Myon instructions are to lean close to the microphone. Im happy to have come here and spend a lot of years in washington and as a matter of fact when some of these events described in the book remember to place i was here as an undergraduate and later as a teacher and instructor at howard university. Every nation of course has a noble claims to that it wants to remember, times that they want its population to remember as a kind of idea of itself a that is a little better. [laughter] these times most nations identify are usually more, conquest for land, conquest for resources or deposing of a king or a dictator. They may be defending oneself again and compressor or invader. But they are generally honorable and bloody. The best ones are honorable. The worst ones are like the honorable ones only in the fact they usually swim in blood. But here in this nation 50 years ago, there was a fairly bloodless revolution. I say fairly because there was blood and instances of violence and instances of torture and imprisonment and there was this. But overall it was a bloodless revolution. I like to think of it as a Civil Rights Movement that was truly civil. Because masses of people thought about what was at stake and what was that right rather than what was expedientnt or habitual. They thought about whatat was elevating rather than power trying to reinforce itself. That movement for it not to be understood as one of the most noble most mature most sweeping political changes inconceivable to me however in serious danger they are drifting into the barely mentioned in our textbooks and cultural history and those that suffer are the untimely demise in its narratives because its promise as far as yet incomplete. Before that we should contemplate and revere that period as a powerfully moral achievement and of the many paths that the whole movement took, none was more significant or cingular then the board of education. There are essays and oped pieces all in place to analyze the events of 1954. The culmination of years of work on the ground and in the streets and in the houses and in the temples and the churches and the courts the culmination being Court Decision that as we pay tribute to a explicit goal of turning points in social policy and law its so easy to forget one segment of the population whose future was the center of the cause, and im referring to the children, not just the ones that walked into the schools in the 50s but also the ones who walked into thee schools now 50 years later. When i was approached to do a book for children of brown v. Board of education, that is what i thought of some of those two sets of children. The question for me was how to relate those events to young people who may have anything from no information at all, some memory of an adult trying to describe the Civil Rights Movement to them and of course it may have been very much like telling you about the civil war. They may feel that distant so the question is how to make those days alive for them in a manner thater is direct, not preaching, patronizing or burdensome. While photographs were chosen as that documented and dramatized the precursors to the decision and its aftermath, but even the most powerful images could become another lesson or another collection if they were presented with captions that were limited to daytime rule when and where so what really attracted me to the project with the possibility of entering imaginatively into the minds of the people in the photos they might be thinking or feeling or could have bought or sold in the language that represented the language of the people in the photographs that was also the language of the readers. I wanted to make theer experiene as much as possible and my skills are holding the narrative, so i thought i would bring those into play rather than vse type rendering of what was going on. In doing so and trying to advance for this person might have been banking on to himself or saying to another person it occurred to me something truly unique happened because i cant think of any Political Movement so demanding and so required and deliver it to a. Of children having to behave in a manner that wasnt just to advance him or herself, but all tchildren then and in the times to come. They were the most vulnerable age when they were asked and able to become involved in something much bigger than themselves. 8yearsold 12 to 15. Im entering the street from a neighborhood, a building where i believe i am hated or i know i am because grownups are screaming at me. I am soot not wanted to soldiers have to come along to protect me and if they have guns maybe my life is in danger may be maybe y out there in the crowd has begun and might use it. But even without the children who went to School WithoutNational Guard support, they entered school alone. Sometimes with a few others of their own race and they had to spend thepe day there. The anxiety of entering into a new school and neighborhood is intense but to enter into those circumstances is more than intense. Trying not to be afraid or at least not showing it, not misbehaving, not even getting angry, not making any mistakes and trying not to be heard and trying to learn under those circumstances. Waiting for the day to end when you can go home knowing all the while what you are doing is for people that he will never know. Ive wanted todays children to think about that and to know that that spirit, that generosity was in them to give up something, to be brave about something for the greater good, not just ones personal advantage. Where else in their a history books could they see that and imagine that kind of courage for age. E their own where else could they see adults of all races and faiths, all classes and professions especially a nonmilitary revolution where else can you see that . It still lives the most startling thing to me. I am still heartened by it, and i hope where i am convinced Young Readers will remember and be hardened. I want to read to you now a few words, some of the passages from the introduction to the book where ict was hoping to communicate that back to young people. I think i can do this withoutity