I think will go ahead and get started. Hello and welcome to Left Bank Books for our event with Carol Anderson. This is of course not Left Bank Books. Imd event host for Left Bank Books and i would like to thank our cosponsor for the evening, the Ferguson Public Library library. Their work and their activism is incredible and inspiring. They are a wonderful partner to have for such an event like this Left Bank Books hosts over 300 author events each year end it is with your help that we continue bringing in your favorite authors. When you support us, you are reinvesting in your community because your tax dollars are going into your schools, parks, streets, libraries and Community Projects at an incredibly higher rate. We give back by partnering with Many Charities and organizations and also we are doing our fundraising for Readers Program and we have brochures at the back. The river city readers serves st. Louis Public School children by building their own home library and encouraging literacy. The students get to keep five books each year end meet the authors of culturally relevant new books. I would like to ask you to make a donation tonight of any amount you can do so at the sales table or you can ask me about sponsoring a child. This program is near injured my heart and it is wonderful and i will tell you all about it if you would like to hear. I would like to thank all of you for your continued support for us. For information about our Upcoming Events and information about our reading group, ferguson reads and much more please visit our website, grab a newsletter newsletter at the back and definitely get signed up for our mailing list. I am very proud to introduce Carol Anderson for Left Bank Books. As ferguson interrupted and commentators referred to the angry response of africanamericans as black rage, anderson wrote a remarkable oped in the Washington Post showing that this was instead white rage at work. It was countered by deliberate and crafted deliberation, white white rage pulls back the veil that was made in the name of protecting democracy. One said few historians right with the great clarity and intellectual that she summons in this book. There are a handful of riders whose work i can consider indispensable. Professor anderson is high up on that list. The editor of white rage also says this is one of the most important books that he has worked on. Carol anderson is professor of afghan american studies at emory university. She the author of many books including bourgeois radicals, there naacp and the struggle for colonial and numerous articles. Her article from the Washington Post will appear in the fire this time, a new generation speaks about race. Its edited by National Book award winner which comes out in august and i highly recommend that book as well. That article shaped and help define this book and a movement. White rage is inspiring, maddening and necessary. From the epilogue, imagine, it is time to diffuse the power of white rage. It is time to finally truly move into the future. Tonight carol will be discussing white rage, the unspoken unspoken truth of our racial divide, answering your questions and signing copies of her book available for purchase from Left Bank Books. Would you please help me in welcoming Carol Anderson. [applause] thank you. Thank you for coming out on ,comma what day is this i really truly appreciate it. I appreciate what Ferguson Public Library has done and is for this community. Thank you. I appreciate Left Bank Books as well. Thank you. I wanted to spend some time First Talking about how i got to white rage ,comma what white rage is and then to move into several excerpts from the book and then open it up for q a. When i first began to wrestle with the concept of white rage, it wasnt ferguson. It was in fact, in february 1999 when a black man in new york city stepped out on his doorstep after a long hard days work to go get something to eat. He was greeted with 41 bullets. Nineteen hit him. His was gunned down by the nypd. He was unarmed. That was bad enough, but as we know from these killings, it is the response that begins to tell you whats happening in society and so, im sitting there and im listening to mayor Rudy Giuliani in an interview with ted koppel on nightline and ted koppel is talking about the nypd, the killing, hes talking about 41 bullets, hes talking about stop and frisk, hes talking about Police Brutality and Rudy Giuliani says i have the most restraint and best behave police force you can imagine. Okay i had one of those scooby doo moments. And then he began to talk about how his policies were working, that what he has put in place in new york city has brought down crime. New york city is a safer place because of his policies and he has flow charts and graphs and bars, everything, and what you dont hear is that an unarmed black man stepped out on his porch and was gunned down. Im sitting there going something is fundamentally wrong , structurally wrong. I didnt know what to call it. I didnt know what to label it, but i knew something was going on and i continued working and thinking and working and thinking and then august 2014 the television is on and im watching and i see ferguson in flames and then i hear the pundits talking