is interesting, we go through periods and recently it feels mike they're provoked by acts of violence that we go through periods where the south is forced to look harder at its past and, but sometimes down at that local level, that community level all those changes happen so slowly and incrementally. >> when i read the section about joseph almost hitting the guy with a chunk of concrete have to tell you when i first heard about the shootings in charleston it made me think about joseph because even though there was a great difference between the two, a man who almost assaults fellows and one who cold-blooded the murders nine people, there's a great deal of difference but the underlying dynamic is the same. that violence shocked so many people recently that it made people think about these things in a different light. joseph almost hitting that man made him see things in a different light. it took him many years to come to grips with it all but he thought that was where it started to change and where he looked to be amiss and call back. he later became a professor at a community college in enterprise alabama. and he was teaching there in the early 70s at community college and a lot of his students would be black. he started to change his thinking about race when he started to have a proprietary interest in the well-being of his students who might happen to be black and when he would go home and talk to his stepfather he was a prejudiced man of his generation and would ask how many and words are you teaching, joseph would get really upset. they are my students. i need to make them improve their lives. i talked-about albany civil rights institutes of little over of month ago. a lot of people were asking me how does change happen? it is the lobby. we know how change happens. >> that is absolutely true. if i may, before we open up for questions, i want to read a little out of the peace that you wrote for as because it is telling about one heart at a time point. what i am about to read to you, jim and greg are in the bookstore which is called bittersweet. this is what jim wrote for us. i have been at the bookstore and our when i noticed a vaguely familiar face approaching the signing table. the president of the barnum funeral home, one of the oldest and largest black owned businesses in town. i had spoken with her several years before and all those she is not mentioned by name she is closely connected to this events, her family provides the funeral they were met by out mom in 1964. and face the scoring, the same sort of daily harassment and others to put up with, she stuck it out and graduated in 1969. had sheet gone up half a dozen copies of this book and given them to our children, to know that they would remember where they come from. and then asked whether any graduates had apologized to her for the way she is the views. a woman came back one time and said they hadn't believe how they acted toward us, it is a shame could have been friends under other circumstances. did she apologized? not really. people around town, i wondered if it still occurred. not a month goes by i don't see one of them. i saw one here tonight, they usually act like it never happened. i wish i could report the black students who had experience with reconciliation, i did not, a precious few exceptions one of which plays a crucial role, quote, i don't want you to get the impression i think about this history all the time, i don't. i love this town and i know we are going to get better but we still have a long way to go. to me that quote carries so much weight because that is the thing that often is forgotten in these discussions at least as we have had them in the past. we hope to have them differently in the future. we have these discussions and we forget that we share the same hometowns, we all live in these places, we have to learn to live together. that shows a lot about how much farther we have to go. makes me sad that makes me hopeful all at the same time. >> work in progress, get reminded of how far we have to go. >> indeed. a question the audience doesn't like to ask jim. >> to greg, he is white and not the black student, did that play a part in who these people reconcile with. >> the class of '65 does not have any black members. and underclassmen, two sophomores and two jr.s, the class of '65 getting ready for the class reunion, there aren't any black members who wouldn't have been invited. greg was treated as badly, some of the black students, considered a traitor to his race. i don't know if that is true. they were treated pretty shabbily. enduring this senior year, hitting a couple times and there was another time, a group of 50 boys met from after-school. and confronted them. they have the literary festival in the town where greg lives in west virginia and asked -- going to talk at it and as for a quote to put on a banner, doing of little short quote. my quote, when you saw 50 guys surrounding me, my god, are they going to lynch me? am i going to get stoned? no, greg was the only person they could reach out to. they -- there wasn't a black member of the classic have invited but that doesn't take away the larger point that most people, white people went to the high school haven't made the effort. >> in the front. >> a couple years ago, it was standard suburban atlanta reunion. trying to visualize, heard of your book, what the hell did they talk about? at that -- how did that work out, the one on one social event 40 years later. >> reunions are inherently awkward. and this one was a combination of exquisitely awkward and exquisitely fulfilling. they did a smart thing. what happened was the handful of students who put into motion this reconciliation and written these apology letters several of the match greg for lunch et gre english teacher's house and they had am met greg for lunch at thr english teacher's house and they had a good session of three hours they knew what they had done back then was the wrong thing to do but because they hated koinonia and hated grade they didn't know anything except he was the commie -- the carnegie library is an olda com library is an old building comment at that reunion the reconciliation with greg was a public point of order. there was the guy who planned the reunion, david morgan said some words about it. they let greg sink a couple songs. he fancied himself bob dylan when he was in high school. he sang forever young, he wanted to see you have a lot of nerve saying you were a friend of mine. not everybody in the class of that went to the reunion was in favor of reconciliation. a lot of them thought greg didn't deserve this treatment, nobody should give him a hug. those