He was the youngest of the brothers. Hed been involved in some scandal, Bobo Rockefeller in the 50s id been reading about, but a great fellow. And that was my first introduction to the rockefellers in that campaign. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Mary Frances Berry, in your book, long memories, the black experience in america, you write most black americans always been more american than White Americans. Guest sort of like being more catholic than the pope, be leaving more in the values and principles that are laid out in the declaration of independence and the preamble to the constitution and which are part of the american ethos. And believing fundamentally, using those principles as a way to ask for the progress on equality for them. That is what i mean. Host what is the proof . Guest every time theres a protest movement organized, civil disobedience, other kinds of movements on the part of africanamericans, people who are in coalition with them, always what they ask for are the principles that are pristine American Values, a longstanding. When Martin Luther king asked for justice, he spoke in the tongues of the language of the declaration of independence and the constitution. He didnt speak in the tones of some alien philosophy that existed in some other country. Host in that book long memory you recount the black Resistance Movements over the years. When did it start . There have been Resistance Movement since the beginning of the republic. In the colonial period we have documented movements of people trying to escape slavery and trying to resist their oppression. Not as many as one might hope that there was a lot of discipline. Lots of movements in the period coming in the antebellum period, in every period of history. I wrote a book called black resistance white law in which i have a couple chapters on the seminole war and the black Resistance Movement because blacks and seminoles were allowed in florida to maintain their autonomy and selfdetermination. In every period, history in one way or another there have been different modes of resistance, two people wrote an article years ago which i use in some of my stuff, day to they resistance to slavery. What they meant by that is the Little Things but person can do daybyday on the plantation, breaking tools, whatever it was, there were many ways to resist. If you had to make a general statement about what was life like for southern blacks during reconstruction what would be . During reconstruction which didnt last long after the civil war there was great excitement because he eventually black men got the right to vote and we know there was great excitement about that including women who couldnt vote but urged the men pawn and would tell them how embarrassed they would be if they didnt even though was a risky so there was great excitement about the prospects that would take place. These were of courseto because reconstruction didnt last that long but it was a great change. People left wherever they were wandering all over the place looking for their families to put them back together. All kinds of problems they were trying to reconstruct family and home so it was a kind of excitement. Host why did reconstruction not last . Because once the war was over the Union Soldiers wanted to go home. And no one was in a position in the north to permanently occupy the south and the south was not about to give in to the change that had taken place without resistance and there was a lot of violence. It is when these groups like the knights of White Committee and other kinds of groups that today we talk about terrorist groups in our own country, that existed but the main thing is there was resistance from the south and the desire to end war and pretty soon blacks were left on their own pretty much. Host when did the states Rights Movement begin . Guest way before the civil war. From the beginning of the republic, when we got the two party system which was never envisioned by the framers, we can get people arguing about the meaning of the constitution and some people taking a stance that the tenth amendment has more privacy than the rest of it and other people feeling we should have a Strong National government and this discussion animated the debate over slavery in the south and animated the debate over the tariff and imports coming into the country and who benefited and who didnt and some of the great statesmen of the period like john calhoun and others were in fact states rights advocates. What happened before the civil war, some people think states rights is something that happened after and we talk about it now but it was a long standing and there were debates about it at the constitutional convention. In a sense the anti federalists were strong believers in the primacy of states rights. Host where did the term jim crow come from . There was a minstrel groups according to people who researched this. My colleague with whom i wrote long memory wrote about some of this and they would dance and it was called dancing jim crow and it was the minstrel kind of black face, the way blacks were supposedly behaving. Host when did that movement, that era begin . Jim crow . After reconstruction and the end of reconstruction. We gradually get laws passed that segregate the vases of race all flow of the former legal structure took place gradually and was in place by the end of the Nineteenth Century as we go into the next century. In fact, it was in place in reality in many places before that time and all that was was a different way to control black people who before were controlled by slavery and now to controls them by segregation which would also mean they were inferior. Host back to your book for long memory many blacklegs