Facebook. Com booktv. My forthcoming book is called r freedom now, and i have an edited volume, black women respond to michelle obama. I want to welcome everybody on behalf of the links, wonderful organization here in charlottesville, virginia, as well as the Virginia Foundation for the humanities and the producers of the virginia festival of the book. Please turn off all your cell phones, okay . I will just tell you the festival is free of charge, not free of cost. So please remember to go online and give back or pick be up a giving envelope from the information desk at the omni hotel and support your festival so we may sustain it for many, many years. Please till out the evaluations, these provide useful information that helps the festival continue to be free and open to the public. Following the talk there will be a book sale so, please, support our fabulous authors by buying tear books, okay their books, okay . And the program today is called africanamerican stories of work, change and dispossession. And this is featuring m. J. Obrien, tammy ingram, steven a. Reich is that correct . Reich. Ike, okay. Can reich. Okay. Pete daniel, and i am the moderator. Well begin with pete daniel, he has been both a professor of history and a public historian. He has served as the president of Southern Historical association and the American Association of historians, and he currently lives in washington d. C. This is his seventh book, dispossession. Lets welcome him, please. [applause] thank you. How many farmers do we have here . One farmer . Two, okay. In dispossession, i analyze discrimination that drove black farmers from the land and record the story of the stalwart brach farmers black farmers who fought back. It was an unfair fight. From top the bottom, the u. S. Department of agriculture, usda, was run by white men, many prejudiced against africanamericans, women, indians, hispanics; that is, anyone who was not a white male. Recall that by 1910 africanamericans held title to some 16 million acres of farmland. By 1920 there were 925,000 black farmers, the acquisition of land and tenure coming under some of the countrys harshest Racial Discrimination and violence. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, the black farm count in ten Southern States fell from 132,000 to 16,000. And 88 an 88 decline. This was not an sent. Three an accident. Three usda agencies played a role in discriminatory process. The ascs managed a lot of subsidy programs. The federal Extension Service offered advice on the latest farming techniques, organize toed 4h clubs for rural youth and established home demonstration clubs for rural women. Fha offered loans to farmers unable to secure credit from private sources. These three powerful agencies wielded tremendous economic and political power. They hired office staffs, selected extension and home demonstration agents, controlled information, adjusted acreage allotments, dispersed loans, adjudicated disputes and in many cases, looked after family and friends. County administrators had enormous discretion in how programs were carried out and who benefited. The student nonviolent coordinating committee, sncc, contested ascs elections for these powerful county committees that carried out these policies. And despite snccs tactics, they ran into duplicity, lies and even violence. And they won only a few seats over the years they were involved in actively contesting these seats. I devote three chapters to their efforts. And this effort as largely been whited out by the department of agriculture that claims that it was today, not sncc, that encouraged black farmers to vote, which is totally untrue. And the cover of my book have you got . This was taken by one of the people who work for sncc, and its a picture she took in mississippi of a black farmer doing something with plowing across a field. And she, theres several other of her pictures in the book, but shes one of these people who came to mississippi in the summer of 64. And it was her and others who organized these to contest these elections. The Extension Service integrated in 1965 meaning that africanamerican administrators transferred from black to white land grant colleges where they were given nothing to do. Black county agents and home demonstration agents out in the counties were put under white control with secondary titles. At tuskegee university, willie strain had edited the negro farmer, which was a very popular newspaper giving accounts of all the news that farmers like to read. When he was transferred to auburn university, he was shunned and given no duties. He said when he walked in in the morning, the white people would turn their backs to him, and he would go into his office and put his books down, and then he would go to the library and read. Well, he got tired of that and went back to graduate school to seek another degree and then returned to auburn, received the same treatment. When he was passed over for position of head of the department which he was highly qualified to do, he sued. And the case became a major, major civil rights case. Strain v. Fillpot, and the decision, rendered by judge frank johnson, basically dismembered all of that prejudicial structure that the alabama Extension Service had and said you will hire a black person for this and this and made it very, police sit what had to be done explicit what had to be done. The strain case is very important, but how many of you had ever heard of willie strain before . I hadnt either until i started this project. And the around conservativists at archivists at the University Said did you know hes still alive and hes living over in tuskegee . So i went and interviewed him and another person who had this similar treatment. The Farmers Home Administration systematically denied farmers loans and since they, like their white neighbors, needed credit to