her own activist strategy. she always said to other activist we must acknowledge today. >> later we visit the special collection as syracuse university to learn about the antislavery movement. first, we speak with author, marsha weisman, about her book "prelude to prisonment" student perspectives on school suspension. >> well, school to prison pipeline is a catchy term that looks at the increasing numbers of students who are suspended from school for disciplinary misbehavior. and it captures both students two are suspended and sent to what's called an alternative school in most districts. some states allow students to be expelled from school for up to a. >> meaning they get no educational services whatsoever, and also encompasses the increasing use of police and arrests. so, students are -- we have seen over the past decade or more, that more and more young people are arrested in schools for behaviors that normally had been, or in the past, had been addressed by school staff, school principals and guidance counselors. so, at the end of the day, school prison pipeline is a term that in my view, really encompasses the robbing of young people of their right to an education. so it's a human rights issue. >> we're here to learn if we're not able to learn, like spelling, if your suspended, a lot of teachers won't geoff you the homework you need from the stuff you missed. we're constantly getting pushed back and fall interesting the prison pipe will be and becoming a statistic, and that not where we want to be. no in a good -- not in a good way. suspended and expelled and pushed out and we don't get to actually learn. >> it's a civil rights issue because disproportionately more african-american young men are suspended from school. as well as other students of color, african-americans, girls, latino boys and girls. and so in my view that makes it very much a civil rights issue. wrote the book to elevate the voices of young people who are in what is called the school to prison pipeline in the last decade, there's been a lot of attention to this problem. a lot of research. and data collection, but missing from the conversation have been the voices of students who are directly affected by being pushed out of school. i really wanted to give them a chance to be heard about something that is so profoundly affecting their lives, and i came to see that these were young people who were very, very harmed by being pushed out of school, by the process. they were also really distraught about losing their opportunity to an education. and so it occurred to me that i needed to hear more about that. i needed to really hear their stories about what happened, why did you get suspended? and once you were suspended, what happened after what is called the hearing, the decisionmaking process that finds guilt or innocence, if you will, and then what the sentence is, what happens if you're found guilty. and so i reached out to young people who we knew, who are in our program, and i asked if they would be willing to be interviewed. first i was struck by the sense of, on the one hand, responsibility that the young people had for their behavior. they did acknowledge misbehaving. but they also thought that the full story wasn't being heard, and for the most part there was a lot of detail that went into what they did, and they really felt that they were never given an opportunity to tell their perspective on what happened and why. but they were willing to say, i shouldn't have done that. i know that. i know better than that. my mama taught me to behave better than that. so the story i would tell was a young man who was on the school bus with his younger brother. his younger brother was being bullied in school. and one day he brought a knife, and the older brother realized he had a knife on him. and as they were getting off the school bus, took the knife away from his younger brother and intended to turn it in because he knew the policy. he supported the policy. and he didn't want his brother to use a knife and get into more trouble and harm someone else. but as they were getting off of the school bus and he was taking the knife, they both got pulled off of the bus, and they were both -- the end of the story for them were they were both suspended for a year, and this young man -- he must have been about 15 years old -- and he was a big kid, right? and as he's telling me the story, his eyes filled up with tears, and he said, i support the policy. i took that knife away from my brother because he didn't need to have a knife in school. but they went listen to me. they wouldn't hear me. i know -- and then he said i know they had to do something because my hand touched the knife. so i understand they had to look into it. but they didn't hear why, and they didn't believe me. and they said i was a bad kid, and that hurted me so bad. and when you look at this kid, it's usually people think, oh, my god, tough guy, and the conversation with him just was heartbreaking. you could see how harmful thatterter experience was. it erodes his faith in justice. he wasn't opposed to accountability, but what happened to him he didn't think was fair or just. he thought adults would be better equipped could hear the nuances of the story, and so much of this echoed my experience working in the criminal justice system, and that was somewhat horrifying because we're talking about education. right? so as the kids talked about being suspended, that's analogous to an arrest. as they talked about -- and even in 0 those cases where they weren't actually race -- arrested, they talked about the case against them. it echoed anymore the justice system who are overcharged. they may have done something inappropriate, something wrong, but the charges are often escalated. they -- the experience of the hearing was very much like a trial. and one young person said to me during the interview, they really don't want to hear you say anything. they just want you to plead guilty and take your punishment. and so it was sort of like the railroad that has come to be known as our criminal justice system. the sentence going to a school with even more security measures than a regular school, which itself these days have a lot of security in them. being wandded, going through metal detectors, not being allowed to wear caughts of sweat shirts, being taken into the bathroom and being patted down. the girls felt very violated in the patdowns in particular. and then the return to mainstream school sounds a lot like the older folks we work with when they're talking about re-entering from prison, being forever stigmatized for the mistake they made. massive incarceration became a tool and the criminal justice system became a tool, not only for social control but we began to embrace it as