My name is travis cohen, im a bookseller and in charge of the abamended to quick housekeeping and we can jump right in. Im gonna take a quick second to remind everyone to please silence your cell phone. We are also recording video and audio in todays talk. Also when it comes time for the q a portion we have a standing microphone right here, at the end of the aisle we ask that you speak clearly into it and keep your question to a question. Following everything we have all the books on sale behind the Cash Register at the front of the store so if you want to get those and come back will be more than happy to sign them. Then we ask that you keep your chairs in place. We have as many of you probably know we host a lot of events this year or every year, we need help keeping track of those we have more info desk pand check our website we updat that all the time its the best way to get that information. Campers that enough. Today we have the pleasure of hosting Matthew Algeo, an awardwinning journalist whose abis the author of many books, he is here to discuss his new book all this marvelous potential Robert Kennedys 1968 tour of appalachia. This story tells of kennedys tour starting mid efebruary les than four months before his assassination. Looks like evicted hillbilly aji and recast the midcentury story of appalachian life and what decisions were in place to generate the world as it became to myself having lived near cumberland for years have seen how the story told in the book title still resonates with the population. Even deeper into the books pages readers will be familiar with the story of economic withdrawal and much to discover everyone please join me in welcoming Matthew Algeo [applause] thanks travis. Im going to adjust this a little bit. Hours already feeling . Are you feeling okay . Doing this with the handshake. Its great to be at politics and prose again. I said it before, for authors this is like Madison Square an garden. It just smells better. Travis was mentioning some of my earlier books i kind of like how this fits into some of the previous books are gone but a little background about myself is in order i think its always good to let people know the person who wrote the book. The person who you will be giving your money to hopefully. I grew up in a town about 30 miles was a philadelphia town called perkasie. Its an indian word that means abi went to college at university of pennsylvania in philadelphia and majored in folklore. So ive got that going for me. After i graduated i couldnt find any work in folklore. [laughter] my parents were surprised. I started working in public radio it was kind of the place where folklore people want at the time. I worked at a few stations in seattle and minnesota and st. Louis. I met my wife and st. Louis and 97, we were married in 98 and in 05 she was hired by the state department and joined the foreign service. Since then, ive been able to write these books because my wife have a real job and destroying of nonbestselling books has given me something to do at least while hioverseas. Quick plugs for some of my earlier books if i could my first book was last Team Standing. Thank you. Big fan. In 1943 merger of the steelers and eagles they became the steagalls because the nfl was so short of players during world war ii that had emerged two teams. The cornerback is blind in one eye running back has ulcers. They arent the last Team Standing but the publisher insisted on calling the book last Team Standing dont worry about that its a good book. Exthe next book was Harry Trumans excellent adventure retraced the road trip harriet and bess truman took in the summer of 53 after they left the white house this is before expresident s had pensions or secret service protection. Harry and bessie got in their chrysler and drove from independence missouri to the east coast to visit their daughter margaret who lived in new york at the time and then drove back again. Its kind of a sweet book. Harry and bess are staying in motels and eating at diners and it speaks to a bygone era. Expresident s now are basically midsize corporations unto themselves. When truman left office he was last president to return to something resembling a normal life. It was a lot of fun to do that story i did the president is a sick man abhoward is not best sellers i cant believe this. Industrialism the anhistory of competitive walkin in the 1880s americas most popular spectator sport the sixday walking race. Okay. Abe and fido, which was widely acknowledged as the greatest biography every written tlincolns dog and i mean, lincoln plus dog, come on. What i have to do . All right, we will see about all this marvelous potential and while that fits into the scheme of things. This book came about in 2016 after the president ial election are probably aware donald trump is president and a lot of people were surprised when he was elected and went and looked at the numbers and they were especially surprised at the overwhelming majorities he picked up in a lot of counties in appalachia and people started writing about this and i thought, thats interesting i wonder how that happened. I knew about the kennedy trip just as a piece of political trivia that Robert Kennedy and d 68 had gone on one of his famous poverty tours to Eastern Kentucky and at the time nckennedy was not officially a candidate but considering running against Lyndon Johnson in the democratic primary. It was in effect kind of a Campaign Stop