and what they were talking about was black rage. Why are black people burning up where they live. What is wrong with black people must mark how could they burn up where they live. You know theres something wrong with black people. Why are they burning up, and it didnt matter what ideological stripe. It was all censured. The the baseline, the starting point was black rage. I found myself in this moment shaking my head. You know that moment when youre shaking your head because somethings going on and you dont even realize. Youre just gone thats not right and thats when it hit me and i thought what were really seeing is white rage. But we are really seeing is that we been so focused in on the flames that weve missed the kindling. We have missed what has stoked this fire. We have missed, for instance, distant disenfranchisement of the black community in ferguson that through all kinds of such shenanigans and rigmarole had created, where in the 2013 municipal election, in election, in a population that is 67 of ferguson population you have a 6 black voter turnout. Youve gotta work really hard to make that happen we missed in ferguson schools that had been on probation for 15 years. Where a state has an Accounting System of accreditation of 140 points and ferguson Public Schools were getting ten points a year. We had allowed that to happen for 15 years. We have allowed an entire generation of students to go through kindergarten to graduation and a School System that we know doesnt work. Kindling. We have a police force that didnt see that its role was to protect and serve, but saw africanamericans as a Revenue Generating source that can provide 25 of the citys budget kindling. What all of this kindling does, and as i started wrestling with white rage, i began to understand that what were really looking at are the policies, as a nation we are so drawn to the spectacular. We are so drawn to what we can see that we miss those tectonic plates that are actually moving. White rage moves subtly. Almost imperceptibly, corrosive lee. Through the courts, legislatures, government bureaucracies, through the white house, through congress and it reeks habit subtly, imperceptibly, so it is hard to discern what is the source of what youre seeing. So i set out to make white rage visible, because the first thing you have to do is you have to be able to see this thing. The trigger for white rage is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the catalyst for white rage, but it is blackness with the ambition, blackness with drive, with purpose, with aspiration, with demands for full and equal citizenship. It is blackness that refuses to accept subrogation and blackness that refuses to give up. Through an array of policy assaults and legal maneuvering white rage consistently punishes black resilience and black resolved. How else can we reasonably explain why government after government fought so hard to keep black children from getting an education. We sought after the civil war, we sought all the way through the brown decision, we see it now. Why is it so difficult to educate black children . Why do we have this even when, at least since 1957, when the u. S. Said we have a National Security crisis, we must educate as many as our citizens as we can to be able to effectively wage the cold war, but brown was not going to get implemented. Even in the face of a National Security crisis, even in the face when we say this is what our nation needs, white rage says i dont think so. Why . With this nation design a war on drugs that increase rates most those who sell and do drugs the least. Why . And why particularly after the triumph and the successes of the Civil Rights Movement with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in four and the Voting Rights act of 1965 why would we incarcerate communities. Why would we overwhelm state budget. Why would we destabilize family. Why would we do this to those who arent the primary users and sellers of narcotics . Why why would state after state develop ruse after ruth to keep american citizens from being able to vote and to have a say in their own democracy . When we say we value democracy, when we say this is why we fight , then why would we have such mass Voter Suppression. Understand that none of this was done with the cross burnings to make this happen. All of this was done to coolly, methodically, systematically. So, in my new book white rage, i trace this historical pattern with reconstruction and signpost and the great migration, the brown decision, the Civil Rights Movement and the election of barack obama. I also trace it through three key sectors, education, the criminal Justice System, and the right to vote. Now i want to read some excerpts as you know in 1954, the u. S. Supreme court ruled that separate but equal was unconstitutional. They overturned the plessy decision and said we must integrate. Jim crow was no longer the law of the land. The south rose up and said, with massive resistance and said no and used a series of ruses that in fact dragged to this process out for a long, long time. Well, in 1973 the Court Battles are still going on. In 1973 there was an area in san antonio called the edgewood district. In the edgewood neighborhood, it was 96 