Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Spectacle 20240622

Frank mcadams were you supportive of the war when you volunteered in the marine corps question. I was very supportive of it, so were the members of my class, the 42nd officer candidate class. Mike class lost 44 killed over there. I often wondered what some of those young men couldve done for their lives how they survive. How long were you over there. 12 months and 23 days days. What did you learn . I learned that war is hell, like the man said. Sometimes the wrong people and up running things which put me into a moral to mende dilemma with my company commander. Hes the most despicable person i ever met. I found out after a few incidents that i was working for captain quaid. The day that Robert Kennedy was shot he did a little tap dance in his office, the Office Clerks told us told us that he said it was about time that someone shot that commie sonofabitch. And he was checking the lot lines last night and he found amount of earth with a wooden headstone with his name on it. He got the message. At that point he became extremely paranoid, spent all this time in his Office Cubicle and came out come up with reasons not to command the convoy. He always came up with an excuse that they needed him. He was the the commander on that 140 truck convoy we found out later that he disappeared off the radio for about 12 minutes. In that time we took a bunch of casualties. I was trying to get a hold of him so i could rely the enemy position so he could call in, what they called counter battery fire and that never happened and we took a lot of casualties and he came up with some excuses. After that day june 10, 1968, he never took another convoy. He never took a convoy to a hot area. It was always, something in in the office size had to be done, either i had to take it or to other lieutenants had to take it. At that point we knew what was going on, he was sleeping during the day with a load of 45 nearby, i realize i had a moral dilemma on my hands and i was going to have to answer the proverbial watergate questions. If the troops to get inches what did you know, when did you know it, and what did you do about it. I wouldve been appointed as privy to the act if the article 32 investigation, which is similar to a grand jury and i would have had to answer those three questions. So i was in a real moral dilemma, the biggest moral dilemma of my life it was not a grunt in the jungle book. I was facing a moral dilemma with my company commander. Sometimes i had more respect for the north vietnamese that i had for him. Did you name him in the book question mark. Yet the pub blister was very much worried about a possible liable. Is he still living. Know he died of lung cancer in 2004. That was one of the things he was either putting one out of lighting one up. His favorite was a marble reds. He thunders very manly. Size face with a i faced with a moral dilemma and what i had to do was make the decision on my all and so i went outside the chain of command, i know a major in the First Marine Division headquarters and i had a meeting that really did take place. I told him exactly what was going on, his First Impression was isnt this just a bunch of troops blowing off hot air . You know troops troops are always complaining of pitching about something. I said no and i gave them a few instances and i told him about the Bobby Kennedy incident and he just stared at me, and then he said frank get your educated but out of my office this never took place. And i drove back to headquarters i thought to myself i just may be really screwed myself now. Im going to get a bad report and i went outside the chain of command, somethings going to happen. I think the major might Say Something to my commanding officer, my battalion commander. He didnt. Iran into the office clerk about two days later and he had a big smile on his space and i said what is going on . He said the captain is getting transferred to headquarters company. So they really took him off the load, and he thought he really had a nice desk job and right off the rest of his tour but one night the troops caught him in a four holder and they had a blanket party form and beat the crap out of them. He was carrying an omelette flashlight they took that away from him and used as a black bat. He didnt go into staff offices for about four to five nights until a space healed. But he deftly got the message. We never found out who the culprits were and we didnt know if they came from headquarters or from my company. Does this was is not unusual incident . For to have a commander who did not garner respect and was frankly beaten by the troops . For me is very unusual incident, ive never been placed in such a moral dilemma in my whole life i often think about it. There is a time when my editor at the university of kansas when he first asked me would you care to write about what you went through in vietnam, i didnt want to write the book, that i was pulling out some files a day or two later out of an old bankers box and i opened up the file and i literally went back in time and i saw these photographs, memos and things and i emailed my editor back and said that i changed my mind and that i would write the book and he said fine semi a proposal and we went from there that was one week be for Kentucky Derby in 2011. My deadline was june 2012. I had a lot of the book already written because of all the files and memos and letters. I kept in contact with a lot of people. Therefore five people in that book who are written under pseudonyms. It took you 43 years, why did you not read it prior to that. I did. Time they were coming out and it got me a lot of meetings in the new agent and then Nothing Happened because people told me they dont cover officers. That is a subplot and at the captain defended a lot of people because a lot of people felt usually people go through life and dont have to face a war zone. They go through high school and college to get recruited by a big company and have kids