to end on a positive note and still a page from oprah. you might go to prison even if you are innocent. you might go to prison, you might go to prison, you might go to prison. that is the whole reason i wrote the book. what can we as citizens do about the criminal legal system because we are responsible for it. it is supposed to be out there serving us and we funded with tax dollars. we vote for people that run it. yet, most of us do not think about it until we are caught up in it because it is horrible to think you might be in prison one day. i literally have a plan if it ever happens to me. that is how confident i am that it could happen. as a white male 57-year-old law professor that stays home most nights with my wife and watches hd tv i still know this could possibly happen. i have a plan. day one i go out on the yard and

i see all of the gang leaders and i say, i will be your lawyer and your lawyer and your lawyer, and your lawyer. keep these dudes off of me because i will be in the law library every day. we have to think like that and act like that because we have all been patsies the politics for a very long time. i am always telling my students about willie horton and how that changed america. because, politicians figured out we are suckers and we will vote in response to fear and we will go along with it. and, most politicians are not running on, i will reform contract law. they are not running on i will change the law of the city. they are messing up our gig running on criminal justice and criminal law. they are making poor decisions based on what will get them votes, money, and power. you talk about privatization. people talk about private prisons. all prisons are private because they are all industries. they are hiring things, dutch

hiring people, buying things, charging huge amounts of money for clients to order a book, tv, or commissary. it's a massive industry. do you know what the latest industry is as we have seen the population go down in prison? immigration detention facilities. that is what they are building now. surprise surprise that is the big message in all the campaigns. maybe we are not selling as well a fear of young black men. let's try caravans from central america that are about to invade to fill these detention facilities that we lock them up in. let's stop being suckers and things will get better, thank you. [applause] >> what was said about paying attention to local politics, do not be a sucker, be active, be a voice. i want to switch it up. particularly think about kids. one of my psychologists friends said to me that every single

child deserves at least one irrationally caring adult in their lives, right? and, children would do better if they had an entire team of irrationally caring adults. what i throw out to an audience like this is, where can you be that? beyond your own biological child, where can i be an irrationally caring adult? that means i know you will make a mistake in life. i know that you will engage in some behavior that technically meets the elements of a crime but we will not shame you. we will not embarrass you. we will not put you under the jail. we will care for you, support you, and redirect you. that is what my call is very much. let's be an irrationally caring adult to some child that is not your own. it requires us to get out into the community and see where kids need our help.

to stand up and to be a voice from them when they do get stopped by the police. we see that article in the newspaper and we ask not the question, how do i keep myself and my family safe? but the third question, the fourth question. was it the arrest justified? what were the surrounding circumstances? maybe there are stories where journalists dig deep to ask hard-hitting questions. every single one of us as an irrationally caring adult can be that inquisitive mind that stays curious and skeptical. i love that you said do not be a sucker. be skeptical about what you hear about black and brown kids to be that support. [applause] >> i am sorry to cut you two off. we are at time. the authors will be signing books and i am sure they have lots of thoughts on additional topics for you all.

i encourage you to come say hello. thank you for attending the panel. have fun attending the rest of the festival. >> live coverage of the 2023 los angeles times festival of books held on the campus of the university of southern california. we have more author discussions coming up in about a half an hour. the legacy of slavery. one of the authors you will hear from includes carrie green ridge who has written a book about the grimkes a family that included

most slaveowners and abolitionists. joining us now is beverly gage. her newest book is "genius: j edgar hoover and the making of the american century." you won the los angeles times book award for biography last night. >> i did. ask and you have already won the bancroft prize. >> correct. >> in your speech last night you referred to j edgar hoover as complicated and terrible. why do you use the word terrible? >> i think one of his main influences over this vast swath of time that he was director of the fbi were real invasions and violations of people as individuals, social movements, people engaged in perfectly legal activity. a lot of that came from his own ideas and desire to control what

was happening. i think there are some of the worst things he did and major features of his legacy. >> how did he get started with the fbi and when? >> it was almost fainted that j edgar hoover would end up doing this. he was born in washington in 1895 and he came of age in a government service tradition, a civil service family. he graduated from college in 1917 when the u.s. was entering world war i. he went straight to the justice department and rose through the ranks to become head of the bureau at the ripe old age of 29. he stayed there the rest of his life. >> what was the bureau's chief role when he was 29? >> first, it was a tiny organization. one of the reasons they appointed a 29-year-old was nobody can for see what it would become. this massive institution. they did a few things.

they had gotten in trouble for deportation rates and attacks on left-wing radicals. hoover had been instrumental in that but he survived those scandals. then they had a grab bag of other things to do. it was an institution without an identity at that point scandal ridden and corruption ridden. he gave it an identity and cleaned it up and professionalized and assented forward into the future. >> should we look at those points as positive? >> i think so. one of the goals of the book, though, who averred in many ways has a terrible legacy, i think he has been treated as a really one-dimensional villain in most popular culture certainly since his death. one thing i wanted to do was present a more balanced picture to look at the good ideas he had and some of the amazing talents

he had. you don't get that promotion and then stay for 48 years in your job without having some real talent and vision. the book looks at that. >> talent, vision and files. >> files, for sure. did he have that in the entirety of his career over the last years? >> the files started the moment he entered the justice department. when he was a very young man, 22 coming straight out of law school he was thrust into a justice department doing some of its first federal experiments in political surveillance. his great talent and skill at that moment was he worked at the library of congress to work his way through college and had library and administrative skills.

but the files everybody thinks about on major political figures was later in his life beginning in the 40's into the 50's, 60's, and 70's. they really mattered, in part because nobody knew they really existed. it does not really matter if you have the files or if everybody just thinks you have the files. because, they will behave accordingly. >> when he died in 1969 what happened to those files? >> well, he died in 1972. >> sorry. >> that was one of the big questions at the time of his death. what will we do here? there were a couple sets of files people were concerned about. one where his official and confidential files. those were, as we have learned, things about john f. kennedy's sex life, wiretaps and bugs on

martin luther king. there were files cap in his office separate from other files to keep them safe. others said there was another purpose. then he had an extensive file collection called his personal files. those were destroyed. he asked his secretary to destroy them and she did. they were birthday cards and such she says. some think there was other material in there but we do not know. >> he was under seven presidents. what was his relationship with some of them? >> mostly, he was very useful to them and he liked them a lot. the three princes -- presidents that interested me the most were one, franklin roosevelt because it was roosevelt who made the modern fbi. the new -- the fbi turned out to be a new deal alphabet agency.

he pushed law enforcement in a big way and pushed hoover into political intelligence during the war. that was fascinating for me. then the last two presidents lyndon johnson and richard nixon were also fascinating because they had very long-term relationships with them. he lived on the same block as lyndon johnson from the 40's onward and had decades of relationships with nixon. then when they were in office they both cooperated and were at odds with one another in interesting ways. >> our guest is yale history professor beverly gage author of "g-man: j edgar hoover and d making of the american century." if you live in the central time zone 202-748-8201. mountain and pacific time zones. you can send professor gage a text message 202-748-8903.

if you send a text please include your first name and your city. how many of those presidents wanted to fire hoover but he wasn't too politically potent to fire? >> i would say three. none of them did it. he died in his beloved job. the first was truman, who, coming out of the roosevelt years really thought the fbi had acquired too much power and who averred himself had it much power. he was skeptical but did not fire him. then john kennedy really did not like hoover and hoover really did not like on. but he especially did not like robert kennedy, the attorney general, his ostensible boss. in that case hoover knew an awful lot about the kennedys and they were concerned it would cost them the support of a southern democrats in their party.

finally, richard nixon, by far his close this friend among the presidents. but as hoover started to get old and it defies some of what nixon wanted him to do, there are some funny moments where hoover says, that is illegal. j edgar hoover is the civil libertarian there. there is a moment where nixon sits down with hoover and says, edgar, you are in your mid-70's wouldn't it be fun to go? and it nixon says, ok and kind of gives in to hoover. who is more powerful the fbi director or the president? >> the fbi headquarters is the j edgar hoover building still today. what was his reputation among agents? >> i think the agents really respected hoover. he built the institution in his own image. really in the early years

especially, hand selected agents that represented him and his views, a very particular image. when we think of an fbi agent or a g-man, there are very specific ideas about who that is. will it be a tall white guy in a suit with a hat and shiny shoes and a certain set of political views. during his lifetime, i do not think agents loved him. he was a hard boss to work for. they had a lot of respect for him. right now my sense is the fbi has an ambivalent relationship with hoover. on one hand he did build the institution. on the other hand i think some of the most outrageous things the bureau did in the 60's and 70's do not make them great firm they want to be now. >> let's see what callers have to say. skip with waterbury connecticut.

you are on with offer beverly gage. >> i read your book and it took me three days and three nights and then i had to reread it for a week. here is what i am wondering about. how much did the fbi change? they were unarmed and it then they started with guns. >> it is a really dramatic moment at a great question. in the 1930's you are right. the fbi goes from being what hoover thought it would be, this white-collar professional organization that hired lawyers and accountants and they were going to collect statistics and do antitrust work. suddenly they were thrust into this world of violence law enforcement, facing down people like john dillinger. they had to learn really fast how to do things like carry

weapons consistently, shoot them, really go toe to toe with, you know, pretty well armed criminal forces. in some ways it is a triumphant story. they did figure out how to do it. in another way it is a tragic story. not only because it changed the institution but because a lot of agents lost their lives because they were not ready to do that kind of work. it was a profound change in their culture of the fbi that is still with us. >> i would like to know if skip's opinion changed after spending three days and three nights reading 800 pages of your book. >> i should have just said thank you. >> could you have written 1600 pages? >> there were longer versions of this book for sure. i think the great challenge of this book was hoover was there for so long and had his fingers in so many things and he was the head of the barack or see what

he wanted everyone to write everything down. so you have great sources. i did not get into the details of a lot of the cases. i relied heavily on case studies that other people had done where they could do those details. >> andrew, alexandria, virginia. please, go ahead with questions or comments for beverly gage. >> good afternoon. i have read that j edgar hoover i was wondering, did politicians rather people have information on him? he had a lot of information on other people. i am wondering, did other people in politics have information on him that would paint him in a

bad light? >> the answer is yes, though, hoover tended to one up them on that front. there were lots of people in the press particularly towards the end of his life that were trying to dig up information on him. reporters like drew pearson, jack and big figures in the washington scene. there is some evidence of the soviet intelligence authorities were trying to gather information about hoover particularly. about hoover's sex life. about his alleged homosexuality. then there is some evidence that people who were at political odds with him, robert kennedy from other attorneys general did not like him so much did try to gather material about him. one of the interesting things is the press until the very end of his life was usually not willing to print anything like that.

