lost, is one of the most sensually charged acts of linguistic beauty and accomplishment of other richness, t the world that he describes. i am very privilege that i got to read those books, and it breaks my heart that generations that come after me have han excuses for their own ignorance and all they care about is pursuing these fictions of their victim mode -- victimhood and their alleged fragility. it's nauseating. i can't stand it, and we all have to stop being browbeaten into silence by all, whether it's the fiction of fragility and safety, , the fiction of racial oppression. we have to start fighting back and fight for our civilization. >> on that note i want to thank you, heather. [applause]

.. much. now i know it's raining outside, but when i come to the podium, i really enjoy a great round of applause. let's try it [applause] while you all are here in the room there are a number of people watching on c-span. we want them to get the full experience of being here in miami, even in the rain we are very cheery about books but thank you for that kind introduction. you've read it exactly the way i wrote it. very well done. but i'm thrilled to be here to introduce today's author. i'm going to come to the gentleman in my left in a

moment but before i get there i'm going to start with robert samuels and ask him to come to the dais. he is a national political enterprise reporter for the washington post, focusing on the intersection of politics, policy and people . he joins inthe post in 2011 after spending nearly 5 years working at the miami herald. working at the miami herald. now you get it. he is the co-author of the book hihis name is george floyd: one man's life and the struggle for racial injustice . racial justice, excuse me along with co-author toluse olorunnipa.

if i didn't get that right he will correct me when he comes up here which examines the tragically familiarevents of may 25, 2020 . george floyd was murdered outside a minneapolis convenience store by a white officer. it also examines mister floyd's family who in slavery, sharecropping, the segregation of schools, the callous disregard towards his struggle with addiction. join me in welcoming robert samuels. [applause] >> i don't know if you noticed as he was coming up robert wanted me to do my job and let him know that toluse is here too. he is white house bureau chief for the washington post which he joined in 2019 and where he has covered three

presidencies. he previously worked at bloomberg reporting on politics from washington and florida and as i just mentioned and robert wanted to make sure i knew he was the co-author of his name is george floyd y: one man's life and strugglefor racial justice . join me in welcoming robert and toluse. [applause] next is kerri greenidge. she is a historian at the university and the author of black rascal, the life and times of william munro trotter, winner of the history price among other honors and also the author of "the grimkes", the legacy of slavery in american families.

the latter cover the lesser known story of the black relatives of sarah and angelina grimke will are revered figures in american history for rejecting their privileged lives on the plantation of south carolina to become firebrand anti-slavery activists in the north. the book thus offers a collective focus from white abolitionists sisters to the black grimke's and deepens our understanding of the long struggle for radical and gender equality. join me in welcoming kerri. [applause] finally, the gentleman who joined me in welcoming all of his co-presenter is ellis cose,

author of a dozen dobooks of international concern including the best-selling rage of a privileged class. he's served as a columnist and contributing editor of newsweek , editor page g for the new york daily news and contributor and columnist for numerous major publications including usa today and the times and in his book race and reckoning from the founding fathers to today's disruptors the addresses chattel slavery and modern discrimination on how several decisions have established and perpetrated discriminatory practices in addition to the rise of disinformation that has plunged democracy into an ever deepening crisis. you're going to enjoy this panel and i now turn it over.

give them all a round of applause . [applause] >> how is everybody doing? so we're going to tell you a little bit about our book and what we learned with racial injustice and also want to read from our book, what do you want to do,read first ? okay. okay, i will read from the introduction of the book titled flowers which gives a little bit of the flavor of what we wanted to do with the

book. i love you. george perry floyd junior would express the same sentiment to men, women and children , old friends and strangers to romantic partners, acquaintances and the women who fell somewhere in between. hardened hustlers and homeless junkies to big-time celebrities and neighborhood nobodies , floyd said the phrase so often many friends and family members have no doubt about the final words he spoke to them. he would end phone calls with the expression and sign off text messages by tapping it out in. whatever, man corey said when he first heard pink floyd as he was known to friends say those words. i'll talk to you later. as the decades passed he came to appreciate george's

experience as they lost people to done violence, drug overdoses, police brutality and other trapdoors awaiting young black men like them as they came of age in a loveless reality. i love you bro, floyd told a friend during their final phone call in the spring of 2020. i love you too, man. we always said we were going to give to outogether our flowers before we die. and that right there lets you know what type of person he was. floyd's decorations were nothing new to his siblings. as a teenager will it will stop to get his sister a hug and tell her he loved her r before leaving his house with his friends just quietly enough keto keep the other kids from overhearing. floyd and rona singing love songs karaoke style with his sister and when they spoke for the last time in may 2020 they reminisce by belting out