a mechanism for further stereotype people, to politicize an issue, divide our country, to fear-monger, and to win political office, if you will. and once that -- that begins to seep into every part of our culture. and that's what happened, i think, with schools. as more and more people in communities of color were stereotyped as criminals, it becomes pretty easy, if you will, or a slippery slope to start looking at the children in those ways. you don't undo 20 years of history just by snapping your fingers, and cultures are very hard to change. so at the end of the day, i think that integral to the policy changes that are being put in place, that advocacy, particularly on the part of young people and parents, is an essential part of the solution because unless we keep looking and keep challenging and you can have a good discipliner in code that never really gets implemented. and holding -- so holding districts' feet to the fire to do what they are saying they want to do. it can disappear in a flash of a minute, and so i think that advocacy and student voice and parents' voice remains a critical part of the solution, but we're not at the same place we were ten years ago. and i think that's promising and hopeful. what we're seeing now in this country is almost a last gasp and i think it's going to be a long gasp, but nonetheless, the last gasp of the effort to preserve white privilege and keep people of color as second-class citizens. i think that the genie is out of the bottle and there's just too many people, and particularly in the work that we do. there are now organizations, phenomenal organizations led by formerly incarcerated people. they're not going away. the parents and students who make up -- in schools are not going away, and in fact we're gathering more teens, and so i do believe that it's going to be a protracted struggle, but i am really confident that this is going to come out on the right side at the end of the day. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. this weekend we're visiting syracuse, new york to talk with local authors and tour the city's literary sites with the help of our local cable partner, time warner cable. next, syracuse university professor her herbert ruffin talks about the racial history of california's silicon valley. >> means that this book is -- has been positioned within not only african-american west hoyt but also within great migrations, black urban history. and unlike other black urban histories or great migration histories between 1915 to 1970 when they usually -- when that period has ended, african-americans in silicon valley were not necessarily invited to come into the silicon valley, if you know what i mean, or santa clara valley, by industrial recruiters or something along that line during the two great wars in 1915 or 1940, to work on ships, especially in the west, to work on ships to build ships, and work in factories, government factories, federal government factory us. they war not part of that process so their process is one in which you have african-americans for the most part, if they are coming in, family either lives inside the region. the place is very cultural. african-american at that time don't want to go back into agriculture. you have a situation as well where you have african-americans who have been going into places like san francisco, richmond, california, los angeles, and the like, and once the war is over, that's when you have this very interesting intraregional migration taking place. people start to figure out, wait a minute, this may not be for me inside these larger metropolitan areas. let me see if there are other places for me to try to find my dream. in terms of the first world war -- this is the general thing about blacks in the west. blacks in the west generally speaking in terms of the urban development, in terms of the population, that rise of population, generally it's probably 25 years behind what takes place inside the urban north, the urban northeast, harlem, south side, chicago. that doesn't happened in places out west and when i say west i mean places west of the 98th meridian, states from texas, up to the dakotas, and going out west, oklahoma and kansas and places like that, where instead of it being comfortably couched within this whole idea of conquest and westward migration from a place like syracuse. take this as an example. and once upon a time going from buffalo to syracuse would have been considered the west. now wire taking a physical divide in the united states and going out west and trying to tell that story. and it also opens up a type of conquest. it takes into consideration, say, for example, people within spanish america. native americans a little bit better. and we go on down the line. a lot of it traces back to this period, the americanization period, and san jose is not the only place that is going through what i am describing where they have not really been jim crowed. it's not founded on slavery. you have slavery everywhere. the slavery is not the dominant institution. so, if -- i will illustrate is in in a david way in california, white slavery would evaporate a lot quicker than it would in other parts of the states, largely because in many parts of california you would perhaps have three -- three free in one room and three unfree in another room and that just made freedom that much more immediate. it had to be done away with. the fugitive slave law had to be done away with it was just a very urgent issue, and that's one of the first things these people who are part of the california color convention -- what they were battling with, and then a lot of things you would see during the civil rights movement 100 years later they're actually engaged in at this time period. incredible stuff. and then they were successful just like the civil rights movement. they would be successful by the 1890s. but now we're talking about identity and basically what the black identity is, if you have everybody clustered, you have no center for -- or it's hard to really identify exactly what is a black community. this is where my methodology of dealing with community institutions comes into play. you start looking at the institutions and basically political organizations, mutual aid society, perhaps if you have economic guild or businesses, you look into that. and there's always some form of political expression involved. there's always a structure -- always a struggle that is involved. you're never going to do away with whatever form of discrimination. it's always going to exist. these people understood it. it's just an issue of, do you recognize it? and how are you going to go about battling it once you recognize it? some people get very comfortable and then things slip back into what they