felt better about the certainty of discrimination in the south and the bewildering twists and turns in the color line in the north. Not that the south was a land of opportunity or release raise Race Relations were better, on the contrary blacks preferred the south because below the masondixon line they knew what to expect from whites. In the north discrimination appeared in the most unexpected places and a black was never sure how to act. Right. In the era of jim crow if you were in the north the medicines that everywhere everything would be desegregated and no one would ever say anything racist or do anything that was exclusion area and but it might happen. It might happen and there were in fact places where interracial marriage was illegal, there was some segregation you would encounter whereas in the north you knew there was legal segregation and you would be segregated, you didnt have to worry about it, whether that would happen. That was the way things worked. Host lets go to your book black resistance white law. Guest i mentioned about it earlier about the seminole war. Host white oppression and black resistance have been part of the american scene since the colonial period. The response of the government in its efforts to suppress racial disorder reflected the tension between the lofty ideals expressed in the documents in which Constitutional Government is based and the tendency of the white majority to desire summary disposition of those they regard as marginal or powerless. The predilection of the white majority to suppress efforts by africanamericans to acquire real freedom and equality in the United States as a group, even when white oppression means resorting to illegal violence and brutality, has added to that tension. Host dan is a truism about the long sweep of American History. I began writing that book when i was in law school in michigan and i began writing it the night Martin Luther king was assassinated. I was very angry and very upset. And have been asked by one of my professors, when did the president faster using executive power to suppress Resistance Movements and i hadnt thought about the question in quite that way before. So i started researching that book which he eventually got published but i think that statement is a truism about the country and also reinforces something you said earlier or asked me earlier about blacks embracing American Values and then fighting and i told you about Resistance Movements usually called out, reach out to those values and say this is the goal and this is what we want so that description is the way the system worked. Within the description, is the dichotomy between the values and the reality and what blacks were always seeking is to achieve that reality and it is in fact what we are still seeking. Host that book was written in 1971. Published in 1971. I started writing in 1968. Host updated bring the book to 1994. And i talk in the book about the changes that took place over the years and a closer approximation we came to achieving those goals while they are still a lot left to be done. I started talking about various Resistance Movements and things that happened and how they were suppressed, to the new edition. Host how does fergusons it into your book . If i were writing of black resistance addition i would have to take into account what i know based on the hearings i did at the Civil Rights Commission, based on my own Community Relations and my own experience with these matters, i would have to write that why we have made great progress, which is again a truism, since the time the book was begun and since the beginning of the republic, but we still havent quite got it right and some people still havent quite gotten the message and that a lot needs to be done. Host when were you chair of the Civil Rights Commission . Guest i was nominated 1980 and confirmed by the senate, jimmy carter. Federal Education Programs in the department of health, education and welfare before that and when i left the department he appointed me to the commission and i stayed on the commission and when bill clinton was president he made the chair. Guest when did the Civil Rights Commission began . Guest 1957, the eisenhower as president had proposed to him by his attorney general and a meeting, one of the things that motivated it was the nascent protests among blacks, also thought report that had been done during the truman administration, the securities rights. The beginning of desegregation in the armed forces the continued complaints about Race Relations and racism in the United States, the secretary of state told the president , was making it hard for the United States to stand up and compete in the world where these new nations were coming to independence and the underdeveloped world as we called it in asia and africana and more and more attention was paid, competition with the soviet union for the minds and hearts of men as they used to say, i guess women too and people were always pointing out of the race problems in the United States and every time anything happened this made it really really difficult. All of that was one reason why his attorney general said to him may be what we should do is set up but commission. Government set up, the United States government sets up commissions from time to time. Your listeners know this, we all know this, whenever theres a problem that seems insoluble, we get a commission and they make an investigation and usually they make it and go away and that is the last anyone ever heard of it and the books are on the shelves somewhere or other and that is the end of that until next time but he, John Eisenhower setting this thing up, his attorney general said you know what . If youre going to do