mexicanamerican and africanamerican. It was the poorest neighborhood in san antonio with the lowest Median Income in the lowest property value. They taxed themselves at the highest rate in order to try to fund their childrens education. By taxing themselves at the highest rate they garnered 21. Capita. Meanwhile Alamo Heights which was a predominantly white neighborhood in san antonio taxed themselves at a much lower rate they garnered over 300. Student. Lower rate, 1500 more in funding. Now what we know is that Property Values have a lot to do with public policy. Where governments choose to put the landfill, where they choose to put the highway, where they choose to zone certain types of businesses and not others has a lot to do with property value. So, the parents in the edgewood district took texas to court and said this violates our childrens 14 amendment rights to have equal protection under the law. It violates brown. The u. S. Supreme court ruled in a five 4 decision. Four of the justices were appointed by Richard Nixon and one was appointed by eisenhower. That quote there is no fundamental right to education in the constitution. They said the state funding scheme did not systematically discriminate all poor people in texas, and that because districts across the United States use property taxes, that this method was not so irrational as to be discriminatory. Thurgood marshall, this is his dissent, and thats what im going to read. Fully fully recognizing the implications of rodriguez, Justice Thurgood marshall, more than 40 of black children, 14 and under lived with families below the poverty line. Thats compared to 10 of white children. Under those circumstances he feared africanamerican children wouldnt stand a chance. The decision he wrote, in his dissent could only be seen as a retreat from a commitment to equality of educational opportunity, as well as in unsupportable capitulation to a system which deprives children of their chance to reach their full potential as citizens. He was simply dumbfounded. The majority would recognize widely different funding but then, instead of focusing on the cause of that disparity they would clumsily pure wet to all of the states opposed efforts to close the gap. The issue, marshall explained, explained, is not whether texas is doing its best to ameliorate the best features of a discriminatory scheme, but rather whether the scheme itself was unconstitutionally discriminatory. Moreover he founded the height of absurdity that texas could actually argue that there was no correlation between funding and school quality. You cant make this up. And then, from that faulty premise, deduce that there were no discriminatory consequences for the children. He was equally on in unimpressed with texas is tendency to show students who have excelled despite living in these districts as some proof that funding was irrelevant that a child could excel even one for us to attend an underfunded school, larger larger classes and a number of other deficits compared to a school with substantially more funds. He said its too the credit of the child, not the state, but rodriguez placed the onus solely on the backs of the most vulnerable while walling off access to the necessary resources for quality education. It played beautifully into the colorblind post civil rights language of substituting economics for race yet achieving a similar result. The simple truth was that by virtue of this sheer demographics of poverty, rodriguez would have not only a desperate desperate impact on African American children, but also a disastrous one. I know, sobering. I then move into the war on drugs because it has so warped American Society in ways that are so profound and so i walk us through how the war on drugs and merged. I then walk us through the court cases, the Supreme Court decision that Michelle Alexander, in in the new jim crow so beautifully laid out and then i begin to lay out some of those consequences so as i go through the court cases i then say, taken together those rulings encouraged the criminal Justice System to run racially a mock, and that is exactly what happened on july 23, 1999, in tulia texas. In the dead of night, local police launched a massive raid and busted a major cocaine trafficking ring, at least thats how it was billed by the local media which, after being ticked tipped off lined up to get the best, most humiliating photographs of 46 of the towns 5000 residents handcuffed in pajamas, underwear and uncombed bed hair, paraded into the jail for booking. The local newspaper, they ran the headline tulia streets cleared of garbage. The editorial praised Law Enforcement or ridding them of drug dealing scumbags. The raid was the results of an 18 month investigation by a man whod be named by Texas Attorney general as outstanding lawmen of the year. Attached to the federally funding Narcotics Task force based in amarillo, he didnt lead a team of investigators, instead he singlehandedly identified each member of this massive cocaine operation and made more than 100 undercover drug purchases. He was hailed as a hero in his testimony immediately led to 36, 38 of the 46 being convicted. The other cases were just waiting to get into the court system. Joe moore, a pig farmer was sentenced