her favorite to, reo speed wagons it keep on loving you and i'm going to keep on loving you because it's the only thing i want to do as young man harry as his family called him had outside aspirations to become the supreme court justice, proactivelyá . by the time his world came crashing out in the months before his death he had in chasing more modest ambitions . stability, a job driving trucks, insurance. in his dying seconds as he suffocated under a police officers need floyd managed to speak his love. mama i love you he screamed on the pavement is price of i can't breathe was met with indifference as heavy as a reese, i love you, a reference to his friend maurice paul who was with him when he was handcuffed that evening. tell my kids i love them these words mark the end of

life in which led repeatedly found his dream diminished, deeper at the rail in no small part becauseof the color of his skin . [applause] >> i'm robert. it's good to be here in sunny miami. you could tell wadressed for it. i'm going to talk a little bit about may 25, 2020. because that day we thought we had seen what we thought would be the defining instance of racial discussions and i'm not talking about george floyd.

when you look up that daywe heard the story about two people arguing in central park , one woman named 80 cooper, one woman named kristian cooper. this was going to be the conversation that we had. so what happened? that day i was talking with a s friend. and things got a little intense because i was trying to say legally amy cooper, a white woman who claims kristian cooper might attack her didn't do the right thing . he got very upset and i said here's the thing. if police killed me tomorrow my concern is that people would ask what did i do to deserve this rather than wondering about my soul, my

heart, my hopes, my dreams and the people i loved. and i stayed home that day but george floyd walked into a corner store. the world got to know george floyd on the worst day of his life: his last. his words to the officer who was murdering him resonated in the hearts of so many people. i can't breathe. but as toluse and i went through the pictures there were so many things he said that stood out and we wanted to learn more about. he told the officers to go easy on him because he was mourning the death of his mother, the woman he was crying out for . he told the officers that he was afraid to go to the

police car, inside a police car because he had just gotten over coronavirus and he was claustrophobic. that also turned out to be true. and as george floyd was speaking his truth, he looked up and asked the question to the officer that still makes me shake a bit. mister officer, he said, why don't you believe me? why don't you believe me? but then that single question encapsulated the heart of our project his name is george floyd because it was a question of a man begging to be seen as a full human being and the story of a society and an institution that did not see him that way. and as so many people began to march in his name across the world , we knew that the

life, soul and spirit of george floyd rest being lost again because he had lost his motivation and his spirit. so toluse and i did what reporters do. i went to george floyd square, the place where he was killed. we had dinner with his family several times. accompanied them on some really hard days. eight there sweet potatoes. we got haircuts utfrom george floyd's barber who talked about his talk. we went to church with his brother and rode karts, tarot card readings with his girlfriend who was trying to make sense of it all. we walked the streetswhere he walked, partied at the clubs where you party . totally different party. we cried with people who watched him die.

and in learning about this man, we learned he was a man that was filled with hopes and dreams. we learned as a boy he wanted to become a supreme court justice because he believed he could adjudicate the law. we learned about his desire to be a football player, his desire to be a truck driver, his desire to get health insurance. when he got to minneapolis, he was struggling, drug dependency, trying to find a job to take care of his kids and he walked into a rehab facility that called our turning point. turning point was a place that was designed specifically to cater to the needs of black americans because we know so little

about how g to heal black americans with their particular struggle so i'm going to read a part of that and then handed it back to toluse. the first day george floyd walked into his class he realized it would not be the typical talking point. the room was instead set up like a classroom at the court which was called blacks in recovery like just another campus. the class led by a man named woodrow jefferson, his life had once been overtaken i substance abuse and he believes that black men respond differently to a study in which they were treated as intellectuals albecause so many have been criminalized and stereotypes as uncontrollable, invalid and stupid. jefferson would pace around

class examples about two types of neighborhood wrestlers, one enviable and assured, the other manipulative and subservient. he then added two examples about how black people operate in the world, bringing up mohammed ali and uncle tom. one brandishes and bold, the other obsequious and deferential. jefferson did not try to cast aspersions on any sign. he told the class all four men were trying to figure out a way to survive in a world provided in limited options. all four men in some ways were broken by racism, searching for a way to find dignity. look at history, jefferson said. have you noticed how people are always trying to profit

off of us, own us but what about you? how can you find you again? how can you love your self again? it's about finding your purpose. one day, jefferson saw a hand go up in the back. it was george floyd. floyd finally felt comfortable expressing his personal struggles in a way he had not been able to plainly say to friends. he talked about how disappointed he was that he never went row. so much this identity, is still worth hinge on the expectation that one day he would be able to play ball and now it was a constant reminder of his failures, the physique of a man who tried but didn't measure up.