the press coverage of hoover was almost uniformly adulatory and knowing. he was more popular than we tend to think of him being. >> was he good at working with congress politically? >> he was a genius working with congress politically. one of my favorite chapters in the book. which on the one hand is a little wonky, but i think really key to his power is in the 40's congressional committees got professional fast for the first time to do new forms of investigation. they started looking for qualified people. they said, hoover, your agents are qualified for that. he staffed the house un-american activities committee and a lot of big ones that were engaged in communist investigations. he was very good about everything from congratulating congressman on reelection to

doing favors touching up things they needed touched up. >> cornelius, alexandria, louisiana. hello. you are on book tv. >> beverly, i have a good question for you. i am an african-american. i was a military police officer and i had top-secret clearance. one of my questions. how much did it j edgar hoover have on the kennedys and martin luther king? thank you peter and beverly. have a blessed day. >> thank you, cornelius. >> wonderful question. the very quick answer is a lot. but i think we can divide those two. on the kennedys, a lot of things came into the fbi that were rumor, conjecture, particularly

about john kennedy's sex life and the kennedy family history. they cap -- cap that in their files. on martin luther king day were more aggressively seeking both information and is the ability to damage king and damage the civil rights movement. it was an investigation that estimated overtime. it started with investigations of people in martin luther king's orbit that were thought to be communist and then extended to wiretaps on martin luther king's offices and home phone and extended to bugs in kings hotel room, his sex life, then into his active disruptive threatening attempt to push king out of public life. to try to get him to commit suicide. that was a or aggressive campaign. the kings were in large part colluding with the fbi in that

campaign as opposed to opposing it. robert kennedy signed the orders for the fbi to wiretapped king. >> next. ne-yo in ocean borough, new jersey. >> thank you for taking my call. my question is, what influence did j edgar hoover how was international police? >> international policing was something that the international -- the fbi did some of the wanted to do a lot more of. one of the greater mistakes of hoover's career came at the end of the second world war. franklin roosevelt had given the fbi not only jurisdiction over domestic surveillance and espionage and all those things, but also, jurisdiction over all

of basically the western hemisphere. when the war came to an end hoover's said we will need a big intelligence establishment after the war ended the fbi should be in charge of it. in effect in a bid to also become the seat in -- the cia harry truman rebuffed the bid we have separation there. but the fbi continues then and, i think coming out to bring in police officers around the world to the fbi academy where they trained local law enforcement officials in the u.s. and they do a lot of international law enforcement training. >> i wanted to ask the caller if he came away with a different impression after spending three days and three nights with your book. what about you? after how many years of resource -- research did you come away with a different impression of jericho hoover? >> i started writing the book in

2009, so it was more than a decade immersed in this man's life, that world he created and inhabited. i didn't change my opinion. i thought from the very beginning there was a more complicated story to tell about j edgar hoover. but i found myself surprised about some of the better things he did. his opposition, for instance, to japanese mass internment and incarceration during the second world war. he has one of the few officials that spoke against that. his more aggressive campaigns against the ku klux klan even when he is going after king. those moments were interesting to me. what surprised me the most, because he is such a villain in our own world in our own time was how popular he was. how widely supported he was. whether it was the white house or congress, or public

constituencies he built on his own agents. that told me something interesting. what hoover was doing, somewhat secretive but a lot of it -- a lot was very open to priorities and a lot of it had support. at many levels of americans authority -- american society. when we think about him we cannot just make him the scapegoat. we have to think about ourselves and our history too. >> beverly gates, was the king of vendetta racial? or because he thought king was a communist? >> i think both. one thing i wanted to do in the book was figure out where hoover's views on race and his racism came from. because it is so famous from the investigations into king and the panthers all those years. very early on in his life he grew up in dcaa segregated city where racial lines were rigidly drawn. in college he was a member of a

for trinity called kappa alpha and explicitly white southern segregationist fraternity. he had a deep-seated racism but was also a passionate anti-communist. these worked together and were kind of confused in the case of kanga. >>g-man. g standing for government. a text message from mark in salem, oregon. was there a hoover mormon connection? >> was actually. hoover early on was trying to make the fbi in the image he wanted. in his early years that meant mainly hiring young protestant college-educated men.

he himself was a lifelong presbyterian. after the war it shifted a little bit. he started to hire many more catholics and many more mormons. even in the early years in the 1920's, there were pretty high-ranking mormon officials, many of whom came out of george washington university, his alma mater. >> steve in fredericksburg, virginia, go ahead with your question or comment on jan groover. >> steve? >> yes. please, go ahead with your question or comment. >> thank you very much for this very informative interview. what was j edgar hoover is connection with the fascination of the black panther and a chicago fred hampton? did he order it or was he informed about it?

>> that was one of the darkest periods of fbi history in the late 60's and 70's. looking at groups like the panthers. in the case of fred hampton it is very clear that the fbi had an informant next to him and that informant made a map of where hampton would be and the map guided the chicago police. and, who grew -- hoover approved of all of it after chicago police went in and killed fred hampton and used in corrodible -- extraordinary violence. it hoover know? there is no hard evidence i have seen over the course of doing this. but, hoover orchestrated a deliberately deadly raid and he was aware of the contours of

what was happening with the panthers in a place like chicago. he had no objection to it in the end. there is still evidence out there and coming out on big cases like that. i would not be surprised if we find something more there. >> beverly gage's first book was the date walls -- today wall street exploded. >> hoover was a very young man running the radical division of the justice department. >> the next call is from baltimore. this is arthur in baltimore. hello, arthur. >> hey. can you hear me? hello? >> go ahead, arthur. we will have to move on arthur. >> hello?

>> we will go to robber in littleton, colorado. we will talk to robert. hello, robert. >> yes. you often see j edgar hoover in the second or third row of a major prize fighting film. what did he do to get those tickets? why did he not investigate the mafia until after robert kennedy was attorney general? >> j edgar hoover loved going to fight, razors, baseball games -- races, baseball games, and broadway shows. he was well-connected not only in washington but among lots of culture makers. i cannot guarantee it every time. but i would suspect those were all free tickets.

the mafia question is interesting. hoover has a reputation as somebody who tried to deny the mafia existed until it was undeniable. there is a lot of truth to that. he did not like his agency being close to things that might corrupt them. he saw the way prohibition corrupted law enforcement. he was skeptical on that front. it is also true that by the mid-1950's he was acknowledging the existence of the mafia, of organized crime. and before robert kennedy was there they were doing work. a lot of it was so secret. but they cannot claim public credit for it. they got a plug into the headquarters of the chicago mob in the late 50's. they were proud of this but they were not going around trumpeting it.

>> beverly gage, what where hoover's hobbies? >> hoover was a man of leisure as well as hard work. so, there were some social activities that i was just talking about. he liked broadway. in the 30's and 40's he spent a lot of time clubbing in new york. in quieter moments he was a big antique collector. if you see the shop of his home it is filled with all sorts of tchotchkes and antiques. he likes to go to auction houses , jade statuaries were one of his big things. >> we could spend another half-hour with you. thank you for your time. beverly gage. g-man j edgar hoover and the making of the american century has already won the bancroft prize in american history and the los angeles times award for

biography. congratulations. thank you for spending time with us. our live coverage of the los angeles times book festival continues now. next, an author discussion on the legacy of slavery through the generations. you are watching book tv on c-span. >> good afternoon. welcome, everybody live at the l.a. times book festival. we hope you're having an extraordinary day. welcome also are friends coming in via this recording for c-span's book tv. we are thrilled to be with you. my name is martha jones and i have the distinct pleasure of moderating the panel today. the legacy of slavery through

the generations. my first task is to introduce the extraordinary authors. i begin to my left. carry greenwich is the author of the grimkes: the legacy of slavery in an american family. congratulations on being a finalist this year before the l.a. times book prize. rachel jamison webster, author of "benjamin banneker and us: 11 generations of an american family." welcome, rachel. williams, author of, i saw death coming, a history of terror and survival in the war against reconstruction.

and, the author of "master slave husband wife and epic journey from slavery to freedom." you can already hear where this conversation will go and i am thrilled to help facilitate it. to start, i want to ask a question for each of you. it will help us introduce these books. i want to start with the journey. how did you arrive to write the book and when did you know that it was the book you would write? where did you land? carry greenwich, can you get us started? >> marshall jones work on black women was a transformational piece of my journey of as a historian.

so, think you so much. i first encountered the grimke name throughout my childhood and adolescence. i was told the story most of us are told about the grimke in terms of their relationship with enslavement and anti-slavery. as i was doing research for my first book, "black radicals" i came across the grimke name all over the black press. details told in the black press were often about the black side of the family. and they exceptionalism. there were two things. one side, the white family that i was told is this exceptional family. and, the black side that has gone to these heights of accomplishment at the end of the civil war. i wanted to explore if that could be true. these two extremes. number two, was the legacy of

the abolitionist movement and the ways in which white women in particular interacted with black women in that movement? and what does that say about the legacy of enslavement generally in families and in communities? not just in what happens and happened under slavery, but what happened generations afterwards. i think i knew where i was going with the bug when i decided to spend as much time as i did on the roots of the white grimke family in south carolina that was so entrenched in slaveholding and the atlantic slave trade. i realized this book had the potential to be much bigger than the questions i initially asked. >> i admire the people on this panel so deeply and i am thrilled to be here. i found out about this ancestry and story in 2016 during the

height and season when the narrative of what america means and where we are headed was really up for revision. as soon as i found out about this ancestry i wanted to write these stories because they were amazing. they went all the way back to a dairy made in england that was indentured for stealing milk and a kidnapped and enslaved man from gambia. they went back to the late 1600s. then the sister of benjamin banneker. of course, any writer coming up on these stories would be thrilled and want to tell them. but i was from the side of the family that several generations ago had lost contact with our black relatives and black ancestors. and with generations of activists and people that thrived and survived. i had to grapple with the ethics of the project.

i did a lot of research. i wrote an essay called white lies and fiction that posited my families denial of black presence and black genius in our origin stories that we have written out of ourselves as americans was mirrored in a larger cultural denial of black presence and black genius. i continued to do research and grapple with how i could write more about this and it years later my cousin ed lee harris saw the essay and got in touch and said, we need to talk about our family. that was an amazing moment in my life. it was a very healing moment. edie had done years of genealogical research on her own and was connected to black family members. then i understood the form it could take.

each chapter is a chapter about the ancestors and then there is a present-day chapter about a conversation between me and my cousins about what we learned about history and how we were grappling with our ancestry and the moment we signed ourselves in today. >>kidada? >> i am thrilled to be here. i have been interested in reconstruction since i learned my teachers lied to me in school and when i realized they misrepresented reconstruction i started digging deeper and i cannot get enough of it. the story i tell is a story that uses records which have been available for -- have been available for a long time, for more than 150 years.

historians looked at them, but in a very particular way, focusing on election violence and elected officials targeted by the ku klux klan during reconstruction. when i looked at the records, i realized how much historians and missed. -- had missed. the extent to which survivors including men centered their kin in their accounts. they were attacked as family. they testified before congress they told family stories. so i wanted to write a history of reconstruction from the perspective of those families. what i wanted to do, and i knew as the story came together, when i was able to follow families on their journey out of slavery. from the frying pan of slavery into the fires of freedom. and all the things they made and did with freedom and how successful they were and the price that white extremists made them pay.

i wanted to center them in the story of reconstruction and that was what i was able to do. when i knew that is what i was doing the story came together easily. >>ilyon, please. >> it is an honor to be here with all of you today. i first encountered the crafts in their own writing, their own published narratives. for me, that was an indelible reading experience. i was in graduate school. i just remember the feeling of that voice in my ear. and, the story just, i mean -- william and ellen craft were motivated by love. they were actually husband and wife. they go on an incredible journey where she passes as a rich white disabled man and he pretends to be her slave. they journey over 1000 miles to freedom. and that's just the beginning.