to 99 years for selling 200 worth of cocaine to the undercover narcotics agent. She received 25 years while her husband william landed 434 years for possessing an ounce of cocaine. While the case began to unravel when her sister went to trial. Tonya swore he had sold them drugs that he had proved that he was at a bank in Oklahoma City 300 miles away cashing a check at the very moment he claimed to have bought cocaine from her. Then another descendent had timesheets and his bosses eyewitness testimony that wafer was at work and not selling drugs to coleman. And when the outstanding lawmen of the year swore under oath that he had purchased cocaine from a tall bushy haired man, only to have bryant balled and 5 feet six appear in court, it finally became very clear that something was awry. Coleman, in fact, had no proof whatsoever. He didnt have any proof that any of the alleged drug deals had taken place. There were no audiotapes or photographs or witnesses or other officers present. No fingerprints but his on the bags of drugs. No records. Over the span of an 18 month investigation, he never wore a wire. Now he claimed to have written each drug transaction on his leg , but to have washed away the evidence when he showered. So im either thinking he showered once in 18 months. Additional investigation led to no corroborating proof. When the Police Arrested those 46 people and vigorously search their home, no drugs were found, no nor were weapons, money, paraphernalia or any other indication at all that the housewife, pig farmer, or anyone else arrested were actually drug kingpins. What was discovered, however, was judicial misconduct running rampant in the war on drugs in tulia, texas, with, with a clear racial bias. He had accused 10 of the black population of dealing in cocaine based on his word alone, 50 of all of the black men in the town were indicted, convicted and sentenced to prison. They called tulia a mass lynching my taken down 50 of the black male Adult Population like that, its outrageous. Its like being accused of raping someone in indiana in the 1930 30s. You didnt do it, but it doesnt matter has a bunch of klansmen on the jury are going to string you up anyway. But this was in 1930. It was the beginning of the 21st century and a powerful Civil Rights Movement had bridged those two errors. Then the last excerpt i want to read. The last chapter deals with the election of president obama and how white rage reared up in really deep, profound ways. Almost in ways that we hadnt seen in years. So as i walk through Voter Suppression and then i move into the threats on his life and the disrespect that the office of the president received, i then begin to deal with the violence. Black respectability, appropriate to behavior doesnt seem to matter. If anything, black achievement, black aspiration, and black success are construed as direct threats. Obamas presidency made that clear. Aspirations and their achievement provide no protection, not even. [inaudible] on june 17, 2015, south carolinian dylan roof, a white unemployed 21yearold High School Dropout was on a mission to take his country back. Ever since George Zimmerman had walked out of the courthouse a free man after killing trade on martin in a racially polarized motion in the verdict, dylan roof roof had the to understand the history of america, trolling through the internet he stumbled across a council of conservative citizens, try see. The progeny of the 1950s White Citizens Council that had terrorized black people, closed schools and worked handinhand with State Government to defy federal civil rights while. Despite the groups avowed racist belief system, in in the midtolate 1990s, as the Southern Poverty Law Center reports, the group boasted of having 34 members who were in the Mississippi Legislature and had powerful Republican Party allies including Senate Majority leader trent lott of mississippi but 2004, mississippi Governor Haley barbour, the chair of the Republican National committee and 37 other powerful politicians had all attended try see events in the 21st century earl holt, the chair of the try see gave 65000 to Republican Campaign funds in recent years including donations to the 2016 president ial campaign of rand paul, Rick Santorum and ted cruz. The try see enjoyed precisely the cachet of respectability that racism required to achieve its own goals within American Society. Its website of hatred and lies provided the selfserving education dylan roof so desperately craved. He drank the poison of its message, got into his car, drove to charleston, entered a manual ame church and landed in a bible study with a group of africanamericans who were the very model of respectability. He prayed with them, read the bible with them, thought they were so nice and then he shot them dead. He left just one woman alive so that she could tell the world what he had done and why. You are taking over our country, he said, and he knew this to be true. Not even a full month after dylan roof gun down nine africanamericans in charleston South Carolina, republican frontrunner donald trump fired up his followers with the promise, dont worry we will take our country back. No, its time instead that we take our country forward into the future. