[inaudible conversations] on your screen now is a live picture of the Langston Hughes auditorium at the schomburg center. The home of the harlem book fair. The center for research and black culture part of the New York Public Library system is one of the leading institutions focusing on africanamerican life culture and experiences. Well be back live with the harlem book fair in just a few minutes. [inaudible conversations] what we often think as the bribery of our National Leaders by powerful special interests in washington may actually make more sense, understood as extortion by government officials both elected and unelected. Please elaborate. Guest i think sometimes that often times in fact the conventional wisdom is wrong and the conventional wisdom is you have good intentioned government officials who are being influenced or there are attachments to influence them by corporations corporations and public unyouens and if with could just seal off these Public Officials from outside influences everything would be great and so i sort of call this the Jimmy Stewart mr. Smith goes to washington scenario and that does happen. You have wellintentioned politics being temped by outside forces but my experience in watching politics and researching and writing more offer than not the opposite is true. You have a lot of corporations or entities that want to be left alone by the federal government, and you have politicians or people in the executive branch who are looking for ways in which to enhance their services or the needs to get corporations involved. The hightech industry is classic example. A years ago Companies Like going or microsoft had very small lobbying presence in the United States. They were doing what they were doing and you had a series of actions taken by congress, people from both political parties, that essentially forced those Tech Companies to set up lobbying operations. So my view is that often times what happens in washington dc has less to do with a bribery and more to do with extortion. But does the money follow political figures who have a certain core set of beliefs, one portion may support one politician because they support the issues that are important to their cause and not being viewed as bribery 0 even extortion . Guest i think sometimes it does. You can find instances where a politician that is aligned with a picker cause or policy view is gifting large sums of money from a certain industry, but people would be surprised if you look at a lot of major u. S. Corporations they tend to give to people right down the middle politically, so you find that the oil and gas industry, for example, will give to democrats who perhaps are not predisposed to support their position, butman often times acts as a mean of access or a gateway, and i had examples i cite in the become from executives from shell oil and others that talk about being at ma meeting where members of congress were lambasting them for high gasoline prices, and one of them even called for sort of the potential nationalization of u. S. Oil companies. But after that meeting that very same elected official asked this executive i they might consider organizing a fundraiser for them. If you are an executive and you just heard this sort of veiled that that maybe we should nationalize you guys and then theres an attempt to say, could you raise money for me issue its hard not to see that as some sort of extortive practice. Host you say quote warrant to believe that Committee Assignments are based on knowledge, expertise and background but a member of congress will end up only Paul Committee like ways and means or financial solveses, only if he or she can raid the money. The more powerful their Committee Assignments the more money members are expected to distract from extract from the industries they oversight or regulate. Guest this one of the shocking things i was naive about. I assumed a member of congress is elected maybe theyre a distinguished attorney send occupy on the judiciary commit year or maybe they served in the military so end one an armed services. The shocking reality is in both Political Party does this. They have a system that they loosely call party dues, and party dues basically functions as a price list. If you want to be on a socalled a committee and an a. Committee is a powerful committee from which you can raise a lot of money, house ways and means financial, House Financial Services which has oversight of wall street and the banks. Those are a. Committees. You have to raise somewhere on the order of half a Million Dollars in election cycle nose for your own reelection but to actually go to the Party Committee of your party, which l thats the republican or democratic congressat committee. And if you dont raise that money, there will be threats and if you continue not raise the money you can be booted from the committee and put on a c. Committee, one that you really cant raise a lot of money from, and so people dont tend to want to be on them. For example, the veterans committee, which we would all deem does important work in making sure that our veterans are taken care of and their needs. Thats considered a c. Committee because apparent hill the ability to extract money from veterans or from an industry connected to veterans is not deemed so great. So the sad reality is that Committee Assignments in washington, dc are determined by the price list, and your ability to raise money and if you dont raise sufficient funds for your committee, you will be removed and put on a lower or considered lesser committee. Host among the many books you have written several on Ronald Reagan. Have you ever midwest him . Ever meet him . Guest i did. I met Ronald Reagan after he left the white house in 1994, at his office in