buy seeds, fertilizer and pesticides to stop the crop year, many were forced out of farming. These county fha people had total power on who got loans. There was no appeal no matter what even the committee said. It was the administrators, and there are many stories in this book about administrators that were horrible, prejudicial and so forth. Some of this story is seen through the eyes of william sebron who was an africanamerican administrator of the Civil Rights Office in the department of agriculture. And he was an isolated black man in a very prejudiced bureaucracy. And his attempts to do things were thwarted, memos he sent were intercepted, and then after the fix son administration Nixon Administration came in, usda people blamed him for not having achieved more civil rights. Timothy pickford was a North Carolina farmer who this 1999 after joining with a lot of old farmers had a case called pickford v [inaudible] how many of you have heard of that case . A lot of more of you have heard of that. The judge in this case basically said since 1981 when the Nixon Administration quit when they started throwing complaints into the trash, since then any black farmer who had documentation to prove discrimination could join this suit and try to get some money back. For discrimination. And, of course, that happened. The case was decided, an elaborate system to see who was owed what was set up, and in the fullness of time, the money was appropriated. Meantime, of course, many farmers passed away and never received the benefits from this. The focus of dispossession, the book that i wrote, is before 1981. Most of it is about, takes place if the 1960s in the 1960s. Theres no tombstone marking the final resting place of discrimination. Thank you. [applause] thank you, dr. Daniel. Now we have m. J. Obrien whos an independent writer. His interests in the Civil Rights Era was sparked as a catholic seminarian during the late 1960s and deepened as he studied the nonviolent philosophies of gandhi, Martin Luther king jr. And dorothy day. He excelled at english and history at st. Maries seminary st. Marys seminary in maryland, graduating in 1973. He earned a second ba in communications from washington, d. C. s American University in 1984 and worked as a Corporate Communications executive for over 30 years. Obrien recently retired from the National Rural utilities cooperative finance corporation, and obrien along with his wife, Allison Mcgill adopted three africanamerican children from washington d. C. And because of this, they developed a keen interest in u. S. Race relations. His published we shall not be moved, is by University Press of mississippi, 2013 be, coming out 201, coming out, has come out in paperback, right . And obrien blogs regularly on issues of race and civil rights at blog. Notbemoved. Com. Please welcome him. [applause] well, thank you all for being here. Its wonderful to be here at virginia festival of the book, and its great to be on the panel with such other great authors. My story really begins with a photograph, and so i hope youll indulge me with a few visuals. I think many people who see this picture are familiar with it, and it is a picture, a unique picture in the Civil Rights Movement of the Jackson Woolworth suttin. And i wanted to tell you a little bit about that story. It has now become iconic and instantly recognizable, but there was a time when this was just another one of many photographs taken during the Civil Rights Movement. I was lucky enough if my 20s to meet in my 20 to meet the woman at the suspect of the photograph, the white woman with her head turned away from the camera with the bun on the back of her head. Her name is joan mulholland, and she was a radical Freedom Fighter from the beginning of the Student Movement in 1960. I met her and the story, one of the things that people know is the photograph but they really dont know the entire story of what this photograph represents and how it is uniquely connected to the story of method ger evers in mississippi. And i, in the book i kind of connect those dots and try to weave together the stories of the many people who made up the Jackson Movement as it came to be known. I met joan, the woman at the isnt of the photograph, through center of the photograph, through her children. And this is just a kind of blurry photo of her five children at the time that i met them this 1977 when i was playground counselor in their neighborhood, and they would come to the playground. And it was through them that i met this very interesting, hippielikelooking woman who drove a purple vw, you know, bus with a big peace sign on the back. And i didnt really know her history in mississippi or understand, you know, what she had gone through. And it was only over the course of years that she began to tell me her story. The prior Panel Focused on the fact that there are a lot of oral histories that we dont know, and it was new through her story to begin with and then the many other people who participated in the Jackson Movement later that i got to talk to that make up the centerpiece of this book. Its not unlike, my meeting joan is not unlike the story that was told by thomas key neely in schindlers list. He happened upon one of schindlers people when he went into a store the in california to buy a suitcase, and the people who ran the store was one of the folks who are now, you know, dock uted in schindlers documented in schindlers list. The story of the Jackson Movement may not have come to light except for my chance meeting with joan and her chirp. It took me and her children. It took me 15 years to really understand the significance of this photo. Her kids would always tell me that my moms in a famous picture, but 15 years after i first saw that picture, i went to the king center for social change in atlanta and saw this picture in context with all the