in suburbia with a white picket fence and see the war on tv. Theyve never have to face a subset and wonder that they might not see the following morning. What brings out the best and worst at the same time i saw the best of some of the troops they i served with and i saw the worst with the man i had to serve under. Do you still have anger about what happened to you in vietnam . I thought it was a life experience. I have ptsd before i went over and a recurring nightmare where the proverbial used to chase me through my neighborhood in chicago. They had ak47s and all i had was a 45 and no matter where i hit oran to be near where i was and i would wake up my tshirt with the absolutel absolutely drenched. Once i got over to vietnam and got my first and bush, the nightmares stopped. Coming back i never had any problems. I joined the Veterans Group and once i joined the Veterans Group in south africa taking place i realized how lucky i was. Some of these guys didnt get wounded physically but they were wounded psychologically and some of them didnt fare so well. At that particular time in the 80s they had an astronomical rate and it could be compared to the same from afghanistan. What do you do here . Ive been teaching since 1991. I was teaching the extension and i also taught at cal state and there was a professor from the uk who was diagnosed and i got a phone call and 91. I came up wednesday, the class started thursday. I took over after the second week and that was in the spring of 91 and ive been on the faculty ever since. Host what was your homecoming like when you came back from vietnam clacks they were glad i survived. I was sending young men over to where i came from and at the same time i was interviewing companies because i thought i would leave back for duty and i had a hard time with some of those business interviews. I went through four or five of them that were not nice. They didnt like objects for whatever reason. One of them told me he will be coming to work with a lot of topnotch people. He said i hope you like leaving the bench of High School Dropouts against some machine gun in placement. I want to just put my fist right into his chops. I just grimaced through it and i looked at him and i said thank you i dont want to waste any more of your time and my time and i walked out of the room. That happened on about four different occasions but they wanted me to come price with one, which i did. Host who is this on the cover of the book . Guest they picked that off of the internet. That young man who was on the gun mount is from Denver Colorado and he found out about it from some of his friends who were just walking through barnes and noble. He called the publisher and got a hold of me on an email and weve had a nice relationship back and forth. He sent me one of his books. I also rejuvenated a lot of friendships from Vietnam Veterans and people from my own battalion after 43 years of getting in touch with me i heard from several people. Im glad that my editor told me into writing a book because its a book that had to be returned because people have to know about it on the High School Level to let young men like Henry Fleming what the war is like and once you survive it, it follows you for the rest of your life and for me its followed me for the rest of my life for good. Host in what way . Guest i look at life differently. I just came back from cuba on an inside tour and i got to see what the cuban citizens are like. I understood what they went through with che guevara, castro, the cuban missile crisis and they have a certain well down there and it comes from surviving a situation like that. That does something to you and guides you through life and its something when you wake up in the morning youre just glad you are alive. Host heres the cover of the book the vietnam roughriders the commanders memoir. This is book tv on cspan2. Now the journalism professor talks about the life of a congolese sport featured in an anthropology excepted in the 1904 st. Louis world despairs fair from the Brooklyn Society in new york this is 50 minutes. Now it is my pleasure to introduce the speaker professor of journalism and the professor of journalism and the director of undergraduate studies at new york university. Also the author of black journalists like media that won the award for media criticism and is the editor for portraits of the africanamerican experience. Its been published in many including the new york times, Washington Post and the columbia journalism review. Prior to joining she worked at for organizations including new york newsday so will you please help me welcome pamela. [applause] good evening everyone. Its a pleasure to be here tonight particularly to be here in this beautiful building where i get so much of my research so thank you all for being here. Blacklight does matter is the centuriesold plea. Its what was conveyed to Thomas Jefferson if the indispensable duty of those that maintain for themselves the rights of human nature to extend their power and influence to the belief of every part of the human race. The lament of the links didnt use. Its an assertion, a question, a call, a prayer. Blacklight does matter and spirit of a research into a young congolese mail who garnered global headlines at times but why was the why this story why was the story of a disgraced african who didnt leave behind any record or perform any remarkable feat of the merits of biography. When i began my research five years ago i could not know that some would see his wife is in the four that i knew that his story mattered and he came to be so monumentally degraded in a worldclass city at the dawn of the 20th century during the progressive era. It had already been written. I began begin with a book published in 1992 that have become the definitive account of ota bengas life. It was written by Philip Bradford the grandson of the explorer that brought ota benga to the united states. According to the introduction the book was the story of friendship between ota benga and