people, this is what changed, those people didn't say it. they were quiet. they politely shook his hand and went back to their corner. >> reconciliation -- >> talk about that. >> do you think it was a genuine reconciliation, word there genuine feelings or was it the awkwardness you were describing? i am curious. >> i think the people sat down and wrote greg letters and he called them, were sincere. i think there were three or four of them that were particularly since the year. it was part of their journey to do that. others thought they had behaved so badly in high school. the people who reached out to greg were not generally eat the people who spat at him or hate him or tripped him down the stairs or hit him in the face in high school. these were the kids who stood by while other people did those things and didn't say anything. they were the people, the equivalent of the clergymen martin luther king jr. wrote the letter from the birmingham jail, the good white clergyman of the south who thought he was rushing things too much and who didn't want to stand up and say anything about the injustice because it was too and comfortable for them. they do better even back then. with time they knew better. i think it was genuine but you asked if it was genuine on the part of the class, there is a different answer for every person. for some of the people, greg was treated shabbily, we should shake his hand and wish him well and for other people in was a heartfelt letter. do we have to do this? it very. >> anyone else have a question in the second row? >> i am curious what other members of the community who don't live on the farm to participate, self-contained movement. >> in the early years koinonia was not very self-contained. one of the purposes for founding it was a divinity degree, he became a minister, he had the degree in agriculture from the university of georgia. he had great motivation for not only bringing jesus that scientific farming to the roll south. there was a lot about reach with local farmers. one reason they were not run out of the county in early years. they were making an effort to introduce new strains of poultry to local farmers and things like that. was only the racial move turned ugly after the supreme court decision and so much the offensiveness among white southerners in the south that koinonia started becoming a target. at that point they became an embattled enclave and a lot of people left. a fourth of the population of koinonia which is 60 or 70 people in the mid 50s, a fourth of that population was black. when the violence started, they thought they were going to be the first targets for those and koinonia thought they were going to be too. the klan pressure had the ironic effect of turning an interracial commune into a white collar me and for the wrong reasons. >> was koinonia like today? >> koinonia is still there on highway 49, old dolphin road south of america, it is still a christian commune, there were 25 full-time residents, there were a lot of visitors to come through, people who are curious, people who are members of the traditional churches, quaker's and brethren and people who believe strongly in nonviolence, people who are interested in koinonia history and the struggle in the 50s and 60s, ties to habitat for humanity which started as an experimental program at the farm in the late 60s. koinonia is known, they are hugely into burma culture and they are on that permit culture circuit. a lot of people come through and say koinonia, really interested in what they are doing with the land and livestock more than they are in the racial side. >> in the front row. >> the focus of the book is students. any adults in the faculty or administration stand out as villains or heroes or had a real impact when you did your research? >> the biggest hero among the faculty was this english teacher, i had lunch at her house, she was, she taught english from the late 50s until i am not sure when she retired, probably in 1990 and she spent a lot of changes there and -- greg would talk about the things he was going through. she was the only person in the faculty he would confide in. she knew about what he was going through kent was an ordeal in was. he talked to her more than he talked to his parents. his mother in particular is a very sweet person, the picture i got but their attitude was more like yes, they don't like us. they used to feed us to the lions, get used to it. >> what was jimmy carter's relationship to koinonia and when did it start? >> the carters's relationship to koinonia is a ticklish subject. back to planes in 1953, the same year gray's family moved to koinonia, when jimmy's father had died, mr. earle to run the family peanut warehouse. almost immediately brown vs. board happened and the racial climate turned ugly. there were people coming by trying to get the carters to joy in the country club plan as it has been called, and jimmy wouldn't do it. he refused to do it because he believed it was wrong but he would only let that go so far. they were friendly towards koinonia. when koinonia was being boycotted for the better part of ten years they couldn't buy farm supplies, could sell products, primarily asian the beginning. date shelves some of their peak tons but jimmy hardly got up, he had political ambitions, and they ought to leave koinonia alone, and when he starts running, rate a -- related by blood. they probably, when you talk about koinonia now, they would like to think they get a little bit more. but they know it was difficult. i went to the 72 anniversary of koinonia gathering in america and that this beautiful historic theater on the main street and that is where the main session was an joy jimmy made the introductory remarks, stars for different luminaries over the years, some of them were well known and most were local folks and not the rest of it. some of the stars on the sidewalk were the very people trying to run koinonia out of the county and that was ironic. >> i am glad to hear that. does anyone else have a question? in the front row? >> i don't have a question but an observation. wind clarence jordan was boycotted, in albany, how to mail order. they start with mail order business. the story of greg could have been the story of a girl the graduated in the class of '65 from albany high school. she was absolutely persecuted and hasn't wanted to go back but five girls she befriended all remembered her. when a classmate is writing a book about it, they all spoke about my daughter. >> how many people went through this sort of thing through those years? she lived in albany during this period and her daughter was in high school during