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Now im going to open it up for questions, but i would ask, befores engine because cspan is filling it and if you have a question please go to the microphone. I have read your book and we discussed it with the book group here, readings on race, my one question and i find it very helpful and a good companion of things that i kind of know, but its good to have it all in one place. The one concern i had is that it seemed you really detailed problems that happened under republican administrations. He went from eisenhower to nixon and bush and then the present situation under obama, but you didnt talk much about the clintons ending welfare as we know it or other things that might happen on the Democratic Administration which are also had disproportionate effects on black people. Absolutely. Thank you. One of those, one of the reasons behind that is because i was looking at these moments of advancement and in those moments of advancement, where you are seeing the pushback comes before 68 if got the republicans and the democrats, but one of the things in a piece that i did just recently, i do begin to unpack, just somewhat, bill clinton and what he has done. The article focused in on the gop, but understand there are couple of things happening. White rage moves through parties. It isnt just isolated, like in the republicans are in the democrats, and that is also really important to understand. It was just the kind of epoques that i looked at that did that, but i couldve easily, for instance, during the Great Depression when Franklin Delano are real roosevelt is creating a whole series of programs, one of the things that you see happening there is that the southern democrats are saying, yes, really do need relief. We need relief and funding and support, we need Social Security , but black people cant have that so you can create this whole new deal of programs but you have to exclude africanamericans. I could have talked about that, but at a crunch piece of time. Really just wanted to thank you so much for this work. Its incredibly profound and the things in here that you cited that i was completely unaware of that the state of mississippi didnt ratify the 13th amendment until 2013. Yes, the state of mississippi finally got around to ratifying the 13th amendment which abolished slavery in 2013. They said it was an oversight. So there are really difficult pieces in here. Thank you for telling the story, which i had only recently learned about but i think being a witness to her story is so important and so powerful so i read the book for the ferguson riverside book club. Its such a great group, i learn so so much but i was really diligent about reading it and i had to put it down sometimes and it was so difficult and painful. My question for you is, wasnt like that for you writing it. It had to be so much more difficult to write it in research it. It was tough. Ive been through this before, in the first book, eyes off the price i had to deal with a lot of the lynchings that happened after the Second World War so im dealing with a blowtorch lynching and theyre talking about their blood boiling so hard that his eyeballs popped out of his head. I am in those records, im reading through this so ive been in the bows and thats how it felt in these moments going through this, but one of things, i had the mary turner lynching and it is tough. It is a woman who protested because her husband was lynched. She is angry, shes eight months pregnant, and so the lynchings come after her because she didnt know her place. How dare she protest that her husband was lynched, and so they snatched her, they stripped her, they hung her upside down from a tree and set her on fire. Then they saw her stomach quivering and so they got a knife and they sliced it right open. The baby popped out and they stomped on the babies head. When you are reading through those records, because one of the things i think is also important to understand about the way white rage works is that we focus in on this kind of violence but it is the system around that condones and legitimizes that violence, that allows it to happen, that allows it to occur, that sanctions it. That is what gives it traction. Everybody knew who killed mary turner. You go through the naacp papers at that walter white is writing and he is naming the names, soandso and he works at standard oil. Soandso and he works at the furniture shop. And on and on, and nothing happened. So, when you have that kind of violence that happens in a community and then the powers that be are like yes, thats white rage because it creates the kind of policy, the kind of judicial system but allow that to occur. In order to keep African Americans their place, to stop that advancement. Thank you. I have another question. We talk about this a lot in our book club, but what can we do . You doing it. This is the thing, i study movements. I love movements. I love what i study, how how do we change a norm . There are these moments, for instance before the civil war, 80 of the nace nations gdp was tied up in slavery. Tied to slavery. 