other iconic civil rights photographs and realized that this was more than just a family photograph, this was a significant moment in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. And i started interviewing joan when i got back from that trip, and that is what eventually led to the book. I had it was such a shock to see that picture this that space and to realize i had a deep connection with the person right in the center. And joan introduced me to other people in the picture. Some of you may not know, but the black woman in the picture is ann moody who wrote her own, you know, significant document oral history, really, of her own life called coming of age in mississippi. The man sitting to the right of joan is john salter who was a professor at a college, a historically black college right outside of jackson. He also wrote a memoir of his experiences in jackson called jackson, mississippi. But nub of them really none of them really had gone to the trouble of actually documenting, you know, footnoting, making sure that this is really prepared for the historians who will review it in depth in the future. And so i determined to take that task as by own, and for the next 20 years, really, from 992 until 1992 until just last year, it took me that long to get it down and to find a publisher and get it out. So thankfully, its out now. And if i have a little bit more time, paula . How much we got . [inaudible] five minutes, okay, were good. I wanted to talk a little bit about how this story is i uniquely linked to med garres life medgars life. And i didnt know this until i started going deeper into the story. Because, of course, medgar evers was a naacp field secretary in mississippi, the sole staff person for the naacp within the state s. And since late 1954 he had been agitating for change within the state of mississippi. Often, you know, a sole, lone wolf figure who, you know, was harassed and really terrorized within his own state. His family was harassed. They got phone calls almost every day threatening to kill him and his family. It was a horrible, horrible situation he was in, and i didnt realize that this photograph and this sitin that happened in may 1963, now many people mistake this photograph for the original greensboro sitin which happened in 1960 in North Carolina where four black guys from North Carolina a and t went down and sat in at the woolworths. And that was really the start of the Student Movement. It created, you know, a blast that were still kind of reeling from. But this sitin happened three years later, the woolworths did. So it took three years for that movement to get to mississippi and to make it into the mainstream and for people in mississippi to realize we, too, have to rise up like the rest of the south. And this is the first three people who went to the sitin were from the college, these three black kids. I got to meet all of them and talk with all of them. In fact, i i got to meet and talk with all of the nine folks who were in the sitin. But to get back to medgar, this sitin, the Jackson Woolworths sitin created in a waying with the kind of opportunity in a way the kind of opportunity for all of the black populists to come together under the banner of the jack ason movement led by medgar and supported by john salter. Finally the black populace rose up. It was such a repressive society that people were unwilling to stand up because they would be mowed down or hounded out of the state. Particularly black people would lose their jobs, you know in but the young people said weve been putting up with this for far too long, and were just going to have to make stand, and thats what they did. This turned into a scene that went on for three hours with people harassing. You see the kids in the back harassing the common astronauters, pouring sugar demonstrators pouring sugar and salt and ketchup on them. It was more than what you see. Brass knuckles were pulled out, cigarettes were put out on the back of his neck. The girls were pulled off their stools and dragged through the store. I mean, all kinds of crazy things went on during those three hours, but because the police did not come in and stop the demonstration, this made national news, and it gave the oxygen to movement that enabled it for the next two weeks to become a major movement. And for more than a thousand people, mostly young people, to be arrested. And so the spotlight finally was beginning to shine on mississippi, would shine much harder the following year during freedom summer. But unfortunately, the two weeks of unrest that this demonstration started ended with the assassination of medgar evers in jackson. And thats how those two events are uniquely linked. And i got one minute, so i want to tell my final story about the photographer, and thats Fred Blackwell there who was only 22 years old when he took this famous photograph. He worked for the local newspaper, the jackson daily news. He was a segregationist just like all the kids in the background were. He grew up with those kids. He had gone to school with some of their, some of tear brothers and sisters some of their brothers and sisters. And he went in the store that day hoping that the demonstration would be, you know, taken out. And he was on the side of the kids who were doing all the bad things to the demonstrators. But as he witnessed and continued to take pictures throughout the threehour common straight and saw demonstration and saw his neighbors becoming more and more out of control and doing more and more outlandish things to the demonstrators, he had a change of heart. During the demonstration as he was taking photographs and realized that segregation could not continue and that he was on the wrong side of history. And it took him 30 years before he told anybody, luckily, i was able to capture his story before he told anybody that story. And h