the thing that people most admired and feared. you are lovable, jefferson told him. you are important. you are valuable. you are empowered. jefferson had the man stand up, together they repeated the mantra. i am lovable. i am important. i am empowered. [applause] >> one of the things we wanted to do was tell george floyd'sstory as a uniquely american story , a story that fit in the cabin of other american stories and in order to do that we had to go back very deep in history of the

founding of this country so we went into the archives and one of the things we wanted to answer was whited george floyd come into the world in the poverty? we had heard the stories of how he grew up as a young boy using an outhouse sitting in a trailer park and living the kind of impoverished existence that was even out of the norm for your average american in the 21st century, george floyd was born in 1973 spent a lot of time as a child pumping water in a house that did not have running water and we wanted to find out where that history came from so we researched george floyd's family going all the way back to his great-grandfather was born enslaved in the 1920s and his son was born in 1857 and he was also born into slavery back in the civil war

he was able to get his freedom and one of the unique things we found out about his family history and i love to go into all of this nsout condensed into a couple of minutes, george floyd's grandfather became tuwealthy from working hard as a farmer in eastern north carolina and was able to amass 500 acres of land which made him one of the wealthiest black men in his community. he was so wealthy that white people around him a specific racial slur for him. call him the rich n-word and the was targeted for how wealthy he was and between the plessy versus ferguson ruling in 1920 george floyd great-great-grandfather had his wealth targeted at the time of racial terror in the country when it was common

for people who had gone well land to the threat of that land with very little recourse and we get into it in the book but essentially because your grandfather did not was taken advantage of by unscrupulous business owners who gave him these complex business contracts and allow themselves to through some of the unique financial instruments they were able to use stripped him of his land and tax authorities idwhen that was done at the end of the early 1920s, george floyd's grip grandfather had all of this stripped away and wanted to pass that land down because he and his father had never been able to pass the down to him because they had all been enslaved but he knew that's what he needed to do in order to build a legacy for himself and he had that taken away from me found out the course of the next generation we see a family of

sharecroppers that work hard for decades upon decades that were not able to unmaskany kind of generational wealth . they were worked hard for decades and then i'm poor and that's why george floyd came into the world for one of the things we want to answer was that the injustice was a long time ago we see in the 21st century the reverberations of that kind of injustice in the life of george floyd who came into the world as hthe son of someone who was a sharecropper , not a grandson great-grandson george was mother in the fields of north carolina so we wanted to showcase how that impacts someone's life when you are starting that far ahead and the words of wisdom to george floyd's mother having grown up in that injustice, she said in america you are

already born with two strikes and as a result you have to work twice as hard because no one is going to look out for you and very family as we found over the course of writing this book those words and not being very prescient because of george floyd's life where is in the education system, criminal justice system hewe found him running into these obstacles and institutional barriers and systemic racism and we see them cropping up over and over again but will also find the origin and do that we have to go back deep into history inviting the origin of george was family and many families that work hard but unfortunately the cost of racism were not able to get a fair shot and a fair shake so lewe do hope people read the book because there's so much in there we can't get into ok this evening but we didn't think it was important to ' showcase that this book is a work of history.

it's an american story a. a story that is as deeply american as george floyd's death and is important also for us to know his lifewas uniquely american . [applause] >> what an american story. what an american story, i'm going to have to pull that together. what's a hell of a couple weeks i've been through and i'm not even talking about stable genius who acquired twitter and then decided to bring the other stable genius back onto twitter and all i have to say about that is that this man i'm talking about is not a us citizen and did not run for president because we sure don't want to deal with that. anyway, when i say this has

been a hell of a couple weeks , what i mean is that we did indeed have that big red wave we were waiting for but luckily it can find itself pretty much to florida. and it seems that a good part of america is not that they were quite ready to end this american experiment with democracy and the experiment which as we all know has been going onfor. >> sometime . before the 1619 project screwed everything up, we pretty much agreed that the 77 1776 was when this dream of democracy launched itself.

with the signing of the declaration of independence . and then the 1969 project said that's not right. we've got to go back to 69 when the first africans, that's when it started because that was the essence of america and i won't get into the long discussion about that but i'd like to suggest maybe there's another thing that makes sense for the beginning of this american journey. and maybe that date is neither 1619 or 1776, maybe it's 1705. why 75? 1705 was when the virginia legislature declared it was perfectly fine for a white man who owned black slaves to kill them if he killed them

and disciplining them for not doing their work correctly and if in fact that happened this should be treated as if that accident never occurred. in a sense, that defines america, early america much more than the declaration of independence which despite the words all men are created equal no one paid attention because we all know, they all knew that it wasn't meant to be true. which was reaffirmed by the infamous dred scott decision in 1857 which was preceded, the predicate for that was that the virginia legislature which all but declared that black people had no rights. that black folks, that white

folks were bound to respect. that way of thinking finally ended on paper at least with the 14th amendment which was passed and ratified tin 68. which for the first time put forth this idea that all americans were equal and were entitled to equal rights and have launched unparalleled period's in our history where you saw black high officials, black lieutenant governors and even all-black governor, you saw black senators. black folks at all levels of political society and some at high levels of society itself and that lasted all of about a minute or 11 years. when the grand compromise of