samuel. From the first few pages i was intrigued by the notion that they forged a friendship with the subject. It was akin to the table of Robinson Caruso and his side kick but had no citation and was entirely almost based on the corroborated accounts. The book nonetheless etched the tale of friendship into the hard drive of history. I found other sources and i turned to the Conservation Society known as the zoo to see how it had recorded the exhibition and the plot thickened. Gathering animals First Published in 1974 explores the history of the zoo beginning with its creation and recounting the episode of the former curator presentation content it that it was unlikely that he had ever been teach and displayed at all. Plus ota benga exhibited like a strange animal . That he was locked inside the cage to the stared at during certain hours seems unlikely, he said, ignoring evidence in the society of archives that the verified verify that the dalia exhibition in the cage at specific times of the day. Then in the effort to clarify what had transpired they claimed that there was a page to play with the chimpanzee that accompanied him from africa and a label of information while he was in it. He concluded at this distance in time thats about all that can be said for sure except that it was all done with the best of intentions but ota benga was interested to the new public that hadnt been privileged to see the family in st. Louis. I soon learned that his subjection of doubt despite any reading of the archival records the exhibition is unequivocally documented in this article correspondence and in the published article in the Zoological Society journal. And this is just one of many examples of the session i discovered by the trusted custodian in history. Meanwhile the records that exposed the key aspects into the circumstances of the captivity have largely gone untouched. Revisiting the case for just a rare look at the history and raises troubling questions about what we know and what we think we know. While he didnt leave behind the papers others did. Mountains of archival letters and the autobiographical account in the newspaper magazine articles and field notes and sentenced data and collections of those that knew ota benga enabled me to retrace steps back and what i discovered showed my suspicion of this relationship. In the process i was able to see more clearly how the social elite are embedded in scholarships, Government Policies and Popular Culture and why some of those added to its lingers to. He was the first child of the slaveholding family in South Carolina who came of age during the backlash during the major reconstruction and about avowed white mrs. T. Went to the congo first as a missionary and been determined to make a fortune in the country that was being plundered. As millions were being enslaved under the guide of civilized human with a missionary post and focus on capitalizing on the term on the turmoil. In 1904 can he returned to the congo as a special agent special agent for the st. Louis worlds fair. His assignment was to bring back the pygmies. Fair organizers hoped to match progress from the lowest to the highest civilization. The diminutive people of the Central African forest deemed the least civilized. Heavily armed and with an approval of king leopold and u. S. Government officials, he went hunting for pygmies and was the first first captives about whom he wrote an article entitled by and told adventures while hunting in the congo. In lectures and articles he promoted ota benga as a cannibal and noted his pointy teeth which in reality were fashionable across the congo. Two years later she had turned the ota benga over to the zoo where he was exhibited in the monkey house is in september of 1906. He shared a cage with apes was the headline in 1906. Tens of thousands of new yorkers flocked to the zoo to see. Ministers protested and many refuse to meet with ministers. The Zoological Society Madison Grant also held firm and the zoo director with the blessings of his elite superior said that the exhibit would go on each afternoon in september. Ota benga he insisted had the best room in the monkey house. New york times editors were dismayed. They wrote we do not understand all of the emotion. Ota benga according to our information is a normal specimen of his race or tribe with a brain as much developed as those of other members. Whether they are held to the illustrations of arrested Development Certificates than the other african savages or whether they are viewed as key to generate attendance of ordinary meat gross they are of equal interest. They recounted saying they felt the journey to lynchburg virginia and orphanage farm in long island where he lived a lonely life in st. James and he would turn to lynchburg where he worked and did odd jobs he also became companion for neighborhood children who he believed the hunting, fishing and lynchburg was embraced by the community that would go on to become a renaissance and having the teacher at the seminary camp. He spent the final years to find his way back from trying to adjust to American Life so i will need a small expert in that area where he bonded with a group of boys. In lynchburg she found a home in the contours and boundaries when he crossed into the neighboring cottonwood in the community he was faulted and would come back and ask why they did that he recalled years later he doesnt understand. However long before he arrived he had seen on the faces among the spectators outside of the cage of the monkey house he learned to live in the carefully drawn lines and practice the customs as they have memory in centuriesold depression and he may have recognized the sorrow. They were the descendents of the people that knew the displacement and the loss of language and family, friendship. If i brought her there she was in there she goes again shes about to cry. These people are from a far consonant need a new. Some have lost loved ones, some were the children of the end sleepers but all made room for us