glasses. No. No risks. I had to cataracts operations you will be happy to know the world is blindingly beautiful. [laughter] i had no idea what i have lost. This book is about you even though the main event in the story took place many years ago would havwhat happened before id after is a part of all of our lives because remembering is the minds First Step Towards understanding. This book is designed to take you on t a journey during a time in American Life when there was as much hate as there is love and anger as there was hope in as many heroes and cowards. At times when people were overwhelmed with emotion and children discovered new kinds oo friendships and a new kind of fear. As with any journey there is also a narrow path to balk before you can see the road ahead and sometimes there is a closed gate between the past and the road. I have imagined the thoughts and feelings of some of the people that have chosen to help tell the story. There are children, teenagers, adults, ordinary people leading ordinary lives all swept up in the events. The first people to step onto the long path to the other children and parents. There were jim crow laws that demanded separation of the races in all Public Places and especially the Public Schools. They were based on l the idea of separate but equal. That meant people could enter public areas, could use public facilities such as drinking fountains and train stations, dc the seated on public transportation, go to parks and Movie Theaters and attend schools, but not with white people. Sitting onn a bus not being served through the fund when they leave the window of a takeout restaurant, but nothing was more painful than being refused a decent education. No matter how muchd they argued or how long they complained they had to send their children to all black schools no matter how far away. Textbooks were few. There were no supplies, no afterschool programs, school lunches, equipment, underpaid teachers overburdened trying to make do than delaware, kansas, south carolina, virginia and washington, d. C. Stepped onto the path. Terrence formed a Group Representing to serve School Boards that require them to travel to schools miles away from those closer to their homes. The case was named for the appearance was part of the group. The gates were opened by the Supreme Court after k many lawys and thousands of people pushed against them. May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court justices announced the decision in the gates of brown v. Board ofed education. The decision which said separate schools were not equal through many states, cities, towns, neighborhoods, principals, teachers, parents and students. They were to honor cant ignore or overturn the decision. Many battles for one, some quietly, some not. The demand to integrate Public Schools grew into a nationwide movement to eliminate all. They have the right to vote, the right to choose the neighborhood he wanted to live, to sit in any vacant seat marches, protests, they erupted almost everywhere. It was an extraordinary time when people of all races and walks of life came together, when children have t had to be r than their parents, passengers, priestss and rabbis left their altars to walk the streets with strangers, soldiers with guns were assigned to keep the peace or to protect a young girl. Days full of determined and keeping loneliness, peaceful marchers were met with applause in some places, violence and others. People were hurt and people died, students and civil rights workers were beaten, jailed, strong leaders were shot and killed and one day a bomb was thrown into the church killings of four little girls attending sunday school. None of that happened to you. So why offer memories that you dont have remembering can be painful and even frightening but it can also slow your hearts and opensw your mind. Whenever i see shes driving on the line or snow gumbo simmering on the stove a flood of memories come back to me. In 1953 whenr i traveled in the south with a group of students, we received the generosity of strangers. Country people or city people to deny adequate education in an area in a Movie Theater and like me they are ordinary people. By those laws that say no not here no not you. They had not marked their soul. When the Supreme Court decided the brown v board of education it was connected to those generous strangers even now to summon up my memory of what that decision did and what it meant for all of our futures. This is a celebration of the power because you are a part of it the road was not taken only those brave enough to walk it. And in every way this is your story. [applause] some of you have wrote questions down and i looked at them. And i have chosen some that i thought i could answer. [laughter] and disregarded those i couldnt. But i did notice one third of the questions were about the same subject. And read a few of them together. Do you agree that even though itss been 60 years since board of education segregation has not disappeared a lot of Public Schools that were a white slowly evolved into all black and what should be done against that. I have a notion that with the Public Schools and integration was not simply integration. I never went to an it i mean a segregated school. I lived in atl little town distinguished by its poverty. And the people in that town were immigrants, each europea european, mexicans, black peopl people, all sorts. And we did not have the money to segregate or even interest because during the depth of the depression it was on our collective minds. There were different churches for those groups and there was one high school. And the streets are full from all different places in the world. So i came to the university here in washington deliberately to be a model black intellectual. Because i looked at this business a little bit different back in the fifties t was for thought money to go into those schools and i thought no child should have to walk 10 miles away but i didnt think of it as either r. Or i thought of it as both. So i knew that black schools undergraduate schools or graduate schools had attended one that in those days that you could