Welcome to booktv and in depth. This is our Monthly Program with one author talking about his or her book and we are pleased this month to be joined by wes moore, the author of three books, plus a Childrens Book and novels. His first book came out in 2010 the other wes moore, and the other in 2015 and his most recent book is about baltimore during the arrest and death of freddie gray that just came out. In your book you write that the military saved your life. What do you mean by that . Guest the military plays an incredibly Important Role in my life where some of the most important times inn my life are where i was wearing the uniform in this country. I was first introduced when i was aboutys 13yearsold. I was sent to a military school and i had gotten into some issues and challenges. My mom threatened to send me away to p military school, and every year i kept blowing it off. The first time i felt handcuffs on myrs wrist is that 11yearsold. My mother noticed i was intentionally hurting people that leften me. So finally one day she came up to me and said im going to send you to military school. And honestly, i thought that she was kidding or exaggerating and finally i realized she wasnt and she sent between mandatory school. I hated every minute of it when i first started. I remember that first those first days there. I ran away multiple times. I noticed the longer i stayed i began to fully understand what it was they were trying to teach me and also with my mom was trying to teach me into the fact we did live in an interconnected environment and how everybody was doing in my unit mattered to help my unit as a whole was doing. When i finished school i got a scholarship offers and i decided that the thing i actually wanted to do and spend my life on so thats when i made the decision i wanted to join the army. My decision to go intohe the ary was both a continuation of the fact i had this level of service and it would help pay for college that was hopeful, but there was also this idea but i felt a bit of gratitude because it was the introduction of the crucial time in my life that helped make what is the difference. Host what was your role in the 82nd airborne . As guest i was a peer trooper with the 82nd airborne division. My final in afghanistan i was the director of publications with the first brigade, so that is a long way of saying that everything we had in the psychological operations was in the entire area of operations which was the regional command east, the entire Eastern Region of afghanistan. I was the directo director of Information Operations for that. So atrg the time, my last assignment when i was leaving afghanistan, we have about 1700 paratroopers that were under our command that we were responsible for, so it was an amazing and aweinspiring experience. Host wes moore, how had you changed after the first year in military school as a 12yearold . Guest 13yearsold. I would say the big thing thats changed for me there was an introduction of leadership. What that means and what it meant and the role they played in my life. Military school gave me the chance in a way it was a remake of identity. There was a chance to rethink my space in society. But also some of the other things that happened. There was an intentional introduction of leadership. Sometimes people say they need military because they need discipline and they will do pushups and wake up early. The reality is you will come ofe things are real and true, but that isnt what made the experience useful for me. The thing m that made useful for me was thishi introduction into this idea that l they are very much going to introduce you to leadership early in a very deliberate way. After you go through the initial basic training, they will put you in charge of something relatively early and relatively small. Its not they will put you in charge of a hallway and say you are in charge of this hallway where you are in charge of the dumpster or whatever. If its clean we will congratulate you, if its a dirty we will h help you. Once you are doing a good job and you will be promoted and move onto the next thing. Now maybe you will have a couple of soldiers under your command, then you move up. So there is a sense of responsibility in the way they treated teach the leadership frameworks that i think are not only useful and important for me but also something that gave me the taste of what was important. So i knew going in that leading people was important to me. I knew going in that whether it was in the case of waiting cadets were soldiers or thinking about the work that we do now, being able to be part of the hoprocess and the person who can help shape the direction of the organizations attitude on things, that became important, and i think both the framework on how to do it and also the introduction is necessity into something the military health to foster. Host how did you become a Rhodes Scholar . Guest the truth is by think about that experience quite a bit. The first time i had a conversation about the scholarship was actually when i was interning with the mayor of baltimore. In that picture hes standing there and pointing towards a picture on his wall and understand he wasnt the type of guy that had camera people following him around all the time, but on that day he said he thought about the Rhodes Scholarship. I told him i heard about it but i havent thought about it. Hes pointing to the class and wheree he was. Thats the momentt he first told me i should consider it. He also gave me instructions and i went and i done just about. I had certain people that helped me with my essays and my lifes journey on the scholarship of petition and then right there in my office is a picture and im clear that the picture would have never happened. It was an experience that i will never forget where i think the plane flew off within two weeks after 9 11 where the nation and the world has changed immeasurably at the same time i was having this experience shaped very much as though by 9 11 especially the fact it was a chance to Study International relations iner a place i was one of only a