certainly had all the toppings of the Campaign Trip with Photo Opportunities and the hearings and the ig speeches. I just thought it was interesting that Robert Kennedy in 1968 as a liberal could go to Eastern Kentucky and very credibly campaign and 50 years later you see donald trump winning these counties with 60 or 70 of the vote. I thought i should write a book about that but then everybody else thought the same thing so this book ended up being a little bit different and focuses more on the trip itself. I dont get too much into the analysis of why things have changed. I think i look more at how things are changed and leave it up to the reader to decide whether the changes are better or worse, therefore worse. I went down to kentucky i began researching the book in 2017. I grew up in philadelphia, outside philadelphia, lots of money, i have a lot of bias attached to it. To the story of appalachia and also the 1960s. My idea of the 1950s was woodstock and the chicago convention. San francisco. You dont really think of kentucky when you think about the 60s. S. At least i didnt. Where i came from. The 60s happened in kentucky a lot. There were a lot of crazy things going on in appalachia and Eastern Kentucky. Things to do with te environmentalism and poverty. It really surprised me and i thought, maybe thats a way to approach the story is to look at what the 60s were like in Eastern Kentucky. By way of background before the rfk trip in 1960 his brother jack ran for president and in West Virginia was an important ntprimary for john kennedy to win. And bobby was his campaign n. Manager and this was the firs time jack and bobby really were exposed to american poverty up close. I think it really stuck with both of them. There is a funny story from 1960 campaign in West Virginia where an old coalminer came up to jack kennedy and said, is it true that youve never worked a day in your life . Jack kennedy said, yes there is some truth to that. The coalminer said, dont worry, you have it missed a dam thing. [laughter] kennedy was enamored with the people in West Virginia and the people in appalachia and they always stayed with him. It 63 in july 1963 harry cottle, a writer from Eastern Kentucky wrote a book called mike comes to the cumberlands and it was really an exposc on the exploitation of the people in Eastern Kentucky by the Coal Companies in the major corporations in the u. S. That depended on calls. In october 63 homer bigger who was a reporter for the New York Times wrote an exposc about poverty in Eastern Kentucky and i think jack kennedy had seen both of these and they made quite an impression on him and he had planned to go to Eastern Kentucky to see what the conditions were like for himself that trip was scheduled for december 1963. Of course that never took place. After his assassination, lbj stepped up and really took up the mantle for antipoverty campaigns and in his january 64 state of the Union Address famously declared war on poverty. In august 1964, seven months later, the bill the Economic Opportunity act was passed, creating the office of Economic Opportunity or oto which was the agency that oversaw all the war on poverty programs. There were so many programs. It takes a page in the book to list all the programs but some of them were headstart medicare was really something that came out of this School Lunch Program things like this. Rfk ethic when he went to Eastern Kentucky in january 68 he had a few reasons to go. One was i think it was in the back of his mind his brother had made had wanted to visit Eastern Kentucky in december 1963 and never made it. Sshe reappropriated the office of Economic Opportunity was coming up so he wanted to see what progress had been made on the war on poverty. I think Robert Kennedy also wanted to show that poverty wasnt just an African American problem or native american problem or mexicanamerican problem, it was an american problem. This affected every community and every group in the country including white people, white people in Eastern Kentucky particularly and i thought, i think he thought it was important to show that to the country. The trip itself was two days he held hearings in one room schoolhouse in vortex and then added gymnasium in a town called neon, a high school gymnasium. As i was writing the book i really thought it was more interesting, Robert Kennedy a lot of books have been written about Robert Kennedy obviously with larry tie wrote what i thought was an excellent biography and gave me a good blurb which really is the most important thing. I didnt want to read a book really about Robert Kennedy and a biography of him as much as explaining what he did on this trip. The people he met and the issues he faced. And try to put them into some kind of context of what was happening in the 60s and whats happening today. Also to show what changes have happened since the 60s and what changes happen. A few of the issues that he discussed, or he confronted in Eastern Kentucky, one was stripmining, at the time there was a system called the broad form bd, i dont know why they called it the broad form deed, maybe it was big but these were deeds people had signed over the mineral rights to the property, often 50 to 100 years earlier. These deeds gave companies the right to just strip the land that the call was on and Companies Work required to repair the land, they were required to do anything to fix the damage that was created by stripmining so