were. so this is the story i'm telling now, a story, uninvited, but sought to make themselves invited. so when we talk about the west, we're talking about various groups, but it goes back to 1500s. doesn't start at 1600 like most people think in an east-west tame. north-south way. it goes back to the early 1500s. when you take into consideration the spanish america. african-americans in 19th 19th century during the gold rush, 1850s. early 1860s, they came from places like philadelphia and new york. they also came from kentucky, with their masters, and texas and places like that. missouri. now, with the ones who came from the north, who are quote-unquote free blacks, they were in connection with the ame church, and what would happen as they would start doing what they're doing in san francisco, it would scatter throughout various areas. by the time you had the emancipation proclamation, 1863, what this would do for many people who are connected with the california color convention as well as they had their own papers. instead of necessarily going up to canada, because there was an underground railroad of the west coast as well taking place. now all of a sudden they're just cubed of like, way. instead of going up there, why don't we look and see what we have around here. so they began to start to look around and find populations like san jose. san jose three years before the emancipation proclamation so you have somebody like a reverend peter william casey, who comes into play, and the type of impact he and they have is immeasurable. they the reason why you have most of this stuff written out in the california constitution by the 1890s. anything you can think of in african-american history in the santa clara valley, they had these type of organizations. so when i talk about community formation, look at the institutions, what they're building, look at also the political organizations as well. so there's an african-american league that exists, alert on the naacp exists. you have like a core that exists, all of this stuff that instead of it just -- thinking about these people in an isolated fashion, isolating their communities, they have connected into something that is national, international. know what i'm saying? what they are battling is something that is not statewide -- would be statewide but also so much larger and out in san jose, in the 1870s, was for fair education. they sparked the fair education movement as well as voting. fair voting. san jose was probably the first place to have fair voting take place after the 15th amendment being passed, and then once you have it lefter on, almost a whole century later, keep in mind that civil rights -- the first civil rights bill was actually passed 1866, but this is just to tell you just how tenuous this whole battle is over freedom, and not giving -- allowing people to have their freedom. it took a whole 100 years to even be in this state where we are now where we're 50 years after the civil rights bills have been passed and people have recognized. 1968, people tend to overlook the importance civil rights legislation that was passed in the time period. for me that when it kind of ended, the whole civil rights period ends. in that bill, you have not only enforcement clause but you also have now clauses that point towards fair housing. why is this important? because in a place like san jose, or inside the santa clara valley, which would become the silicon valley after 1971, we're talking about growth, the growth had doubled. from 730 people to 1700 people by 1950. from up to 1960, you're talking about 4100 people. by 1970, we're talking about 18,090 people. most of those people came in the 1960s, after 1968, the housing thing. whether white communities were ready for it or not, the bottom line was that black people knew they could move in, if they had the means to move in. you know what i'm saying? 1968. that's when you begin to start to find the massive spike tapes where their movement out of san jose would be -- increasingly in a place like east part of san jose, which is also where you find a lot of mexicans. now it's like, well, wherever you think you can afford to move. the case today, you know, although i would have to say that in a place like the veil son -- silicon valley it has become increasingly much too expense tonight -- expensive to live in. that been the case for 20 years. whether you're talking about the collective or individually, families -- these people are forever struggling to try to get beyond just the survival, survival mode. they're trying to thrive. >> during book ofs visit to syracuse new york we talked with jeff hemsley about "going viral." >> an interesting thing happen when something goes viral. we don't talk about the contact. we talk about the fact it within viral. we're aware of the fact that lots of people shared and it lots of people think it was important. i was runny a study not too long ago, and this student was deciding whether or not to share something, and she decided that she would share this one video, and i asked her why. she said, it has 30,000 views, and i thought, if other people liked it, it must be good. so, it's sort of like we're all voting on something and saying, this is what it important. this is what is cool. and we're not just talking about the content. we're talking about the fact that there's this phenomenon of us share content. and i think that's pretty exciting. i think a lot of other people think it's exciting, too. so, morality, or when something -- virallity, or when something goes viral, virallity is a process of social sharing weapon tend to think of viral, video that got a million views. actually it's more the process by which that happened. so, virallity is what happens when people share content, usually into their own network. and often times somebody who has a lot of followers or people page attention to them, like an important blog, also spreads content. and then it reaches a wide audience. we often tend to think before viral events as being new, powered by the internet or social media, but they're not. viral events aren't new. in the book, one of the examples that we give is rosa parks. when rosa parks was arrested for sitting on a bus, she was a black person sitting in a bus where black people weren't supposed to sit, and she was arrested. well, within four days, 40,000 people knew about it. it spread socially through the community. torches were an important part of that but people telling the story over and over again. one of the key ways in which it spread. so what is different now with social media is 40,000 people can reach -- be reached in a day instead of four days. so it's the speed and the scope that is different now. but viral events aren't new. the process starts out