1877 which made a republican rutherford hayes president. in exchange for the republicans giving the dream of reconstruction, getting the troops out of the south and in fact forcing african americans to go back to slavery in all but name. and then we have to really go to the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s when that began to change. then of course in the landmark legislation of 64, 65, 66 which changed that into law but that was around the same time that goldwater had the insight that the republican party should change. in 1861, goldwater famously

declared that the republican party which at that time black folks by and large outside the north were not allowed to vote. that republicans want to go pu looking as he put it, hunting where the docs are. basically, foreshadowing the whole southern strategy. that the republican party at that time began in a very dramatic way to turn its back on the very idea of integrating blacks as part of american society and as part of that society. that's when the groundwork was laid for the foundation of the republican party which ultimately led us to donald trump. that's 250 years or so of history and like five minutes

. but that's what's it's about, about the decisions we made as a country that led us to this point where we are now. and i'm going to read a little bit of that if youwill allow me . >> in 1955 abraham lincoln, martin luther king delivered a famous speech on the capitol steps of alabama in which she asked, and i'm going to start reading this. how long will it take and he was asking how long will it take until that dream of equality in this country and

he asked the question from stage, how long, not long because no line can live forever. how long? not long because you still read whatyou so . how long western mark not long because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. and that final phrase originated with an abolitionist minister from 1800s version aswas i do not pretend to understand the moral universe. i cannot translate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of the site. i can define it by conscience of t what i see i am sure it bends toward justice. that sentiment is wonderful to hope for but in truth i'm not sure how the arc of the moral universe ends.

it seems to bend every which way often rewarding those who least deserve it. the art of us democracy on the other hand is clear. roots that were once considered minorities artifacts regame a larger and larger share. that's not going to stop in the foreseeable future. and it will in fact mean change. not in the way some fear but in the sense that we are ultimately going to have to acknowledge that the united states is not just a white nation and we're going to have to stop making such a big deal out of something that shouldn't matter. so-called people of color see race differently than whites to is not that we're smarter but we're smart enough to knowthat we are not the problem .we know from having lived the consequences that bigotry is not the thing

and instead of running from it we have no choice but to face it . as a come to recognize racial discrimination makes no sense that it seems each generation is more agreed on that matter than the one that came before . even before many of the ellis seem to be learning these things intuitively that the differences of race are trivial and nothing worth writing about. there's a multi racial array of people who wants to be free of the preconceptions of the past, who recognize knowledge and the importance of race past and present is not the fullness of the issue but perhaps our deliverance and will accept that a society that refuses to his missteps is likely to keep going down the same dark. one day, we will be free of this racial sickness n, free enough on the evils on my

enslavement to collectively and creatively focus on what divides us and why so many people support and economic political order grants 40 percent of the country's wealth to one percent of the population that pays osthe eos of fortune 500 companies more than 4 to 5 times workers receive provide a few morsels with enough money to provide private shuttles which with which they enjoy right into space and over others barely enough to pay their bus ride into work. promises healthcare policies that the many americans unable to pay for their kids education or medical care. since the dawn of time powerful people have been putting blame away from their selves and towards those who have been defending themselves. perhaps when we stop focusing

on so-called differences we can focus onwhat we can do . thomas jefferson realized it would not, it would be built largely on the backs of enslaved people he justified treating people with animus while articulating liberty and freedom butthings change . today is no bond to justify. the reason for the soundest rationalization that catered to the insecurities of those determined to supplant their problems of people who have nothing to do with those problems intelligent people coming to see catering to the unreasoning resentment is killing us which is why i believe we can see beyond the horizon today that this submission will no longer exist. what is more worrying is the on the other side is the

divide between those who accept the fact those who do not. those who accept science and those who refuse to, those that way long-term consequences those that ignore them. it's been clear the outcome of some of themajor issues have less to do with our ability to put preconceptions aside . the founders didn't believe ordinary people were good at doing so which is why they got so many safeguards into this republic separated the masses from real letters political power, it's why we don't presence directly and why we elect senators. as this political scientist with the founders saw democracy as a bulwark against the mob rule. they preferred a republican republic delegated to small citizens, the smaller number would be able to enlarge the public's views and their wisdom the true interest of