so, this is a story that was really a page turner. a 60 page page turner. i did not think there stop thinking about it in the moment that i could not stop thinking about it for decades. something about it, especially the family story. the stories of loss. the feelings of longing they expressed. the dangers. these all caps coming back. for a long time, i wanted to read more because there was a lot the crafts said and there was also a lot they could not or would not say. i wanted to know more. i honestly hoped somebody else would write the book i wanted to read. and i was honestly not sure if i was the one to write the story. but, curiosity got the better of me. i started doing a little digging and scratching at the surface. and i know that my fellow panelists know what it is like

to fall into that incredible rabbit hole when you connect to my material -- this material. this happened for me at a moment of incredible doubt. when i was heading to macon for the first time and it was raining i was thinking what am i doing here? am i going to do this? i thought, if i see william and ellen craft in the archives i will move. if i do not, isaac i will rest. that day when i was in the macon county courthouse in this strange upstairs area where they improbably let me go to put my paws all over everything, i opened these great tomes that i do not think had been touched for a very long time. but, the pages i held that day, one was a document by which ellen crafts biological father,

a document by which he gave his own daughter away as a wedding gift to his other legitimate legal biological daughter eliza collins. the way he writes it is he says, out of the love i have for my daughter eliza collins i give her this property, the property being his own biological child. when i saw her name on that page and what i saw later that same day a paper by which william kraft, a boy, 60 -- 16 years old and trained as a cabinetmaker. when i saw that page where william craft was listed next to a bunch of -- a pianoforte and numbered church pews and other objects i thought, i have to know more about the story. >> thank you for that. we do not talk often enough

about the signs that come to us and tell us, even if that we are -- if we are at the very beginning of a story, that we are exactly where we are supposed to be in the work. thank you for that, so much. i have shared with some of you that i am teaching a graduate seminar this semester called the black world. our focus has been on the history of family, on family history. each and every one of these books will be until the next time because you have all really grappled with that. here i want to ask you about where you think the focus on family. which is different. as dr. williams has begun to suggest, it is different than a focus on political history or social history, and uncle monica -- an economic history, the history of capitalism.

all these important threads historians follow in their work. you have each elected to stay connected to and rooted in this very intimate perspective. maybe dr. williams you can get us started. you have already begun. can you say a little more about what it means both as a storyteller and a historian analyzing the past, explaining the past, what happens when we think through the family? >> when we center families, for me, when we follow their direction, and what i mean by that is, what if they believe was important, who they believe was important to them, then we have a better understanding of how they experience the world. the families i look at during reconstruction, when i realized

i needed to trust them and not necessarily the investigators asking questions, not necessarily the historians that have whistled past a certain aspects of their account, when i paid attention to what they wanted known it became clear that they wanted people, meadowbrook -- members of congress in particular to understand how devastating the violence was to their families. and, what families were losing in the war against reconstruction. i think when we only look at the political aspects of the violence, when we only look at the economic aspects of the violence we lose the personal. survivors who testified before congress did not have the luxury of looking past that. many of them say, yes, i lost the vote. but that is the least of what happened to me in my family during the attack. so, when we do follow families, when we do understand what

mattered to them we have a completely different way of assessing the history that we might not have considered otherwise. >> thank you for that. let me invite you all to come in and react to that. who wants to jump in? >> i think what you are saying is so true. one of the advantage of looking at a family had people's accounting for the realities of the economic and structural. then it becomes less of a statistic. less about, you know, the eve of the civil war. over 4 million people enslaved. it becomes more about the actual stories of what that was. so, understanding the history. understanding the narrative of the grimke family that many

black and white people told themselves over the years. one of the things that struck me was when that is said over and over again in somebody's family it is never true. that is not how people actually function in families or as people. that to me would seem to indicate there is something else there. just as if i were to do my own family history -- >> we are experiencing some technical difficulties at the los angeles times festival of books. we will return to live coverage of the festival as soon as possible.

>> recently jeff quinn was a guest on book tv's author interview program in depth. he has written on topics ranging from bonnie and clyde to charles manson. during his appearance he recounted meeting with manson family members leslie val houtman -- leslie van houtman and patricia karen weigle as he researched his book. >> what was it like sitting across the table from leslie and patricia knowing and what they have done? >> you are not allowed in that prison if you are visiting them to bring a pad or a pen or a recording device. so i would spend a day interviewing one or the other. they are not friends at this point anymore. they were not going to sit at the same table and talk to me at the same time. >> and they are old ladies, basically. >> that is one of the shocks. we remember them frozen in time

and in a way they still are. >> returning live to the los angeles times festival of books. you can watch the rest of the program online at book tv.org. >> and he was part of a family that war do it -- were doing everything they could to promote freedom for others and for themselves. so, his mother argued in the provincial courts, as soon as she got her own freedom, she argued for the freedom of her children and the courts. i wanted to put this story that many people already knew in family framework as a way of appending the great man narrative and showing self-actualizing context of black people taking care of their family in any way they knew how using any tool at their disposal. showing it was his mother, his

grandmothers, his sisters often that allowed him to be the genius. i want to begin by saying that all of your stories have transformed the way i continue to learn the story of william and ellen craft. i was just thinking, dr. williams, reading your book, i mean, the crafts, there are many layers to the story. but, they eventually leave the story then come back and start a farming and educational cooperative in south carolina. then they are attacked by knight riders. it's an event we don't know much about. but, reading your book opened it up. you were bearing such witness that i felt like i could revisit that space in a new way. but, i wanted to invite you all to join me back again in macon, that moment in the courthouse when i was looking at to that deed talking about family. we have already talked about --

i mentioned how james smith his idea of family definitely was warped. where he is giving one family member to another family member. the other thing really troubling about the document for me is that it is a document that not only condemned ellen craft to bondage by her sister, but, it was in perpetuity. so, the language for this is not only would ellen belong to her half-sister, but, her increase would belong to the increase, or, the generations to follow after eliza collins in perpetuity. that is a line of bondage that extends then, potentially all the way to the present moment. but it did not. because ellen craft disrupted that when she embarked on this incredible journey with her

husband william. the thing that really moves me now can sit -- to consider is that line, the crafts were running for their children. one day, they had the children they dreamed of having in freedom. so, they had a child. they held, named, and loved the child. the child held, named, and loved another child. that child held, named, and loved another child and that child held and named and loved children who are sitting will hear -- sitting here with us today, in the front row, the descendants of william and ellen craft. [applause] >> thank you for that. what i was hearing in part as i was listening are the ways in which what your family stories

do is not only invite us, but, insisted that we pull those threads into the present and that easy notion of the past and present becomes, i think, very blurred, very complicated, but very powerful. we rethought in all of your stories. i hear another threat. that is thinking the liberty about family in black and in white and in all the compact cities we know is the product of violence, of exploitation and more. early america. you all forthrightly confronting that. i think something about the family's we are born into and the families we make. all of these books do such important work on helping us

reflect about what we think family is, even in our own time. one thing that distinguishes our storytelling as historians are these approaches to research. i want to take some time for you to share some of that. you not only center voices and perspectives and past experiences by black americans, we know that is not as straightforward an undertaking as it might be. in your stories, there is something about how much possibility there is in asking those questions. i think some readers might be surprised by how rich the archival record is. i want to start, if i could,

with you because i know you began very deliberately, very early in your thinking about the crafts with their words but you did not end there. that was just a start. tell us about your archival journey. >> thank you. i knew if i was going to tell this story, i had to do something more with the crafts then they had already done with her own words. there are areas where there story did not go. one thing was there was a reason they would not tell is because ellen craft's mother was still enslaved by her biological father's widow. he had passed away but she was still living.

ironically, this woman's story is what ended up yielding a lot of the research. a sad reality of the archives is there is this richness but there is an archival deficit. an imbalance between what we know of the enslavers and the enslaved, who were denied literacy in part because of this reason. i wanted to know more about this woman. this is a woman, she is the reason why ellen was separated from her mother because she could not stand the sight of alan baer -- ellen bearing such a strong physical resemblance. she is the one who has ellen given away when she is 11 years old. it is easy to demonize her and

make her a bad guy. we can say she is not like us, this is a past era, but she is not the only person who made the decisions she did. i wanted to try to evoke the fullness of her reality. there are tons of records. she comes from an illustrious line that connects to a presidency, the cleveland family. i know what her favorite hymn that she wanted to have sang at her funeral. there is so much information. i know of for losses, too. we do not have the same information about maria but we can find her information. age, dollar value assigned to her and -- the challenge that i found in writing about this, on the one hand, i wanted to evoke the fullness of what her

experience was like. i did not want to re-create the same in balance we are seeing in the archive by giving so much to this woman and not being able to give the equivalent amount to maria. what transformed for me was almost a changing at the molecular level of storytelling. mr. smith has many more records and much more stuff. we can change the access by which we tell the story. i went back into my writing and looked at the sentence and the paragraph in the section to see who is a subject, a direct object, who gets the thesis, who gets the story because that is something we can change. in all of your reframing's, we

can shift the access upon which the story is told. >> who wants to come in? >> i will go. for me, i had access to survivors' testimony before congress. what is really interesting about those sources is they are full of all this information that lawmakers and some historians have deemed irrelevant. they tell us a lot about the family's transitioning from slavery to freedom. who is selling hogs. they have a listing of their earnings. a number of them detail how much property they have acquired. how much they paid for it. when they were driven off their property. how much they lost in earnings

for that year. you have a lot of rich information about those families. what i wanted to do was sit with that material and help readers understand what family's achieved when they left slavery in a very short period of time. when i talked about following the direction, it is not to say you do not use a critical analysis of the sources because you do, but there are other things that make sense to follow. a lot of the people who testified before congress, they referenced people coming through. even though the senses is a complicated -- even though the census is a complicated source, it help me find the potential names of family members who were referenced indirectly in the account. when they focused only on the

men, because they were elected officials or voters, what we miss is how many people were in their families during the attack. a story of reconstruction that focuses on the men alone would say one person was attacked by the klan without acknowledging or knowing there were three generations of the family in the house that night. you had 10 people, right? they were held hostage, as opposed to that one. there is a lot of rich material in there. i look for additional evidence to try to thicken the data if you have a better understanding to reveal as much about who they were and how much the achieved in this moment and what they were losing to violence. the last point i will focus on is in their first-hand accounts, what is really interesting, and

revealing, is how much they theorize on the future. there is a refrain in the testimonies, i will never get over it. she will never get over it. we will never be over this. i think that challenges the way people have thought about reconstruction violence. they think it has neat bookends. the violence ends when the men leaves. the accounts are clear that is not what happens. they are living in a disaster for a very long period of time. when you follow them using the census, most people who were landowners do not recover their land. they are driven from their home communities. they leave places like white county, georgia, and end up in

atlanta and have to start over from scratch again and were never able to achieve what they had to that point. these accounts reveal a missing puzzle piece that might help families understand how their families transitioned from slavery to freedom. >> one of the things -- it bears repeating what we are all getting at it -- trusting black people in the spaces of the archive. i think too often there has been a tradition of historians having a caveat. this was said by someone who was illiterate and therefore what they said about their family in 1840 could not possibly be true. you hear of a mother who every other historian has said we do not know who she was related to and do not know anything about her. she was brought up to believe she would eventually be freed. she believed her sons were free.

nothing in the sources i saw made it through. what i found was she could not read or write but told her sons they lived in a community of free westons and talked about the free westons and said they were her kin. people asked how much could we take away, she was elderly? then you go into the sources of the family she talks about, the mckinley family, for instance, a prominent family in washington, d.c. whose papers are at the library of congress, and they are talking about the westons. i think taking -- looking at sources and not thinking that because someone was enslaved or

someone was black or supposedly illiterate that the records do not exist. and then following that up by looking at multiple places where additional aspects of that are. there is a wealth of information talking about nancy weston that are in other people's papers. even if nancy weston does not have the paper, a rich family of westons that ended up migrating, they have papers. not just going into one archive and sing this archive exists and i did not see anything so it does not exist. going into multiple archives and trying to reconstruct the world -- particularly black women say so and so was my cousin, or someone so was so-and-so's daughter.