los angeles. Thick looking back, certainly saw a little bit of the forgetfulness that came with age or with alzheimers but we had a 30minute meeting. Came as a result of a book id written on Ronald Reagan and the cold war called victory. That was a result of the book being published. Host what yours impression of them, even though he had stages of alzheimers. Guest he had presence. I have met other current president s and corresponded with former president s. He certainly had presence. He was very engaging. He certainly still had a understanding of, i think the core issues. Reagans always struck me as somebody who had a sense or an understanding of a few very, very important things. I cite actually in one of the books i wrote on reagan, an is day about foxes and hedgehawks and talk busy the way people think. You have foxes who know a lot about a lot of things. You Los Angeles CountySomething LikeRichmond Nixon or bill clinton and say theyre fogs. They understand the minutiae of a lot of issues. So you have fox on the one hand, hedgehawks. Hedgehawks know bat few very, very important things, profoundly important things. So i put, for example, Ronald Reagan as a hedge hog. He was not a technocrat, not a detailed guy. But he understood human freedom he understood human schooling blown it okay. To human psychology when it came to freedom and that made the difference for the worldand type of leader has was. Host on sunday, august 2nd become tv is live with the cofounder of the Political Advocacy Group code pink on in depth, our live monthly callin show. She is the author of nine books clegg investigation into the use of drones for military purposes, drone warfare. Other titles include the growning of he revolution and stop the next war now how to crete political change through activism. Other books cover topics such as how to aid People Living in the third world profiles of women; live on booktv, sunday, august 2nd on in depth. You can send your questions or comments to facebook. Com booktv, on twit ex, book tv, or call in. Booktv is back live from the harlem book fair. Pamela newkirk is next. With the book spectacle the astonishing life of ota benga. Good afternoon. I hmm rich from the Columbia University school of the arts and welcome to our second panel for this years harlem book fair the 17th annual harlem book fair in the newly restored Langston Hughes center. Lovely. Our first Afternoon Panel features Pamela Newkirk on the book on ota benga. So introduce the panel we have mr. Allen mcfarland. Mr. Mcfarland is where is his bio. Its right here, i think. Im so sorry guys. Yes. When you have too many papers in your hand. Mr. Mcfar land is the assistant Vice President of outreach and engage. In new york university, also adjunct professor in the department of social and culture analysis at nyu and will introduce our dynamic moderator thank you so much. Allen. [applause] well, thank you very much, rich. Good afternoon everyone. Good afternoon. Come on now good afternoon. Good afternoon. Fax. We have a wonderful panel this afternoon and were in for a treat. Im so happy to be here this afternoon to introduce our panel. For our panel today which will be pride and prejudice more on the white gaze. Literary critic ken neglect burk once said were the instrument our instruments and we have who exemplars who clearly have the heir work in im pleased to introduce our panel this afternoon. Lets start with our mott rater in our discussion, and that is the director of the shomberg sheer for research, and that is khalil. He is a former associate professor of history at indiana university. His book, the condemnation of blackness, race, crime and make offering a modern urban america will be published by Harvard University press and it won the 2011 John Hope Franklin best book award in american studies. And here also this afternoon is we have author and nyu professor of journalism, dr. Pamela newkirk. He book, which you all see in your programs, is spectacle the astonishing life of ota bengal she is an author, journalist and professor at new york university, multifacetted scholar who has published a variety of works that present multidimensional portraits of africanamerican life. Her first book within the veiled black journalist, like me, explores historical troubles of journalists integrate can mainstream news rooms in america. Love letters from a black america which i had the pleasure of reading recently, a fantastic tome put on the list. The book were talking about this afternoon im not going steal her thunder as she is going to talk to us about the book and all that went putting it together as part of a wonderful afternoon. Please join me in welcoming our speaker this afternoon. [applause] thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all for that terrific production. I want to thank all of you for being here this afternoon, and i want to thank our guests, decider Pamela Newkirk the author of spectacle. Its hard to say wonderful with the subject matter she hays written about but i think that as a writer, as someone deeply committed to learning from the past to recovering stories that have something to say that speak to us across generations that makes this book quite rivetting and amazing and one that if nothing else gets said of any interest, you must buy it and read for yourself. Because in some ways this story is better known than some others and i do want to talk about the context that ota bengays journey is situated in, one which you lay out clearly. For those who dont in the name Ota Benning Gasser dont know the story of a map in a caged zoo just a few miles from here. What happened . Guest so first of all thank you for facilitating this conversation about a very difficult subject at an apt time in