80 of the United States gnp tied to slavery. But we got to the point, we had to fight a mean, hard war, where the norm changed and we knew that slavery was wrong. We came to know that jim crow was wrong. We came to know that apartheid was wrong. The movement that it takes to change those norms, bit by bit neighbors talking to neighbors, its mobilizing, its organizing, its writing and talking and thinking. Its voting. Its laying pressure on policymakers to make this a much more just and decent nation and world. Thats how we do it. Thats how we work together. Good evening everyone, how are you doing . Recently i was completing a job application and under the nationalities it listed latin, spanish, mexican africanamerican, african asian or north african. It said asian is island pacific or japanese, but it just said white under caucasian. Nothing to reference european or russian or anything like that. Why did you think its so hard for some caucasians to recognize that there are also immigrants of this country and also quick to say that this is their country . I think a lot of that has to do with the way that history is taught k12. It creates a civics lesson, but not a history lesson. It creates citizens, in terms of a very kind of flattened narrative about who and how, by whom and how the nation was founded. Who built the nation, who created the railroads, who built the citys, who invented this, who invented that, and if you go through those kind of standard textbooks ,comma what you will find is very minimal discussion about anybody else. It is whites who have built america. Whites who have sustained america. Whites who created america, whites are america. It is that framing in our textbooks, from k12 that have really solidified this narrative. So we do get were a nation of immigrants. You get that kind of thrown out there, but then we have the melting pot and we all become one, but not really. So, and, i think i untran saw a statistic that a statistic that only 20 of americans have a bachelors degree. So that means somewhere around 80 that this is the history that they know. You know how it is when something tells you something, the first or you hear is the one that Everything Else has to be weighed against, so if the first story you hear is the story youve heard over and over and over again, then trying to say you know, your folks came from poland. I will tell you a quick story. I have tons of stories. I was teaching u. S. Cold war foreignpolicy class, and i broke my students up into Research Teams and they were to be the president s Transition Team for a series of issues. We had things like human rights and energy, the environment, and i had one on immigration. That team actually wrote a great policy paper on immigration. It was a really good paper. I require they then present it to the rest of the class as part of the president team. The responses were so vitriolic. Things like yes, so my parents were immigrants, but i really do think we need to build the wall. Wow, wow, wow. So you talk about that we only Pay Attention to the flashpoints. Here in ferguson, Michael Brown is shot and killed, you talk about the point that people only Pay Attention to the flashpoints. Here in ferguson, Michael Brown a shot and people take to the streets. The governor and politicians overreact, ferguson blows up and suddenly it is national and international news. In baltimore, people march peacefully and then nobody pays attention until people start looting and writing and suddenly, once again, it is national and international news. My question is, is somebody who is about as nonviolent as you can get, it seems like the only thing that people Pay Attention to and white people Pay Attention to is suddenly things turn violent. How do you protest peacefully and still get attention and make a difference when it seems like the flashpoints are the only thing that people listen to . One of the reasons i wrote white rage is so we begin to Pay Attention to the kindling. We need to really understand the power of policy. I would push back on the fact that whites only Pay Attention when something blows up. In movement, and struggle, you have whites who are there on the ground who are doing that hard, heavy lifting. You have asians who are on the ground doing that hard, heavy lifting as well is having latinos and africanamericans. You have people who are doing the bass work, the organizing, the strategizing, the strategizing, the letter writing and social media has helped so much with that kind of mobilization so you have that going on. The thing that happens then is we dont see it, but it is happening, and that is why when something jumps off mad, crazy, because that kind of organizing has already been in place, you have people and organizations that step into the breach. They help provide policy rationale, policy options, they provide safe spaces. We just dont see the heavy lifting initially, but it is there. Thats why we have to keep at it, keep doing it. Its not sexy. We love sexy, and this kind of heavy lifting isnt sexy, but as i documented and tried to go through, looking at what the Supreme Court is doing, this is why we have to Pay Attention to who the Supreme Court nominees are. We have to pay really close attention because their decisions help shape the wharf and roof of this nation. To follow up with his question, i think we really do Pay