few americans studyi studying. Studying this with people in your class from brazil, china, nigeria andro argentina, gettina chance to reallyha understand hw all these dynamics take place with some remarkable people whove becomwhobecome some of m. It was a pretty special experience, and i give a lot of things to those that really helped light the path for me and realized that it could be real. Host what is your view about taking money from deceitful words foundation, and what did you tell the overview for . Guest one of the last questions in my interview was because i had spent time in south africa, also i know our history in this country really well one of the last questions i was asked by the chairman of the board, he said youve been to south africa, you are africanamerican, how can you accept the money knowing the history, knowing how he made it and knowing the lives lost in order to make that money. I thought about it and i said no, i know a few things for sure. One is that when cecil rhodes was creating the scholarship, he didnt have meid in mind to be sitting here as a finalist for the money. And he is for the way turning in his grave knowing that im here as a finalist for his scholarship. The other thing and that does show me what progress needs and looks like. The fact something that wasnt at all intended for me that i had an opportunity to model me stand here and utilize it but then also have an obligation to make sure that you do something with it. The other thing i do know is that it was bonny ancestors who fought and bled and built, and where able to build in a way that it created a pathway for me, who were able to sacrifice and dream for a world that they didnt see, but to train and fight for one that hopefully one day i would see. And for me to have the opportunity then to be there in that seat, for me to have an opportunity to then take the privilege of that seat took about in spite of the worlds fight, i thought it would be disrespectful not to. When you are looking at the history of cecil rhodes and looking at the history of the entire South African region and the damage that he gave to the people there for his own personal benefit to the point at the time he was the wealthiest man in the world. It isnt lost on me. It is also not lost on me the obligation that i now have to use the benefit those of us thought long and hard for me to use thats now to make sure that they can create a more just and fair world. R host wes moore, where did you grow up . Guest i spent part of my childhood growing u up in maryld and part of my childhood in the bronx. I called to place his home. One is baltimore. Actually, where i live now. I was born a little way closer to the dc area. And then new york, where i spent part of my childhood after my dad died. My dad was a radio personality in the baltimore and dc area. One day he was complaining about his throat and saying how it was bothering him and he couldnt sleep. He went to the hospital the next day. A lot of assumptions were made when he walked into theum hospil stay looking for help. When my mom finally made it to the hospital to join, they asked questions like is your husband prone to exaggeration. They gave him instructions to go home and rest and if it got worse then to come back. Five hours they released him and he died. Thats when we were living in maryland. My mother had a difficult time with the transition at that point and finally called up her parents and my grandparents were livingth in the bronx. My grandfather was a minister in the south bronx and my grandmother was a schoolteacher in the south bronx. Their house was barely big enough for them but they made a way to get all of us, so we ended up moving out there. At that point, after moving up there, thats where i spent a good six to seven years of my childhood for a young discipline to military school in pennsylvania. Childhood was a lot of moving around. But thehe thing i knew is no matter where we moved around to, i had have a remarkable loving family that i was blessed to be able to say with what they have, they tried to provide for us as best they could, and it was something i always felt. Host fromom your first book the other wes moore, my father was dead five hours after having been released from the hospital with a simple construction to get some sleep. The same hospital was now preparing his body for the morgue. Hemy father entered seeking heah but his face was unshaven, his clothing disheveled, his name unfamiliar and his address loss in a familiar area. Lye hospital looked at him, insulted him with ridiculous questions and basically told him to fend for himself. Now my mother had to plan his funeral. Why do you think those assumptions were made . Guest race. Actually, i think its really one of th heartbreaking things, and i think about it a lot both with where we are now, and also when people say at what point in your life did you know or did you understand the impact of race in the world. And as you just listed out, it was the earliest points people are treated differently. When i think about the many systems that we have in place in our society, whether it is our healthcarhealth care system or n system or whether it is Environmental Justice or educational justice, its impossible to talk about these things without understanding the role that it plays because it isnt lost on me and it will never be lost on me. In fact, have those factors been different ha if it had been mentioned before, there would have been a benefit of the doubt was given. Had the benefit of developing giving, we wouldnt have had the same type of revolts. Results. And this is something that i know is not just anecdotal. There is data that continues to reinforce the fact that race is one of the most predictable indicators for the outcomes across several areas, across education and across mortality and mental and physical health. So, i the thing that made that real in the case of thinking about my Family History is this idea that i know that its inescapable to not understand and embrace the impact of race. Host who was the other wes moore . Guest