this you will need subpoena power to get witnesses to come in an come. And people were scared to come, will be forced to come so congress has to pass it because to subpoena somebody needs the authority of statutory law so they sent it up the land was part of the Civil Rights Act of 57 which was the first Civil Rights Act passed since reconstruction and it was set up supposed to be one year to go out and as an eisenhower put it i am told by people who willthat he pounded the table and said put the facts on top of the table. I dont know what he actually did. That is what the story is that he did. In any case they went out and started doing hearings and they were to be independent and give an independent view to the public and the president as to what was going on in Race Relations and how they go about solving these problems and that is where the Commission Said it. Host alisha host when did you leave the commission . Guest i resigned right after george bush i guess it was george w. Bush was the president. I resigned that year as a chair and from the commission after years of serving on it. Host y . Guest i resigned from it because i knew we had not had a majority that was in favor of doing something positive on civil rights in my opinion. For years. And i had struggled and done Everything Possible to try to get something done and i knew that the jewish bush would continue after he was reelected with the same policies he had before and that he would get appointments and i thought i had served my time so to speak. Host is the commission different than some other agencies where whoever is in power in the white house gets the majority, 32 majority . Because you served as chair while george w. Bush was the commission went was set up by eisenhower was i explained in the book calls and justice for all and i wrote about the history of the commission. And it was when it was renewed after the first year and kept on being renewed for ever and is still around, it was by law an independent agency independent from the president , from anybody and it was to have balanced membership and at first the people were nominated and confirmed by the senate. It was to be bipartisan and the idea was that no one would influence what they did and when they had reports ready they would release them. With out fear of failure. That was the idea. Host that in that book the struggle for freedom in america, you write the Civil Rights Commission and the republican controlled the trade the mission for which the agency was founded. It did not address immigration issues, the treatment of victims of the flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina or the need to find ways to achieve diversity in education. Didnt do any of that. That has been true for since i left more or less. It is not even so much that they might have different opinions. Is okay to have different opinions. Is just that when major episodes in the advancement occur, we would investigate, the commission would always go out and investigate the causes of things because the law required that you were supposed to do that. That was why the taxpayers were paying it but they seemed to be oblivious or had some reasons i dont know about for not investigating any of these things. Host one of the things you wrote about was the 2000 president ial election. What was your role . Guest we got all of these complaints from people about problems they were having with voting on election day and they wanted the commission to do something because the law says the commission had been very visible for a long time and the law required as to do something. It said when people complain that their Voting Rights have been interfered with the Commission Shall investigate. Dozens said it might if it feels like it or think about it. And so the staff collect all of this information from people and a couple of them went down to florida which is where all this was coming from to see what was going on and talked to various people and when the commission met we all agreed, republicans and democrats, that we had to investigate and we waited until the reelection was no fur. We were not trying to interfere with the eruption but we did want to find out what the problems were so that we could see that it didnt happen again to anybody so we did hearings in florida which were televised on cspan and everywhere else. In fact they were televised almost everywhere in the world that had television, in florida, and subpoenaed people, jeb bush, the governor, katherine harris, secretary of state who was also on the Bush Campaign committee and so on as well as people who had complained about what had happened to them and eventually, we found things like people who were told they were felons when they had never been arrested. One of them was the county clerk in charge of elections in one of the countys. They told her she was a felon and she was listed on the list of felons that they had and they were discovered through the testimony that the company that did the felon purge of the list to come up with the right list had told katherine harris, secretary of state and her staff about the list would be erroneous because of the way it was done but they let from go ahead and do it anyway. At report finally focused on something none of the media talk much about. The media was consumed with hanging chads and if different counties and so on. We talked about mainly what we called the no count, people who were eligible to vote and who went to try to vote and they wouldnt let them vote which means their votes didnt even get included in it and there were people who were quite upset. There were elderly people who were told their polling place was upstairs in the building and when they came from the