our country but over the centuries the united states has moved closer to the idea of a true democracy where at least in theory every voice has a right to be heard at the same time issues have become difficult to follow. the disinformation as become. we reach a dangerous point where much of the public can't be bothered with the task of getting to the truth. and political propaganda and conspiracy. us while it is missing even self-evident sites. the challenge to the largest society is that the most serious dangers of democracy live not in our differences but in our failure to see beyond them. a large group of americans has evolved into an idea of democracy that includes the right to wear face masks through an epidemic, which is

the right to buy their powerful military grade weapons which endangers the lives of ordinary citizens the right to reject duly elected leaders as candidates which implies the right to ignore the will of the majority, the right to submit the evidence of cool science in general which implies the right to the planet to live whenever and whatever they like regard that doing so might cause the list goes on. the beauty of this new bill of rights requires no process for ratification, he just requires a huge sme ideas of rights and responsibilities and that democracy is lost more. [applause]

>> thank you so much, hard to follow both these wonderful books so thank you so much. i'll start by saying that this book comes out of the work of black women historians who have come before me, anna jones rogers, jennifer morgan, deborah gray white, paula gibbons, martha jones, to name a few. and i'm going to do a little bit of storytelling but start by talking about the genesis of the project. 2016, 53 percent of white women voted for trump. often repeated statistic. and i was working on my first book about radical newspaper editor millie william monroe trotter and one of the things i kept coming across when i was researching my first book was the name of grimke.

but not in relationship to the white grimke sisters. there are grimke born 1790s and her sister angelina april 18,2005 . in reference to archibald henry grimke, african-american born in charleston, his brother francis james grimke born in charleston 1850 archibald trotter, angelina well-dressed point in 1880 and famous as the meeting will play right of the 1920s. and so when i was doing that research i kept coming across all this story surrounding them that i have learned as a child from my grandparents and asking my grandmother and great sisters and i asked my grandmother date related to the ones that we talk about because they were integral in

black history and she said were similar while the other and she said while, she doesn't like to talk about that story because thiswas ease . before the local work of this historians including gordon reed. and so as i was working my first book 2016, 53 percent of land will book for delta i started to think what is the story that historians are not telling you now doing all this research and i keep on seeing these amazing coverage of the black grimke brothers and barely any mention in these contemporary, by contemporary means a 1901 to 1930 e. contemporaneous newspaper articles about the grimke brothers, twwhy didn't i see action between the brothers lack grimke sisters wife and when in school that i only see cereferences to the grimke sisters wife rarely

references to the grimke brothers lack. i began to reflect on the relationship many of these myths that we are all talking about on this panel are talking about these ideas of what america misses about itself ltand bank and have over the long term and i started to look specifically at this mess as a microcosm of the grimke family story of exceptionalism in the black community, politics is hardware money and achievements and we can see the ravages of racism. minutes in the white community in the united states that slavery was not that bad. was there were a few outrageously violent slaveholding people as below and just told me in on thursday my family owned slaves but they were kind slaveholders and so i began

to come become concerned with my book addressing these issues while placing the lives of people in this who disinfects in a very real way the center is the greek grimke because of all their life. matthew six eight playwright arrives in charleston south carolina. despite the fact that her oval, her grandmother most of the adults in her life had been born she was there for the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the avery institute, firstaccredited secondary school people in charleston .

once home to a greatve southern dynasty. by the time she returned to her own home with her uncle and father she told a friend she couldn't help but feel quote a sense of foreboding here there was a tale their detail indeed she wrote to his friend but she said alaska will never decipher it although it sweeps of me heavily. how i wish you conclude it was a story we would tell ourselves both the wealthy negro and the poor both the white and the black but it will be a curse of our country i fear she said that we never speak its name. again what a first time working on the grimkes come her word to push my shape to understand this ball, get a full plate i would

argue uncomfortable familiar story. like many african-americans of the turn of the last century particularly the so-called color elite or w.e.b. du bois, the test, nana grimke was the granddaughter of both the enslaved ambience labor. she's also the grandniece of twl of antebellum america's famous white women here sarah and angelina were two of 13 children born to one of the wealthiest and most politically influential families and south carolina country. in 1838 after nearly a year of touring the north speaking on the duties of white women in public reform she became the first american-born woman to speak before state government when she addressed the message is a state legislature on the need for immediate emancipation