when somebody shares content. they could be an activist, they could be a company sharing a video about their product, they could be a politician, they could be a local tv station. but somebody shares that content. and with virallity, what happens is some people find it interesting, or they find it funny 0, find it worthwhile to share, or to talk about. and so they share that content into their own social network. and when they do that, all the people that they're friends with or that follow them, they have the potential to see it or run into it. and then some of them can share it. and then the people that are friends with or follow them can share it, and so we have these waves of viral growth. when the content is particularly popular or people really feel like it's worth talking about, then it can spread really, really fast in our social networks. we have this saying that the internet is a democratizing force or social media is a democratizing force, and viral content is one of the things that supports that dem dem mock tieing force, and the reason why 40 years ago we had three big tv stations and if they can't air the shore, nobody heard about it. there was the advantage because we had a shared culture and that meant we were all americans and had similar memories. well, our society is fragmenting a built as a result of social media, and that may not be the greatest thing, but on the plus side, it means we can all share content that we're interested in. if the big three stations aren't telling a story, it still gets out. in fact, one of the studies we did was on how did "occupy wall street" grow? started as a protest in new york city, and less than a month it was in over 2,000 cities in the united states, and wasn't just what was happening in social media. there are boots on the ground, people protesting in their own cities. but they got hooked up as a result of social media. because the mainstream media was not telling stories about "occupy" for the first couple of weeks it came out. so, we learned about "occupy" through what was happening on social media. in fact, as researchers we learned about it as a result of what was starting to spread in social media, and that's why we started collecting social media data related to "occupy wall street." in previous work we looked at the 2008 presidential election, and we looked at the videos that went viral, and what we were interested in there was understanding the life cycle of viral events. one of the key things we did was, we collected all the viral videos related to the presidential election, and then we collected all of the links from blogs that were linking to those videos. so that we could figure out the order in which people were posting links to these videos and driving that viral content. what we found is in some cases content does bubble up. it's a video that somebody made in their backyard or something, in their own home studio. it got shared by a few smaller blogs and got picked up by bigger and bigger blogs, until final lit was on huffington post, and then it explode all over the internet. but say we're talking bat rumor, and enough people think it's true, they're spreading it. here's an example. years ago there was a case where people tweeted that tiger had gotten loose in london, from the zoo. and i hadn't. but people were like, oh, wow, this is a public safety issue. we have to spread the word. you can imagine that went viral and went viral really quickly. and then of course the zoo said, no, we have all our tigers. but that content didn't get as viral as the rumor. it took a little while for that to get squared away. but you don't know. you don't necessarily know if a lot of people are sharing it, there must be something about the message that is believable, that people think, well, this could be true or is true or it's important to share. so i'm interested in that dynamic. and i'm interested in the fact that it's us sharing the content and saying it's important, as a society. so i want to understand how viral events are interacting with society. i would say that viral events are a reflection of what is happening in society, statement that they're both re- -- changing our social norms. showing us what is possible or happening. they're shaping our opinion about things. let's say you're a politician, new politician, and you want your content to go viral. how do you do that? well, it's pretty tough. in fact, viral events are events that a have all the right ingredients and happen to be well-placed in time. so in order for you to make something go rural, there's a few things you can do. you can make the content very high quality content. hire people to make the video for you who know how to do that. if it's a story that you want to go viral, have a professional write it for you. so that's the first part. the content has to be good. second, the content has to have some quality about it that going to engage the audience. it has to be funny, for example, or it has to be very kindly. it's what we call salient. right now it's the hot topic. so the viral information that future historians will study is the content. they'll watch the video. a lot of times we post something online and think i've tweeted and it now it's gone. i post evidence this video, and enough it's out there. maybe you delete the video. if it went viral, though, chances are somebody made a copy of it. in fact, there's lots and lots of copies out there. and in fact, lots and lots of companies are sucking up all of this social media data and they're doing analytics on it. library of congress, in fact, has every tweet ever tweeted, and is going to continue to collect those. they're part of our national archive of information. so that information will be available for future historians to study. i don't see the viral events are going to go away. the landscape is just getting faster and faster. there's new ways to share information, whether it's photos through snapchat or -- we send links and send videos and pictures on facebook and twitter. that's not going to change. one thing that is interesting is that all this content that goes viral are things that we think are important, right now, for some reason. so, think about 20 years from now, or 100 years from now, when researchers are looking back at this point in time and trying to figure out what we thought was cool or what we thought was important, or why history turned out the way it did. well, the documents that those future historians will be looking at are viral events. they'll be saying, wow, these are the things people thought were important. these are the things that society as a whole thought were important. so, i think the viral events today are our legacy for tomorrow. >> you're watching back to on c-span2. this