Attention, we whites, but in a different way. Lets go back to charleston, and one of the things that i noticed which i always see, when one of us whitestone act appropriate as whites do, then the media starts talking about was at parents or environment, and we go on to this, and intellectual assessments we can figure it out so we can keep our image intact while we never grieve the death of eight or nine of our brothers and sisters but theyre africanamerican so it doesnt count. We judge ourselves by our best example and we judge you by your worst. There is violence that by us never allowing ourselves, we said not safe. No not comfortable, but we mislabel it. The media then presents in a narrative that we whites want and support and thats violence. We know flashpoints, were stepping on the line we make sure we come back looking good. Could you comment on that. That was a boom. Im working on a piece right now dealing with the politics of respectability. One of the elements in the politics of respectability is how africanamericans dont get the benefit of the doubt. I walk through, i walk through why the politics of respectability was deployed during the Civil Rights Movement as a means to try to humanize africanamericans to the larger American Society. To the powerbrokers and others because there had been a series of killings, brutal, horrific killings like the lynching of claude neil in 1934 where he was dragged out of in alabama jail, sent through a gauntlet of torture down into florida with the spectacle lynching hoisted up and tortured. The Florida State said there was no crime because he wasnt from here in alabama said there was no crime because he wasnt killed here in the naacp turns to the fbi because now we have the lindbergh kid kidnapping law that if you cross state line its a federal offense and hoover said well there was no ransom required, no crime so seeing what this kind of violence on the blackbody has done, you saw the Civil Rights Movement the ploy the politics of respectability as a way to make visible that the only way, the only reason that you are seeing mrs. Amelia boynton yanked onto the concrete in selma is because shes black. This cant be anything but racism. It was a way to say you cant say you had a criminal record. This is why you see this the point. The politics of respectability does have some good pieces in it. Im not one of those who just puts it off as some kind of victorian thing because being sober is not a bad thing. We know that alcohol and drugs destroy families. Being sober is not a bad thing. Education is a good thing. There are these things, but what it doesnt do is protect black bodies from white violence. One of the things about charleston, charleston drove me to this because i looked at that. The nine who were killed were the model of respectability. You saw nikki haley in South Carolina going that was really bad, then you had to have their killer. You got respectability, their killer had to be an about white supremacist. They had to find incontrovertible proof that he was an about white premises. He had to have the rhodesian flag, the apartheid South African flag and he had to have the Confederate Flag, im not done yet. And then he had to have his manifesto where he said he wanted to start a race war. Thats still not enough. Then you had to have the families of the slain forgive dylan roof. While, wow. And then, they are going to take down the Confederate Flag with dignity. We see it today. What happened in orlando is horrific. But the way that the killer has then become the avatar for all muslims in the world, but you didnt see the same kind of rationale being used, for instance, with timothy mcveigh, right, so that is part of the way that the narratives work, and the way that they begin to undergird undergird policy. You hear, as theyre talking about muslims and terrorists that they are in fact talking about what kind of policies to put in place based on this. If i can follow up with another thing, when they looked up and they saw three flags flying at half mast with the u. S. Flag, the state flag and then the Confederate Flag flu at full mass and then youd strategized and she was going up the pole and a white male stood at the bottom and the order was given by the police to tase her which would have electrocuted her. They stopped and looked at the white man, this is my interpretation, they backed off and let her live. The only reason shes alive is because that white man was at the base of that think and he grabbed the pole and said to kill him. People dont know that story because they wont report it. Im a historian. Im going to run with this one. In 1946, in columbia tennessee, a white shop owner smacked a black woman. Her son, a black veteran was standing next to her. You do not lay her hands on some of his mother. That veteran picked the white man up and threw him out the glass window. Whites in the town organized to lynch the black man. The black veterans in that town werent having it. Basically its called the columbia tennessee race riot. After was over, 23 africanamericans were arrested for murder. No whites were arrested, although has you know, lots of of shooting and killing happen. Thurgood marshall came to defend the black man in columbia tennessee, but