Marc lamont hill is the Steve Charles chair in media, cities and solutions at Temple University. His books include nobody casualties of americas war on the vulnerable from ferguson to flint and beyond and except for palestine, the limits of progressive politics. He also owns uncle bobs coffee and books and is the founding director of the Peoples Education center, a germantown based Nonprofit Organization devoted to community education. Todd brewster is the coauthor with Peter Jennings of the number one New York Times bestseller of the century. His other work includes the books lincolns gamble and in search of america. He also taught journalism at Temple University was a knight fellow at Yale Law School and was the founding director of the center for l history at west point. He is also the executive producer of the documentary into harms way. In their new book, seen and unseen, the authors examine the uniqueness of this moment in the overall history of Civil Rights Movements in the united states. Joining them in conversation this evening is award winner, Award Winning broadcast master and journalist tracie madison. Please join me in welcoming our guests back to the free library. Who will . Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for sharing your evening with us. What a delight it is to be back in person. So were thrilled to see you all. Thank you again for coming all of that said, why dont we dive in and Start Talking about the book seen and unseen thought and work . Thank you and welcome back to the free library of philadelphia. Thank you. Its our pleasure. So i want to talk about your Partnership First on this book. I know that todd wrote the foreword to another book of yours, mark and todd. I know that you did a lot of work with Peter Jennings. You wrote a number of books together. But mark, talk a little bit about how you came to collaborate on this book and sort of who did what. Yeah. First of all, thank you for for hanging out with us tonight. It wouldnt be anywhere else. How about the sixers game . Not even there. Thats everyone else, right . It is. Its such a pleasure to be back at the free library and to be talking to everyone here tonight. Initially met. We have the same agent. Its i wish it were more like cool story, but we we have the same agent who did a wonderful job of bringing us together. When i was thinking about a book on ferguson and started to write about what was going on, todd was in town, i believe, and we all hung out and had lunch. And when it was time to think about the forward for the book and tyler was is a great reader, a great editor, a great everything, but when it was time to write the forward for the book, george said, hey, this is the guy you want. And id read the century. Id read some of his other work, and i knew that he was a phenomenal writer. And when i was on, when i was hosting huffpost live, he came on to talk about his book, lincolns gamble. And so i had an opportunity to read his work and so and his sense of history and i thought, wow, this would be a great thing to do. And then life goes on and you do other projects, you work on other things, and the pandemic happened and the uprisings happened. And in george called again and this time he said, you know, you should think about doing another project this time, maybe one with todd. And i said, well, you know, ive written other books with people and its always been great, but im not necessarily thinking about this. We say well just take a call with them. So then we talked on the phone and we had we had a bunch of ideas and we came up with an idea that resonated with both of us. And we were super excited about about writing together and thinking together. And in terms of division of labor, you know, every collaboration is different. Some collaborations, you one person, you know, writes the first draft, the other person edits and fixes it. Some people trade chapters. It just depends on the collaboration for this one. You know, every every chapter took a slightly different form. I think a lot of it was brainstorming through an idea, outlining the idea of breaking down every place we were going to go. And then after wed go there, wed sketch it out and then say, todd would pass it to me. And then id say, you know, were going to we each would nerd out in our respective areas. So, you know, id be like, todd, no, we dont actually need to know the entire history, you know what i mean . Of the firefly, right . And and the sentence doesnt need to be seven pages. Yeah, right. And then conversely, you know, sometimes i would be so invested in because ive been doing Current Events so long lately, you know, with media, id be very much interested in the current ness of the story. And todd was always pulling me back to give the story more legs, to give a deeper sense of history, and honestly, to be more literary in which in my writing. So it its been a fun collaboration. Todd this book has heavy and difficult material in it, and im just curious about what your conversations were like as the two of you worked on this and sort of immersed yourselves in not only difficult recent events, but also difficult historical events. Yeah, i mean, we thats one of the great things about the collaboration. We, we would talk pretty regularly about at the same time every conversation landed on something very deep and profound. Right . I mean, and one of the revelations, i think, of the whole process was that even as they were retelling the stories of of Ahmaud Arbery or to retelling the story of george floyd or retelling the story of kenosha or charlottesville and getting deeper into what the the actual details were, at which a retelling can allows you to do. Right. We live in a very fast paced world in which everything is running with we think we know something. But then when you go back, you can find out a much deeper sense of it. What we really found and i think what is the biggest contributor to this