weekend, we're in syracuse, new york. next, historian carol faulkner speaks about the life of 19th 19th century abolitionist lucretia mott. >> lucretia mott is the most important white female abolitionists and one of the most important women in america, yet she has not received the same amount of historical attention as someone like elizabeth sands. she is noose household name. my biography is called "lucretia mott, the heresy." and that refers to her own activist strategy. the always aid to other activists we must agitate, whether they be abolitionists or feministsing. so she advisessed reforms to be stand out under heresy, to confront social injustices, political injustice, and legal injustices and not be afried be labeled a heretic or infin dead -- infidel, or a nonconformist and that's what lucretia mott did. she was abolitionist, women's rights activist and quake ermanster. she lived a very long life, born on the island of man duct but lived most of her adult life in philadelphia and that ways the city from which she based her activism, which stretched across the united states and the atlantic as well. lucretia mott definitely defined herself as a feminist in and women's rights activist, and the traced her commitment to women's rights to her childhood on the island of nantucket. it was a community based on the whaling industry so the men in the community would often go off on three, four, five-year voyages, leaving the women to planning the households, do the household finances, and a lot of. the on nantucket ran substances. so, for mott, women's independence and capability was self-evident. she -- as the quaker society of friend were also one of the first denominations to allow women to preach so she had always seen female ministers in their childhood, and she eventually became one herself in 1821. so, i think that sort of capacity for religious authority also informed her commitment to women's rights. she got married to her husband, james mott, in 1811. and in the 18 teens and early 1820s there was nothing necessarily to indicate that she would become a great activist. so, she eventually had six children, five of whom lived to adulthood. she taught in a quaker school. she became a quaker minister. but number of this was unusual. the key moment in her life that turned her into an activist was the controversy in the society of friends in the 1820s. by 1827, the society of friends in the united states had split into two competing hostile groups known as the hicksite and the orthodox quakers, and lucretia mott was a hicksite quaker, neighborhood after their leader, elyas hicks, and the hicksites were one -- one of the issues they focused on was the leadership of the society of friends had become complacent on the issue of slavery. they had done away witch the ownership of slaves along before, and viewed that as enough to have removed themselves from direct contact but elyas hicks and ulee should mott believed you had to sever all ties to slavery, and for wealthy merchants in philadelphia, that was asking quite a lot, they all had economic ties to the south. they all debt in cotton, and even james mott struggled for a while to find a profession to find a career, that would support his family, and eventually he succeeds but it is as at cot top merchant. so lucretia puts a lot of pressure 0 on him to give up the business, and eventually he became a wool merchant by 1830. so that was a radicalizing decade for her and she would speak on women's issues and antislavery issues in that -- when she became a minister and that was the formative period for her. but i think in the early 1830s in philadelphia, philadelphia had the largest population of free blacks in the north. lucretia mott would have known them and inter, ad with them and probably tried to speak in african-american churches and otherwise connected with them. and there were a lot of race riots in philadelphia in the earl 1830s. so, the intensity of northern racism was very visible to her, and so when she attended the founding meeting of the american antislavery society in 1833, and then thereafter founded the philadelphia female antislavery society, she believed that their goal should be not only fighting slavery but also racial prejudice so basically a two-pronged approach. one thing she did frequently, whenever she met a slaveholder, as she did when she was traveling abroad or around the united states, some we often speak in delware, virginia, slave-holding states, kentucky. so she would engauge. she would try to convince that slaveholder that slavery was wrong. and, whether they were being polite or just toll rating the lady poking them in the ribs, she seems to have had some individual personal success. she said, this one slaveholder i met told me to send him some pamphlet when i got home. i'm going to send him some pamphlets. again, she was not afraid of confrontation and engage. and she was going to try to persuade people that slavery was wrong no matter where she was who they were. lucretia not was not particularly interested in politics or the political process, but she did speak on multiple occasions in washington, dc, and at one point, she was supposed to speak in congress, but because she would not agree not to talk about slavery, they wouldn't let her speak, and so instead she spoke in a unitarian church and politics, including southern congressmen, attended, and of course she spoke about slavery because that's what she was always compelled to speak about. during that particular trip to washington, dc in 1843, she also met president tyler, and his line about lucretia mott was, i think i'll turn mr. calhoun over to you. you can negotiate with john c. calhoun for me. that was the level of her ferocity and intransigence on the issue of slavery. she first met elizabeth katy ton. elizabeth katy stanton was 22 years younger, ask when they met, they met in unlikely place, which was at the world antislavery convention in london, england, in 1840. so, two americans meeting in london. and they had other connections, but lucretia mott was there as a delegate from various american antislavery societies. she was officially there to attend the world antislavery convention. elizabeth indicate katie stanston was there on her honeyman. she married an abolitionist named hedgery stanton. so it was a political journey, but the two million instantly expected elizabeth katie stanton later described lucretia mott a revelation of womanhood. i had never met someone like her and didn't know it was possible for women to be so outspoken and independent. so he became an admirer of lucretia mott. elizabeth katie snap ton referred to lucretia mott as the moving spirit of the -- mott rejected it. she said, you should claim that for yourself, really your