traditionally, historians have said, how would they know that? they are talking from their community, you should take it as something that could be true. >> exactly. i took that -- one of the foundations of the book was an oral history from family members. it has been slightly contested but it is a -- rigorously recorded history. because i was coming at it as a creative writer and a poet, i wanted to create different forms of knowledge, including the emotional. the banneker family has a lot of documentary evidence for their family. there are gaps in the archive. i think it is important to note they are not just there because someone failed to keep track. benjamin banneker's cabin was

burned down on the day of his funeral. this was a common act of racial violence, especially for families that had achieved a lot in the community. those things happen. it is very painful to confront those gaps, confront those moments where you see people listed with property. it is heavy to do the research. when i listen to everyone speak, there is so much to be said about creative research and treating our attention as a resource. once you bring your attention to the people, you find things. we still have benjamin banneker 's published almanacs, his letter to jefferson and one journal that is filled with brilliance. accounts of his dreams, mathematics, poems.

we have ample evidence of genius. i was struck by how often people would say, there is not enough. there actually is. we actually have written evidence of these families. they were keeping careful track of one another. it is exciting to hear all of the wily ways that people have found to get that on paper and honor that. >> as i am listening, -- take seriously our own families. the stories that are told. the documents that sit in the shoebox, the trunked, the attic. get them out of the attic and put them someplace safe. those kinds of materials are so critical to you all being the extraordinary work you do -- you

all doing the extraordinary work you do. i have one more short question before we turn to the audience. we thank everyone for being here. i will ask you in a moment to raise hands for questions. there are microphones in the room. while folks are gathering their questions, let me ask one last one. it is sort of a big one but let's try to take a short pass at it. one of the things that has been running through the conversation this weekend at the festival has been the kind of strife to which history, and particularly black history, has been subjected in recent months and years. you all are writing important and challenging history in challenging times. when we sit on a panel like this , there are many folks out

there, whether they are the teachers of high school history, the students who aspire to tell their own stories, and more, but i will ask you to speak a little bit to folks about how you think , as we see our history being rewritten by pundits and lawmakers -- i will put that in quotes -- lawmakers and opportunists, where are you in your own thinking? i imagine this is not where you thought you would be when you started this work, but here we are. would you get us started, rachel, and tell us about what it is been like to tell us about this work in challenging times? >> it is a big question. books are being banned. books about black history --

history -- not opinion, not ideology, history are being banned from libraries and curriculum every day. i feel honored to share these stories of my ancestors but i also feel a special urgency to share them right now for several reasons. the first, they found ways to survive and resist in times much like these, when things were getting worse before they were getting better. people were losing their rights. we are in a time when democracy is being eroded and civil rights are being taken away. what is amazing about the books today, all of us write about people who were living through similar times. they did not give up. the used whatever measure of freedom they had to work for freedom for others. in a lot of cases, ucs to people

had freedom, they were trying to protect their own family and their people. as an educator, i try to very honestly acknowledge that these are difficult times to be alive. these are difficult times to be a young person. i try to connect us to our literal ancestors and our cultural ancestors because we have so much information there about how to keep going and i think we have guidance and we also have tools to connect to our own courage and our own clarity. >> thank you. >> what you just said so deeply resonated with me. especially thinking about william ellen craft. as soon as they arrived after this harrowing journey and a lifetime in bondage, they could have just disappeared and went

to canada. they had dreams about starting a family of their own. instead they are invited to tell their story and they come to halls like this one where they are packed sometimes with thousands of people. it is like putting a target on their back. they do not change their names, they go on the road and traveled 1000 miles. they settled briefly in boston and then slave hunters come after the passage of the slave act where they were urged to leave the country but they stand up and tell their story and it is that standing up and telling that motivated so many people then, and i think is an inspiration now. >> thank you. >> i will go. i think there are a couple things in a couple points that have been made. african-americans, one of the things they have done was ba history-centered people -- was

be a history-centered people and passing that legacy on. that is why you have this rich and broad history that families passed on before kids even get into school. yes, we do need to fight the bans on history education and school. we need to remember earlier generations of african-americans did a lot of that work and they were assisted by a lot of teachers who did that work, particularly in the time of slavery. a lot of states are passing laws banning literacy did not mean black people did not learn how to read. they did on a regular basis because there were a lot of insurgent teachers out there. we can look to the past to understand ways we did not just get through the moment but fight it. fight it in a way we are able to win.

i am inspired by the past and often try to continue working with teachers providing resources and helping them think through strategies for how to teach this history when their livelihoods are at stake in how to encourage students to do the work. we have a lot of work to do. we have a lot of rich resources and we should not overlook that. >> amen to all of this. i will quickly say that we are living in a moment where one of the reasons i cannot help but thinking we are in this moment is because the history itself, would you study it, puts to shame the last 50 or 60 years of the american story itself. the lies we have been told since the 1960's or earlier, once you start to read the history, none of that story makes sense. that is a very powerful

thing, the history that people do not want you to reckon with gives you an alternative to the moment you are in. that means supporting in this very moment libraries as much as you can. show up into a library, even if it is not your normal town library, tell the librarians in there that somebody is listening. i think recognizing that a lot of this work has been done before. reading scholars who have done this work in the past and understanding that the work that is coming out in the present is building upon the work that has been done in the past. it will be here through this moment. we have to recognize the reasons it is under attack is history is -- >> let's turn -- please.

[applause] >> let's turn to the audience. who wants to get us started? just ask the folks waiting for a microphone. i am looking for my microphones. i have a hand in the back. while we are getting the microphones in place, it is a moment to say thank you to the l.a. times book festival, c-span's book tv for bringing us together. writers and readers. [applause] it is always a joy, isn't it? it is also a time of tremendous purpose. >> i want to thank everyone today. you were marvelous. in my readings, it is a scientific fact, there is a

family of human history that originates in africa. we are all african. i have african genes. everyone in this audience has african genes. was that mentioned in your books? if so, how did it impact your stories? there is a science behind the family history of genetics. without that black history, human beings do not exist. >> thank you. families? genetics? dna? we are all africans? >> i do go into this in the book and i feel it is a very important to talk about this connection to africa. there is no america without african-americans. there is no american history without black history, and there

is no human history. so thank you. >> would that be important in the future to mention that? >> i think you have done that for us, at least this afternoon, so thank you very much. >> i have a hand here in the front. >> hi. i have been aware of the bones of the craft story for close to three years. i was unaware of your story about ellen. it reminded me of a person who was given by her father to her half-sister, which affects american history on a huge level. i have been in book discussions

about her. a lot of people do not understand the lack of power of white women. it sounds like you did a lot of research on her stepmother who encouraged her to be transferred out of the household. i am very excited to read your book. do you go into the powerlessness of a lot of these white women during slavery? >> thank you for your question. they connect with the hemmings. also, her first book, there is more linkage of the lineage. in terms of the white women, the mistresses, there has been a good deal of scholarship about that and there is one book that came out, the name is escaping

me. that is right. thank you. i would recommend that as a resource. what i would say is white women were far more empowered than i actually thought when i went into this. they might not have had the same legal rights upon marriage as white men did, but they were property owners. they could also buy and sell people and they did. they could hold onto their property as mistress smith did. for me, investigating the role of these women was to see the ways in which they had considerable agency. >> i want to make sure we mentioned stephanie jones rogers' book, which was the winner here in 2019 of the book

prize of history. the someone else want to come in on this question? perhaps more recent recognition that slavery as an institution and slavery as power is not the exclusive province of men. >> that is one of the reasons i wrote that book. there is this whole idea that the white sisters were powerless against their family's slaveholding ways and they threw that off and became activists but that is not true. stephanie jones rogers' work has shown that white women profited from, benefited from the slave system. those sisters could not have

made it to philadelphia and lived on the road without the money their family made off slave trading. even as they were pronouncing slavery as wrong. you go back to the complications of history, it is possible to hold those two things in the space at the same time. you could be a white woman and believe that slavery was wrong. you could dedicate yourself to saying slavery was wrong, and yet you could have problematic relationships with actual black people, which are two different things. you could have a problematic relationship with actual black people who were enslaved to you. we have come to a moment in terms of as historians were we can complicate the stories that we think we know, even as liberal-leaning people about what slavery was and how deeply embedded the benefits of the

slave system was to white people, regardless of gender. >> this is another example where listening to african-americans matter because you rarely find in slave narratives or freedom narratives as we are now calling them, you rarely find these helpless enslaving women. they are never there in the records. a lot of the work that we are seeing today has been taken seriously. african-americans' accounts and perspectives on these relationships. the helpless enslaving woman does not exist, at least not in african-americans' minds. >> one of the things recorded of her saying -- she never says

anything about her life. we have to take that seriously. what she is saying about her experiences. >> we have time for one more quick question. thank you. >> hi. it has been a long day and i am feeling very nostalgic -- i am going to cry. i have been to every one of these book festival since they started at ucla. one of my favorite ones in 2004 or 2005 was a panel of women like you, war correspondents who had gone to iraq to tell the stories of people whose stories need to be told and nobody was telling them. i am just struck that 20 years later, still a panel of women telling stories of people who story said not been told.

i do not have a question for you but just a note of appreciation for what you are doing and encouraging all of us to turn the mirror on our own families and find out where those stories are and who these people were. keep on plugging away. i love it. . . thank you [applause] >> that is almost so good of a note that i would like to end on it. i have one more question that flows from it if i could very quickly. telus what you do to take care of yourselves in doing this challenging work, because we know the way in which this work can extract a tremendous personal toll. very briefly, where'd you go for joy, beauty, sustenance, care?

>> music and family. jazz. lack original music -- black original music makes me happy, even though it might be said. >> i meditate. and i try to connect with the ancestors and get beyond the bounds of myself while also taking responsibility for myself. i would say my relationships with my cousins, they come in and they worked with me on the book when i am feeling most doubtful or unprepared. i have had many moments of surprise that have encouraged me and i really live by those moments. >> i will say that, for me, i spend time in nature. i also come back to my love of african-americans as a people and the love they have shown others and that gives me the strength i need to continue

telling their stories. >> everything here just resonated. especially the meditation and just being in the body and being out in nature and in movement, out of my head. also, sitting with each of the people i meet in the archives. when i look at that list of names, there is something -- i say something to each person i encounter on the page, which is i see your history, i feel you in time. that mantra for me to connect to people through time and space, i find that to be restorative. >> thank you. i have one last bit of business, which is to urge you all not only to read but to come out to signing area 1 and to meet these authors, have a chance to ask other questions, have them sign your books and to support them

in keeping this important work going. we all thank you so much. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> book tv's live coverage of the 2023 los angeles times festival of books continues. one more author discussion live

in about a half-hour. the topic is civil rights, the black power movement and where we are today. you will hear about a book on jim crow. daniel and mark whitaker, who we talked to earlier on our set with his book about 1966 and the black power movement. joining us now is washington post white house bureau chief and co-author of this book. his name is george floyd, one man's life and the struggle for racial justice. what was the angle you were taking in writing this book? >> we wanted to tell george floyd's story. not the story of his death what the story of how he lived in america.