american life, as we look forward we also look back on, like what it is that africanamericans have or African People have defendant with over the centuries. So ota benga was a Young African, a person from the congo said to be a pygmy i say a socalled pig my because thats a contested team because of the etymology of the term. At one point it meant chimpanzee. But he was brought to the United States first in 1904 by a man named Samuel Verner, who was commissioned by the organizers of the st. Louis world fair to bring back pygmies to exhibit on the st. Louis world fairground. So thats how he first came to this country. And then would years later behind up being exhibited with an orangutan in a cage in the bronx zoo to seen to say that those who have known of ota benga, just about everything that we thought we knew about ota benga was a fiction created by the people who exploited him. So there was always this suggestion that he was complicit in his exhibition. He was complicit in his degradation, as if he was showman, but the archives show definitively that he was held he was captured and brought to this country against his wishes. He was caged in a zoo with apes against his wishes. So this is a corrective of history. Host so he book opens with a very detailed and textured account of the bronx zoo nit early days. One of the things that is really compelling in the way you present this story is not a story of horror. It is a story of triumph. It is a story of scientific celebration. It is a story of the architectural grandure of a new Technology Age where the United States of america is positioning itself in relation to hit european counterparts as having arrived and so the very notion of a zoo in the bronx as a course part to central park is sort of the arrival of the bronx itself. Talk about that context as the annexation which many of us dont know about. Guest the bronx zoo was not part of the celebration of new yorks rise into this global city that only recently the five boroughs have been consolidated into greater new york. Now we have going from a place where brooklyn was a city and all these manhattan was a city 1898. So the bronx zoo arrived two years 0 year later and it was an architectural wonderland. Right . The greatest architects from around the country and the world were assembled to build these beautiful structure. So there was this juxtaposition of grandeur with the dedegreed gages of this Young African man who had been can touper and was now being shown as the missing link. Host you describe the earliest tours the revealing. Were all accustomed to exhibition openings, whether its the Natural Museum of history and well learn something about a the dinosaur we had no idea walked the earth or some fine arts show. These are big deal. So talk about the moment when oat too beginning back goods exhibition opening happenings. Guest right. So william horn horn aday, the offending director of the zoo and the nations most imminent zoologist, the founding director of the national zoo in washington, dc, major major fig. Host the kind after people you look up, right. Yes. Eminent scientists. So he had this pygmy. Right . And he is at the gate telling people you have to see what i have today. You have never seen what you are about to see. This is an amazing exhibit. So he starts leading people, one and all to the primate house where its in this glistening white building, where there are little animals engraved on over the doorway family of monkeys, apes, to suggest what was inside. It was the prime primate house and people went in, and there he was, this slight 411inch boy s03 pounds and the second day the New York Times covered it. Bushman shares a cage with bronx park apes. So the second day sunday, thousands of people stream up to the zoo to see ota benga and were calling it the bronx zoo then it was the new york zoological garden. A centerpiece in new york city. This was again asymbol of what new york was at this time. And by the second day hornaday littered the cage with bones to suggest that ota beginning back was a cannibal, and he added an orang gang to his cage and placed him in a larger cage, crescents shaped cage where more people could view him and that was the introduction of ota benga to new yorkers and he became first a sensation in new york city and then a sensation across the country and then eventually around the world. His exhibition made headlines in paris and london. Just everywhere. Host this is every Museum Directors dream. Guest i hope not. Host well, well talk about that because this is a moment where in the language of our tech know rattic present the way we think about metrics and think about best practices and how we measure outcomes and success, the success of hornaday was to drive attendance and he is breaking records. Guest he broke records. One day alone, 40,000 people went to the bronx zoo to see ota benga. Who sat solemnly in this cage looking out like, he must have like, who are you . Are you crazy . Why . Host so, just to give a little bit more texture to what pamela has already described in terms of the New York Times adulation for this event i want to read a quote from the article she has already cited bushman shares a cage withbronx park apes ota beginning base normal specimen of his race or tribe with a brain as much developed as those of his other members. Whether they are held to be illustrations of a arrested development and really closer to the anthropoid aprils or jude as descendents of ordinary negroes they are of equal interest to the student ofth nothing and can be studied with profit. Guest this was science. Accepted by most mainstream white, i should say americans as science. Host although you cite a few headlines from around the country, one from los ange