idea. but the fact is that it was the fact that lucretia mott was in the area that the convention was held, and her presence was advertised to draw attendees. so her sister lived in auburn new york, not far from seneca falls and she would come to this part of the country to central new york regularly, and so when she came up in 1848 she was actually engage fled a number of different activities. she attended an annual quaker meeting, the genesee yearly meeting. she traveled to ontario, canada, to visit former slaves there, american slaves who had fled to canada. she went to the seneca reservation and witnessed them writing their constitution. so she is actually engaging in very interesting activities in the summer of 1848, native american rights, african-american rights, and then women's rights. so, before the seneca falls convention in july 1848, she meets up with her old friend, elizabeth katie stanton, and other quakers in the area. they decide to hold this convention devoted to women's social, civil and religious conditions, and they advertise that lucretia mott will be theres' be the principal speaker. i think the public's perception of her is very interesting. one newspaper once called her a grizzled caesar of the movement. somehow she shed her femininity by engaging in this type of activism. but the women's rights movement and the antislavery movement, held her up as a paragone of womenhood, and they said she was an example you could do both. be an ex-lend wife, mother, grandmother, and also be an activist. i think for her, the activism and the family life blended seamlessly because her husband was also an abolitionist and active in a lot of the same organizationment that she was. he attended the first women's rights contention at seneca falls and chaired the convention. her children also became involved in the philadelphia society and other organizations for women's rights and women's suffrage in philadelphia. so many ways her activism was a family affair and there wasn't a lot of conflict. at her funeral, someone said -- there was silence as appropriate for a quake are funeral but someone said who can speak? the preacher is dead. that sort of -- how much a void had been left by lucretia mott's death. she always had something to say, and i think that made her in some ways too good. she had become almost what elizabeth katie stanton made her, kind of saint. and in actuality she was a deeply radical person for her time, and was not afraid to speak her beliefs. >> we toured the special collections researcher in of syracuse university with the curator, william la moy. >> we are in the sapphire room, the special collection vetches center at the syracuse university library. we are pulling material from the garrett smith papers. he was one of the most prominent mid-19th century reforms, and we also have material from our own rare book and printed material collection to augment the story. gerrit smith was one of the wealthiest men in america in the mid-19th century, but his real interest was in all of the reform movements that were taking place and that meant principally the an legislation n is -- abolition nist movement and women's right. and his papers are here. they're particularly rich in content because everyone in the reform movement wanted gerrit smith to know what they were doing because he could well help them either financially or with publishing support, and just your knowledge of him was valuable. i've made a selection of material from both the gerrit paper smith papers and our rare back and principled material collection to give you two narratives. the first covers the national campaign for antislavery. what i want to show next is the other primary activity of william lloyd garrison, and that is the newspaper "the liberator. "william lloyd garrison started pushing this paper in 1831. and it's important to note that it has been sent to gerrit smith, esquire, and red ink is used for that purpose, but also to mark an excerpt in the paper. so, the person who sent it to gerrit smith is very particular that he reads this story. and the story concerns thomas clarkson, and the significance of that is that thomas clarkson is the english abolitionist who was principally responsible for the abolition of slavery in great britain. so he is regarded as one of the great forerunners of the movement, and the person who sent this to gerri to smith specially marked the passage for that reason. there are factions within the abolitionist movement -- you wouldn't look to would be factions but there are. and in fact, william lloyd garrison's faction is known for regarding the united states' constitution as a proslavery document. and that sets them up in opposition to the liberal party. i should say the liberty party. and the liberty party is devoted to a different ideology that holds that the constitution is not a flawed document but that certain states have failed to implement the constitution properly. and that faction is represented by people such as gerrit smith, and here we have an example of a publication produced by the liberty party, and it's an important image -- this is the liberty almanac for 1851. and the image is that of a chained slave, and the caption underneath reads: am i not a sister? now, remember this image because it is one of the ones that was created for the english abolitionist movement but was adopted by the american movement, and there are different iterations of it. in this instance, it's a woman slave being depicted in chains and kneeling. but these publications were sold to supporters of the movement, and this was one of the sources of funding for the movement. so these publications were critically important in order to keep the movement going forward. we also have a very significant letter here. this the only letter in the gerrit smith papers from harriet beecher stowe. but it's a crucially important one. why is harriet beecher stowe writing to gerrit smith? the answer is explained in this letter, because she is selling her book incredibly well in both great britain and the united states. it's flying off the shelves. but the question arises of whether it is a true depiction of american slavery, or is overdrawn, and that's actually the expression she uses in this letter to gerrit smith. her fundamental problem is, as successful as the book is, people are not regarding it as a true depiction of the evils of american slavery. so, the one person she writes to with this dilemma in mind is gerrit smith, because she is confident that gerrit smith, at the center of one of the abolitionist factions, is probably the one person who can successfully gather the facts and statistics that she needs to write what will become the key to uncle tom's cabin. and that's the version that talks about