find anywhere thats where they came from and that goes higher so that is a consequence and nevertheless i am still not certain that now what used to be all white and now all black or whatever ethnic group, i am not sure with racial segregation so much as class and money. When it became popular to go to any school or to go into other neighborhoods they make those choices so then the benefit and the consequence of the law the best teachers of some of the best black schools were dragged away to other schools. And that apartheid had created its own blossoming profession architecture, medicall school schools, et cetera and black entrepreneurs who had a closed and captured audience. And they all live together in one neighborhood. But to live next door to the carpenter who lived next door to the whatever that was the cohesion of the neighborhood. When that was over, it was over. Its a beautiful thing to have more choices. And some of those left behind a different kind of neighborhood of the inability to move out. Some of that changes rapidly now as people move away from urban areas so that is changing. That i think is better but to this completely diversified world there are moments when you will find certain schools that are 80 or 90 percent black summer 80 or 90 percent latin. I am not disturbed by that. So that all students and all schools have a relationship how well they are taught the touching one the teaching and somehow we get a notion it doesnt really matter. And it does matter in the resources into the schools. So that is a very long teacher answer to a question that is it awful now that there is still reintegration . My feeling is that all of the struggles were foror more choices than fewer once. And where they feel comfortable. But not be forced and of course the major thrust of the government and the state should be absolute support with budgetary requirements. So is there anything else i have not covered in that answer. So a little tiny offthewall but what advice would you give graduating College Seniors considering pursuing a career in print journalism . [laughter] it is a noble calling, i suppose that you will have to change it. But because of many instances with the huge incorporation of all media including the press and aggravation and the role that these to play and then maybe some of you in eighth or ninth or 12th grade education and now that they are from graduate schools when they say we they mean them. [laughter] and edward armer oh is idle and the way he said nice workingclass boy and felt he didnt have the credit and so he invented them but in the beginning he felt with himself some fault. Andd subsequently and if you cut with a very sharp knife just go and see what happens. And for independent thinking. Do you think the Supreme Court shouldve been more specific with the implementation rather than deliberate speed quick. I suppose that is one of the ways they got through. It was a long time. The whole county close their schools five or six or seven years will close down the Public Schools if they didnt go somewhere else they would provide for the white children but the black children had to go b to detroit. Can you believe that . It wasnt going to happen. There is a question here and a couple of others about the achievement gap and if you believe can be done with the closest gap . That is a very entangled question and problem. You know that they dont test black to do better than or worse that but they test a culture and class. I think in a number of places i could strip your brain and feel very comfortable doing that. [laughter] in my own heart of hearts i think the changes come from the panic and i hate to say that so blatantly because im aware of the fact more and more they are dumping the teaching job on to parents. It has been hours and hours with the children not because its board knowledge but less is done in many of the classrooms. I am very mindful of that. I have a lot of questions how can i help my children are my child read better . What do you suggest we do . And i always ask them do you read . Do your children see you sitting somewhere oblivious to everything because you read a book you really excited about the bookstore . Do you validate and you cant wait to get home to read it . Because whether they do it or not they will see what is interesting and fascinating to you. That helps not just to have books laying around but to be an active participant in the process and sharing stories what do you think thishi means . As adults or parents but i do know what matters a great deal and they are very sharp and their antenna is up and shivering all the time. They have to be because they dont know the language and have to look at Something Else and then had a picture he had drawn and said look at what i had did. I was doing something and said thats lovely and he tore it up right in front of my face. Said what did you do that for he said you had that patronizing smile on your face. Thats lovely. [laughter] and it was trooper guy was trying to get rid of him. And he recognized it and has whatever it takes to tell me about it by just ripping it up. From then on i realized he knew is much as i knew when i was a kid. You really have to tell who was lying and who isnt, that sort of thing. So because there is a sharp intelligence parents can make enormous differences in how the children behave and learn in school. These photographs some i knew i wanted in the book others were sent to me and i just pick them out when i felt suddenly and probably knew what he was thinking of what they were thinking like you cannot go here or there so that i peeled to me they wanted to comment on something and may not have done. Some more questions about the system of segregation i tried the comment as clearly as i could with the complexity of that not wanting the necessity of doing numbers of 50 percent of this or that but at the same time wanting the choices to be available this question is a good ending because its about ending in the end of the session that this is not a story remember a story to pass on . It is a story to pass on. Thank you. [applause] we were taken into the hall to con