he couldnt stay in a hotel because they were white only hotels. After court everyday he would have to drive so one of his colleagues was a white man. As they are driving out of columbia tennessee one night after court, he looks behind and theres a cop car behind him. They go left the cop goes left. They go right the cop goes right. They speed up the cop speeds up. Finally the couples them over. They said you need, thus. Thurgood is like our snap. He gets up, he gets in the cop car. The white man looks up and he realizes there are several cars behind that cop car and if they dont turn around to go back into columbia tennessee, but instead theyre heading into the woods. Thurgood marshall is getting ready to get lynched. The white man hops over into the driver seat turns the car on and he starts following. He scared, but hes like im not going to let this happen. They speed up he speeds up they turn right he turns right. They turn left he turns left and hes going, and finally they stop and they say what you doing and he says im not gonna let you do this. Now think about the courage that it took, in 1946, in the middle of tennessee. This loan white man standing up before the sheriff and his posse saying im not going to let you do this. It was one of those moments, im so glad i have some folks my age up in here. Remember those old aqua velva commercials . Thanks, i needed that. It was like this bracing moment. They had never seen anything like this before. They said okay fine. There is history in this kind of solidarity. It is absolutely essential. Ive got your book but i havent read it yet. Thats okay. Thats half the battle. Im a believer that the problem, im involved in a lot of groups concerning racism and its overthrow and solving it, getting rid of it, but i think we have a problem. I think we really need to know more about what really happened and we have not been told the real truth. It may offend my caucasian friends, but im sorry, i think they need to be offended. If the truth is going to offend them it will help them become whole. I think thats really one of the problems is that we are not really telling the truth and im glad that you and Michelle Alexander are writing the way your writing and a lot of things are coming out. As an example, i listen to serious satellite radio which i enjoy, when i hear ms. Hunter and she always talks from a historical point of view, and she was talking about something you touched on, the lynchings that took place, and i didnt know they had benching parties. Yes. They would roast animals and then they would bring the person in to be lynched. They would not only lynch them, they would cut off their head and they might barbecue it. They wouldnt eat it, they would throw it away. Things like that, we really need to know more about and the things she brought up, they are saying that the 49 people that were killed in orlando, the worst massacre that weve ever had and she karen hunter said thats not true. You look at someplace in arkansas. Alain arkansas. 500 blacks. And east st. Louis and tulsa. So i say keep on writing. Now i wanted to ask you another question. Ive been looking for some books by e franklin frazier. I read about him in the late 50s and early 60s, a great social theoretician. I would like to know where i might retrieve some of those old books, and the book she mentioned, i dont remember the authors name, about the lynchings that took place, but a lot of these books are out of print some of you could kind of help me. If you dont do it now. Ill do it after because there are some really good books that i used in my class on lynching because most of my students have not heard about this. One of the things that happens, for instance, in many black families, there is a lynching story. You begin to think about what that means to have a lynching story in the family, how it shapes the way you move through this society. How it frames what you think about justice, and how the system works in the society. It is staggering, and so, there are several books i use but one of them is philip drake, at the hands of persons unknown. Okay, that sounds like time. Anyone else . Well thank you so much. I really appreciated this. Thank you. [applause] this Holiday Weekend on cspan2 book tv, saturday night at ten eastern on afterwards, wall street journal editor joe and loveland looks at top Women Leaders in corporate america, and at 11, cnn political contributors talk about journalist thomas lakes book unprecedented, the election that changed everything, and a look back at the 2016 president ial campaign. Sunday the 2016 president ial campaign. Sunday afternoon a little after five, professional or could talks about the final volume to her Eleanor Roosevelt series. At ten pm eastern, author sl price on the death of the Steel Industry and its effect on a workingclass town seem to the lens of high school football, playing through the whistle. For the complete schedule go to cspan. Org. Coming up next, look at usjapan relations and current military strategy. Then journalists uncovering emerging technology in Silicon Valley and other parts of the u. S. After that our interview with retiring congressman Jim Mcdermott of washington state. Later on the tv, a look at notable books