and women's rights of political whrepresentation. after the right meredith activistew theodore dwight wells since it moved to rural new jersey whether race angelenos children with the ministries of reform organized and integrated schools and wigginton tells women's rights activists like susan b. anthony and elizabeth cady stanton.s note as a first downs of women's rights according to the first biographer, the sisters were a lot of other content versus public quote disavowing the birthright and supposedly sacrificing their wealth to support quote the cost of the slave. these of course withh the facts that we know. but it had many questions again after 2016 and, of course, before 50 50 troops to whiten voting for trump. how was it come for instant and joe, angeline and sarah processed deception when they discovered the black and nephews

were well reading an article in the national antislavery standard. so the story goes after the civil war they made their way to lincoln university pull themselves up by the bootstraps, arrived at university. their loud and depressed and sarah and angelina are retired and utterly say their name in the press and go to meet their nephews. according to the grimke states as this was a first contact they've had with her black nephews. according to angelina as well she and sarah were horrified to discover that they existed and could i believe that the brother henry was a bad slaveholder. he was always such a nice boy, they said. we believed he would never do such a thing. it was this horror that led them or so the story goes to meet the brothers come to welcome during to their homes in hyde park massachusetts and eventually help pay for the education. first at lincoln and then rg is tuition to harvard law school from which he graduated in the 1870s. but according to all of the available historical records,

letters, diaries, accounts by family friends and acquaintances, all of which are available in the archives, henry was a particularly brutal and sadistic slaveholder. so brutal in fact, that the authorities in charleston were called twice, urging him and pleading with him to stop beating his younger black half brother archie during the civil war. he picked up the boy and u threw down the street and beat him up and down until the authorities told him to stop. as asl child apparently henry delighted in banging slave boys heads against door jams causing when a it'ste a man named sten permanent brain damage eventually met the white grimkes to bring in north. this eventually met that the black man made his way to new jersey where the grimke sisters of the response to disability again caused by the brother was quote he is lazy. he has jerked the responsibility of free negro man and he is of no use to us. so that was one question i had. where did that come from?

then there was a matter of the grimke brothers themselves. men who ascended the ranks of again to voice talent to death only to reveal in private letters, diaries and public speeches their disdain for those they refer to as quote the negro masses. raised byis the mother nancy to see themselves as exceptional, believe that they were quote colored westerns and that the greatest lot of the south, both frank and art using derogatory languagee that's there and angelina used when talking about the lowly slave to describe what the brother saw as quote the creeping immorality and quote looming respectability of the majority of the colored people, end quote. as pastor of 15th street presbyterian church, for instance, frank transfer an institution founded by john f cook as the first african f presbyterian church in washington, d.c. in the 1840s, he transformed it yourmi welcomg

congregation of quote all classes of colored people, , ino a bastion of postbellum, politics. although grimke transferred this treatment of five incidents of rights ands and committed activism, he also policed his parishioners particularly black women, forbidding them from teaching in the school if they were too become permanent membes from the church, publicly what he referred to as working folks shiftless next and the tendency to quote hank their arms out of windows and give the white citizens every reason to distrust us. similarly, archie often refer to the dominican peasants as quote in capable of self-government and quote in need of economic interventions from the yankee businessmen. here he sat aboard like a racist white northern or overseeing the confiscation of freedman's land

in the 1860s0s that a black dedicated to racial equality. finally there is a question of how the grimkes choose the black of life. despite archie support and frank's public reputation for supporting the national association of colored women. frank married charlotte a fourth-generation philadelphia abolitionist and public intellectual in her own right but discourage her from continuing her public writing after the couple first and only child i daughter named theodora died in infancy. although privately devoted to lottie, called hered lottie, and proud of her past accomplishments frank feared that quote exposure of the pastors wife to jeopardize what he called the ultimate goal, racial respectability, racial respectability, racial respectability at allll costs. there was also the matter of nana grimkeon the woman who traveled to chosen for the first time in 1906. what did it mean that lottie

spent all of her life asking her uncle and her father's about her past? why she asked her father if the sisters had been his kind of scope widened her grandmother ever learn? why she asked her father and her uncle if you never talk of charleston except when she arrived there at the age of 26? when nana was a young girl and that such relationships with women, her father, alkyl and aunt were adamant that quote this is not the weight of a colored girl of respectability. again he repeated in multiple letters respectability, respectability, respectability at all costs. finally when angelina fell in love with a man, and attraction that they should of been happy about giving the rejection of her sexuality, archie threatened to cut her out of his life forever. a black man he insisted was quote too dark. his work as a musician quote

entirely unsustainable the grimkes come the legacy of slavery in american film explores these complexities of what the scholar hartman calls slave race after lives. it asks questions thatt are as important today as we leave the effects of late stage capitals and the failedri promises of the civil rights and obama era. they are as important as it were in the grimke brothers typeahead is racial and sexual violence of seven slavery continue to affect families, communities and the ways in which black people communicate with and understand our blackness? what was the real cost of birthing a postbellum quote-unquote colored elite from the rampant sexual exploitation of enslaved black womenme by slaveholding white men? and what does it mean that capitalist accumulation supposed economic success and professional achievement have never been enough to deliver us from america's racial abyss. thank you.