the other wes moore is a young man i heard about actually at the same time that i was getting ready to head off. The baltimore sun, my hometown paper, was writing an article about this local kid that just received a scholarship and they were writing about my background and childhood. They were writing about the fact that just ten years ago i had handcuffs on my wrist and now ten years later i was getting ready to go on a full scholarship and for that lookedd like in the period. But at thehe same time they were writing about an armed Jewelry Store robber where four guys went into a Jewelry Store and put everybody on the ground and spend the next guy i guys walken they pulled out of malice. One with the guy with a gun and one with a mallet. They were keeping them on the ground and Walking Around in smashing out jewelry cases in taking out watches and rings and necklaces. One of them yelled lets go and all of them ran out at the parking lot. One of the people was an off Duty Police Officer if she was a 13 year veteran and threetime recipient and also a father of five he was in the area because it was his day off and she was trying to make extra money for his family. He got up off the ground and drew his weapon and when he ran outside he started kneeling next to cars and vehicles to get cover. What he didnt realize is that when he was kneeling next to a window rolled down and he was shot three times at pointblank range and killed. There ended up being a 12 day manhunt and one of the people was captured and tried and sentenced for the crime was a guy that was also named wes moore. The more that i learned about this crime, the more i learned about this tragedy, often times the morning there were questions i wanted to ask. One day i decided to write a note and the first one i wrote was my name is wes, and heres how i wrote about you. I grew to the Correctional Institution where i knew he was at the time. So that is who he was and that change the way that i thought about the world. Because he did have an important reminder. That his story could have been mind one mine and my story could have been his house in that decisionmaking is how a small decision that we make sometimes its lack of options but we cannot be so quick to castigate unless we can understand the things that make our stories rich so that the neighborhoods that we are growing up in was screaming to them about what we want and expect from them. Talking about baltimore and the fact that we were living blocks away from each other said you think we are a product of our environment he said beer products of our expectations. And as soon as he said that he is absolutely right we are products of expectations someone said its a shame that you lived up to your expectation and the real shame is we both did. Because thats exactly we have structured the system where people live up toon their expectations so what expectations do we actually hav have. Host you quote the other wes more from everything you tolds m me, both of us did some pretty wrong stuff when we were younger and both had Second Chances but if the situation or the context if it doesnt change then Second Chances dont mean to match. Thats right its interesting to see who gets a Second Chance and for what. That is important for me to him appreciate every one of us needs a Second Chance. I tell people all the time two steps forward and one step back. That is now. So the idea Second Chances was a very humanistic need but we are not structured to do is to have parity or equal apportionment. Right now we still know from every single measure to have massive disparities of how the Second Chances are allocated and what we have Second Chances for. We have People Living in poverty how does it show itself . The air they are drinking by the air they are breathing and water they areat drinking. So if you are creating a concentrated level of poverty and injustice that exist and colorcoded, we know this idea behind Second Chances is fleeting. So that experience continue long after the book and to say respectfully i know why he is there but i do know i even give them an opportunity to mean something that is crucial. Host what did he think about you telling his story . I have a friend who is a remarkable writer, a real writer. She puts out a lot of books and his talented that she would always ask s about wes. I knew about him for years before this idea she would always ask and i would give the update. She set i thank you should write about this. I think there is a bigger story to be told. I want to dig that deeply into his life for my own. And i said ive been approached about writing your story on our lives and relationship. Immediately he said i thank you should do it. He said i wasted every opportunity i had in life and i will die in here. If you can do something to help people understand the consequences of theirp decision but also theds neighborhood these decisions are made and then you should do it. That became the fire and the focus. Not just the consequences and with the context of the decision thats soon after the book was published my editor said we just received word they want to do an oped with the other wes more and he is a fantastic writer and bestselling author and a progressive and brilliant. He said i really enjoyed this book it was a great examination of race and class in our society. Three weeks later the editor sayswe we just received word Michael Gershon wants to write an oped with the basis of your book who is a former speechwriter for president bush, washington post, conservative. He says i really enjoy the other wes more a great examination of personal responsibility and individual choice. This is fascinating to people like it for two completely Different Reasons. My wife said who is right . Id, said honestly they are both right. You cant talk about societal responsibilityet understanding at the end of the day it is all an individual choice. Either good or bad. However you cannot talk about individual choice without understanding these are made in as societal context. That does influence so all of those things help to tie in