you could tell readers a little bit about the country in which he lived and the struggles he had as he came of age in america. an america that has moved beyond the days of jim crow and colored water fountains and blatant racism but still suffers from inequality, discrimination, systemic racism that often happens behind the scenes, often happens behind closed doors and underneath the surface and wanted to showcase how that operated in george floyd's life. everyone saw how he died, under the knee of a police officer that happened to be white. there are many ways that racism takes place that is not quite as visceral, not quite as emotional, not quite as evident as someone dying under the knee of a police officer and we

wanted to showcase how that happens in our school systems, prison systems, housing systems and show the george floyd was a human being. he had his ups and downs and highs and lows but he was a human being before he became this icon of social justice. we wanted to honor his human story and allow people to see him for who he was, not just on his worst moments but throughout the course of his life. that is what we wanted to show. >> that was in may of 2020. three years ago. what were some of his ups and downs in life? >> he was born poor. from the beginning, he was born into deep poverty. not because of his family not working hard but because of where his family was. north carolina, in the deep south, hard work was not always

rewarded with wealth for people who look like george floyd. they had their wealth stripped away through fraud, racial terror in the late 1800s and early 1900s. he had dreams and visions. we talk to his second grade teacher who told us about how he wanted to be a supreme court justice. she actually kept one of his assignments 40 years later and saw he had been able to write, read and do everything on grade level. he had hopes and dreams and had the opportunities to chase the american dream. . he was a tall, big person was able to excel on the sports field and went to the state championship with his high school football team and saw a pathway to get into college through sports. he got a scholarship. he had what seemed like a pathway to stability despite the

deep poverty. he was born into. we see over the course of the book that despite the opportunities, despite persistence to overcome obstacles, those obstacles eventually catch up to him in terms of poverty, substandard schooling, a policing system that was unfair in many cases and targeted communities like the one he grew up in. later in life, we see him confront a series of lows, being arrested for petty drug crimes and spending time in jail, experiencing poverty as a result of his criminal record. he could never get a job in part because he was not able to qualify for the professional licenses you would need to get a job because of his criminal record. we see the lows, which included substance abuse, make his life very difficult. one reason he was in minneapolis

was he had left his hometown of houston to move to minneapolis to get into a rehab program. despite his willingness to uproot his life, try for a better shot at life, changes pathway, we saw a police officer snuff that life out before he had the opportunity to remake his life. >> we will take calls during the segment, as well. we want to get the numbers up on the screen. if you want to send a text message to our guest, you can send it to this number (202) 748-8903. please include your first name and your city. at what point did you and your

co-author decide to take the approach you did and was it one of those casual conversations? >> this book grew out of a series that rented the washington post. it was myself, robert and several other reporters who each took on a different part of george floyd's american experience. there was a reporter who wrote about his experience with the housing system. the criminal justice system. i wrote about his family history. robert wrote about his experience in the american health care system. we have a lot of different pieces of the puzzle. understanding his experience, how we came of age, long before he met derek chauvin. we got an understanding of how his life was like. that series ran to great acclaim of the washington post. robert and i got together and decided we would tell a deeper story.

we would turn the series into a full-length book which we were able to start from the beginning, even before george floyd came on the scene. tell the story of his ancestors and their american experience and how we came into the world. how he experienced america, in a much different way than most people experience this country. we decided to take on the project and not only write about his life but what his death meant for america. the movements marked by his death. every day people taking to the streets, some people who had never protested before. some people decided this was too much and they went to change the country they lived in. part of the book was about george floyd and part was about the experience of america dealing with his death and the aftermath of his death, the conviction of the officers who murdered him and how the country responded to his death. we wanted to be able to tell that story.

we knew we were living through an important part of american history. we wanted to record the history and write the second draft of history that is more thorough and more nuanced and get some of the details we were not able to get in the moment in the immediate aftermath after he was killed. we thought it was compelling because of how major the moment was in our history, to be able to tell the history of the person whose death sparked the moment and tell the story of the country who grappled with his death and all of the issues that were brought to the surface by his murder. we thought it was important to be able to tell that story in the best and most thorough way possible. >> what percentage of your time did you spend in north carolina, houston, minneapolis? >> i spent most of my time in houston. i moved to houston to do the research for this book and immerse myself in the community

where george floyd grew up. to spent time in the housing projects where he grew up. meet with the people who knew him when he grew up. to walk on the fields where he chased athletic stardom. to go to some of the courtrooms were he was sentenced to time in prison. spent time with friends and family members who had him over for dinner and remembered who he was, this tall and gregarious guy who was big and never quite felt comfortable in his body because people saw him and were intimidated by him but he saw himself as gentle and loving to the world. i spent most of my time in houston. i spent some time in minneapolis, as well. my co-author spent a lot of time in minneapolis, covering the trial. he spent time with george floyd's family. he traveled to other parts of the country, as well, where george floyd had family. it was important to immerse

ourselves in the communities where george floyd lived and communities impacted by his death so we could get a feel for what it was like to be him and for people who were coming to know him through his death and being animated by the death and dealing with the issues that the country decided to deal with as a result of the fact that he died in such a heinous way in front of the eyeballs of millions of people. >> let's take some calls. let's begin with don calling in from new orleans. you are on book tv. >> i apologize, we are going to put you on hold. the producer is going to talk to you and tell you how this operates so we can get you on the air. did you approach derek chauvin for an interview? >> we did. >> we try to get in touch with

him. by the time we were writing this book, he had already been convicted and he was in jail. we reached out to him through the appropriate channels and he decided he did not want to stick with us. >> did he consider it? >> i am sure he did but he turned down his chance to tell his side of the story. we did hear from him in court and from his lawyer. we have some of his side of the story. we have some of his side of the story through interviews he did through the legal process. there is an entire chapter about derek chauvin and his american experience that we got him talking to people who knew him, worked alongside him and were arrested by him. george floyd was not the person -- not the first person he arrested with the technique of the knee on the neck. we talk to other people who were

brutalized by derek chauvin. we were able to understand a little bit about how he approached the job of policing and how he came to the corner on may 25, 2020, and how history changed by the fact he was responding to the call and responded the way he did. >> what was one question you would've asked derek chauvin? >> i would have wanted to know what he thought of when he first saw george floyd -- there were multiple opportunities he had to de-escalate. there were multiple opportunities he had to remove his knee from george floyd's neck. what understanding what he thought when he first saw george floyd and what triggered him to become some aggressive in his arrest of george floyd that even after george floyd stop moving that he continue to keep his knee on his neck.

i think there is something we could find out by understanding what he saw. maybe he did not see george floyd's humanity in the way that all the people who saw him die saw. that is something i would want to know. i think that would get to the heart of why he responded the way he did. >> new brunswick, new jersey. you are on book tv. we are listening. >> hi. thank you so much for the two of you writing this book and that you focused on his life. i have a quick question. since this is a broader issue, i had no idea all of these things occurred in his life that were extremely positive. do you ever think about the possibility of a play about his life? i think there is a movie. i am about 20 minutes from manhattan so i am thinking play or theater. i would love to see a play with

all of the things that you talked about, what he did and accomplished. because it is a broader issue of racism, injustice and being underserved, i think that would be awesome. have you thought about the possibility of a movie or play? >> thank you so much for the question and for the suggestion. we are journalists what we are open to any form of art that allows a story to be told in a powerful way. the world of theatric arts, the world of dramatizing stories will allow people to connect with the story. i hope that in some moment, when the time is right, that this story is able to be dramatized. we tried to write it in a way that is engaging and translate to the dramatic world. we wanted it to be engaging to readers. if you have the opportunity to

pick up the book, it reads like a real-life story, a movie because we wrote it in that way. there is a lot of dialogue. we heard from a lot of people. we did more than 400 interviews for this book. it allowed us to bring some of the scenes to life. there is a lot of power. for people who might not ever pick up a book, being able to dramatize his story and have people connect with george floyd this way. it all started with a video. a dramatic moment that was caught on camera on a video. i think people were able to connect with this not just because of the written word but the video of george floyd's death. there is something that can be done to showcase the drama of his life, the hopes and dreams and aspirations he had, not just the negative video that was his death but the dramatic way he lived life, the powerful way he lived life. i think there is something to be said about focusing on the fact

it started with a video that was heinous and brutal but there are ways to dramatize the ways and parts of his life that were more hopeful and positive. this is a very sensitive topic and we want to be deliberative and diligent about thinking about how it might be translated for the big screen or smallscreen. it is something we are not rushing into. it is something we are thinking about. if we do decide to move forward, we went to be a positive approach and something that will be sensitive. we want whatever is done to be true to the story. we want whatever could be done to be true to george floyd's own personal story and the story of the country he grew up in. >> the name of the book is "his

name is george floyd." if you live -- send a text message (202) 748-8903. first name and city in the text message if you would. this text message from illinois. do you know, or was there speculation that mr. derek chauvin knew of or knew who george floyd was? >> that is something we researched and spoke to his many people as we could to run that down. what we learned was, it did not necessarily matter whether or not show -- derek chauvin knew him.

our understanding was they worked in some of the same places but there was no sense of a strong personal relationship but derek chauvin was known as an aggressive police officer. no matter who he encountered, he likely would have used the same technique. he used the knee-to-the-neck technique so many times. when he would be asked about the level of force, he would say the person was bigger. george floyd was a bigger person. it is not surprising after learning about derek chauvin's history in policing that he decided to use this technique. it did not have to be out of a personal grudge he had with george floyd. it was just how he behaved. it was the kind of officer he was. we did not find any evidence

that he was doing it out of personal spite. even though the two men moonlighted at the same nightclub and work security at the same nightclubs, there was no sense they had a personal grudge or personal relationship of any kind. derek chauvin was the kind of police officer who could do this kind of action whether or not he knew someone. >> vicki, carolina, good afternoon. >> both the caller before hand and he just answered my question. did the police officer know george floyd at a nightclub that they worked at? >> you are right, he just answered that call so we will move on and talk to dan in new jersey. dan, you are on book tv. >> i was really shocked because

if you remember, the officer had his knee on mr. floyd's back. for you to breathe, the ribs are rotating on the spine. it is a tremendous effort with the weight of a man on your back to expand your ribs. the other knee -- that would suppress the drive to breathing. mr. floyd was doped up on drugs that would affect his respiratory drive. all in all, i think this was a case of poor police training and a medical condition the combined a number of factors that were most unfortunate. by putting this officer in jail, we are disregarding the fact we are not training as to the real medical issues that involve drug

addiction and holding down people when they are being arrested. mr. floyd was a very big man. >> i think we got the point. >> thank you so much for your comment. these things were litigated as part of the trial. there were many medical experts who testified to what exactly happened. how the pressure was applied to george floyd's neck and how that stopped him from breathing. although george floyd did have opioids in his system, those did not contribute to his inability to breathe, according to the medical experts who testified. these issues have been litigated, the jury heard these issues and they rendered a verdict of guilty for derek chauvin. that is how the american system of justice works. we respect those verdicts.

mr. chauvin has had the opportunity to go through appeal and question whether or not it was a just verdict. i think the fact that it was a unanimous guilty was the result of a jury that heard all of the medical evidence and about how exactly the process went down. this was a case that had a lot of evidence. there were dozens of camera angles and information about how george floyd spent his final moments. we were able to use those medical experts to showcase exactly what happened to george floyd, exactly what happened to his organs, exactly how he lost his life. there is a lot of speculation about what might have killed him , the medical evidence is pretty clear about how he died and the fact that derek chauvin's knee on his neck was a major

contributing factor to his death. >> did you talk to members of the jury? >> we did not do that as part of this story. we talk to the legal team that prosecuted derek chauvin. in part because the verdict was unanimous and it was so clear, we found a lot more value in speaking to the prosecutors and the people who testified getting into the jury and on earth their anonymity, we spot they spoke -- we thought they spoke in a clear voice with a unanimous verdict of guilty. we thought that being able to retell the story of the trial, it was much more valuable for us to speak to the prosecutors who put together the case, who dealt with the evidence and presented a case to the jury along with

the witnesses who testified and spoke to the jury through their testimony and got some reaction from the jury through some of the eyes of those on the witness stand. we got a sense of what played well with the jury and what did not play well with the jury. >> a few minutes left with our guest. california. good afternoon. >> hi. i just want to know why everything has to be turned into a race matter. ever since this whole chauvin thing, our country has been so divided. half of america sees a very sad situation where he died. i do not think he was intending for him to die, do not think he was people. there was a crowd around, he was pushing on his back and he died. there is so much tension. you do not know if black people are looking at white people and

thinking they are special or white people are thinking black people hate them, it has been so divided. what can we do to stop making everything racist and start getting along? >> that is a good question. one of the things he wanted to do in the book was allow people to understand one another better. a lot of people never met anyone like george floyd in their mouth. many people -- george floyd in their life. some people would say that is someone who is not up to any good based on how he is dressed. we wanted people to read this book and get to know someone -- someone who is in their family. someone who is talkative and gregarious and interesting, complicated and nuanced. we are in a very divided time. the fact that george floyd died brought out a number of issues that the country has faced for much of its history.