the facts and statistics behind the book, and she was confident that it was gerrit who could gather this information for her better than nip -- anyone else. i have been solicited both inening england and this country to give some 40 or 50 pages of notes in addition to my book, to supply facts and statistics to show that it is not an overdrawn picture of slavery. i am pressed for time. it's being thought desirable it should appear in england during the height of the uncle tom era. we don't know exactly what he responded. but he was in a position to point her in directions whereby she could get the statistical information. he knew everybody in the movement. they all knew him. so it was a really question of contact. who do i write -- to whom do i write? and then he will redirect me to those she knows. so she's not expecting him to necessarily do it but she knows he will know the proper people. that is why she is writing to gerrit smith. n. because at that point in time, you have gerrit smith and you have william lloyd garrison, and she chooses to write to gerri tu smith. john brown is willing to go into the american south and challenge the institution of slavery directly. brown was so convinced of that action hat when he went to st. catherine's ontario, to interview harriet tubman, he had written a document that would become provisional constitution and ordinances for the people of the united states. ... >> >> there were still willing to support him. this is the very dangerous and these will be men in the metropolitan boston area with the exception of garett smith. talk about this fascinating letter to survive in the garett smith papers. and what you need to realize is is all the previous letters to sanborn from smith are all gone. how did that happen? smith did not want to be known as involved in the attack and harpers ferry. so all of the letters are gone. so why did this survive? this is a first and the reason that it survives it reason that it survives it is a celebratory letter exulting in the fact of the commonwealth of massachusetts just freed him from that policy to kick him out of the commonwealth of massachusetts that is why this letter survives. of the surprises in the papers because they can't bring themselves to destroy that. because technically it is after harpers ferry. there is no legal risk. is also a great triumph for the cause that is a victory and that is what it represents. and this is terribly disturbing to mrs. smith but he actually writes it with a view to this myth that they should own their part in the cause and he believes now is time in 1874 to know he will go to jail he once the full story told i regret that i destroyed as many documents as they did for this story to be told lung the documents are needed. that is why he preserved because it is the true conviction and he did go to right past the life and wanted the whole story to be told. >> we are going to explore the ways that the fault in this region. because that was an active place with the abolitionist movement with that he and vice lavery convention october 21st 1 is going on? where they talking about two separate events one day apart? the answer is the first convention but a 1935 we are not that many radical abolitionist. but they did want to have a convention in the meeting was totally disrupted. but barrett smith was in the room and stood up and declared that all right. because tomorrow you'll go to the village where he lived and there will be no disruptions. and then in that room realized that made that claim because they knew he had that much power. no doubt we're going tomorrow and that's why we have the second occurrence of the meeting. there is also a very important incident that takes place with the background of fugitive slaves bill was passed. and the man responsible of daniel webster. and made his declaration here in syracuse even if there was an anti-slavery convention to still in force the fugitive slavery. and in october 1451 there was an antislavery convention in syracuse and they did try to enforce the law endeavors to suggest to arrest him with the intense of returning to the south. with those facilities and then he doesn't get too far. this time a mob of people associated with the convention converge and the free him. , pat -- this is significant president dan was writing for rochester 1852 president dan was writing for rochester 1852 because god will bless you my dear friend for the interest of the cause of jerry's rescuers. wisely and beneficially so here we have frederick douglass and barrett smith. here we have the different image with a second more. and here we have the title page entitled my bondage and my freedom. and where is it published? new york and auburn. it is seeking 55. what is this version significant? it is because on these two pages, he explains exactly why he had to relocate from boston. he was concerned about a visible lecturer so to express his concerns to understand why he was saying and responded what you go off on a lecture tour in great britain and there'll be no risk to. of which douglas does and they do love him there. he spends about two years there all over in the british isles. and then want to give him honorarium. and his response is a don't need money per se but if you help me to acquire a printing press i would appreciate it. that is because he is already focused on owning his own newspaper. what would become the liberty press were though liberty party paper is the next name is still being printed it utica. velez said he had to make a strategic decision he can not print it because newspapers are being produced in utica and if you know, what happens next the liberty party paper it's printed in syracuse new york so douglass was very shrewd to say i'm going to rochester new york were i will be far enough away from the other paper and not too close to the other papers under the influence of garett smith. and that is how the north star is produced in rochester new york. habitat correspondence the whole story. this is the letter in which frederick douglas gives an account of the status of the north star and in a word it does not appear to be charity but among the two class's to support a paper that concede good in each party. he complains he is in the middle with this entire letter is his attempt to get a handle is this the real issue? because i am not grasping a very well. i'm having trouble and he admits it is the point with a faction that he is within the sphere of smith who is disputing the other side of the question bin douglas is right in the middle that is why he tries to work through it which is the whole thrust of the letter. when i said the papers were a treasure trove i meant it. because this letter from a first 1851 is frederick douglass immediate