that period and was not in agreement with most of the racial attitudes and was punished in the same way grade was for it, went through a lot of harassment, she also mentioned koinonia had gone into the mail-order business after the boycott, that is true, koinonia in its first few years -- cleric was a paltry man on the cover of the southeastern poultry news at one time wearing a test helmet. when nobody would buy from them they went into the pecan business. they could some mail order all over the country. this is a familiar koinonia story. he came up with the slogan for their mail order pecan product which was helped shift tp the n out of georgia. >> is there a lady who went albany who became the druggist and build a story around her? >> you could build a book around the pioneer of black students who went to america's high school. they are told rather shallowly and i think there would be something done. i was telling somebody when we think about the civil rights movement we think about it like the civil war, in terms of a handful of big engagement, gettysburg, birmingham, antietam, and both conflicts which are bookends in the same conflict were fought in hundreds of engagements across the country particularly in the south. one of those engage and you don't usually hear that much about wasn't a smaller one. it was a very significant one. got a lot of publicity at the time but it is not well remembered their. all of these little struggles and all of these little towns and high schools, they have become stories, you could certainly do that. >> in the back row. >> footnote to the school situation in america. there is no issue that created more kickback or violence throughout the house than the issue of school desegregation. the irony is now we looked like -- you go back to america's to they are they the same? they are more segregated now than they were 50 years ago and that is probably true across most of the country. you mention roberttina, writing a book, pretty sure she will the we have been looking for documentation of the american movement since 2007 and we are hoping with the university and america's to establish our ties in the civil rights institute on its campus. >> tell people who you are. >> yes, if you like. >> this is sam malone who was a hero of america in nearly 60s, he was a snake activist during the protest movement in america, 64, 65, he is in the book, he is now head of a group called the sumter county movement remembered committee or might have left out a word. it is a movement that is basically trying to say, to hang onto this history and something significant happened in this place with this wonderful eve talkative name america's and he writes about the resegregation of schools across the country particularly in america. was there anything else? >> a question over here. if you will lay your hands one more time so we can hear you. >> i think as a follow-up to the last comment, most of our housing in this country is segregated. wheat integrate and then kind of segregate. any african-americans move back into koinonia after they left? >> that is a good question, there have been some. i cannot tell you what the figure is but i know the times i have been down there you always see there are some black people living there. koinonia was never going to appeal to black plaques in sumter, georgia that much. as alien to their experience, these are white products, ministers and their families and young missionaries, questing and young people who all came from more liberal main line protestant background. the black people who did live at the farm tended to be people living there because of employment, it was a tough sell to get him interested. >> i saw their hands a minute ago. way in the back. you are under the light which is why i can't see you. i am sorry. >> i want to ask about grade's relationship with his parents. as a parent it is hard to read about how his parents were willing to sacrifice him to the america's high school system he was suffering under and they have deep religious views but did greg resent his parents at all for their religious beliefs? >> he did not hold a lot of rancor for his parents and some other young people at koinonia, certainly his older brother billy in chicago, they have never gotten over it. billy has gone a lot of therapy over the years, billy felt like the koinonia children were cannonball fodder in a war they didn't have to be part of and they fought it was awful of their parents to set them on the front line like that. i think about my own parents if i had been in a situation, playing volleyball one night and getting shot at by clans and i believe i would be on the next train north. i don't think i would be living there. they were so deeply committed to their religious view, greg's father was a minister, disciples of christ minister, a lot older, he was about 50 when great was born. he had his family at a much older age. greg thought of him as a grandfather figure so most of greg's child that he was part of hearing. clarence was more of a father figure to him than his own father was. his mother was a very nurturing person. she listened to a lot of his stories that they were not going anywhere for their father didn't want them to. >> we have time for one more. the young man with the beard right here. >> with jordan being a baptist minister how does the baptist church feel about clarence? >> that is a good question i don't know the answer to. the southern baptist church obviously is fairly conservative and i don't think clarence is one of their patrons saints. [laughter] >> another patron saint, the cooperative baptist union, the split off from the southern baptist, jimmy carter, this part out and actually a lot of baptist churches in atlanta i have come to find out are actually part of a gap, no longer affiliated with setting baptist church because they have changed within neighborhood. .. he'll be signing books downstairs, 25% off all books tonight. thank you so much for coming. come down and buy books you will not regret it. [applause]. >> [inaudible conversation] >> interested in american history? watch american history history television on c-span three every weekend. forty-eight hours of people and events that help document the american story. this is c-span.or.history for more information. >> would talk about the 100 year struggle of the fire department which continues today. the fdny has only 300 black fire fire fighters out of 11,000. 11000. during this event held that relate bookstore missile notices join by some of the firefighters profiled in her book. >> good evening, welcome to greenlight bookstore. we're excited to have this