the country has had a complex racial history and we have to deal with that. we cannot sweep it under the rug. there has been a history of racial injustice in america and we are trying to get to a better place. in order to get there, we have to confirm our history. the fact that george floyd was killed because people to confront parts of our history maybe they were not familiar with, maybe they were not willing to confront in the past. sometimes it does force us to get through a period of divisiveness and confront some of the ugly parts of our country's history when we see someone die on camera the way george floyd did. the goal of our book is to help us understand each other better. help us understand what needs to happen to bring more equality into our system. it is easy for us to it is users say -- it is easy to say lets everyone get along, but

as long as someone like george floyd races so many trials in his life because of the color of his skin, that makes it harder to say let's all get along and forget about race for the time being. so our bk hopes to improve some of these inequalities so that some time in the future we are not talking about race so much because we don't have as much racial inequality in our system. we have to confront the issues, and deal with the issues in order to get to a place where in the future we are not having to focus as much on inequality as we do now. as long as we have inequality in our system, it's going to be something that causes inequalities -- that causes divisiveness in our system, so

we need to do what we can to address those inequalities and bring our country to a more united place. >> white house bureau chief for "the washington post your cup -- "the washington post." your co-author works with you. >> he just left "the post," sadly for us. just in the last month or so, he joined the new yorker. he is still in washington. still will be writing about the key issues of our time, so i'm looking forward to following his career as a fan and co-author. he is a great writer and was a great person to work on this book with. >> alvin is in denver. please go ahead. >> i purchased your book. i'm reading it now. i appreciate the perspective going back generations in george

floyd's family, establishing at one time his relatives owned more land in the particular county in north carolina. i really appreciate that. i paid a lot of attention to the trial. i watched a lot of it, and you kind of touched on this a little, but i worked in the criminal system. i have my own ideas about this. why do you think children -- why do you think chauvin wanted to incapacitate george floyd, and that's why he kept his knee on his neck? there's a police department -- >> hi, alvin, we are going to have to leave it there. we are running out of time. short answer to an important question. >> very complex question, very nuanced. during the trial, we learned

that derek chauvin was not trained to use force in that way. even his police chief told the jury that is not the way to use force. no matter his intent, that was not the way you use force, even according to his own police chief, which we rarely see at trials. it is important to remember that the chief of police said that is not the way to use force. >> the book, "his name is george floyd: one man's life and the struggle for racial justice or, -- justice." thanks for being on "booktv." coming up, one more author discussion, and it begins now. it is on civil rights, the black power movement, and where we are today. >> ok, ready?

>> ok, welcome, everyone. it is so referentially quiet in here. maybe that speaks to the topic? welcome to civil rights, the black power movement, and where we are today. yet another panel on civil rights, the black power movement, and where we are today. i'm a journalist and writer in los angeles. i'm joined by three wonderful authors and historians and witnesses. just because my own story touches on everything these three write about, i recommend all the books. they're wonderful. i and ellie native, which is something that does not surprise people as much as it used to, but my family came from the louisiana, from new orleans. my father came in 1942 during

the war, and this kind of to margaret's book. my family did not talk a whole lot about what happened in the south. you just did not hear a lot. i put it together over the course of my life, really. as an essayist, i always tried to sort of dove right -- i don't know -- write about the history of black folk and about my own individual life, which is very hard to do. i think i'm still trying to put those pieces together, so all these books speak to that effort, i think, by black people to continue to do that. we are in the era of black lives matter, which is the same campaign we have been running for a very long time. i think of dr. king in 1968. his last campaign for the sanitation workers in memphis. there are pictures of protesting , picketing, trying to unionize, and their slogan was "i am a

man." our current iteration of that is black lives matter, and we have been making the same argument for a long, long time. what is interesting now is just how black people are doing it, how we meet this moment with lessons of the past, which don't ever feel like lessons of the past. because we keep failing to learn them. i'm going to kind of let you guys introduce yourselves if you can, and also just to say briefly -- i know this is really tough to do, but briefly in terms of civil rights and the black power movement, i think they have always been -- they are connected, of course, but if you could just say something about where you think that is at in 2023. we will start with daniel black. >> good afternoon, everyone. i am daniel black. i am professor of african-american studies at a grand, marvelous place called

clark atlantic university. i'm very happy to be here. i sat down and i saw liquid death, and i said, oh, god, you know, here we go again, right? [laughter] but i'm happy to be here. this is my 30th year on faculty at hbcu. i wrote this book "black on black" for really one reason, and that was to really help -- or maybe two reasons, to help young people today understand the cost of black life, like, how expensive black life has been in this country. every generation, black life gets more and more and more expensive. i want to believe that young people just do not know the price that somebody paid for their flesh. that's the first thing. the second thing i wrote this is i believe that those of the black power movement now in hindsight would make different decisions than they made, one of

those being integration. i think most elders now if they could do it again, they would not vote for integration. >> mm. i think mark might have something to say about that, too. do you want to introduce yourself and give your thoughts? >> i'm mark whitaker. i'm a veteran journalist. i worked for a long time at "newsweek" magazine. i was an editor there for almost a decade. i was in tv news at nbc and cnn. i still do some on your reporting for cbs sunday morning, but i'm also -- for the last decade or so, i've been riding books, and -- writing books, and my last book was about the legacy of the black community in pittsburgh in the middle of the 20th century, and it made me realize in writing that book that as a writer and author now trying to be sort of working on history, that there

are stories of black history that have been told by black writers and white writers, usually the stories that have been told also by white writers have a white element, a white savior element for white oppressor element for interest to write -- to white readers. other elements either have not been told or if they have been, they have been told mostly by black writers and black historians, often because they really just focus on kind of things that were happening within the black community and not necessarily sort of, as they say these days, centering, sort of, you know, white protagonists . not that i'm not interested in those stories, but i thought the area where i could sort of contribute is by writing about those stories. after that last pittsburgh story, i started thinking about

the black power movement, which is -- you know, had this profound effect, changed the civil-rights movement, but the number of books that have been written about the black power movement compared with the civil rights movement of dr. king, you know, is still tiny. so i set out with that idea that i was going to write about the black power movement, and i spent an entire year reporting and writing. i knew that the slogan "black power" had become popular -- stokely carmichael, it was not really his slogan, but he made it popular in 1966, so i started there, and a year later, i was still in 1966 because so much happened in that one year. that's how i ended up deciding to write a book about the birth of black power focused on that one year. >> ok, great. margaret? she won a prize in journalism

and black history last night. [applause] >> thanks so much. it is a great joy to be here with mark and daniel and with all of you. i know it is late in the day, and folks have heard a lot of talk and participated in a lot of discussions, but we will try to make this as lively and informative as we can. my book, i'm thrilled to say, was recognized last night. never too late. never too late. those of you who are still writing, it is never too late. [applause] never too late to write a book and never too late to be a winner, ok? [applause] my book focuses on the jim crow era. the book is called "by hands now known: jim crow's legal executioners." the book title comes from an expression used by coroners and

others during the jim crow period when they were describing lynchings and other executions of african-americans. there would have been hundreds of witnesses to these events, and yet, the reports, death certificates, and otherwise often would carry the words "by hands not known." the premise of the book is we now know a lot more than we did about what transpired, who was involved, and perhaps most important, what his legacy is for us today. this book really addresses the jim crow era, jim crow era violence and resistance and law, looking at violence and resistance through the lens of law, looking at an era of our country, really the confederate states of the south which were

in effect lawless. i described these as an authoritarian regime with a purportedly -- within a purportedly democratic state. it looks at these three things and unearths new stories, new information to paint a picture not just of what lives look like then, so it is history for its own sake. history that helps us understand what it meant to be alive in that moment. obviously as well, it is also history that informs us about the moment that we live in today, so that is the gist of the work. let me just say one other thing. the book really began as i began to meet families who had experienced these events and who were carrying these stories as their own personal history, their own family history.

we traveled across the country to meet with folks who experienced these horrific atrocities, and our effort was to provide to them the material that the government had produced in these cases and to partner with the families to create a fuller, broader, deeper, and more meaningful picture of these events. >> what has been occurring to me the last several years are actually maybe last decade, that those folks who lived deep in the jim crow era, that generation, is leaving us. my father lived half his life in that era and then pack out, and he lived in los angeles. it did not have official jim crow but by custom had segregation. i was born in the early 1960's.

we are losing first-hand accounts of that. i don't know, it is something -- so i was so glad to read your book. let's talk first about -- there's something else i have been thinking about a long time. integration, which is something we don't define that well. in reading daniel's book and certainly reading marc's book, i thought i knew what it was. there's always this tension around the idea that integration was sort of strategically the only thing we could do because separate and unequal was separate and unequal, right? the fight seemed to be for integration into white society, but that was not really it, was it? there was always reticence about that, and many black folk were actually not in favor of brown versus board of ed, not that they thought that black people were unequal, but they could see

where that was going to go -- nowhere. or that was not going to turn out well. mark, maybe you could talk about the year 1966, when i was four years old. >> both at the time and now, even in some of the reviews of my book, people have said, why were people calling for black power? at a time when things were getting better, right? a lot of white folks out in 1966, you had the 1964 civil rights act, you had this voting rights act. it had been a decade since brown versus board of education, so from the kind of white liberal perspective, things seemed to be getting better, so why were blacks unhappy? why were they talking about black power? why were they unsatisfied? the fact is from the black perspective, you had a couple of things. you mention your family coming

from the south to the north to the great migration -- through the great migration. arent had played out in the south, but meanwhile, and for decades, there had been these families that had uprooted themselves, moved to the north, and found out that things were not that much better in the north than they were in the south, and as far as integration goes, in 1966, you have stokely carmichael, who takes over as the student nonviolent coordinating committee, ousting john lewis the great, you know, ally dr. king and civil rights icon. you had the formation of the black panthers in oakland. you had dr. king trying to take the movement from the south to chicago with pretty disastrous, violent results. and you had a young generation

that was behind all of this, and they were saying a number of things. they were talking about black pride and lack consciousness, afros, -- keyes, all of that -- afros, all of that. when dr. king talked about a society where his children could live, that by a large was a project that had been advocated for five well educated, middle-class blacks -- by well educated, middle-class blacks directed by small segment of the situation which we would now call progressive, well-educated, middle-class whites, but most whites had no interest in living

side-by-side or integrated with the sharecropper's organizers were working with in the deep south over the descendants of the migrants who lived in inner-city oakland -- defendants of the migrants who live in inner-city oakland or who lived in america by the 1960's, and they were right. they are still right, you know? one of the things black power stands for is politically and culturally, how do black folks continue to have a place in american society as citizens, as voters, and in the workplace, but still living a life where fundamentally they are going to have to rely on themselves as a community and were not and probably never will fully be integrated with white society? i think that is a very live issue today. >> the truth is for me -- and i think you are very kind -- [laughter] because i don't it's that whites