people would see Coal Companies dig in their land to take the call and leave. It was environmentally very disastrous. It stripped hillsides of all the covers so the hollows would flood every spring. Not to mention very exploited since it destroyed the land they had and they got no benefit from the call that was t taken out. I think Something Like 1 trillion worth of coal has been extracted from Eastern Kentucky. Not much of that money made it back. Another fissue that was present at the time was this concept of maximum feasible participation. The Economic Opportunity act provided that the people most affected by these programs, i. E. Poor people, would be given maximum feasible participation in deciding how the money would be spent. And what the money would be spent on, where the money would be spent. Just as an example there was a grassroots Citizen Committee of wolf and buffett counties that was organized that got 40,000 grant from the federal government to build new roads. This was a committee that had been formed by unemployed minors in the two counties and it seemed like a really fantastic thing they were able to get this money but who do you think didnt like the fact that the federal government sent money directly to grassroots citizens committees. The state and the county politicians. They were used to having the money go to them first and they would decide who got to spend it. When the money started going bypassing state and local politicians and going directly to poor people but this was kind of the final straw for a lot of people who were opposed to the war on poverty in the Economic Opportunity act. It was such a fantastic ideal but in a way it planted a emlittle seed of its own demise right there in the act. It triggered such a backlash aover the entrenched political interest. This wasnt only kentucky but anywhere this money went. 1968 the president ial campaign was heating up. We are in february when the trip takes place so we are about six weeks before Robert Kennedy officially announces his candidacy. Like i said earlier, it really had the trappings of the Campaign Trip and its funny, i have pictures in the book, kennedys aides did not expect quite the crowd of a oppressed of the company to the senator on this trip so he would see these long caravans of cars following him and would stop somewhere go inside the house to talk to somebody and he would be done and onto the next house before the caravan even finished pulling up to the house. Its kind of funny how much attention it got. Although, i was surprised to learn that the networks did not archive nightly newscasts until august 1968 when the Democratic Convention came. They would be occasional newscasts you would find that if someone thought it was important to say for one reason or another but the Network Newscast from kennedys trip i was not able to find and i think they were just, they didnt archive the newscasts at that time. There were a host of issues, real brief really, food stamps was one of the fascinating issues to me that i learned about in this book. Mainly because people had to pay for food nlstamps, which i hadnt really appreciated but when the Food Stamp Program began, you paid for a certain denomination of stamps and in addition to that you were given free stamps. You pay like say 10 and get 15 worth of food stamps and the fee was number of factors the size of your family your income, that kind of thing. But it could be a fairly big price, kennedy one of the people he talked to on the trip at one of the hearings was an unemployed minors named swingle if you get spent 72 a month for 94 in food stamps. Had to pay 72 to get 22 in food stamps and another minor was a guy named kristin click berg johnson a father 15 whose monthly income was 60. He paid 26 a month for ab leaving just 34 for all other expenses. Kirsten johnson at the hearing said to kennedy have you ever seen 15 kids and three beds . Robert kennedy said, im headed in that direction. He had 10 kids at the time i think. After the trip, one of the things that came out of this fo was eventually the purchase requirement was lifted although it didnt take effect into the food stamp act of 1977 and that didnt take effect until january 1979 when the purchase requirement was finally ended and participation in the Food Stamp Program went up 1. 5 million in one month. It made a big difference in a lot of peoples lives just by lifting that purchase requirement. Also interesting to find that food stamps are a Welfare Program for people for the hungry also Welfare Program for mark because about four percent of walmart sales come from food stamps. Its always interesting to see walmart how they come down on legislation that makes it harder for people to get food stamps because it cuts into their revenue. After rfks assassination in june 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president and he had to appoint someone to oversee the office of Economic Opportunity. To oversee the war on poverty. Of course republicans for the most part hated the war on poverty and hated the programs so this kind of put nixon in a tough spot. Whos gonna find to this thankless job that nobody wants . He found a congress guy from illinois, he took over the office of Economic Opportunity and one of his first hires was a young ambitious congressional intern from wyoming a guy named dyck cheney. In 1981 the office of Economic Opportunity was finally abolished altogether. In so we can give mont