book is that the roots of this the roots are are deep and they run throughout American History well back into the past last century, well back into the century before that, such that the use of film, the still photograph of photojournalism, personal photography, and then ultimately the use of the the cell phone video and video. We just had the 30th anniversary of rodney king. You know, which was not a cell phone video. But whats a video and was a compelling video, that sort of started us on to this role of citizen journalism. But each time we realized that this doesnt this episode can or should didnt happen in a vacuum. Right . Charlottesville did not happen in a vacuum. These are the bubbling up of of of a rich history that is extremely dark and in a lot of ways, its also very hopeful. We found a lot of hopeful moments, but we as americans need to confront just how rich the history and news and dark the history is of america as a relationship with race and how that has played out in our media. The birth of a nation, the gone with the wind, the the terrible, terrible photographs of the lynchings, the late 19th century, the early 20th century, the role of those photographs at first in continuing the kind of level of racism, and then ultimately shocking and shaming the nation towards what they were doing. But i think that was a revelation, i would say was that the role of media wasnt just new. The newness was only the most recent manifestation of something thats been playing out and has gone back both ways. Both hopefully a lot of hope. Photojournalism of the 1960s with extremely powerful of the Civil Rights Movement and also very dark. Yeah. And i want to circle back to birth of a nation and gone with the wind and a little bit. But mark, the book is largely about the democratization of technology and changing. In effect, who gets to document history now . And you write that and im quoting here, it sometimes feels as though the history of communications will one day be understood to be divided between everything that came before the cell phone and everything that came after it. And the story of race in america will be different for it. Talk about why thats so significant. I think it goes to that question of democratize asian people have access to this. Who here has a cell phone . Now, who here . My mothers in the crowd. I know she she does not have a phone. I mean, that has a camera or a video footage option on her phone. It has a wire on it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. She has the first cell phone in Human History where for everybody else who has who has a video footage, who has a video camera on their phone, who can video call, live stream, who has it right. So, you know, if i had asked the same question ten years ago, wed have half the crowd, you know, just the ipad, as would a cell 14 years ago. Most people raise their hand, but almost no would have the high in, you know, sort of pda, kind of phone and so forth. But as time has gone on, having a cell phone is no longer a luxury. Having high quality video footage capabilities on your phone is no longer a luxury. And so that means everybody has access to this now, not the same level of access. And what we do with that access changes, right . Race isnt neutral class and gender neutral on this. But theres something about having access to this technology that changes the game. When we talk about technology, when we talk about race, when we talk about the struggle for racial justice, when, when, when Darnella Frazier and you know, Darnella Frazier, Darnella Frazier is the woman, the young sister who took the video footage of george floyd being killed. You may not know her name, but you know what she did. And its important that we raise the names of those people who are courageous enough to stand in front of state power and videotape, because that takes courage to it takes courage to stand it from police when they got guns. And theyre looking to give somebody a charge and use it in a videotaping this. Right. And so. That footage allowed us to get a window into something that we otherwise could not see is tacit. 30 years ago, there was an uprising in l. A. After the cops found not guilty after the previous year, rodney king had been beaten on videotape. So the Technology Allows us to tell a story that wasnt getting told by Mainstream Media, that wasnt being told by state power. Now, in 1991, the odds of getting a beating recorded it was almost impossible. Yall, some of yall are old enough to know. Seasoned enough to know. How big, how big a thing it was to videotape something. You need the big camcorder. You need to had a vhs tape. You already had something taped on it. You had to stick a little piece of paper in the little hole so you can tape over the thing. You tape the night, you tape matlock, the night before. And and suddenly you had this whole thing you had to do, and you had to catch the spectacle. You had to stop there while the thing was happening. Now, you just pull out your phone. So now being able to just pull out your phone allows you to capture everyday events. It allows you to stream your life. It allows you to live, blog. It allows you to tell everybody what you eat and where you go. What are you thinking about with which mad about all of it in real time now . Sometimes that can be frustrating when people are going on a timeline about something you dont care about it. Sometimes going live like its a big event and they just go on to the supermarket. That might frustrate you. But then theres the moment where a fight breaks out. Then theres a moment where somebody comes with an air weapon to a rally and shoots people. Then is the moment where the police are. Are shooting at somebody as theyre running away. Walter scott or we could look in grand rapids, right just last week. And so this was a story that was hard to tell now with black folk and people who love justice of all races have