were not interested in living next to black people. i think most whites were absolutely opposed to it, and i think there is a difference, right? i really think that integration never happened. >> no. >> see, you can't force -- you can't force one people -- you cannot bus one set of kids to somebody else's school without busing those kids to the school. right? if you are going to call it integration. white kids would never bust black schools. so what in the hell integration are we talking about here? that did not happen. what we really mean is trying to change the focal reference of black people to believe the closer you become like white men, the more excellent you are. that is really what integration was ultimately seeking to do, and it did it in so many ways, but what black people really discovered, quite frankly, is that black children did not do better in white schools. black children actually did

better in dilapidated black schools because a teacher who loves you is worth more than a shiny building. [applause] and black people discovered that, but the problem has been that part of our liberation or too much of our liberation as black people, we keep using white models of institutions, right? trying to get the black equivalent of that, as if that then will be black liberation. so that we try to find a black harvard, right? when there were schools far more excellent than harvard already. that's how you get a boy who goes to harvard and gets a phd. people think it's because he went to harvard, but it's because he went to fisk, right? we have to know and understand this because if not, we will keep using the language -- folks

have been talking about the notion of privilege, and i've been thinking about this. it is not a privilege to be overly -- it is not a privilege to have access. -- excess. what's a premise he is not a privilege. that is not something someone should aspire to -- white supremacy is not a privilege. it's like people saying they are straight. what the hell does that mean? straight just suggest that everything else is crooked. we have to revolutionize the way we understand these things, and black people have to be bold enough to say liberation cannot simply be the measure of what you have gifted blacks. >> well said. [applause] i think that's very true, and i have to insert a little story. when i was younger, i was a kid, 1972, i was bus to a mainly

white school. we were gifted black children going to a white school. one of my good friends, who happened to be a white kid who sat next to me, she overheard her parents talk about what was going on in school, and were saying, those black kids are going to degrade us. my friend, he was nine, had to say something. he said, erin is the smartest kid in the school. this discussion of integration, we always talk about blacks breaking the ceiling, being the first in the setting, the first to do this, the first to do that, as if just appeared -- >> and we were not the first. we were the first they saw. >> the first they saw, right.

>> i have a couple things to say here. [laughter] first of all -- first of all, in 1935, a lawyer named charles hamilton houston travel all across south carolina and north carolina, taking an old camera with him, and he took video -- not video, film of the schools in south carolina and north carolina to see what the educational opportunities were for african-americans living in those states. both films are still available, and i urge everyone who thinks that it is ok to go to a all-black school -- you are going half the time, getting second handbooks. you are not getting any microscopes. none of that is happening, and you are all in one room. i urge everyone to take a look at those films.

now, history is not linear. it is not linear, and it's not dichotomous. it is not this or that, and it is not one line. it is a complicated thing, and you can only live in the moment that you are living in. after charles hamilton houston and the naacp and thurgood marshall took a look at the failure, the intentional failure to deprive african-americans of education, they decided something needed to be done about that. we can sit here today in 2022 and say they put all their eggs in one basket and that was the wrong basket. they should have put them in a different basket. you can only live in the moment you're living in. you can only make decisions for the moment you are in and at that time in that place, they thought the only way to get the opportunities that african-americans needed to live

full lives -- full, flourishing lives, to get the jobs available to everyone else living under this flag, that the only way to prep them to do that was to press for integration. we can see -- we can say to them today that it was wrong. derek bell, a famous legal scholar, wrote an article some time ago called "serving two masters, and -- "serving two masters," and in that article, he presented a theory about the engine which the engine of progress for black folk. he called that the interest convergence theory and derek's view, a professor bell's view was that the only way african-americans can progress is when what they identify as being in their interest is also in the interest of white people.

he used that to talk about the difficult, challenging and perhaps in hindsight, limited and perhaps incorrect decision made by the leaders of the movement to integrate schools first. when we talk about integration, black folk and white folk, perhaps not in pittsburgh and not in detroit and not new york, all over the south, black folk and white folk live neighbor to neighbor across history. we are talking about where the doors were closed, the doors to the court were closed, the doors to the schools were closed sunday was the most sacred gated day the week. let's talk about exactly what we mean when we talk about integration and the reason why those who are in a position to make decisions about how to advance black interests made the

decisions that they do. >> also i am thinking malcolm x. malcolm x knew the fallacy of integration. that is what resonated, even back in the early 60's. even civil rights advocates said it's not one thing or this thing or that but everyone understood what he meant when, one of the things he said in his speech he said you can go out and integrate, you can go to those neighborhoods and integrate but pretty soon they are going to leave and take all the stuff and you will be all by yourself. and people would laugh but he was making a point, he sought is a waste of time. everybody black knew what he meant. for that he was called militant and he was called anti-whatever. anti-american which i find really ironic. can you speak to -- 66, i read

this with great interest this was a turning point. malcolm x talked about how this had to be a freedom movement not just civil rights it was bigger than that. other younger people understood this was about human rights. personhood. it was not just about the right to vote etc.. really black power to me means black empowerment. >> and i decided that i was going to focus on 1966 i told people what i was doing, people who were fuzzy on the dates and didn't know the history that well would say it malcolm x right? and i would say no he was assassinated in early 1965 so he wasn't around and yet what i discovered in reporting and researching and writing the book he was still very much around. he was in everybody's heads. all of these pioneers of black power healy newton, bobby seale, ron karen goa, out here in l.a. the us movement, they all looked

up to him and they all thought they were carrying on his work. malcolm did three very powerful things. first of all he had this critique, it evolved over time particularly after he left the nation of islam. but he was really the person at the time who is really puncturing this myth about where we were headed in terms of integration. he was also talking way ahead of his time about black consciousness, black pride, connecting with black history. the cultural aspect of black power. in that work was carried on by a mere baraka and sonia sanchez and it eventually led to hip-hop culture and also the international conversation, that

black folks are being by the 60's -- black folks were still suffering from voter discrimination, economic discrimination, educational discrimination, at a time when black folks in africa who we had thought we were far more involved in those countries were actually winning their rights and taking control of their destiny. there was a connection both politically but also in terms of consciousness between the fate of black americans and people of color around the world. all of those ideas, we now look at that and say of course, yes, black consciousness, yes pan africanism level consciousness, that was all new. and malcolm was the first person to really be talking about it. >> actually, the anticolonial movement starts way before the 1960's. the anticolonial movement starts in the 1930's. in the 1940's, you have a push

towards -- it culminates in the 1960's. it's also true that the engagement of african-americans with africa predates, far predates the 1960's and really goes back to the 19th century when folks began to figure out ways to associate with the then liberation movement and the fights against colonialism in africa. this has been an ongoing thread and a continual in the african-american experience. it's connection, it's deep connection with africa and the efforts to colonize -- d colonize the broader african community. >> this goes back a long ways to the harlem renaissance movement

which was a movement to d colonize people's minds. who are we? the question wasn't just what are our rights, those we had to fight for a long time but a deeper question of what do we deserve. who are we as people >> those are two separate questions. >> yeah sure. >> one is can you get the colonial powers off your back and create an independent nation and the other, in a different question from who are we as a people. who are we as an african people. i don't think there -- >> it is a very complicated question. you're in your own country but -- >> there wasn't any evolution and so to agree that by the 1960's people were talking about black power like the latest manifestation of black nationalism -- and there had been, it absolutely was not entirely new. i think it became more broad and

more widespread. i think in terms of the way all these ideas were embraced throughout the black community in america. in previous cycles black nationalism, marcus garvey and others had said things are so bad for us here in black folks that we have to go someplace else. we have to find our homeland. one of the things that malcolm was saying and was picked up by the black power generation was we don't have to leave, we just have to form our own nation within a nation. and baraka writes about this, we carry our nation with us. it was kind of like an internal black nationalism politically but also again culturally. that was really an issue of

survival, and community and psychological survival for black folks. and has remained so. >> it is. it is survival but there are always higher things you are trying to aspire to at the same time. black power, where is that now? it seems to be such a threatening idea to a lot of americans. now in this era of craziness, it's not craziness it's exactly how this country has been a long time with the backlash, i would say backlash to black lives matter in those movements except a friend of mine says it is a front lash. it's not a reaction it's an ongoing initiative. where are we with black power for black people now?

where is that, is it in media, where are we finding frontiers? >> the truth of the matter for me, what i love about the black power movement when i think of and i read sonia sanchez andnaraka others, i think what they added to the civil rights movement was they were talking about a transformation in who we are culturally. not trying to make our way in order that we can sit next to those who always despised us. which is a different goal. it's a different thing to say listen, i don't seek to have the house that you live in. i don't need my child to go to your school, my god doesn't have to look like your god in order for me to believe that this is god. that's a different thing than having a black jesus. maybe i don't need a jesus.

that doesn't mean i am not spiritual. what i think was beautiful about the black power movement is that these young people, they were young at the time, dared to believe that we could actually live. and actually be happy and thrive without it being done in the measures of the ways in which others at the time lived and measured their own sense of success. people say the criminal justice system in america is broken, it is not broken it works beautifully. it just does not work for brown and black bodies, it was not made for that. once we understand that, we will say oh, now it's important that people try to revolutionize the criminal justice system. you are trying to revise the thing -- the reason other folks don't vote to change it is because it works. >> it works the way it's meant to work.

daniel: exactly but that means you have to understand yourself differently. versus i am going to force this thing to change. i am going to make this thing be something else. and the truth of the matter is we are five generations enforcing and begging and that's not been the most fruitful thing. the most fruitful thing it seems to me is for black people to get clear, and there are white people who are revolutionary in the sense to, but in this sense i am in black power and children in the black power movement, is to understand that the goal is not to get yourself to the place where you can partake of the privilege of america. if you participate in the privilege of america you are in oppressor. it is oppressive by design. >> is the black middle class oppressive? >> in so many ways and i am in it. but one of the things i want us to do, and again i am absolutely in it and i am fighting my way through this.

because what i'm trying to get to the place, is that i am not eating up with the dream of american materialism. because if we have that dream there are other things i'm going to participate in to get it and i don't want to oppress somebody. i don't want my turn as the master. i want to get rid of the plantation mentality completely. but in order to do that there are some material goods i also have to forgo. for me i think the beauty of what we might mean today by power is a revolutionary people of all colors and genders and sexualities etc.. a revolutionary people deciding we despise oppression, we despise oppression of any kind of anybody and if that means having less materially, because it is not true that people are happy who have more material. that's not true.

it is true that people are wealthier, the crime in america is that we keep associating wealth with quality of life. >> we do. >> as i have been going around talking about my book, people want to know what is the lesson for today, what are the lessons for the black lives matter movement. i think there are some lessons about messaging and so forth but one of the things i've been thinking about a lot is leadership. it's controversial. there are people i interviewed alicia garza and she wrote in her book that came out in 2020, we don't want leaders, we don't believe in leadership. when you look at the sort of patriarchal nature of leadership throughout american history you can understand why they might feel that way, but i am a believer that you do need grassroots. activism. but you also need leadership. part of the problem we have today and i am not singling anybody out specifically, the

kind of people who have some of the qualities in the tools that dr. king had or that malcolm x had or some of the great leaders in our history, the temptations for them now economically, in my business the media, being on tv, writing books, getting big advances, >> that sounds good i'll take that. >> and that actually, the great leaders of truly transformational social and political movements their history have had this quality of selflessness. of sacrifice and, of understanding that if this was going to be their mission there were certain things they couldn't do, they had to live among the people and with the people.