[applause] john. questions? sure. we can do that for a while. you're going to moderate? yeah. so we're happy to take questions in in book fair style. there's a live mic in the middle of the room. if you queue up and come up, you can be in dialog with the authors. be shy. look, kerry. i had just finished reading the invention of wings. look familiar. yes. and i found your book. and thank you. this is answer so many questions that i had when, i was reading it to the wings because that

book literally made me cry when i just read about the treatment of slavery of slaves. but your book, it's like it's like watching the of oz and then watching wicked seriously. so thank you so much. well, thank you so for reading. the invention of wings is a is a novel. excuse me. that was written a few years ago, a bestselling novel that fictionalizes the sister's life life. thank you so much. my question is directed to the authors about george floyd. thank you for filling in many of the gaps in our knowledge and understanding of who he was. i guess my overwhelming feeling in hearing his story was just that of profound sadness of a

generations of loss. but what strikes whenever i see video images of george floyd and in whenever he speaks spoke. was profound love and kindness and i was wondering whether words he had every right to be very angry and very and but whatever i see in the media whatever he spoke was was filled with love so i was wondering where did that come from? that's a good early. yeah. you're perfect. that's a that's a really good question you for engaging the text like that. one of the things that ella and i had to wrestle with was nature

of hope in the united states, because we see so many people who are in george floyd's life and so many people were moved to march after his death, operating under this idea that the country could be a better place. it raises the question about why that's like that, why we're like that. right. for the floyd family and i think many black who live in this country, the alternative to hope is a way to plead right. there's something that's almost a defense mechanism about it that operates that allows folks see the sunny side of things. one of the things that was really important to telling me, we started this process was we were very conscientious of writing something that exploitative of black pain or looked at trauma as something that should entertain the mass. and we wrestled with question a

lot and we learned at every turn that the answer to that perennial question, the solution to that worry was the story of george floyd, because we saw in his work, these are the things he wrote. he signed the ways that he related to people that he never fully gave up on the promise of the country. so we tell folks that we don't simply write the story because george floyd died. right. we tell this story because we got to live. and when we got to live. we had the doctor to duty to make things better. that's what the that's the philosophy about the floyd's we're operating under. excellent reading by all of your books are just way out there.

but the question is, for most tacos, what's much misinformation does. the information that just seems to be spreading all over the place how do we get it under and how do we find out what is true and what is fiction that could easily become a two hour long discussion? i think that there just a couple of realities that are worth acknowledging. i mean, that the impact of social has been huge because social media and i'm going to generalize here, but communicates in large measure, in very short, abbreviated and very emotional ways and in polarizing ways. you know, and it makes it very easy. to one people for people isolate

themselves and only see what they want to see and to it puts, you know, some crazy nuts sitting around writing stuff in his pajamas on a level with the washington post because all get delivered in the same way and there is just this glop of stuff, you know, that comes that. people are so that puts a huge responsibility us as individuals and a responsible that many of us are not prepared to assume, which is pay a lot of attention to the sources that we are we're reading. and i think it also puts huge burden on educate others to to teach in such a way that they students something not only about research and verifying, but also about critical thinking. we have a serious critical thinking problem you know, in this country and the better we

get at that, the better it's going to be. but the part of the acknowledgment that there are some people who don't want the truth, who don't want to clarify, why right from wrong, we just want to see affirm what they already believe. and we are in age where that is inevitable and. they will find that affirmation. and god willing, i'm i mean, most of my previous book this was the history of the first amendment. it was a book called the short life and curious of free speech in america. i believe very much in free speech. but what i don't believe is that free speech corrects itself automatically. i don't believe that good speech necessarily out bad speech and i'm fully aware that the first amendment, which people loved to cite, though, many, many don't understand what it says and does

not declare, that companies cannot moderate their content does not declare there cannot be rules defined to govern. how a community governs itself. and think we need much more of that. i think we as citizens need to be much more outspoken about that. i mean, that's only a small part of that answer. but i think, as i said, i think a big part of the answer is ultimately, you're going to fall on us as individual issues because we're going to be hit with all of this nonsense. and it's going to be up to us to try to make sense out of as best we can and fund the humanities. right. i mean, that's that's that's a blunt way of saying it. but, you know, the the horrible thing is and not to get too much on the soapbox, you know, students are not in i teach college students are not getting critical thinking because we've cut english we've got drama, we've cut any kind of semblance, an education that is designed to make you think. right. and so support the humanities.