it. But im focused specifically on black folk because we were the ones being lynched, little ones being enslaved. We were ones being harmed. That some technology. Right, did. We always use the best technology . We had to tell those stories. Thats what i was talking to the camera. The Martin Luther king was using technology. He was he was relying on the technology of Mainstream Media to tell the story. What was happening on Edmund Pettus bridge . You said were going to get beat, but were not going to get beaten private anymore. Right. I had to be because burnett was like, were going to show the lynching, the same pictures theyre using as as full as postcards. Right. Were going to use to stir outrage. Yeah. You know, so but now we dont need a 5,000 camera. Now we dont need access to a media crew. Now we can just pull out that phone until the story. So that means everybody here has a fighting chance, not an equal chance that we can get in it, but a fighting chance. And todd but heres the question that comes to mind in all of that. And you mentioned grand rapids. So patrick. Leroy. All right. And so theres dash cam video, theres cell phone video, theres home surveillance video, theres body cam video, theres all of this video. And as it relates to cameras for all of their ubiquity, they are not necessarily a guarantee that justice is going to be served. Right. Theyre not necessarily even a deterrent. Well, we have i think weve both recognized in this era the miracle of video and what it can do. Weve also begun to recognize the limits of video, such that video in some ways, you know, our book is called seen and unseen. Right, too. People can look at the same piece of video and come to a very different conclusions is what you bring with the eyes. And this, in some certain sense is actually analogous to the historical roots that we bring out in the book. Your eyes dont come completely without a history. They come with a certain amount of knowledge that you apply to what you see. You know, one of the things my family whos here will know this tiresome thing that we say to them, because what i teach the First Amendment, i say it. The First Amendment allows you to say what you want to say this what students say, you know, and i say, well, to some degree, with some exceptions, but yes, youre right. You can say whatever you want to say, but you have responsibility to listen. And heres the third element. You have a responsibility to be willing to be changed by what you hear. Well, you have a responsibility to be willing to be changed by what you see. Thats what we all need to bring to the video that we see right. So you could take the story, for instance, of of kenosha and the and kyle rittenhouse. I would just remind all of you, a 17 year old boy who comes across the border from Illinois Armed to join those who are protecting private property right in kenosha, these terms are loaded property. You know why people were from most of American History, a good chunk of American History considered to be properties was not. Forget that. And that comes up also in the Ahmaud Arbery story. But hes there to protect property and he ends up shooting, killing two people, two protesters, one a man who would only that day have been released from the Mental Health ward of a prison, another who was actually trying to stop him, who was he was he was a shooter on the run. He had already killed the first victim. So there was no moment. What would stop the mass murderer who may be among us kind of thing . Right. So complicated things were happening, but those of us who look at the video with a certain set of eyes would say, we know whats happened. You know, and its tragic. And this 17 year old boy who whatever his age, was in a position where he he had actually encouraged the very events that he participated in. And that resulted in the loss of two lives there. But that video, that same video even refashioned to be shown as an agent to raising defense funds for kyle rittenhouse, was a different kind of narration, a different approach to the words, the images youre seeing now. You see them in a completely different way, encouraged by the voice of a narrator whos pulling upon some historical references that others of us dont wish to entertain in our on our moral judgment of something. And so video is very a great tool. Technol g is a moral right. We need to remember that. And we need curators. In the end, weve discovered we still need care of free. Speech is wonderful, but it helps when people the speeches constructive and it leads to people actually helping us understand whats happening not just expressing something. Yeah, i want to talk a little bit about birth of a nation. You know, you talk in the book about well, let me let me back up a little bit before i get to that, because in the book, mark, you cite the American Civil War as a prominent example of white storytellers controlling the narrative, which Robert Penn Warren called are felt history. The history lived in the national imagination. Im quoting here. So there was this northern view of liberty. There was the black view of felt history, which was quite different. And then, of course, there was the southern myth of the lost cause and i wonder if you can address those competing views of that time and how the lost cause in particular has continued to gain traction even till today. Yeah, it had like a remix, you know, with the red hats and, you know, the presidency of donald trump. I mean, theres been a real nostalgia not for the lost cause per say, but for but for certain key dimensions of it. Right. And some people are explicitly saying no, the civil war was was fought for this for for this noble grand purpose. And so let me back up just for a moment, because i think in time, please jump in on this as the history is the history in the civil war honored a particular of the duo here. But part of it is that people have to understand that history is always i