mandela, dr. king, who succumbed to some temptations but never to the material ones. malcolm x. i want to make that observation but margaret of all of us up. she was living this history in the 60's. she representing angela davis. i'm curious about your thoughts on that. margaret: let me pick up on daniel's point first about what it means to live in late stage capitalism in a world where materialism seems to be the center of all of our lives. i would say two things here. one is that each one of us has to draw our own line in the sand and that's going to be different for each one of us. each one of us has to have our own moral compass about the ways

in which we will accommodate in the ways in which we will reject. i would say that is true about the overwhelming and oppressive and never ending racism that we all face. i would also say it is true about something like the climate crisis. each one of us has to decide are we going to go on an airplane? are we going to use an electric cart? it is the same thing. each one of us has to make our own decision about that. i would also say this. it is not enough. given where we stand as a country today, given the risk that face us as a country today, given the shadow of fascism that is just a few yards away, it is not enough for each one of us to make our own decision. our own personal moral decision.

parties, we don't have parties anymore. we don't have a democratic party or a republican party. we don't have the kinds of formations, we don't have a black panther party. the ways in which people were disciplined and participated at all levels, the ground level, leadership all of it. in movements that had certain standards, goals, ideals, visions, that were inspiring. in that people dedicated their lives too. those don't exist anymore. there have to be other ways, it's got to be ways beyond the voting booth, in which we can express our concerns, our solidarity, and our commitment to a world that looks very different from the world we live

in today. i agree with daniel, rejection yes. it's got to be not just rejection, it's got to be moving towards something. it's got to be moving toward something that is positive, that is global in nature, so global capitalism? not only is capitalism global, everything in our lives is now global. our resistance movements as well, have to have a global and international dimension and dynamic. >> i really think black and brown people should get together, it seems to me that the people of color just politically in terms of interests. there is so much shared interests. did anybody see thewakanda movie to? when i was in there watching the

movie and thewakandans were at odds with the brown people under the sea i was like this is dumb. [laughter] did anyone have that response too? i was like they should have gotten together. because also there are ways that we conceptualize america as whiteness conceptually. and because of that, native americans, black votes, brown folks etc.. we keep baking entry into a place as if it does not already belong to us. it is already mine. i don't have to ask you for anything, it already belongs to me. as long as we conceptualize it in that way we are always politically undermined, and we are always politically challenged. i think that people who really truly love freedom which includes people of every race, really should understand that the freest thing i think on the

planet right now potentially is for people who really truly love freedom to put everything else down and put on our armor and understand we have to fight this together. what we are looking at right now in america is so dangerous. what is potentially on the horizon, everybody here knows what i'm talking about, if that comes again shame on us. shame on us. but what i am also saying is if we are not careful some of the reason we allow it is because we want parts of the spoils of it. and so it's like patriarchy, you can't have a little bit of it. if you invited it's coming. mark: another lesson though and i think it's very important to look at this crowd, i love the diversity of this crowd. i have been in a lot of sessions today where i have not seen

that. this is not a black versus white thing. or it does not have to be, it is not a black and brown versus white thing. i think for everything we are talking about, having white allies is essential. which is not to say that we can't talk about white supremacy because white supremacy is a larger systemic thing that has existed over time and still existed in many ways. but one of the things i saw, there was a lot of argument within the black power movement as it rose up in the 60's, margaret knows this. about what the role of white people should be and should we have anything to do with them and if so on what terms and so forth. i write about that in my book. but i think then and now, movements that say there is no

role for sympathetic white allies, i think that is a mistake. i think that's a mistake in terms of the support and the talent in the energy that we can provide -- they can provide but also because even if whites are in a numerical minority by the second part of the century, there still going to be half of the country and for this country to move forward in a positive way there has to be alliances between right-thinking people of all colors. >> we had an outburst of white empathy after the george floyd murder in 2020, i was thinking about this reading margaret's book.

people were moved by the event, the atrocious notice of it and broke through the consciousness. but the real thing is they were moved by at the story. the bigger story and first of all the individual story of george floyd. just the deeper things and many people said that that interest has waned, the progress is too dependent on people paying attention and yet i'm still thinking about how do we live in a nation within a nation. what is the right way forward, my father who was an activist who died in 2020 said we have to hold different values. we can't just aspire to that privilege. and yet how do we do that. the good thing about the point we are at now is nobody should be accumulating stuff. it is not good for the planet is not a good way forward. but for most black people i know

they are still trying to get there. but like daniel says we are already there. it's a huge mind shift. i want to stop here i think this is a good place to stop and ask if there are any audience questions, not comments, but questions for any of the authors appear. they are coming around with a mic so hold on a sec, to get a mic. thanks. we have a hand appear. oh ok she is first. >> as early as the late 70's, early 80's at ucla at the black student union we would have big discussions about certain portions wanting to use black power in our materials. other people were like it is being co-opted.

the language is being co-opted, there was already power for seniors, it had been commercialized. how do we take back black power -- and the uses that they meant? erin: do you want to respond to that? margaret: one of -- mark: one of the things in my book was investigate that, what it did mean originally and in fact, stokely carmichael was talking about he tried to form an all-black party in alabama. where black folks were in overwhelming majority but nobody had been allowed to vote in six years. he goes in there, and actually

finds a law and sets aside the provisions for creating a new party from scratch and that was the original black panther party. they chose their symbol of the black panther which was later appropriated by huey newton and bobby seale, but it was because his point, which makes absolute sense, 1960 five voting rights and so forth -- what good is that if black folks in alabama the only people they have to vote for our segregationist whites? so that ultimately, the whole idea of all-black parties did not go that far but that leads to the kind of black organizing that gets black mayors, members of the congressional black caucus eventually it becomes a big part of the first black president, and then the other thing with the panthers were talking about was the behavior of the police. everybody remembers -- that was

legal in california huey newton read up on that and would carry around logbooks with him to prove that. basically his idea was were just going to go -- we are experiencing some technical difficulties here at the los angeles festival of books we will return to live coverage of the festival as soon as possible. mark: i think how to keep it from being co-opted, go back to

the origins, explain to people the very real, practical things that were trying to be accomplished, why they were trying to be accomplished and why they are still relevant today. one of the things we still see and we are living with us now, with the backlash against black lives matter is what you just said. if you don't define it properly for yourself over and over again so people understand it, your enemies will define it for you. they will define critical race theory for you, they will define defund the police for you. you can say why should it be the job of activists to have to continually do that? that is part of the work of activism. daniel: i would say something to that. i think the job of making sure the black power notion does not get co-opted i think it is important to do, i love your question. and i think one of the things that has to happen that has not

happened in this country, is at some point white children have to be under the tutelage of black instruction. that has to happen. that will shift consciousness and terms of the way white children understand history, the way they understand race, that has never happened in this country. if that happens we could get a world where white people gosh everybody. because then they will be like what the hell? we need that moment because that moment will be the aha moment instead of white children getting the privilege of just rolling along and inheriting this and that and the other, and never really intellectually understanding what has been the cost of race and racism in this country. i am a firm believer that most white kids don't want it.

but most white kids don't know the cost of it. and the only way for that to happen, see at some point somebody's got to understand whether it is george floyd or breonna taylor or eric garner, the names go on and on. we never stop calling names of people that get killed in the street. somewhere something is awry. something is wrong. while seemingly everyone disagrees with it because somewhere our consciousness is off. that integration, if all children had to be bused somewhere else they would have come back together and said i know you, i see you. i get it now. i would vote for that. margaret: quickly in the late 70's -- erin: in the late 70's there was a buzzing that was going around it did not go over

well in los angeles. this was a huge fight. the idea of white going to black spaces was completely against everything, every political and cultural list of most fast most white people so what was left was the voluntary busing of black people and sending their kids to palisades or whatever assuming they would be in a better space. that is what was left. in boston we know what happened. daniel: we know what happened all over this country. erin: it didn't happen anywhere. and my father was in the middle of all that and got in trouble but that's another story. any other questions? daniel: this lady had her hand up too. >> about guns. you mentioned guns but where does guns fit in all this? i am a professor here at usc i have nothing else to say about guns because i don't think there is anything to say so i wondered what you all would say.

margaret: -- erin: let me just start with i recommend a book by this guy you see he watched it become a moneymaking machine after the gop saw gun rights as a real cultural issue but they also tied it to black crime and it made a lot of money. when obama came along, the gun sales, bullet sales went through the roof. ryan busey says this was the biggest gift to the gun industry to say nothing of mass shootings it was all about profits. you cannot forget that. that's all i wanted to say one to lay that out. in fear of the other, you can mine that forever in this country.

mark: i want to hear from margaret. daniel: in a sense i think guns maintain racism. that's why think people want them. erin: i see a hand or at comes your mic. >> this has been wonderful. i am in my 70's. to some of us margaret is a legend, a hero, and has one of the most brilliant minds that she could ever want to sit at her feet and learn. in fact i learned big words from seeing her on tv back in the day. [applause] i would like to hear more of her introduction as an activist,

more of her history as an activist. i know she has had to pay some prices but look at her now. i am so thankful the l.a. times honored you with that award. i would like to hear more of your experiences please. margaret: thank you so much it was very generous and kind of you. i will say that this book comes out of family history in part, the book focuses on the period of 1930 to 1955. 1950 looks at the jim crow south and looks at not just the violence that was prevalent every day, ordinary, and shape the lives of african-americans in the south but also looks at the forms of resistance that they nurtured and developed and grew and supported.

seven days a week in their churches and in their homes and workplaces and schools. i try to think about not just the resistance on those generated by leadership, but the picket lines etc.. as well as the under the ground resistance in which mostly women and children participated and to integrate that and get that into our understanding of the ways in which that period of time has essentially shaped their resistance during a period that mark talked about in his book. the 1960's and on through the 20th century and on into our own century. i think it's important both to understand the ways in which

these are different but also the continuity. this book that starts with my own family, i moved from harlem to birmingham alabama to participate in the southern negro league youth conference in 1939 in the left movement in the south. and were there until they were kicked out of birmingham by connor in 1948 when they move back home. that moment, the life, the culture, the blues, the spirit of black folk in the south was so much a part of what we grew up with. as i think mark mentioned, angela was a friend of mine and we were kids together, babies together and live close

together, and live close over a long. of time this was a revisiting of that and looking at it through new material, new documents, remind the archives at the national archives in college park and the library of congress in order to really put flesh and blood on what we all know. which is that it was a dangerous time, but who were these people? why were these names not better known. booker spice lee in 1942 was killed in durham north carolina because he refused to ride jim crow. he got on a bus with his uniform on on a saturday and was asked by the bus driver to give up his seat for a white man who also had a uniform on and he had the

audacity to say we are both fighting the same war and we are fighting the same war why must i give up my seat? for that the bus driver pushed him off the bus and shot him to death. that is a book -- story i presume you don't know my book is filled with stories like that. no matter how deep those stories are we have to understand the weft of this thing i will say as aaron said, the folks we talk to and as we drive around the country, they are in their 70's. and 80's. these are the folks who carry these memories pressed in their bibles, they have the old yellow newspapers, they have carried this history with them. are anxious to share it and have not yet gone out there and done the full job and are so happy

that mark and daniel, mark working in the 1960's, that is great. this is earlier period that we can't capture, the last panel was about slavery. that has gone. what we have is what we have. but these decades, these deeply significant decades in the 20th century, we have not yet mined them and we have to get, this is a plea to all of those historians, professional and others who are out there. that this work has really got to be done if we are ever to understand the full scope and beauty of african-american and american history. erin: well said, thank you. that is a good place to end, i

want to thank this wonderful panel, daniel black, mark, margaret. they will be signing books in area one, so please get books. they will sign and thank you for coming.