support books and support libraries because that's i mean, that's the only the only way. and and that's what i mean when i say that that alone could be the subject of a of very long dialog. thank thank you all for your presentations and your work. i was sitting wrestling with this question, but the last question has encouraged me to go ahead and ask it. i honor if you decide not to answer it. and this is for authors of the book on george floyd's life. i really thank for your efforts in telling his story and attempting to uplift his humanity. but i'm struck by the fact that your work is also competing with a media project that is doing something different. i will not name it. i wonder if you have any critique based on the deep work you have dan done on telling the story of his life of, that other project, either specifically or

more generally when it comes to telling the story of the lives of people from trayvon martin to mike brown to freddie gray, all of whom seem in death to invite the of why they were killed. why is that a pattern? how does your work contrast with the specific alternate narrative of george floyd's life? thank you. thank you so much for the question. i may be a little vague in answering it, but i try to try to do my best. i think for us, where we're a journalist, we work at the washington post and our role often is to seek for the truth. and so we welcome other efforts that are interested in seeking truth, but when it comes to misinformation that counter to what we're trying to do. and so it's very to have everything look like it's on a level playing field. but one of the things we had to do in order to make this project work was do a lot of research,

talk to a lot of people. they were more than 400 interviews. that's probably undercount of what we had to do to try put together this narrative. and so we wanted to be able to be able to stand on on this research and say that everything that we wrote can be backed up. it's factual. it's backed up by interviews it's backed up by research is backed by archival information. and so it's hard it's hard to do that. it's hard to put that kind of work. it's not as hard to just put something out there just for clicks or just for eyeballs. and so it was important for us to make sure we wrote something that would stand the test of time. we wrote this in a kind of pressed amount of time, but that didn't mean that we didn't spend, you know, hours on end trying to check every fact and have people read behind us and make sure they were fact checking for us and making sure that, you know, this was a vetted effort. this wasn't something that, you know, people were going to come back and say, you know, you got x, y, z wrong. now we're we're human beings and

we're not above mistakes. but we wanted to make sure we every t and dotted every and made sure that we were doing the in the right way. and so we can stand, you know, behind the work that we did and make, you know, made sure that it was backed by research and backed up by evidence and and written with a lot of nuance. you know, we wrote about the good, the bad, the ugly but we made sure to write it in the context, which a lot of times the context is stripped away. people want to drive a narrative and journalists, we didn't come into this with specific narrative that we were trying to push. we weren't trying to, you know, push for specific policy goals, know there's a place for that. and it's important to have that. but, you know, our role restrictions in a certain way. but also frees us from from some of that to really just be able to focus on the truth and that allow that to be our guiding light. and so that's what we tried to do with this book. you know, we know other people are going to come this and other issues from, different angles. and so as long as the is sort of

the guiding light of other and we're all for it, but when you get misinformation, when you get people trying to take advantage of a situation or trying to confuse people or try to justify things that should not be justified, that's where you get into a lot of trouble and where it becomes difficult for. even a book like this, to have a space itself. because one of the things that robert and i run into all the time is people coming at us with misinformation they've heard online or that they've heard elsewhere, either about george floyd, about his past about the black lives matter movement, about any number of things may be adjacent to our book. and so a lot of times it's becomes incumbent upon us to reeducate people, tell people that this is what we found in our research and that makes it harder to. get people to understand sort of the get through the door and understand. we were trying to do with our book if they already come in with a notion based off of misinformation that had clouded atmosphere. so yeah, i'll put a little bit more sharp of a point on this

because i want to be very clear about it, it's very important to us we go through in the book with incredible detail the nature of how george floyd died, the way we know that this is not something was an overdose of any sort. we go through that we go through the discussions his drug dependency people who are very bold and they trusted us with that information we don't run from it because it's important to understand the context of which in which sorts of things happened. and often time on. now elon musk's internet people ask us, well, did you interview the woman who he apparently assaulted as if we are not journalists and would not the job seriously. the answer that question is yes. we did also they did not. so when we go through the story

and we talk thinking about folks in nuanced ways means all of it because we tell this story in a full way we get a better understanding of who he is and who we are. we're not afraid any of that stuff. so i [applause] >> i'm sorry, we are going to to cut off the question here because of the time with c-span. but the authors are here to continue the conversation. there will be authors signing on the second for us the elevators. the books are present at the desk outside. i'm sorry, sir, about the time. thank you so much are coming out. [applause] >> if you are enjoying booktv didn't sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to see the schedule of upcoming programs, , author discussions, book festivals and

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