response to the proposal of garett smith that the liberty party paper of syracuse and the north star of rochester should be combined. and what will be the outcome will be frederick douglass paper. the abolitionist movement really did have its beginnings the when migrated west to upstate new york that founder appreciative audiences with radical abolitionist who embraced it some more relentlessly so that it became not just a new england movement but an american movement >> host: joining is now is the author of flawed convictions shaken baby syndrome what is shaken baby syndrome? >> a medical diagnosis with extremely cold cuts? -- consequences of a diagnosis of murder to prove a child abuse so despite the fact it emanates from that it is a legal issue and i write the book from a perspective of the criminal-justice system. >> host: is that isn't necessarily a medical issue? >> guest: it is an interesting question. it really is about diagnosing taub abuse or finding a cause is as opposed to any treatments of a diagnosis of compilation of symptoms that doctors have said or can prove a baby was abused. >> host: when was it first used as a medical term and a legal term? >> guest: it goes back to the early '70s in literature. in the united states if first came up on appeal in the '80s and exploded in the '90s. is a combination of factors with child abuse as the specialty to pay attention to the issue of tall the use in trading on the part of prosecutors. in that prosecutorial community. >> host: what is of the bill affecting shaken baby syndrome? >> guest: it is very often caregivers have been sent to jail and because of those suspected of shaken baby. >> host: you tell of a case start month study of jennifer the lycian what happened? >> she was carrying for a young baby and was apparent of two children and had raised them on her own. she was accused of shaking this baby in the case that i described of this diagnosis meaning is representative of the facts that what we see when we look across this category and to see how the legal system treated the diagnosis. she was convicted of the basis of the neurological symptoms that defined the diagnosis. she proclaimed her innocence throughout and was sentenced to decades in prison where her case takes "the twist" where she comes under attack the the federal court judge in chicago issue is very likely of the charges in she was released from prison pending the resolution of her case but she convinced the judge she probably wasn't guilty of the charges to not be incarcerated with those constitutional claims. >> host: she is currently released? is she working and she allowed to be around children? >> guest: i don't believe she is the condition is that she cannot work with children. hurt children were young when she was sent to prison and now they have grown up. >> host: in your book you describe her in your book flawed convictions. shoes are room mom, active in her church, active of children in the church, very involved in their children's lives and those of the children's friends. her home was a gathering place. and she never had any trouble never been accused anything hurtful for having a temper this was the evidence that was admitted at her trial that witnesses testified for her. >> what is the? >> it is day triad of symptoms the first is of durable hematoma which is being the outer most membrane where of the brain and then in that back of the i so that three systems systems, that triad show violent shaking. >> host: so some of the legal community has challenged this. >> doctors recognize now there are causes because you cannot distinguish from the classic trial so there are natural causes autoimmune disorders, to have a stroke or a seizure and then to prove. >> host: in your research how many are imprisoned wrongly because of shaken baby syndrome? >> guest: that is hard to answer nobody is really keeping track of this as a phenomenon so we have distorted to collect data on a national basis and have posted this online collecting upwards of 3,000 cases i believe of shaken baby syndrome over the past decade. certainly not all of those have resulted in a criminal conviction but we can assume with the appellate cases of hundreds and hundreds. >> host: what is the justice project? >> it is out of the school at northwestern shaken baby is only one of a number of projects to improve the integrity. >> host: how did you get involved? >> i am a federal prosecutor working in the manhattan district attorney's office after graduating from law school so i was trained on this with this triad of symptoms and learned from my doctor of what this was supposed to mean. and to learn about shaken baby syndrome we did not learn much about that at all there is a case called audrey evans. based on this trial of symptoms and she had her conviction with the appeals court to be concerned of the change of the scientific diagnosis and now we know more of this triad of symptoms so that also very likely did nothing to this child that she is alleged to have shaken. i wondered if this reasoning was right that they were factually and distinguishable that the triad of symptoms that convicted her and so many others. that the science had shifted and there were so many unknown to have her conviction overturned. i wondered how that criminal justice system would adapt and respond to the other convictions and what to know if this shift had really occurred the implications for the criminal justice system. >> host: are there legitimate cases? >> guest: it depends on who you asked those who say someone cannot shake a baby to only bring about the triad of symptoms like neck or spine involvement maybe you can edit is a real diagnoses but you cannot feel confident about diagnosing based on these symptoms along. -- along that when babies are of use someone should be held accountable. there are cases where a prosecution goes forward based on medical corroboration beyond the triad of symptoms but the cases that i write about in my book our triad only. >> host: there are thousands of those? >> what was posted does not break them down as opposed to do triad plus. but there are hundreds. >> so - - wire there so many of these cases? >> the evidence was seen as overwhelming to prevent expert after-tax with uncertainty and until very recently there was not a lot the defense could say in response and not until recently that we could challenge that the point with those alternative causes of the triad with that overwhelming evidence. i think would be enticed with the deal of the plea of guilty with a much lesser sentence if they were convicted after trial so some of those involve a very steep steep sentencing disparity it would be up to life some of those was tim

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